Military manuals and the Danish Straits: explaining divergent legal interpretations of peacetime minelaying

Abstract

The aim of the thesis is to explain why otherwise similar countries – Germany, Denmark and Norway – interpret the legality of using naval mines in peacetime in the exclusive economic zone differently in their national military manuals on the law of armed conflict. I hypothesize strategic culture to be the explanatory factor for divergent legal interpretations, functioning as a perceptual lens for interpreting law. I expect that a more idealpolitik-oriented strategic culture constitutes a more restrictive approach to the legality of using naval mines in peacetime. I study this through a legal analysis of the manuals and a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis to determine the dominant strategic culture in each country. Results exhibit support for the hypothesis: Germany is the most idealpolitik-oriented of the studied countries explicitly interprets the laying of mines in peacetime in the EEZ to prohibited, while Norway as the country with the most realpolitik-oriented strategic culture shows an implicit permission of the activity along with Denmark, which falls between the two. These results imply that strategic culture may not only influence specific foreign or military policy decisions, but also the way in which international law is interpreted.