Pluralistic Security Community Research Articles

Amity and enmity in regional security complexes: public and official perceptions in Latvia after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT This article examines Latvia’s external amity and enmity patterns after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the patterns of amity and enmity and the resulting regional security complexes appear clear, this study adds a layer of depth to that understanding. It does so by exploring the views of Latvian society based on a two-round nationally representative poll, as well as the alignment of these views with the official positions. The societal and official amity patterns place Latvia within a transatlantic Western regional security complex and a pluralistic security community. The enmity patterns, however, point to an overlapping regional security complex centered around Russia, thus binding both complexes into a supercomplex. Rather than making generalizations on amity and enmity links among states, this study underscores the role of the official discourse, societal perceptions, and the internal plurality of views. In the case of Latvia, despite a considerable Russian-speaking population, the external amity and enmity patterns are largely aligned among Latvian and Russian speakers. However, amity and enmity intensity against some states differs in these groups.

Quo Vadis ASEAN Security Amidst the United States-China Rivalry in the Southeast Asia Region

Tensions between the United States and China intensify globally, particularly in Southeast Asia. Therefore, ASEAN countries should re-assess the ties between these two great powers, both within the ASEAN region and with external counterparts. Given the strategic value of the region, Southeast Asia has become the venue for strategic competition between the United States and China over the past decade. Therefore, rowing the ASEAN's boat among the two gigantic reefs in the ocean requires ASEAN resilience as a Community to overcome the current and future challenges. Potential conflicts intra-ASEAN could be entry points for major powers to weaken ASEAN's unity. The study aims to analyze the most suitable approach for ASEAN regionally to deal with the challenges and to meet the expectations for a sustainable ASEAN Community and assess whether ASEAN's orientation in maintaining neutrality against major powers remains suitable to serve the strategic interests of the member states in the current environment. In this regard, a qualitative method and concepts of Amalgamated Security Community and Pluralistic Security Community are applied to analyze the study. The results of the study show realistic calculation can never be overlooked to preserve sustainable common strategic interests for the member states, which include economic growth on the one hand, and stable regional peace on the other hand. In this regard, “a manageable United States-China rivalry” by a solid ASEAN Pluralistic Security Community in the region guarantees more sustainability of national strategic interests for its member states and ASEAN.

Democracy, Donald Trump and the Canada-US Security Community

AbstractThis article examines Canada-US relations through their shared membership in a pluralistic security community (PSC). While the bilateral relationship has been turbulent for decades, the Trump presidency has damaged the Canada-US PSC by (1) exacerbating a decades-long trend of weakened shared identity and mutual trust between Canadians and Americans, and (2) undermining the democratic norms and institutions that uphold American domestic stability and Canadians’ expectations of peaceful change. Assessing the combined implications of the decline in shared identity, mutual trust and democratic stability, I argue that the Canada-US PSC cannot endure if the United States does not also consider Canada's national and security interests or if the United States itself poses a threat to those interests. Given current trends, the future absence of war in North America may reflect American domination over a weaker and dependent Canada rather than their continued membership in a bilateral PSC.

Uma avaliação das ciberameaças e das migrações como desafios para a Comunidade de Segurança Pluralista da União Europeia na Ordem Mundial 2.0

This article departs from the assumption that European Union is a Pluralist Security Community resulting from symbiotic interactions between material and ideational variables such as beliefs, identities, material capabilities, borders, distribution/perception of power, anarchy and polarity, which gives to this theoretical model greater analytical consistency and ontological density. So, looking into the potential threats the EU is being confronted with and for the negative externalities they can generate in the near future, we are led to reflect on some paradigmatic issues: has the EU reached the limits of its capacity to effectively deal with contemporary challenges? Accordingly, is there a need for a new European concerted plan of action on security and defense issues? To verify how the EU has been tackling some of these challenges and how they impact the defining features of the EU as a Pluralistic Security Community, cybersecurity and migration were selected as our objects of analysis for being good examples of transnational problems the contemporary international system is being confronted with.

