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INTERNATIONAL SECURITY VOLUME I11 Widening Security ite
Barry Buzan and Lene ...
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SAGE LIBRARY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY VOLUME I11 Widening Security ite
Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen
@SAGEPublications Los Angeles
London New Delhi Singapore
Introduction and editorial arrangement 0 Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen 2007 First published 2007 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research o r private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. Every effort has been made t o trace and acknowledge all the copyright owners of the material reprinted herein. However, if any copyright owners have not been located and contacted at the time of publication, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver's Yard 55 City Road London E C l Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications lndia Pvt Ltd B 111 1, Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road New Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-4129-2139-8 (set of four volumes)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006938798 Typeset by Televijay Technologies (P) Limited, Chennai Printed on paper from sustainable resources Printed and bound in Zrinski d.d Croatia
VOLUME I11 Widening Security 43. What is Security?
Einnza Rothschild
44. A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Tahoo
1
Richard Przce
45. Securitization and Desecuritization O l e W m e r 46. Secur~tyStud~esand the End of the Cold War Davzd A. Baldwzn 47. Ident~tyand Secur~ty:Buzan and the Copenhagen School Bzll McSzuecney 48. Broaden~ngthe Agenda of Secur~tyStudm: Pol~tlcsand Methods Kezth Krause and Mzchael C. W~llzanzs
35 66 99
121
135
49. Collective Identity in a Democratic Community: The Case of NATO Thomas Rissc-Kappeiz 50. Insecurity and State Format~onin the Global Military Order: The Middle Eastern Case Keith Krazise
202
5 1. Constructing National Interests Jutta Weldcs
233
52. Multiple Ident~tles,Interfacing Games: The Social Construction of Western Act~on~n Bosn~a K.M. F w k e 53. Competmg V ~ s ~ o nfor s U.S. Grand Strategy Barry R. Posen and Andrew I,. Ross 54. Imagined (Security) Communities: Cognitive Regions in International Relations E m m u c l Adlcr
271 297 340
What is Security?' Emma Rothschild
P
rinciples or definitions of security are a well-established institution of international politics. They are of great importance, in particular, to the ceremonials of reconstruction after large international wars. When Descartes died in Stockholm in the winter of 1650, he had recently completed the verse text for a ballet called "The Birth of Peace," which was performed at the Swedish court in celebration of the Treaty of Westphalia, the birthday of Queen Christina, and the "golden peace" that was to follow the Thirty Years' War.' All the great postwar settlements of modern times have since been accompanied, at Vienna in 1815, at Versailles in 1919, and at San Francisco in 194.7, by new principles of international security. One principle has been thought to echo to the next, across the turbulent intervening times. Harold Nicolson set out in 1919 for the Conference of Paris with a "slim and authentic little volume" about the Congress of Vienna; he addressed his own account of the Versailles proceedings, some years later, to "the young men who will be in attendance upon the British Commissioners to the Conference of Montreal in 1965." The Cold War was also a large international conflict. Like the two world wars and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, it came to an end with momentous changes in the political configuration of Europe, and it, too, has been followed by a new political interest in principles of security. The principles of the incipient post-Cold War settlement have no Woodrow Wilson (or no Castlereagh) and n o imposing Congress. But they already have an epigram in the idea, much discussed since 1989, of the security of individuals as an object of international policy: of "common security" or "human security." This essay will look at the proposed new principles in a historical and critical perspective. They are not conspicuously new, as will be seen, and they suggest troublesome questions about what it means to have (or to act on) a "principle of security." They are neither concise statements of received wisdom (like Castlereagh's "just equilibrium"), nor inspirational (like the self-determination for "well-defined national elements" of Woodrow Wilson's Four Principles); they have not been embodied in new international organizations (like the
'
Source: Dadrrlus, 124(3 ) ( 1995): 5 3-98,
2
Widening Security
settlement of 1945).But this disorderliness is also a strength; the international politics of the post-Cold War world is itself disorderly, verbose, and only intermittently inspirational. It is closer, in this respect, to the politics of the Congress of Vienna than to Versailles or San Francisco; it is particularly close, as will be seen, to the pluralist politics of the generation that preceded the new world order of 1815. The war against the French Revolution has been taken as a standard, at least since Henry Kissinger's encomium to Metternich and Castlereagh, for the long Cold War. But it is the ideas of the Revolution itself, or at least of its early and liberal supporters, that have become newly conspicuous in the post-Cold War settlement. The "liberal internationalism" of the 1990s - a liberalism disengaged, in Stanley Hoffmann's words, from its nineteenth-century "embrace of national self-determination" - is close to the liberalism of Kant, Condorcet, or Adam Smith.4 So is the commitment to an international "civil so~iety."~ "The essence of a revolutionary situation is its self-consciousness," Kissinger wrote; "principles," in such a situation, "are so central that they are constantly talked a b o ~ t . "My ~ objective is to describe the distinctively self-conscious principles of the 1990s, and their possible political consequences. These principles are evocative, as will be seen, of the liberal ideas - including ideas of security - of the end of the eighteenth century. But they also hold out the promise of a different liberal theory; of a theory that is freed, in particular, from the dichotomies so characteristic of the, 1815 settlement, of English versus French liberalisms, or of domestic versus international politics.
Extended Security The ubiquitous idea, in the new principles of the 1990s, is of security in an "extended" sense. The extension takes four main forms. In the first, the concept of security is extended from the security of nations to the security of groups and individuals: it is extended downwards from nations to individuals. In the second, it is extended from the security of nations to the security of the international system, or of a supranational physical environment: it is extended upwards, from the nation to the biosphere. The extension, in both cases, is in the sorts of entities whose security is to be ensured. In the third operation, the concept of security is extended horizontally, or to the sorts of security that are in question. Different entities (such as individuals, nations, and "systems") cannot be expected to be secure or insecure in the same way; the concept of security is extended, therefore, from military to political, economic, social, environmental, or "human" security. In a fourth operation, the political responsibility for ensuring security (or for invigilating all these "concepts of security") is itself extended: it is diffused in all directions from national states, including upwards to international institutions, downwards to regional or local government, and sideways to nongovernmental organizations, to public opinion and the press, and to the abstract forces of nature or of the market.
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I
i What is Security?
