Regions and Powers I

I haven't been reading books at all like THIS since I was a political science major at an undergrad college in the late 1970s.

Barry Buzan & Ole Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge UK 2003).

I've discussed the underlying idea before on this blog.  Buzan and Waever pursue RSC Theory, a form of international relations realism that focuses on states as primarily members of regional groupings. My previous comments on the theory were offered at second hand. Now I'm finally reading the theorists themselves. I propose to write a series of posts on the subject, beginning with this one (hence the Roman numeral in the title).

Start with this.  "A handful of states at the top of the power leagues play a truly global game, treating each other as a special class, and projecting their power into far-flung regions. But for the great majority of states, the main game of security is defined by their near neighbors....The binding theme of the story is the emergence of powerful RSCs [regional security complexes] against a background of great power domination."

This emergence maybe said to have begun around 1500, when Spain was at the top of the league table, the RSCs emerged "only slowly, and only at the margins for the first 450 years, and then dramatically and almost universally, in two clear stages since 1945." 

Those two stages? First, the Cold War and decolonization era (1945 - 1991), secondly the post-Soviet and so the post-bipolar era, which we may also associate with globalization and the "post-modern" state (1992 - ?).

Buzan and Waever divide contemporary nation-states into three sorts: some they consider pre-modern (Afghanistan, Albania, Haiti are examples); then there are the modern states (most of those found in the middle east or South America) and the post-modern states (typified by those of North America and western Europe). 

A comment on the pre-modern states. "For pre-modern states, the threat from globalization is broadly defined as an inability to measure up to international standards of good governance. The danger is either that they will be demoted in the ranks of international society to some sort of trusteeship status, no longer recognized as legally equal and capable of self-government, or that they will simply be neglected and allowed to fall into chaos."   

More in due course.