America First? Ambidexterity in Safety and Security: A Study Across the World’s Fifteen Leading Military Powers, 2006–2016

In absolute terms, the United States of America (US), by far, spends most on defence and is considered the world’s leading military power. Because of today’s diverging safety and security issues, in addition to the military dimension, nations find themselves challenged to come up with answers to cope with climate change, poverty, irregular migration and terrorism. This chapter investigates, from 2006 to 2016, the extent to which the US has operated ambidextrously, i.e. display equal skilfulness on various approaches in the safety and security domains. Using quantitative measures, we compare the absolute and relative US contributions to different safety and security dimensions (i.e. defence, poverty, migration and climate change) among the next 14 largest global military powers. We find the US scores almost persistently in the top 5 regarding safety and security. We conclude that during the Obama administration the US indeed operated ambidextrously in the safety and security domains.