3
The geometry of the proposed new principles is in these terms of dizzying complexity. But something close to this scheme has become virtually a commonplace of international political discussions in the 1990s. The emphasis on the security and sovereignty of individuals, for example, was of conspicuous importance in the Eastern European revolutions, and in particular to Vaclav Havel (following John Stuart Mill); "the sovereignty of the community, the region, the nation, the state," Havel wrote, "makes sense only if it is derived from the one genuine sovereignty - that is, from the sovereignty of the human being."' The foreign policy speeches of the Clinton administration contained repeated references in 1993 and 1994 to extended or "huniau" security, including to "a new understanding of the meaning and nature of national security and of the role of individuals and nation- state^."^ The international Commission on Global Governance was the exponent, in 1995, of vertically extended security: "Global security must be broadened from its traditional focus on the security of states to the security of people and the planet."' The United Nations Development Program took as the principal theme of its 1994 Human Development Report the transition "from nuclear security to human security," or to "the basic concept of human security," defined as safety from "such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression," and "protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions.""' The United Nations Secretary-General called in 1995 for a "conceptual breakthrough," going "beyond armed territorial security" (as in the institutions of 194.5) towards enhancing or protecting "the security of people in their homes, jobs and comnlunities." I ' These ideas of extended security are hardly new in the 1990s. They are a development, to take one example, of the idea of common security put forward in the 1982 Report of the Palme Conlmission. Common security was understood, in the Report, in a quite restricted sense. It was presented as a way for nations to organize their security in the presence of nuclear weapons: "states can no longer seek security at each other's expense; it can be attained only through cooperative undertakings." Rut the Report also pointed towards several more extensive conceptions. One was that security should be thought of in terms of economic and political, as well as military objectives; that military security is a means, while the economic security of individuals, or the social security of citizens "to chart futures in a manner of their own choosing," or the political security that follows when "the international system [is] capable of peaceful and orderly change" were ends in themselves. Another was that lasting security should be founded on an effective system of "international order." As Cyrus Vance wrote, "the problems of nuclear and conventional arms are reflections of weaknesses in the international system. It is a weak system because it lacks a significant structure of laws and norins of behaviour which are accepted and observed by all states." A third conception was that securlty is a process as much as a cond~tion,and one in whlch the participants are individuals and groups - "populx and political" opinion, Olof Palme wrote In hi\ mtroduction to the Report - as well as governments and states. I'
4
Widening Security
The new security ideas of the early 1980s were the reflection, in turn, of many earlier discussions. "Over the past decade or so a vast array of public interest organizations have begun to put forward alternate conceptions of national security," Richard Ullman wrote in 1983 of the debate in the United States over extended or redefined security.13 Such proposals were indeed an intermittent feature of the entire Cold War period, and even of the preceding postwar settlement. The historian E.H. Carr had thus argued in 1945, in Nationalism and After, for a "system of pooled security" in which "security for the individual" was a prime objective, and in which it would become possible to "divorce international security and the power to maintain it from frontiers and the national sovereignty which they represent." Carr's view of the previous 1919 settlement as "the last triumph of the old fissiparous nationalism" - "we shall not again see a Europe of twenty, and a world of more than sixty, 'independent sovereign states"' - was hardly prescient; nor was his confidence in the diminution of national sentiment in existing "multinational" states (the United States, the British Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union). But his "social" or "functional" internationalism is strikingly close, nonetheless, to the extended security of the 1990s: its premise is a "shift in emphasis from the rights and well-being of the national group to the rights and wellbeing of the individual man and woman ... transferred to the sphere of international organization. " l 4
Principles of Security
The new political preoccupation with these old ideas corresponds, in the 1990s, to new political interests. "It is not profitable to embark on the fine analysis of a definition unless we have decided on the purpose for which the definition is wanted," John Hicks once said of the economists' dispute over the definition of capital.ls One purpose of principles or definitions of security is thus to provide some sort of guidance to the policies made by governments. Principles of security may be derived or described by theorists, but they are followed or held by officials. This is what could be described as the "naive" view of the debate over principles of security, in that it assumes that principles are indeed important in the organization of policy. It is this view that was dismissed with condescension by Castlereagh in his famous State Paper of 1820 about the "principles" of intervention by one European power in the internal affairs of another (in this case, the constitutional revolution in Spain). Great Britain, Castlereagh said, "is the last Govt. in Europe which can be expected, or can venture to commit Herself on any Question of an abstract character. ... This country cannot, and will not, act upon abstract and speculative Principles of Precaution."16 A second purpose of principles of security is to guide public opinion about policy, to suggest a way of thinking about security, or principles to be held by the people on behalf of whom policy is to be made. Castlereagh gave as the reason for his prudent "maxims" the peculiar circumstances of
r \ i ~ i l i ~ l i iWhat i ( ~ is Security?
5
British politics: "a System of Government strongly popular, and national in its character," and one in which "public opinion," "daily Discussion in our Parliament," and "the General Political situation of the Government" are of decisive importance for foreign policy." But public opinion is itself influenced by principles or concepts. Some crises are "intelligible" or recognizable to the public mind, in Castlereagh's description, while others are not, and the process of recognition is influenced by ideas about security. The quest for principles or epigrams of foreign policy has for this reason (among others) been of fairly consistent interest to nineteenth and twentieth-century statesmen, and to their intellectual adjuncts. Equilibrium was "Castlereagh's favourite word," according to J.A.R. Marriott.lx Even the idea of nuclear deterrence was most compelling as a popular idea; an idea which provided "reassurance," to use Michael Howard's term." A third, related purpose of principles or definitions of security is to contest existing policies. To dispute the foundations of policy is one way - an often effective way in a strongly popular system of government - to subvert public support for policies to which one is opposed. The interest in new concepts of security was thus encouraged, in the late 1970s and 1980s, by quite disparate groups. Critics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) nuclear weapons policies, for example, questioned whether current deployments and doctrines provided security, even against the threat of nuclear war, and supported different and less confrontational policies (such as "confidencebuilding measures"). Other critics were opposed to all "offensive" military deployments. Yet others, particularly in the United States, favored domestic over international commitments; economic and environmental security were described as more fundamental objectives than military security, and expenditure on defense was compared to expenditure on other, civil (and often domestic) objectives. Thc politics of extended security is substantially different in the 1990s, in that it has engaged the theorists as well as the critics of military establishments. I f security is the objective of military and intelligence organizations, and if the sources of insecurity have changed in character (with the end o f the Cold War), then a condition for redefining the role of the "security forces" is redefining security: to contest old policies and to promote new ones. The fourth and crudest purpose of principles of security is to influence directly the distribution of money and power. A public interest organization concerned with environmental programs, for example, might hope that by promoting ideas of environnlental security, it would bring about a change in government policy such that less money was spent on military deployments, and more on environmental programs. A change in the objectives of policy from military to economic security would bring a change in government expenditure from ministries of defense to ministries of commerce or of foreign relations. A change in the definition of military security to include the prevention of conflicts by the deployment of peacekeeping forces would bring an increase, or prevent a decrease, in expenditure on military forces. The keenest proponents of extended security, in the 1990s,
6
Widening Security