Conceptual visions of regional and global security

Introduction. Under the influence of globalization and regionalization; the world economic development is becoming more dynamic but contradictory at the same time; creating new challenges and threats for both individual countries and entire regions. This exacerbates the urgency of forming flexible systems of security cooperation and finding solutions to regional and global security problems.Purpose. The purpose of the paper is to systematize research on regional and global security governance and a review of the balance of geopolitical forces in Europe.Methods. The research was carried out using the following methods: analysis and synthesis – to characterize the modern mainstream of theoretical intelligence in the field of regional security; comparative analysis – to compare the structures of regional security management in different parts of the world; deductions and inductions – to form a conceptual model of global governance; tabular and visual methods – for visual presentation of the material.Results. The paper considers theoretical approaches to the interpretation of regional security. It is noted that regional security governance is a set of institutions and activities at three levels: global; regional and national. A nomenclature of different types of regional security governance structures is presented; which includes a regional balance of power and ad hoc (informal) alliances; regional coherence; regional cooperative security; regional collective defense; regional collective security; pluralistic security community. It has been recognized that regional security management is provided not only by highly specialized or formal structures; but also by multi-purpose regional organizations; which initially pursued a combination of economic and political goals with growing security targets. Conceptual options for regional security governance at the global and regional levels are systematized. Based on the analysis of the mechanisms of global management; own vision of the relationship between the subjects of global governance processes is presented.Discussion. The crisis of recent decades has shown that no single group of global governance actors can act effectively to minimize global risks; which are both a challenge for business leaders and politicians in any country. That is why it is undeniable that global issues require global governance (especially in the field of security); the main goal of which should be to ensure global stability and sustainable development.

Explaining Peaceful Change without Democracy: The Case of the Sino-Soviet Security Community

Some scholars have claimed that democratic regime type needs to be treated as a necessary precondition for the formation of a pluralistic security community. This essay argues that one should not overestimate the explanatory power of linking the democratic peace proposition to the study of security communities. Democratic values, norms, institutions, and practices may certainly facilitate the formation of a security community, but it is by no means the only or even most plausible path to assure dependable expectations of peaceful change. While a number of authors have of late made similar claims, what is not settled is why non-democracies can form security communities. The findings in this essay advance scholarship on this issue by showing that the same causal logics commonly attributed exclusively to democratic security community formation are also present in the formation of non-democratic security communities. The study adds empirical evidence to this argument by developing a historical case study of the Sino-Soviet relationship. In sum, the findings demonstrate that (1) democracy is not a necessary (though facilitating) precondition for the development of a pluralistic security community and (2) a pluralistic security community may form between autocratic regimes based on the causal logical nexus of non-democratic norm externalization, ideological coherence, a common Other (normative logic) and autocratic domestic institutional constraints (institutional logic).

Challenges and opportunities for establishing a security community in the wider Black Sea area

ABSTRACT The establishment and maintenance of various regional intergovernmental organizations in the wider Black Sea area and the incremental growth of the political and economic rapprochement between Turkey and Russia suggest that dependable expectations of peaceful change have developed. However, the security situation remains complex, as deep-rooted security and highly localized military conflicts in the region both constitute major challenges to establishing the basic phase of a security community. The region escapes ready classification as a nascent, ascendant, and mature security community. This paper investigates pluralistic security communities in the region through personal communication, official documents, and personal observation.

Relacje Polska–Rosja–Ukraina a zmieniający się ład międzynarodowy

To correctly understand relations between Russia, Poland and Ukraine, it is essential that Russia’s president focuses attention, not on shaping a new world order, but on establishing a political system that will ensure his long-term authoritarian governance, a system without alternatives accepted by the society. This kind of system is presented as Russia’s own original model of governance. Russia’s goal for Poland and Ukraine is to restore the international system based on ‘zones of influence’ for global powers. The international security system in the transitory period is quite often characterised by uncertainty, instability and a certain level of imbalance, leading to political unpredictability. Under these conditions, the old threats have not disappeared, but there are no new effective mechanisms and procedures to prevent and counteract new risks and challenges. These include the inspired secessions and rebellion wars that destabilise and weaken countries, and allow for achieving political, economic and military aims per procura – without involving your own armed forces in the territory of a state, against whom these measures are addressed. This requires managing executive groups of both transatlantic security and defence organisations to adopt innovative thinking. The starting point for effective implementation of the common strategy for building sustainable peace and security in Europe should be a common perception and understanding of threats by all countries of the transatlantic community. In the second decade of the 21st century, the major threats for international security are of a non-conventional nature. They appear primarily within nations and not between them. The source of these threats lies in violating democratic rules of governance and in trampling on universal values, as defined by Karl Deutsch more than 50 years ago for a pluralistic security community. Politicians have the right to expect thinkers, scholars and independent intellectuals to give answers and recommendations about how to respond qualitatively to new risks, threats and challenges.

Prácticas de seguridad en América durante la posguerra fría (1992-2010): ¿complejos regionales o comunidades pluralistas de seguridad?

