The Building and Unraveling of Security Communities

The Building and Unraveling of Security Communities - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 19.07.13 23:34 The Building and Unraveling of Security Communities Mikhail Troitskiy ARTICLE JULY 9, 2013 Summary The Euro-Atlantic security community is the most successful to date. But can it rise to the challenge of integrating post-Soviet nations—perhaps even Russia itself? With Asia rising and the West still confronting crises, power is diffusing and the world is becoming ever more complex. This shifting landscape presents decisionmakers across the globe with increased uncertainty. Meanwhile, the need for financial austerity confronts governments with the dilemma of providing for their countries’ security without overspending. Amid enduring expectations that living conditions will continue to improve and social welfare will increase, a government’s ability to wisely economize security expenditure is becoming key to its success and popular support. For some states, smarter defense spending in the face of mounting security challenges may even turn out to be necessary to survive. One way to reasonably scale down defense and security budgets is to form a security community. A security community is a group of states that refrain from counterbalancing—that is, trying to weaken— one another unless there is a clear and contingent reason to do so. Participation in such a community allows countries to economize the resources that would otherwise be spent on hedging against the risk of mutually hostile policies. Members of a security community agree to derive no long-term benefit from diminishing the power of other members and are able to give each other credible reassurances to that effect. The most successful security community to date is that of the Euro-Atlantic area, which includes Western and Central Europe and North America. This project holds out the promise of effective cooperative responses to the guns-or-butter dilemma for both current and prospective members, including many nations across post-Soviet Eurasia—perhaps even Russia itself. What Makes a Security Community? To prove their benign intentions, members of a security community put in place certain institutions and practices. The nature of these practices has been the subject of decades-long debate. This discussion is aptly summarized by Dmitri Trenin in a major study of security communities that has just come out in Russian. Many explanations of how these communities work are based on the construction of new common http://carnegieeurope.eu/2013/07/09/building-and-unraveling-of-security-communities/gdzg# Страница 1 из 3 The Building and Unraveling of Security Communities - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 19.07.13 23:34 identities. This implies, first and foremost, shared interpretations of history, values, and goals among the nations that form a security community. Common identities are believed to emerge with time as a result of intensive communication across a group of states that may initially be drawn together by shared security concerns. A classic illustration is the transition of Western European countries from a legacy of fratricidal war and mutual distrust to an economic union and security alliance. Identity-based explanations of security communities provide good conceptual frameworks. But they are elusive. Common identities can rapidly erode, during a severe economic crisis for example, leading to primitive nationalism or other divisive ideas. These, in turn, can quickly bring adversarial policies back to the agenda and cause states to balance against one another. Once that kind of posturing begins, there is no credible guarantee against further escalation, including armed conflict. In his book, Trenin provides plenty of examples of just such a course of events. While common identities do play a role in holding security communities together, other important mechanisms allow states to reassure each other of their long-term unwillingness to engage in confrontational behavior. A state could verifiably guarantee that it does not possess offensive capabilities that can be used against other community members. A solid record of mutual diplomatic coordination and support among states on key foreign policy issues could also provide the necessary reassurance. These types of principles underpin the Southeast Asian security community, the core of which is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Faced with pressure from the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, smaller Southeast Asian nations coalesced to collectively resist being drawn into superpower games in the region. Ever since, the ability of ASEAN members to uphold their sovereignty has depended on preventing bigger powers from driving wedges into the association. Yet common security challenges and even the long-term vision of a country’s global role can change much faster than identities. Therefore, reassurances of benign behavior are only fully credible when each state has a transparent policymaking process. If reassurance mechanisms are firmly anchored in the domestic politics of security community countries, they can work even in the absence of clear-cut common identities. For a state’s policymaking to reassure other security community countries, it usually has to meet a number of criteria. First, foreign and security policy resources should not be concentrated in the hands of a single government body or leader. Second, a robust system of checks and balances should surround the creation of foreign policy. While independent parliamentary involvement in foreign policy making could compromise the credibility of a country’s commitment on key international issues, such involvement would protect against the vicissitudes of “strong leader” foreign policies. Third, there should be domestic consensus on the benefits of cooperating with fellow security community members. Fourth, states should have no history of counterbalancing for populist reasons, such as to drum up domestic support for the authorities. Fifth, government representatives and other influential political figures should refrain from calling for curbs on the power of other community members. While these criteria are more likely to be met by democracies, the policymaking process (and the political system in general) does not need to be robustly democratic for a state to provide assurances of nonthreatening behavior. A security community may exist even in the presence of strongman leaders if they can prove their long-term commitment to benign policies. This type of situation was likely at play in the early stages of Turkey’s membership in the Euro-Atlantic security community and with a number of Southeast Asian nations in ASEAN. Transparent domestic politics keep the Euro-Atlantic security community together. But states may instead take the opposite tack—opting for intentionally opaque foreign policy making—to reassure others. Such an arrangement means countries deliberately refrain from openly discussing their mutual positions in order to avoid officially acknowledging the need to hedge against each other’s potential expansionism or other forms of pressure. http://carnegieeurope.eu/2013/07/09/building-and-unraveling-of-security-communities/gdzg# Страница 2 из 3 The Building and Unraveling of Security Communities - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 19.07.13 23:34 For example, the official relationship between Russia and China is characterized by an implicit agreement not to openly question mutual intentions. Moscow and Beijing bottled up their mutual suspicion in 2001 when they signed a twenty-year treaty of friendship. If the two sides were more certain about each other’s mutual defense postures, which are likely to be based on preventing the other’s expansionism, then suspicion might get the best of the relationship. Now, Russia is close to finalizing a security community with China, despite a number of Russian concerns about China’s international strategy, such as its growing involvement in the Arctic. That is a major feat for Russian diplomacy. One can only imagine what it would take for Moscow to contain Beijing if China chose to become assertive vis-à-vis Russia. End of document Source: http://carnegieeurope.eu/2013/07/09/building-and-unraveling-of-security-communities/gdzg http://carnegieeurope.eu/2013/07/09/building-and-unraveling-of-security-communities/gdzg# Страница 3 из 3