include officials of organizations (such as the United Nations and its development agencies, or humanitarian, nongovernmental organizations) that would benefit from changes in international policy towards expenditure on civil objectives. They also include academics who have benefited from the fairly resilient support by US and European foundations for projects on extended security (including the projects for which this essay was prepared); several of these foundations, in turn, have had the objective of influencing or contesting existing security policies.20 The main concern of this essay is nonetheless with the first purpose of principles of security, as described above: with the naive, or naive idealist, position that principles, including abstract principles, do matter to international policy. Castlereagh himself, in speaking of the maxims of British prudence, was setting out the principles of a policy that repudiated abstract or systematic principles. Such principles are perhaps especially important to a government whose "general political situation" depends (in Castlereagh's words) on the "public mind." One of the presumptions of eighteenth-century liberal thought was that people tend to think in principles; Adam Smith suggested to statesmen that they "will be more likely to persuade" if they evoke the pleasure that people derive from beholding "a great system of public police."21As Friedrich Gentz wrote in 1820 of Castlereagh's memorandum, it was well suited to a government, such as England's, which "owes an account of its conduct to Parliament, and to a nation which is not satisfied with an order of business in the gazettes, which wants to know the why and the wherefore of everything ('le pourquoi du p o u r q ~ o i ' ) . " ~ ~ "Politics would be led into frequent errors, were it to build too confidently on the presumption, that the interest of every government is a criterion of its conduct," Gentz himself wrote a few years earlier. One reason was that "the true interest of a nation is a matter of much extent and uncertainty; the conception of which depends greatly upon the point of view in which it is contemplated, and of course upon the ability to choose the proper one." Another was the intertwining of the public and the private: "it must likewise be confessed, that even the immediate interests of states are oftener sacrificed to private views and passions, than is generally imagined."23There is a naive realism that is at least as misleading as the naive idealism of the unending search for principles, including principles of security.
What is Security? The idea of security has been at the heart of European political thought since the crises of the seventeenth century. It is also an idea whose political significance, like the senses of the word "security," has changed continually over time. The permissive or pluralistic understanding of security, as an objective of individuals and groups as well as of states - the understanding that has been claimed in the 1990s by the proponents of extended security - was characteristic, in general, of the period from the mid-seventeenth century to the
t
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What is Security?
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French Revolution. The principally military sense of the word "security," in which security is an objective of states, to be achieved by diplomatic or military policies, was by contrast an innovation, in much of Europe, of the epoch of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. But security was seen throughout the period as a condition both of individuals and of states. Its most consistent sense - and the sense that is most suggestive for modern international politics - was indeed of a condition, or an objective, that constituted a relutionship between individuals and states or societies. "My definition of the Smte," Leibniz wrote in 1705, "or of what the Latins call Respublica is: that it is a great society of which the object is common security ('la seurete c o m m ~ i n e ' ) . " ~ ~Montesquieu, or security was a term in the definition of the state, and also in the definition of freedom: "political freedom consists in security, or at least in the opinion which one has of one's security."" Security, here, is an objective of individuals. It is something in whose interest individuals are prepared to give up other goods. It is a good that depends on individual sentiments -the opinion one has of one's security - and that in turn makes possible other sentiments, including the disposition of individuals to take risks, or to plan for the future. The understanding of security as an individual good, which persisted throughout the liberal thought of the eighteenth century, reflected earlier political ideas. The Latin noun "securitas" referred, in its primary classical use, to a condition of individuals, of a particularly inner sort. It denoted composure, tranquillity of spirit, freedom from care, the condition that Cicero called the "object of supreme desire," or "the absence of anxiety upon which the happy life depends." One of the principal synonyms for "securitas," in the Lexicon Tucitcum, is "Sicherheitsgefuhl": the feeling of being s e ~ u r e . ' ~ The word later assumed a different and opposed meaning, still in relation to .. the inner condition of the spirit: it denoted not freedom from care but carelessness or negligence. Adam Smith, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, used the word "security" in Cicero's or Seneca's sense, of the superiority to suffering that the wise man can find within himself. In the Wealth of Nations, security is less of an inner condition, but it is still a condition of individuals. Smith indeed identifies "the liberty and security of individuals" as the most important prerequisites for the development of public opulence; security is understood, here, as freedom from the prospect of a sudden or violent attack on one's person or p r o p ~ r t y . ~It' is in this sense the object of expenditure on justice, and of civil government itself." There is no reference to security, by contrast, in Smith's discussion of expenditure on defense ("the first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies")." The only security mentioned is that of the sovereign or magistrate as an individual, or what would now be described as the internal security of the state: Smith argues that if a sovereign has a standing army t o protect himself against popular discontent, then he will feel himself t o be in a condition of "security" such that he can permit his subjects considerable liberty of political "remonstrance."
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Widening Security
The security of individuals in this sense - the sense of freedom from the prospect, and thus the fear, of personal violation - has been of decisive importance to liberal political The word "security" in fact assumed a new public significance in the early, liberal period of the French Revolution. The natural rights of man, in Tom Paine's translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man of August 1789, consisted of Liberty, Property, Security, and Resistance of Oppression. Security - or "szirete"' - was still a condition of individuals: it was a private right, opposed, during the Terror, to the public safety (salut) of the Committee for Public Safety. In Condorcet's outline of a new Declaration of Rights in 1793, "security consists of the protection which society accords to each citizen, for the conservation of his person, his property, and his rights." Security was conceived, still, in terms of freedom from personal attack; the constitutional scholar Alengry explained Condorcet's conception of security, in 1904, as "close to the Anglo-Saxon idea of habeas corpus."32It was to be ensured, henceforth, by society: by the "social pact" or the "social guarantee" of a universal civil society. The guarantee of security was extended, in the reform proposals of the same period, to include protection against sudden or violent deterioration in the standard of living of individuals. Leibniz had urged the rulers of Germany after the Peace of Ryswick in 1697 to turn, once the (military) "security" of their countries was ensured, to a project of social insurance against accidents, an "Assecurations-Casse"; a republic or a civil society, he said, was like a ship or a company, directed towards "common welfare."33 Condorcet's project of social security, almost a century later, had a wider political objective. The new schemes for social insurance, to be provided either by public or by private establishments, were intended to prevent misery by increasing "the number of families whose lot is secured," to bring about a different sort of society, or "something which has never before existed anywhere, a rich, active, populous nation, without the existence of a poor and corrupted class."34 The economic security of individuals was itself of political significance, as the condition for an active political society. The central idea of liberalism, in Judith Shklar's description, is that all individuals should be able to take decisions about their lives "without fear or favor."35 Fear, and the fear of fear, were for Condorcet the enemies of liberal politics. If people were so insecure as to live in fear of destitution, in his scheme, then they were not free to take decisions, including the decision to be part of a political society. Individual security, in the liberal thought of the Enlightenment, is thus both an individual and a collective good. It is a condition, and an objective, of individuals. But it is one that can only be achieved in some sort of collective enterprise. It is quite different, in this sense, from the inner and introspective security of Roman political thought. It is different, too, from the security with which individuals can be endowed, by a benevolent or charitable or humanitarian authority. It is something that individuals get for themselves, in a collective or contractual enterprise. The enterprise is in turn something to be endlessly revised and reviewed. Security is not good in itself, without regard to the process by which it is achieved. The state (together
Gothit
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What is Security?