El nuevo regionalismo de seguridad en América, durante la posguerra fría, ha fallado en aportar suficiente evidencia empírica comparada para determinar la presencia de Complejos regionales de seguridad (CRS) o Comunidades pluralistas de seguridad (CPS). Frente a este problema el estudio busca responder ¿en qué medida las prácticas de seguridad prevalecientes en el continente durante la posguerra fría (1992-2010) permiten diferenciar los CRS o CPS en los niveles regionales y subregionales?Las prácticas de seguridad se estudiaron a partir de dos indicadores: las disputas interestatales militarizadas mediante estadísticas descriptivas y modelos econométricos, y la persistencia de la hipótesis de conflicto en instrumentos programáticos de defensa, mediante el análisis de contenido. Se concluye que el abordaje más apropiado lo ofrecen los CRS dada la persistencia de la amenaza y del uso de la fuerza como práctica de seguridad. La primacía de la agenda estadounidense en América del Norte, América Central y el Caribe implican la presencia de un CRS centrado por su proyección de poder e influencia mundial, mientras que en América del Sur se presenta un CRS estándar. En el nivel subregional, América Central y la zona Andina constituyen subcomplejos, mientras que el Cono Sur una comunidad pluralista de seguridad.

Black Sea Regional Dynamics: Balanced Multipolarity in Action

Recent events and hostilities around the Black Sea make the European Union’s strategy of bringing peace and stability to the region look more hopeless than ever whilst the majority of people in the region are looking for hope. However, previous research has suggested that in the future there is a possibility of a ‘pluralistic security community’ arising in the region based on ‘balanced multipolarity’ as a necessary but not sufficient condition.1 Russia’s president would seem to be testing the theory that the Black Sea Region consists of four poles (Russia, Turkey, the European Union (EU) and the United States) which are interconnected in a condition of balanced multipolarity, by trying to re-establish the region as Russia’s own sphere of influence. This article analyses the current dynamics of the region, asking whether the situation is more akin to bipolarity or unbalanced multipolarity before arguing that the situation is one of ‘balanced multipolarity in action’. If this is the case then, when the ‘action’ ends, there may still be the possibility of a future non-hegemonic security community. Both the EU and Russia would be members of this loosely connected community which would pose no threat to either and could help to avert future disasters. This could fit well with the new 2016 EU strategic direction.

Transatlantic conflict management inside-out: the impact of domestic norms on regional security practices

This article explores the impact of domestic norms on regional security practices in a pluralistic security community in the transatlantic area. A security community is considered to be ‘a group which has become integrated, where integration is defined as the attainment of a sense of community, accompanied by formal or informal institutions or practices, sufficiently strong and widespread to assure peaceful change among members of a group with “reasonable” certainty over a “long” period of time’ (Karl W Deutsch, Sidney A Burrell, Robert A Kann, Maurice Lee Jr, Martin Lichterman, Raymond E Lindgren, Francis L Loewenheim and Richard W Van Wagenen (1957) Political community and the North Atlantic area: international organization in the light of historical experience (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press)). Recent studies have aligned the concept of security community with the practice turn in International Relations theory. Although practice theory is able to explain peaceful conflict resolution within a security community, this article shows that its explanatory power is significantly weaker when it comes to military interventions outside the security community. The article theoretically and empirically investigates this argument by using the empirical case of extraregional conflict management in Afghanistan. The importance of domestic norms in constructing and perceiving regional security practices in out-of-area operations emphasizes the ‘local’ over the ‘regional’ as a crucial driver behind the emergence of a regional actor's understanding of security and thus for the formation and consolidation of regional peace.

ASEAN and the Creation of a Regional Community

After the ASEAN Concord II called for the building of an ASEAN Community in 2003, the creation of an ASEAN Community became a concrete part of the political agenda for the nations of Southeast Asia, and an ASEAN Community is scheduled to be created in 2015. However, it will all be for naught if the ASEAN Community that is established does not truly contribute to the stability and prosperity of the region. From this point of view, the article will attempt to evaluate the development of an ASEAN community concept and efforts to create it. To clarify the ideal of a true community, this article will take up Karl Deutsch's concept of “pluralistic security communities” and reconsider what a community requires. The article will state that the efforts to create an ASEAN Community should not be underestimated, and the blueprints for the creation of the ASEAN Community outline the formation of a true regional community. It will, however, conclude that in reality there exist factors within the ASEAN region that may shake the development of an ASEAN Community. It has to be said that the fostering of a sense of community at the level of ordinary people, as well as the creation of a community in which fundamental values and norms are shared, are distant propositions.

