the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

the technological imperative 171about the rationality criteria on which deterrence depended. While theCold War discussions of BMD were driven by desire to escape the MADrelationship of deterrence, the post-Cold War one was more moved bythe desires both to have some defence against possibly irrational actorsand to underpin US claims to sole superpower status. This latter motivecontinued the Cold War tradition of using massive military superiorityto differentiate superpowers from the lesser ranks. The rogue state focusmeant that the BMD debate, like much else in post-Cold War StrategicStudies, became tied into concerns about the proliferation of bothnuclear and missile technology. As the US once again got more seriousabout BMD, the general debate about the pros and cons was re-enlivened(Harvey, 2000; Payne, 2000; Wilkening, 2000b; Center for NonproliferationStudies, 2001; Levine, 2001; Miller, 2001; Sokolsky, 2001; Survival,2001), as were analyses of US policy (Daalder et al., 2000; Glaser andFetter, 2001). There were concerns about the impact of BMD on internationalpolitics generally (Valentino, 1997/8) and particularly on Europe(Bowen, 2001; Gordon, 2001; Kenyon et al., 2001) and East Asia (Robertset al., 2000; Urayama, 2000). Another focus was the consequences of USmoves towards deployment of BMD on arms control, most obviously theABM Treaty (Wilkening, 2000a; Coyle and Rhinelander, 2001). The subjectbroadened out beyond just ballistic missiles to take into account howto deal with cruise missiles (Gormley, 2001). Other than updating to thenew international conditions and the not very impressive improvementsin the technology, this literature delivered little in the way of basic newinsights about the political and strategic consequences of deploying BMD.It was largely just a response to changes in US policy and the spread ofmissile and nuclear technological capabilities.Yet BMD development was just one element in a broader fascinationwith military technological advance that marked the post-Cold WarStrategic Studies literature, not least because the US continued to maintainan enormous military budget and huge expenditures on military researchand development. Whereas bipolarity and rivalry was once used to explainhigh US military expenditure, post-Cold War the US need to maintainunipolarity seemed to have the same consequence: keeping a wide technologicalgap between the US and all other military powers was a badge ofsole superpower status regardless of whether there was any pressing needfor such capability. This continuity offered grounds for suspicion reminiscentof the Cold War literature on the MIC, which looked to domesticpolitical and economic drivers to explain military expenditure. A lot ofthis discussion went under the heading of the RMA (Cohen, 1996; C. S.Gray, 1997; Lambeth, 1997; Freedman, 1998; O’Hanlon, 1998; Goldman