Regions and Powers VII

We continue our tour of the world, at least as it existed two decades ago, through the eyes of two political scientists, Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, pioneers of the "regional security complex theory" of international relations. 

They write about two Europes.  Not East and West on the terms of the old Cold War division. The dividing line has moved well to the east.  Western Europe extends right up to the former Soviet Union, and the new Eastern Europe consists wholly of the former Soviet states in their complicated interactions. 

Turkey and the Balkans (where the latter means specifically the states that used to be part of Yugoslavia) make up special cases. The Balkans sometimes seem as if they are about to be incorporated into (Western) Europe.  But they are such trouble there is sentiment in the west to avoid or delay that incorporation. On the other hand, Turkey is a classic "insulator" state. 

But let us start with the west. These nations, roughly speaking the EU nations, are so thoroughly integrated with one another in so many ways that war amongst them seems impossible. Indeed, politically that is an important dynamic for these countries. They continue to fear a recurrence of their region's past, and that fear drives forward the course of integration as a security measure. 

On the other hand, the integration is itself sometimes seen as a security threat. The independence of a separate sovereignty for each nation is, to many, that which must be kept secure. The EU is the threat.  Buzan and Waever wrote well in advance of Brexit, but they saw it coming around the bend. They wrote, "Various ... actors have mobilised a resistance against EU integration based on the security claim that integration threatens national identity." 

One result of the degree of integration thus far achieved, though, is that "it is generally assumed that no country will exploit its neighbor's minorities to expand its own territory." This is a progressive development of the old Westphalian model we've mentioned. The 1998 Anglo-Irish agreement removed the last possible exception. The "United Kingdom" includes Northern Ireland, and the government thereof seems no longer to be concerned that the Republic of Ireland is employing the Catholic minority there to expand its own sovereign territory at the expense of the UK's. Nor does the UK seem to be concerned that Spain will do something analogous as part of a scheme to take Gibraltar. 

Turkey, as noted above, is in the REGIONS AND POWERS vocabulary an insulator state, separating the European and the Middle Eastern regional complexes.  More specifically, it insulates both of the two subcomplexes of Europe from the Persian Gulf sub-complex of the Middle East and vice versa. The present shape of Turkey came about after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It has played the part of an insulator state as described in a quotation attributed to the founder of modern secular Turkey, "Turkey does not desire an inch of foreign territory but will not give up an inch of what she holds." Mustafa Kemal. 

So let us turn to the complex created by the fall of the former Soviet Union.  This consists of a variety of oppositions or potential oppositions: between Russia and the central Asian countries; between Russia and the Baltic states; between Russia and the western former-Soviet states (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus).

Since this is 2025, I think you, my readers, would very much like to know whether this book published in 2003 had anything prophetic to say about the Russia-Ukraine relationship. So I offer you this quote: "Future developments partly depend on to what extent the west (EU and/or the USA) becomes a credible alternative to Russia, economically and eventually militarily." Closer westward relations for Ukraine "could trigger determined reactions from Russia, as seen ... in August 1997 when a NATO exercise in Ukraine ('Sea Breeze 97') was modified after Russian protests."

Not a prophecy, but an analytical touch that holds up well in retrospect.

I'll offer one more quote from the book for this post, and this time it concerns the group of "Stan" ex-Soviet states.  Our authors write, "One interpretation is that Central Asia is a distinct subcomplex with a possibility of becoming [a regional security complex of its own]. If the states in the region consolidate and gain an ability to threaten each other more directly, Russia is gradually weakened and no other external power steps decisively in, then Central Asia might become an RSC in its own right." 

An intriguing thought to contemplate. So far as I can tell that still remains a possibility and a tantalizing one in 2025.    

Next week we will cap off this series of posts, with the conclusions of our two authors, and perhaps with a final reflection of my own.