9
with powerful small collectivities such as guilds or communities, operating under the protection of the state) can be a source both of insecurity and of a security that is itself o p p r e s ~ i v e . 'Its ~ most important function is to ensure justice for individuals: "of all the words which console and reassure men," Condorcet wrote before the Revolution, "justice is the only one which the oppressor does not dare to pronounce, while humanity is on the lips of all tyrants." '' The new idea of security as a principally collective good, to be ensured by military or diplomatic means - the idea that came into European prominence in the period of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars - was strikingly different. Individuals and states had been seen as similes for one another, at least since Grotius's earliest writings on natural rights; individuals were thought to security of states be like states, just as states were like individuals.'"he against external, military attack, too - the "Sicherheit" or the assecuratio pacis of the Miinster deliberations before the Treaty of Westphalia - had been a commonplace of political discussion in Germany throughout the eighteenth c e n t ~ r y . Herder '~ indeed spoke sarcastically, in 1774, of the continuing preoccupation with "Order and Security," with the security of Europe and the world ("Ordnung ~nzdSicherheit der Welt"),and with "Uniformity, Peace and Security" ("Einfonnigkeit, Friede und Sicherheit")."'But in France, as in England, the collective sense of the words "surett," "securite," and "security" was an innovation, most conspicuously, of the very end of the eighteenth century. It was in the military period of the French Revolution, above all, that the security of individuals was subsumed, as a political epigram, in the security of the nation. Rousseau described the social contract, much like Locke or Montesquieu, as the outcome of the desire of individuals for security of life and liberty: "this is the fundamental ~ r o b l e mto which the institution of the state provides the solution."" But the ensuing collectivity was itself like an individual, with a unique or individual will. International order - like war, in Kousseau's description - was a "relation between states, not a relation between men."" For Kant, both individuals and states seek "calnl and security" in law: in the case of states, in the public security ("iiffentlichen Staatsicherheit") of a cosmopolitan system.4zCondorcet himself, who was profoundly opposed to Kousseau's conception of a general will as the foundation o f political choice (and to his idea of national education to inculcate patriotic virtues), was caught up in the new rhetoric o f military security. He too spoke by 1792 of the security or "surett" of the collectivity: France would accept peace, he said, if it were compatible with "the independence of national sovereignty, with the security of the state."44 Paine's translation of the Declaration o f the Rights of Man in 179 1 can be seen, indeed, as one of the last great uses o f the word in the old sense. The great public uses of "security" in the new, national sense can be dated even more precisely. Before the Congress of Vienna assembled in 1814, the victorious Allies signed the First Peace of Paris with the newly restored King of France. In the words of the Treaty, France was once again to become,
10
Widening Security
under the "paternal government of its Kings," a guarantee of "security and stability" ("un gage de securite' et de stabilite'") for Europe. The object of the coming negotiations, the new French government stated at the formal opening of the Congress, was to "ensure the tranquillity of the world"; the epoch was now one in which the great powers had joined together to restore, in the "mutual relations of states," "the security of thrones" ("la stirete' des t r 6 n e ~ " ) . ~ "
International Security
The new security principles of the end of the twentieth century constitute a rediscovery, of sorts, of this late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century politics. One of the celebrated political metaphors of the post-Cold War period is Gunter Grass's, of the unfreezing of the germs of European nationalism, conserved for half a century in the ice of Cold War confrontation. But there is another, less biotic metaphor, in which it is the politics of liberal internationalism that has been unfrozen: not after half a century, but rather after two centuries of confrontation, between militant (and military) revolution and militant conservatism. "It was the Revolutionary power more particularly in its Military Character," Castlereagh said in 1820, that was for the Alliance the "object of its constant solicitude," and against which, exclusively, "it intended to take precaution^."^^ The identification of revolution with its military character, or with its prodigious and offensive military success - the memory of Custine's and Napoleon's armies, and the transposition of this memory into the identification of Revolutionary France and Soviet Russia - has been a continuing preoccupation of subsequent politics. It is only with the final disintegration of Soviet military power, or rather with the disengagement, in the early 1990s, of Russian military power from the Soviet rhetoric of revolution, that the long militarization of continental political confrontation has come to an at least temporary end. It was "the problem of peace and war," for Franqois Furet, that in the course of the French Revolution "prohibited, in people's minds and in events, any liberal solution to the political cri~is."~' The political prospects of 1791 are poignantly incongruous in the retrospect of two centuries of militarized or militaristic revolution: the proposed governments, for example, in which Condorcet was to be Minister of Finance, and Talleyrand Minister of Foreign affair^.^^ But the liberal solutions envisaged in the early 1790s are perhaps more convincing now, at least in international relations, than they have been for much of the intervening period. This seems to be the opinion, in any case, of liberalism's opponents, if not of its (characteristically) muted supporters. "Liberalism is the real enemy" was the title of an article in 1992 by the English conservative critic Peregrine Worsthorne, in which he recounted the "regimental reunion" in East Berlin of "the remaining old guard of Encounter": the conclusion, he said, was that "worrying about communism intellectually - as against militarily - was a gigantic red
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What is Security?
