ABSTRACT
The main purpose of a state’s alliance policy is to safeguard external state security/autonomy, understood as ability to avoid other actors’ influence on the state’s behaviour. “Security policy” is broader than “alliance policy,” covering also the establishment of the state’s own defence forces and, in some of its modem uses, policies aiming towards ecological or societal security or other good purposes. By “environment polarity” is understood the number of poles with paramount positive/negative sanctions that can be projected in the neighbourhood of the environed nation-state. The United States (US) being one of the power poles, the distinction between systemic polarity and environment polarity was of no practical relevance for the explanation of US behaviour. “Environment scenarios” are at stake. In contrast to global or regional scenarios, this type of scenarios predict the situation and behaviour of one specific nation-state on the basis of assumptions pertaining to selected characteristics of its salient environment.
