Strategic culture of a country determines how its political elites view security, security threats and how they adress them. Key factors for determining and studying strategic culture of a certain country are its history and geography, which it must adapt its actions to, in order to survive. Strategic culture of a certain country is thus changeable with time, the biggest and clearest change however is caused by big shocks, such as direct or indirect experience of war. The change of strategic culture can be studied via actions of political elites which are its carriers. Based on the key components of strategic culture it is possible to assume, that the change of it will be more clearly visible in countries which, in one way or another, claim to be neutral. Thus, for the purpose of case studies, Denmark, Finland and Ireland were chosen due to their specific attitude towards Common Security and Defence Policy of the European union. Through elaborate system of studying strategic culture and via the analysis of strategic documents made by political elites of chosen countries written right before and after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the thesis shows the changes in their strategic cultures. Synthesis of findings suggests an answer to the posed research question how a major sudden security crisis impacts strategic culture of countries and contributes to filling in the gap identified in the literature.
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