II
herring, deflecting intellectual attention from liberalism, which was a much more dangerous enemy of ~ivilisation."~' The two principal constituents of "human security" or "common security" in the 1990s - the insistence on human rights and the preoccupation with the "internationalization" of politics - were also the preoccupations of late Enlightenment liberalism. For Janos Kis, t o describe something as a question of human rights is to identify it as of concern to the international community: "as human rights of a particular kind, minority rights belong under the protection of the community of nations.""' "Our policies - foreign and domestic," Vaclav Havel says, "must grow out of ideas, above all out of the idea of human rights."" The opponents of such policies present then1 as the outcome, or last hurrah, of a half century of Western hegemony, of the epoch that began, for one leading political figure in Singapore, with the imposition on a temporarily powerless international society of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948." But the human rights of 1948 are also the rights of the American and French Revolutions, or what Condorcet, speaking of the influence of the American Revolution in Europe, described as "the natural rights of humanity." These rights hegin with "the security of one's person, a security which includes the assurance that one will not be troubled by violence, either within one's family or in the use of one's faculties," and proceed, through "the security and the free enjoyment of one's property," to the right of political participation.i3 The new political rhetoric of human security in the 1990s is also the old rhetoric of natural or international rights. The politics of "internationalization," in the post-Cold War period, is also oddly evocative of older political discussions. One o f the preoccupations of liberal thought in the late Enlightenment was with the extension of rights to individual security, or rights of humanity, to individuals who were not citizens of the state in which the rights were being asserted: to women, to children, and to the propertyless and dependent within the territory of the state. Laborers, shop assistants, or women, in Kant's account, could not be citizens or "co-lawmakers." But they were nonetheless free (as human beings) and equal (as subjects); they were entitled to the protection of law as "co-beneficiaries," or partners in protection.'" The next stage, in this extension of rights, or at least of the right to protection, was its further enlargement to individuals outside the state or political territory. If the public security of the state, in Kant's phrase, was to he achieved only in a cosmopolitan ( a "tueltburge~lichen") system, then individuals in one state must be co-citizens or co-partners, in some sense, with individuals elsewhere. The international politics of individual security was indeed seen, much as it has been seen in the 1990s, as the consequence of an exorable "internationalization" of political, economic, and social life. If one thinks of the half century from the 1770s to the 1820s as a single epoch - the epoch of Condorcet and Talleyrand, for example, and not the epoch in which the Revolution "cut time in two" -then it was a period of intense interest in new international relationships of different sorts."" It was a time, for example, of
12
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tremendously increased information about events in other countries, and of quite self-conscious reflection on the political consequences of this inform a t i ~ n The . ~ ~ dissatisfaction of the English public with cursory official gazettes - their interest in "le pourquoi du pourquoi" - was an essential element in Castlereagh's politics, as Gentz wrote. In Germany, too, the last quarter of the eighteenth century saw an explosion of journals concerned with "the internal affairs of states and with international relation^."^' Condorcet himself spent much of the Revolution as a journalist, for which he was excoriated by Robespierre: "hack writers hold in their hands the destiny of peoples," Robespierre said, and Lafayette, supported by Condorcet, would have risen to power surrounded "by an army of journalists," and lifted on "a pile of p a r n p h l e t ~ . " ~ ~ A second preoccupation was with the increase not only in international information - the knowledge that people in one country had of events in other countries - but also in international influence. The actions of people in one country actually caused events in other countries. Herder, in his denunciation of the international culture of information (what he described as the "Papierkultur!"), spoke of the "shadow" of Europe over the entire world, and of the "power and machines" of modern times: "with one impulse, with one movement of the finger, entire nations can be c o n v u l ~ e d . "It~ was ~ not only princes and sovereigns who exercised new, distant influence, but ordinary citizens (or ordinary trading companies) as well. "The prodigious increase of the commercial and colonial system in all parts of the world," Gentz wrote, was the most significant development "in the political world since the Treaty of Westphalia." It had transformed continents, and it also transformed Europe itself: "it has even been the groundwork in the interior of states, of a great revolution in all the relations of society."60 A third concern was with the increased effectiveness, in international relations, of official policy. Castlereagh concluded that the Spanish crisis of 1820 did not constitute "a practical and intelligible Danger, capable of being brought home to the National Feeling," and was not sufficient, therefore, to justify military intervention by the British. But he emphasized that Britain could indeed have undertaken such an effort if she had wished to do so. Britain had "perhaps equal power with any other State" to oppose an intelligible danger: "she can interfere with effect."61 One source of this new power was Britain's own military superiority, following the defeat of France. But for other states, too, the possibilities of international interference were greatly increased. Condorcet, looking ahead in 1792 to the formation of an independent federation of small German states, pointed out that new canals would make possible the rapid movement (if requested for the defense of the new federation) of "troops" and "munitions" from France. He also foresaw a fearsome world of multiple military interventions: "There would be no more freedom or peace on earth, if each government thought it had the right to employ force to establish in foreign countries the principles which it considers to be useful to its own interest^."^^
The fourth and most evocatively modern concern was with the increased scope of international politics itself. Castlereagh insisted on the intelligibility of international problems as a precondition for international interference - on the requirement that they should mean something to what he describes repeatedly in his state paper as "public sentiment," "public opinion," "the public mind."h' To have information about some foreign event is a necessary condition, evidently, if an individual (or "the puhlic") is to recognize that event as being of political importance. To have the possibility or power to "interfere with effect" is also necessary; political obligations, like moral obligations, are bounded by the limits of the possible, or of what Castlereagh called the practical. TO have the sentiment that one stands in some sort of causal relationship to the event in question - the relationship of influence, for example - is of further political importance. We are inspired to passion, Hume said, by that which "bears a relation to us" or is in "some way associated with us"; "its idea must hang in a manner, upon that of o ~ ~ r s e l v e s . " ~ ~ The societies for the abolition of slavery in the 1780s and 1790s Condorcet's Awzis des Noirs, for example, in which the pamphleteer William Playfair saw "the first step" to revolution - provide a good illu~tration.~' Slavery, even outside the colonial territory, was recognized as a political problem by British and French public opinion in part because it was so evidently related to British and French policy, to British and French laws and commerce, and even to the tastes of British and French consumers (the taste for sugar, which British abolitionists - or "Anti-Saccharites" - refused in one of the first political revolts of modern c o n s u ~ n e r s )This . ~ ~ recognition of the political in~portance,or at least of the political intelligibilit): of the destinies of distant individuals was indeed a principal indicator, in some of the greatest liberal thought, of political enlightenment itself. "The spectacle of a great people where the rights of man are respected is useful to 311 others," Condorcet wrote in his observations o n the influence of the American Revolution in E ~ ~ r o p e : "It teaches us that these rights are everywhere the same.""' Kant used the same image of a spectacle, a few years later, in speaking of the French Revolution. An "occurrence in our own times," he wrote, has revealed a view "into the unbounded future." The occurrence was a disposition; it was the sympathy of disinterested spectators for the French Revolution, in which "their reaction (because of its universality) proves that mankind as a whole shares a certain character in c o n ~ m o n . " " ~
Extended Security and Extended Policies The obvious shortcoming of the new ideas or principles of security of the 1990s, as was suggested earlier, is their inclusiveness: the dizzying complexity of a political geometry ("tous azinzttts") in which individuals, groups, states, and international organizations have responsibilities for international organizations, states, groups, and individuals. This inclusiveness,
14
Widening Security
