Throughout this book the authors use the word "securitization" as the name of a process, or "securitize" as a verb. To securitize an issue X is to come to regard X as a security issue or threat. The process of securitization brings a nation-state's decision-making elite to this point: X is a threat.
Once in a while, too, a desecuritization takes place. What had formerly been considered a threat ceases to be so, not because it disappears but because it fades into the status of a background fact.
Their use of these two words can be a little confusing for someone accustomed to the very different use of "securitization" in financial news: an asset or income stream is "securitized" by being used as the basis for the sale of securities. But over time I did become accustomed to their use. Simply by using the word in this way, they have suggested that what is or is not a security issue is not a given -- that it is, to a great extent, a matter of convention.
The issue of the boundaries of a regional security complex, (RSC), in turn can be a very complicated one turning on what the member countries securitize.
As the book winds down to a conclusion, our authors write, "The pull of the Middle Eastern RSC on the Maghreb [North Africa west of Egypt] varies mainly with the intensity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which at the time of writing looked set of inflict its inflammatory influence on Arab and Islamic politics for many years to come. Overall, there seems to be a huge weight of continuity built into the multiple conflict dynamics of the Middle Eastern RSC."
The governing elites of the Maghreb choose to treat the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (quite a distant affair from the perspective of Morocco) as a security issue. Because they do, those countries remain within the Middle Eastern RSC. If they choose otherwise -- and if "the street" allowed them to choose otherwise -- they might effectively merge into, or at least affiliate with, the EU's RSC.
Another terminological point: Buzan and Waever distinguish between "superpowers" and "great powers". A great power extends it influence throughout a region or even something more vaguely called a "superregion". A superpower extends its influence around the globe. By their count, the world now has four great powers who are NOT superpowers: Japan, China, Russia, and India. India dominates south Asia; Japan and China via over east Asia. Russia longs for its old superpower status and tries to maintain control over the CIS region [the former Soviet Union]. The world, them has what they call a 1 + 4 system. Or, sometimes (because the number 4 may easily change) it has a 1 + n system.
In some of their concluding observations, the authors discuss the possibility that the United States might stop being the "1" in a 1 + n system. It might step down, so to speak, to become part of the "n" in a 0 + n system.
One way this may play out is that the US gives up overseas ambitions while trying to extend its control more emphatically over its "superregion," the Americas stretching from Arctic to Antarctic.
I have given a fair overview of this book. I will now declare myself largely persuaded of the authors' points. I am persuaded that nations tend to cluster into regions and that these regions are critical to understand both the circumstances of any participant nation and the broader global system.
Sixty six years old (and four months) and I am still taking political science lessons.
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