the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

52 the driving forces behind the evolution of isscontroversial topic which pushes enquiry towards the large literature onAmerican exceptionalism (Buzan, 2004a: 153–182).A distinctive feature of the US is that its geography and history haveinsulated it from the rigours of war and the balance of power to a muchgreater extent than is true for most of the countries of Eurasia. Isolationismhas been an option for the US in a way that it was not for other powers,and the US has strong traditions against military entanglements andengagements abroad. It also has as its norm a higher standard of nationalsecurity: a desire to be absolutely secure against outside threats as itlargely was for much of its history. The Soviet threat was sufficientlyglobal, and sufficiently challenging to the much cherished American ideathat their country was the model for the future of humankind, to drawthe US out of isolationism. But even though the US accepted a longtermglobal commitment against a broad-spectrum challenger, it still didnot abandon its high standard for national security (Campbell, 1992).One can read this into both the frenzied US reaction to Sputnik (seechapter 4), and, up to a point, into the obsession with working outthe last detail of deterrence logic in order to ensure that the US wouldnot be caught at a disadvantage. Even clearer is its impact on the Anti-Ballistic Missile/Ballistic Missile Defence (ABM/BMD) project, where thepromise was precisely of invulnerability to attack. The allure of that goalmade ABM/BMD a central feature of US strategic thinking and policy,despite the fact that the technology has never come close to delivering thepromise, and that many experts argue that it never will. It is also visiblein the decision to retain unprecedentedly high relative levels of militaryexpenditure after the end of the Cold War, though there one might wantalso to look at bureaucratic and domestic political factors. The highexpectation of security can additionally be seen in the US response to9/11. The shock of vulnerability ran deep in the US, in ways that it hasbeen difficult for societies with less stringent expectations of security tounderstand or empathise with.Summing up this discussion, the driving force of great power politicscomprises: the distribution of power among the leading states (the polarityof the international system); the patterns of amity and enmity amongthe great powers; the degree of involvement and interventionism by thegreat powers; and their particular societal dispositions towards levels ofsecurity. These elements are to some extent related, at least accordingto a Realist logic. In a bipolar system, for instance, there would tend tobe stronger patterns of enmity than in a multipolar one, and a bipolarsystem would also presuppose that its two superpowers were driven to