Greece in the Emerging Eastern Mediterranean Security Sub-System: The Capabilities–Expectations–Motivation Gap

Abstract

A state system is defined as “the totality of relations which exist between the autonomous units in a particular arena” (Cantori and Spiegel, The international politics of regions, a comparative approach. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972: 3). In its turn, a subordinate system is defined as a state system that “consists of one state, or of two or more proximate and interacting states which have some common ethnic, linguistic, cultural, social, and historical bonds, and whose sense of identity is sometimes increased by the actions and attitudes of states external to the system” (Cantori and Spiegel, The international politics of regions, a comparative approach. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972: 6). These state interactions define the security parameters of a particular security environment and turn it into a zone of peace or a zone of turmoil (e.g. Singer and Widalvski, The real world order, zones of peace & zones of turmoil. New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, 1993: 4). A suggested subordinate system model builds it on three axes of state participants.