Colonial Hangover: The Case of the CFA

At first glimpse, the Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) could be seen as an extraordinary example of the kind of economic and political leadership developed nations could establish in Africa. Dig deeper and the relationship France keeps with her former colonies shows evidence of chronic and endemic problems. By concentrating on the economic and geo-political gains the CFA has brought for the countries involved, this paper offers a pertinent evaluation of the nature, purpose and relevance of such Community, in light of two antagonistic theories of international relations: Pluralistic Security Communities and Dependency Theory.

Regional hierarchy: authority and local international order

A regional security complex (RSC) is a set of states continuously affected by one or more security externalities that emanate from a distinct geographic area. In such a complex, the members are so interrelated in terms of their security that actions by any one member, and significant security-related developments inside any member, have a major impact on others. Regional orders describe how states within an RSC manage their security relations and range from balances of power, to regional power concerts, collective security organisations, pluralistic security communities, and integration. As regional states move ‘up’ this continuum of regional orders, relations generally become more peaceful and interactions less coloured by actual or threatened violence.

The Big Influence of Small States Revisited

power overwhelmingly favored the United States. In Cooperation Among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy, Thomas Risse-Kappen challenges this structural realist account, arguing that the West Europeans repeatedly demonstrated the big influence of small (Keohane 1971) even on matters of strategic importance to the United States. Risse-Kappen also questions whether traditional realist bargaining theories offer adequate explanations for U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Instead, he argues that liberal theories that link domestic political structures systematically to the foreign policy of and institutionalist arguments emphasizing the role of norms and communicative action (p. 4) better account for the actual level of influence exerted by the U.S.'s NATO allies. Risse-Kappen outlines his theoretical framework and methodological approach in chapters 1 and 2. His null hypothesis is the structural realist argument that small states will not have an impact on great power decisions in alliances under conditions of bipolarity. From traditional realism and related strands of hegemonic stability and bargaining theory, he concludes that under certain conditions small allies can exert influence on a great power. But the principal alternative to the null hypothesis is found in liberal theories as they relate to Kantian pacific federations among democratic states (Deutsch's [1957] pluralistic security communities) and the common identities, values, norms, and decision-making procedures that are institutionalized in such alliances and reflect the liberal character of the domestic political structures of the member (p. 12). Given these norms, domestic politics (Putnam's [1988] two-level games) and transnational and transgovernmental coalition-building provide the tools by which democratic allies are likely to influence each other (p. 12). Risse-Kappen uses four case studies (the Korean War, the 1956 Suez crisis, the 1958-1963 negotiations on the test ban treaty, and the Cuban missile crisis) to demonstrate that the Europeans influenced U.S. policy in significant ways and that liberal theories better account for this phenomena than either structural realism or its traditional variants. Based on evidence from both primary and secondary sources, including now declassified U.S. government documents, the conclusion is clearest in the Korean, test-ban, and Cuban cases. In the Suez crisis, however, the United States did exert its prerogatives over the objections of Britain and France. Risse-Kappen notes that this outcome confirms realist expectations but is more the exception than the rule. He also argues that the process of the allied confrontation over Suez can only be understood in a liberal and institutional context.

Suez 1956: A European Intervention?

This article does not analyse events in the Middle East. It is concerned with the structural background of the Suez Crisis. The Cold War bargain of 1949-50, and thus the Western bloc architecture, was challenged in 1956 and 1962-63. The Suez Crisis and the SKYBOLT Affair are classic examples of intra-bloc conflict. This article focuses on inter-allied conflict during the Suez Crisis. The crisis year 1956 witnessed a European challenge to the bipolar order of the Cold War. It is the hypothesis of this article that the mystique of the Suez Crisis unravels, if the events are interpreted as a clash of conflicting world views. The article attempts to enhance our understanding of the crisis by exploring the impact of the formation of a European core on the transatlantic pluralistic security community. The article will thus re-evaluate the architectural debate within the Western partial system. It is the aim to shed new light on the almost unexplored European foreign-policy co-operation within the Western European Union (WEU) in the crisis year 1956.

