Toward an East—West Security Regime: The Case of Confidence- and Security-Building Measures

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the applicability of regime analysis to the collective management of East-West security relations. Using a narrow regime definition and starting from a `microscopic approach' to East-West relations which disaggregates the assumed conflict totality into various more or less regime-conducive issues, Confidence- and Security-Building Measures (CSBMs) in and for Europe are characterized as an evolving security regime. Regulating `conflicts about means' the CSBM regime serves to stabilize the security situation in Europe in at least three ways: (1) it decreases the likelihood of a conventional surprise attack, (2) it raises the obstacles to intra-bloc intervention, and (3) it improves crisis stability. The case of the CSBM regime is then used to test several hypotheses toward explaining the formation of a security regime. It is found that issue-area related and subsystemic determinants are superior to systemic variables in accounting for the emergence of the CSBM regime. The article closes with a discussion of the impact of the CSBM regime on the security problematique in Europe. It is shown that the CSBM regime based on a set of norms and rules has already left its mark on the perceptions of military threat by contributing to the convergence of actor expectations and by generating regular interactions. Furthermore, recent proposals of NATO and WTO clearly indicate that the persistence and further evolution of the CSBM regime seems possible and may even facilitate the conventional arms control negotiations which now are rightly ranging at the top of NATO's and WTO's efforts to create a truly confidence-building security structure in Europe. Encouraged by the case of CSBMs, the authors recommend further empirical research on security issues in East-West relations which is founded upon the theoretical perspective of international regime analysis.