or incoherence, was also a characteristic of the earlier liberalism of international (and individual) security. One much discussed problem was that of psychological incoherence. If the individual is expected to recognize the rights of all other individuals, however remote, then she may disregard other, less remote individuals, or find herself so overburdened by the process of (political) recognition that she does nothing about anything: this is the old charge against liberalism (Edmund Burke's charge, for example), of coldness, or irresolution, or both. The second and more serious problem is of political incoherence. The principal connotation of individual security in modern political thought, as has been seen, is as a relation between the individual and the state: security is an objective of individuals, but one that can only be achieved in a collective or political process. Even the idea of national or state security, in the sense that became widespread after 1815, refers to a collective process in which the participants are themselves states: the Westphalian settlement, or Kant's cosmopolitan federation, or the equilibrium of Europe. But the "human security" of the new international principles seems to impose relations that are only tenuously political. The security of an individual in one country is to be achieved through the agency of a state (or a substate group, or a suprastate organization) in another country. The individual is thereby very much less than a co-lawmaker, in Kant's sense, in the political procedure that ensures security. She is less, even, than a co-beneficiary (like a wife or a shop assistant); she is not even a partner in being protected. The nonpolitical character of the new principles poses evident problems. To have a right means very little, in the liberal political theory with which we have been concerned, if one is not conscious of the right. Adam Smith, like Hume, criticized the theory of a tacit or original contract for individual security on the grounds that it ignored the consciousness of individual political subjects: "they are not conscious of it, and therefore cannot be bound by it."69 For Condorcet, if individuals were not conscious of their rights, or did not understand them, then their rights were not "real"; this was one of his princiBut the beneficiaries of the pal arguments for universal public instr~ction.'~ new international policies are not especially likely to be conscious political subjects in this sense. The individual who is "troubled by violence" does not know who to ask for protection (which agency of the United Nations, which nongovernmental organization, and in what language?), and she has no political recourse if the protection is not provided. The interposition of poorly understood and only incipiently political rights is even more insidious, in some circumstances, if the assertion of a new international right has the effect of subverting a local and potentially more resilient political process. One of the charges made against the humanitarian policies of the 1990s is indeed that by depoliticizing procedures of emergency relief, they tend to subvert the local politics in which individual subjects are conscious participants, and which constitutes the only consistent source of continuing security.71 My suggestion, nonetheless, is that the new policies of individual and international security are likely to be a continuing feature of politics in the
I
1st
I
What is Security?
15
post-Cold War period. The effort to make sense of them, and in particular to make them less inclusive, is thereby of continuing importance. The changes that led in the late eighteenth century to a new preoccupation with internationalization - the increase in news, in economic and cultural interdependence, in the effectiveness of international intervention, and in the consequent political recognition of distant events - are also the preoccupations of the end o f the twentieth century. There is very little, still, that corresporlds to an international politics in which distant individuals are co-citizens, or coparticipants. But there is an international political society, of sorts, and it imposes some form of reflection on the principles of international justice. Policies for the prevention of violent conflict provide one illustration. The idea of the prevention of nuclear war, as distinct from the deterrence of nuclear offense, was of central importance to the Palme Commission's idea of common security. A similar distinction can he made now between the cooperative enterprise of prevention and the frightening or forceful enterprise of deterrence: the deterrence of injustice or insecurity, or the enforcement of rights. The discussion of new policies for collective security has been concerned to a considerable extent, since 1991, with principles of "intervention": with the circun~stancesunder which (in Condorcet's terms) governments should employ force to establish principles in foreign countries. If there are well-trained international forces, it is argued, prepared to intervene at the early stages of crises, then military conflicts will he less likely to begin; if conflicts do begin, they will end earlier and with less ~ i o l e n c e . ~ This ' is deterrence, of a new, enlightened, and internationalist complexion. But it is not the same enterprise as prevention, or as the effort to ensure, whether with military or nonmilitary instruments, that there will be no need to intervene. One of the distinctive characteristics of prevention is that it takes place under conditions of imperfect information, or before one knows with certainty that a particular conflict (or a particular disease, in preventive public health) will occur. This makes it a very difficult objective for international cooperation. It is easier, often, to agree that a particular international problem is intolerable - that something must be done about it - than to agree either on predictions as to the probability of future problems, or on general principles of international policy. There are different explanations for the interest of people in one country in "doing something" about injustice or insecurity in other countries: that the problem is something they know about, for example; that it is something they care about or identify themselves with; that there is something they can do about it. But these explanations, or criteria, are difficult to describe in a circumstanceless, universal idiom. One does not know that one cares about something, or reflect on what one has it in one's power to do, until one knows about some particular injustice or crisis: until the crisis, that is to say, has already been described, or until (as Castlereagh said) it is no longer a question of venturing to commit oneself on an "abstract" question, and there is something "intelligible and practicable" to be done. It is particularly difficult, therefore, for countries to agree in advance o n the "resort to force" by the international community. As Castlereagh also
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Widening Security
said, of the prospect of "unanimity and supposed concurrence upon all political subjects" among the allies of 1820, "if this Identity is to be sought for, it can only be obtained by a proportionate degree of inaction in all the state^."'^ There is thus no evident relationship between the extent of consensus about a particular military intervention and the efficiency of the intervention in question. It is indeed often much easier to intervene efficiently at a very early stage in a conflict, or when there is considerable uncertainty about its future course; it is much more difficult, at that stage, to agree that intervention is needed. The choice or use of nonmilitary instruments is, under these circumstances, of considerable importance. It is difficult to conceive of agreeing, in advance, to have military force used against one. This was one of the (several) unconvincing features of early post-World War I1 schemes for international government, in which recalcitrant participants were to be sanctioned by the punitive use of force, including nuclear weapons. It is less difficult, perhaps, to agree on less coercive policies. National states do not, after all, rely only or even principally on the use of force to ensure security for their citizens. The incipient international society, too, should have recourse to civil policies for preventing conflict. Nonmilitary policies can be constructive as well as coercive. They include, for example, policies for recognizing (or refusing t o recognize) new sovereignties. Recognition can be made conditional on guarantees for individual rights, including the rights of members of minorities and other groups; countries can agree in advance to give themselves a space for reflection, of the sort that was missing in the early stages of the current Balkan crisis, at the time of the European Community countries' decision to recognize Croatia in 1991. They can also agree on policies to support individual rights, as distinct from punishing violations of these rights. These are policies in which people in the countries where rights are at risk are co-participants with people elsewhere. It is expensive, in many cases, to guarantee minority rights, to build schools in which children can be educated in their first language, or to provide trilingual education for all children. Such policies could also pose familiar problems of "moral hazard" (in that they would tend to reward countries in which the rights of minorities are thought to be at risk). But international expenditure on education is nonetheless an important component of policies for individual security. It would be in the spirit of the plans of the 1780s and 1790s: of Condorcet's project of public instruction, for example, in which children would be instructed in their own language, in an international lanThe international society guage, and in a third language of local imp~rtance.'~ of the 1990s should be in a position, eventually, to provide material support for these old liberal projects. Policies for demilitarization provide a related illustration. The new security principles have been presented, since the end of the Cold War, as especially suited to a period of postwar reconstruction. The problems of demobilization in the 1990s are indeed similar to, and in some respects even more serious than, those of earlier peace settlements. The period of intense economic (and political) mobilization lasted for about four years in World
.. r l
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What is Security?