The evolution of the euro-atlantic pluralistic security community: Impact and perspectives of the presence of American bases in Italy

The evolution of the euro-atlantic pluralistic security community: Impact and perspectives of the presence of American bases in Italy

Managing Security in ASEAN-China Relations: Liberal Peace of Hegemonic Stability

The management of security and ultimately order building in ASEAN-China relations are loosely embedded in a declaratory process of community formation. While this process has generated generally beneficial soft institutions in economic and other policy areas, the current state of relative regional peace is primarily attributable to China's emerging role as a hegemonic stabilizer. The PRC increasingly sets the rules and organizes a growing network of security-relevant relationships in both traditional and non-traditional security fields. Just as in the cases of Pax Britannica and Pax Americana, the up-and-coming Pax Sinica is characterized by the creation and enforcement of rules that are profitable to the dominant state at the center of the security order. At the same time the policies of China as a hegemonic power on the horizon also bring security benefits to the states in its zone of influence. Key words: China, ASEAN, East Asian security Introduction: Social Constructivism versus Neorealism In November 2000 political leaders of the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China agreed to strengthen economic cooperation and uttered the words free for the first time. Since then academic analysis of relations between Southeast Asia and China has developed a strong emphasis on the proposed China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA).1 Under the Framework Agreement on ASEAN-China Comprehensive Economic Co-Operation, which was officially announced and signed in November 2002, ASEAN and China envision the liberalization of 99 percent of their bilateral trade in stages: by 2010 for the ASEAN-6 and China; and 2015 for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam.2 The Liberal-Peace and Social-Constructivist Arguments While most recent analyses deal almost exclusively with the economic implications of CAFTA, a sizable number of academic observers highlight the fact that the scope of the free-trade proposal goes beyond trade facilitation and tariff reduction.3 According to this view, CAFTA is only one of various examples in China-ASEAN relations of regional security coming into play even in the absence of an explicit political discourse on security between the two sides. In other words, the intensified building of economic institutions in Sino-Southeast Asian relations is expected to facilitate regional stability and security. States that trade with each other are less likely to go to war against each other. This liberal-peace hypothesis is of course almost as old as the study of international relations itself, and the ASEAN-China example seems to be just another empirical case to prove it. From this perspective, growing economic interdependence reduces the negative effects of anarchy and ultimately transforms the nature of international politics, moving it toward a trading world. Interdependence, not insecurity resulting from anarchy, structures the behavior of states in the international system.4 The most popular incarnation of the liberal-peace argument in the study of Asian security follows Karl W. Deutsch's early work on the building of security communities. According to Deutsch, historical evidence suggests that stable and peaceful inter-state relations are the result of quantitatively and qualitatively increased transnational activities in multiple areas (such as cross-border trade, investments, telecommunications, and travel) and related intergovernmental institution building. If cross-border transactions continue to increase they eventually reach a level of institutionalization at which military conflict between states becomes highly unlikely. At this point a pluralistic security community has emerged, characterized by the general absence of war as a possible means of problem solving in intermember relations. Instead, states will settle their disputes in some other way.5 A rich (and growing) body of literature, not to mention countless master's and doctoral theses, identifies ASEAN as a pluralistic security community given the organization's four decade-long track record of having managed relations among member states in (mostly) nonconfrontational ways. …

In Defence of the West: General Lauris Norstad, NATO Nuclear Forces and Transatlantic Relations 1956–1963

In the history of NATO, lack of Atlantic communality is a recurring theme. Atlantic cohesion was constantly challenged. However, the discord among NATO members rarely threatened the very existence of the Alliance. The late 1950s and early 1960s witnessed such a rare occurrence. In Europe the question of nuclear sharing triggered the development of blue-prints for a step-by-step replacement of the Atlantic security co-operation by a European Security Community. These blueprints were discussed among the EEC member-states and within the forum of the WEU. This study analyses not only those concepts, but also the role of the SACEUR, General Norstad, in defending NATO from external threats and internal decay. By studying the leeway of the SACEUR, this study tries to establish whether the subsystem of the international system, formed by the nations of the North Atlantic area after the Second World War, should be characterised as a system of hegemonic stability or as a pluralistic security community. The article is based on recently declassified archival material from both sides of the Atlantic.

Security, Community, and Democracy in Southeast Asia: Analyzing ASEAN

Is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) a pluralistic security community (PSC)? Does community cause security in Southeast Asia? In a PSC, member states are sovereign. So are the members of ASEAN. Before concluding that the ASEAN region is a PSC, however, one should distinguish between two versions: a thin or descriptive PSC, whose members share both a sense of community and the expectation of security, and a thick or explanatory version in which community has actually been shown to cause security. Depending on how a sense of community is defined, one may say that at certain times in its history, ASEAN probably has been a thin PSC. More recently, however, the cooperative identity of regional elites may have frayed, as democratization, especially in Indonesia, has incorporated non-elites into public life. Meanwhile the proposition that the assurance of security in Southeast Asia has resulted from this sense of community, that ASEAN is a thick PSC, remains to be proven.