Comparative analysis of Czechoslovak and Finnish strategic cultures before World War II

Aim of the thesis is to examine the influence of strategic culture on states and their most substantial decisions. The concept of strategic culture introduced first by Jack Snyder in the 1970s is today generally accepted, there are even warnings that culturalism may become too fashionable, indeed some authors say this is already happening. Most works however focus on strategic cultures of countries with long and rich history, historical experience and a great amount of various doctrinal documents - such as USA, Russia, China or India. My aim is to identify the influence of strategic culture in small countries, with a rather short period of independence - Finland and Czechoslovakia before World War II. They differ in one crucial decision: Czechoslovakia had decided to yield to German territorial demands, while Finland had decided not to do so and as a result faced a war against the Soviet Union. Hypothesis of this work is that this crucial difference is caused by different strategic cultures in the two contexts