17
War I, for about seven years before and during World War 11, and for twenty-three years, intermittently, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars; the Cold War mobilization lasted for more than forty years, and it is correspondingly difficult to undo. But in other respects the present postwar period is strikingly different. The Cold War was indeed a long international conflict, but it was not a conflict that ended in the exhaustion, celehration, and revulsion from rhc use of military fol-ce that was characteristic of 18 1.5, I91 9, and 1945. The God of War is defeated in Descartes' ballet of 1649, and the personification of Earth, whose limbs have been torn apart in an early scene, reappears restored and renewed. The Cold War has been followed, in contrast, by a rediscovery of military force - by a demobilization of certain (principally nuclear) forces, and by remilitarization of international relations. On the one hand, the military forces of the two superpowers are more "usable" (in the Gulf, or in Chechnya). On the other hand, military conflicts within or between other, lesser powers are uninhibited by the prospect of an eventual superpower confrontation. The promise of the end of the Cold War has been understood, since the earliest negotiations for nuclear disartlianient, as the promise of a world of peaceful political competition." It is the demilitarization of the long conflict between a proto-revolutionary "Left" and a proto-reactionary "Kight" that has made possible the revival of liberal internationalism. But the post-Cold War conflicts have turned out to be at least as violent as the many snlall wars of the previous generation. They are newly visible to (Western) public opinion, at least in the case of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia; they constitute a new challenge to the incipient institutions of international order in that they have demonstrated the powerlessness of even a relatively united international cornmunit); undivided by the superpower competition. The process of demilitarization is, under these circumstances, of high priority for policies of human, individual, o r common security. It is of particular importance in states that are themselves at peace, but that are the source of means of violent destruction elsewhere. lnclividuals in Russia, the United States, France, or the United Kingdom "bear a relation" to distant wars (in Hunie's phrase) in that they are residents of states that license or encourage very large-scale arms exports. One way to make conflicts less violent is thus to sell and produce less military equipment. Both Somalia and the fornier Yugoslavia have been important locations, for many years, of military-industrial transactions. Yet the effort to reduce transfers of conventional arms is of strikingly little political interest in the post-Cold War world. "The right inherent in society to ward oft crimes against itself by antecedent precautions," for John Stuart Mill, included a right to impose precautions on the sale of articles, such as poisons, of which both proper and improper use could be made (or which are "adapted to be instruments of crime"). The seller, he says "might be required to enter in a register the exact time of the transaction, the name and addrcss of the buyer, the precise quantity and quality sold; to ask the purpose for which it was wanted, and record the answer he re~eived."'~There are similar precautions in 7
18
Widening Security
respect to articles that are adapted to be instruments of war: they should be an important component of government and other groups' policies for international security.
Civil Society Strategies The most troublesome illustration of the new policies has to do with nongovernmental organizations, or with what has been described rather grandly as the "civil society strategy."77The dislike of government power has been at the center of all liberal thought. Its "historic beginning," in L.T. Hobhouse's description, is to be found in protest, even in "destructive and revolutionary" protest, against the "modern State."78 Condorcet's idyll, at the height of his revolutionary career in 1792, was of the "virtual non-existence" of government, or of "laws and institutions which reduce to the smallest possible quantity the action of g ~ v e r n m e n t . "This ~ ~ dislike has been accompanied, for many liberals, by a liking for that which is not government, and in particular for elective or voluntary associations, for the "professions," "divisions," "communities," and "callings" that the not notably liberal Adam Ferguson (The electiveness, described in his Essay on the History of Civil So~iety.~~' at least for early liberals, was more important than the nonidentity with government. For Adam Smith, as for Turgot and Condorcet, the coercive nongovernmental organizations of the eighteenth century - apprenticeship guilds and corporations, for example - were even more insidious than government itself.81) Relations between nongovernmental organizations (and nongovernmental individuals) have been of central importance to the internationalization of political life in the late twentieth century, as in the late Enlightenment. The increase in news and information is the work of nongovernment, of very large private companies, very powerful individual proprietors, professional societies with their codes of conduct, public relations companies, and so forth. So also, to a great extent, is the increase in economic and cultural influence. The power of individuals in one country to cause economic and social change in other countries is the work of private companies (including the companies that export military equipment) far more than of governments: much as it was, indeed, at the time of Grotius's defense of the (Dutch and English) view "that private men, or private companies, could occupy uncultivated territory."s2 The increased effectiveness of policy is itself a characteristic of the policies of nongovernmental organizations as much as of governments and international organizations. There are private organizations who negotiate cease-fires and hostage exchanges: private charities (and large airlines) deliver emergency humanitarian relief, and compete with government agencies for public (or government) funding to do so. The novel aspect of nongovernmental organizations in the 1990s is their new political self-consciousness, or self-importance - the beginning of a
,I
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What is Security?
19
political theory of the "NGO." The nongovernmental organization is identified, in such a theory, as the uncorrupt, the uncynical, or the unbureacratic. Relations between individuals in different societies - including the relationship between recipients and donors of foreign assistance - are supposed to be conducted, wherever possible, through NGOs rather than through governments (even when the NGOs are licensed by. governments, funded by . governments, and organized b y past and future government officials). Thc "civil society strategy," in this setting, consists of the effort to organize international relations o n the basis of exchanges hetween organizations. It "assumes that formal democracy is not enough." Its objectives include "funding independent media" as well as "judiciary and police," "developing charitable and voluntary associations," and "developing nongovernmental At its most specific, it involves matechannels" for government as~istance.~' rial support from private foundations in the United States to voluntary organizations and professional societies in Kussia." At its most imposing, it involves the effort "to provide more space in global governance for people and their organizations - for civil society as distinct from g o v e r n n ~ e n t s . " ~ ~ The new international politics of civil society, like the politics of individual security, is founded on old and important political ideas. The most profound of these ideas, and one that has been conspicuous in all the great peace processes of the twentieth century, is the idea of multiple, overlapping identities. The engagement of individuals in organizations, professions, clubs, and societies has been seen, at least since Montesquieu, as a principal sign of civilized and peaceable political life. For Turgot the characteristic "of being citizens" was to be found, above all, in the "free associations" or "societies" of which "England, Scotland and Ireland are full."x" This peaceable citizenship was thought to provide some sort of security, in turn, against international conflict. E. H. Carr spoke hefore the end of World War I1 of "a system of overlapping and interlocking loyalties which is in the last resort the sole alternative to sheer totalitarianism." His "social" or "functional" internationalism was to be founded on what was earlier (and later) described as civil society: "local loyalties, as well as loyalties to institutions, professions and groups must find their place in any healthy society. The international community i f it is to flourish must admit something of the same multiplicity of authorities and diversity of loyal tie^."^' World War I, too, was a period of anxious reflection on the politics of civil society. Leonard Woolf, in a report p r e p r e d in 1916 for the Fabian Society, saw in the "extraordinary and novel spectacle" of international voluntary associations the prospect of "true International Government." The increase in such organizations, some of which (like the "Association Internationale pour la Lutte contre le Chbmage") included as their members "states, municipal authorities, private individuals, and every sort and kind of national group, society, and association," corresponded to the newly international life of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Woolf wrote that "A man's chief interests are no longer determined by the place he lives in, and group interests, instead of following geographical lines, follow
20
Widening Security
those of capital, labor, professions, etc." Like Gentz, a century earlier, he looked with some coolness at the assertion of national interest: "Over and over again, when we analyze what are called national interests, we find that they are really the interests, not of the national, but of a much smaller group." The geometry of the new international security, as in the 1990s, was to be distinctively variable. In the association against unemployment, for example, Woolf found "both forms of representation, the vertical or national and geographical and the horizontal or international, provided for."88 Woolf describes himself as trying to edge away from the "terrible precipice of Utopianism" (or from what Carr, during the next world war, identified as the "idealistic view of a functional internationalism," which "would be utopian if it failed to take account from the outset of the unsolved issue of power"). He concedes that the delineation of the "international" is a matter of practical politics, and he takes as an "actual example" the situations of "the Bosnian" and of "the Englishman" in Ireland: "it is impossible to say exactly when the Balkans became, and when Ireland will become, an international question."89 But his own political ideas, of the reinforcement of the "system" of international conferences to protect the security of national minorities, and of international cooperation to protect the economic security of individuals and groups, were themselves put into a sort of practice in the postwar settlement. One of the principal themes of reconstruction after World War I, in the words of the Peace Treaty, was to prevent "such injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers of people as to produce unrest so great that the peace and harmony of the world are imperilled"; the decision of the Great Powers to begin their Versailles deliberations by considering international labor legislation "produced a degree of surprise that almost amounted to bewilderment." The idyll of multiple, minimal identities is of poignant importance to European political thought. It is described elegiacally in Robert Musil's description of the "negative freedom" of "Kakania," or of the AustroHungarian Monarchy of 1913: "the inhabitant of a country has at least nine characters: a professional, a national, a civic, a class, a geographic, a sexual, a conscious, an unconscious, and possibly even a private character to boot. He unites them in himself, but they dissolve him. ... This permits a person all but one thing: to take seriously what his at least nine other characters do and what happens to them."9' But the innocuousness of the unserious is too slight, in the end, as the foundation of civilized life. Musil's prewar world is also the world of which Freud wrote in 1915 in "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death" that its loss was the source of "our mortification and our painful disillusionment." "The citizen of the civilized world," Freud said, must now "stand helpless in a world that has grown strange to him," with his great European fatherland disintegrated and "his fellow-citizens divided and debased." "We hqd hoped, certainly, that the extensive community of interests established by commerce and production would constitute the germ of ... a compulsion" towards morality, Freud
said of the civil society of the prewar world; he found, instead, that "nations still obey their passions far more readily than their interests. Their interests serve them, at most, as rutionalizutions for their passions."" The elective institutions of civil society were not enough, in the 191Os, to prevent the violent enmity of war, and they are not enough, in any liberal theory, to ensure the security of individuals. The new political theory of the NC;O - the self-identification of nongovernment groups as the privileged source of human or individual security - is in this respect particularly odd. The organizations that constitute international civil society can play many important political roles. They can provide the international (and local) information that is at the heart of the new politics of security; they can cooperate in the schools, museums, and rights organizations that contribute to policies for preventing violent conflict; they can put pressure on governments to reduce arms production and exports; they can make possible the process of international political discussion, which is a precondition for international politics. But one of the things they cannot d o is provide security. The essential characteristic of security is as a political relation, which is not voluntary, between the individual and the political conimunity. Security (or the opinion of security, in Montesquieu's account) is the condition for political freedom. But it is the political choice to live under the rule of law that is in turn the condition for security. The doubting mood of the late Enlightenment tends to make one skeptical, in general, of the presumption that NGOs are preternaturally otherregarding or uncorrupt. Adam Smith reserved his coolest dislike, and his most cheerful demonstrations of hidden self-interest, for the ostentatiously publicspirited: parish overseers, university teachers, or Quaker slave-owners. The new principles of security of the 1980s and 1990s have been put forward with special enthusiasm by NGOs, and they are consonant with the not particularly hidden self-interest of these organizations. The "civil society strategy," too, can be seen as the outcome of a coalition between governments that wish to disengage from foreign assistance (despite the opposition of suhstantial minority opinion) and organizations with an interest both in improving other people's lives and in their own advancement. " NGOs are also, of course, a kaleidoscopically heterogeneous politic:11 form. "Independent media" are identified as a suitahle object of support in a civil society strategy, and the presumption (in the case of assistance to the former Soviet Union) is that they are to be independent of the state. Rut are they also to be indcpendent of large international oligopolies? O r of large and powerful proprietors? "War between two nations under modern conditions is impossible unless you get a large number of people in each nation excited and afraid," Leonard Woolf wrote in 1916.94 News media, dependent and independent, are rightly thought (as Chndorcet thought, and as Robespierre denied) to constitute the core of a free civil society. They play a central role in (for example) the prevention of famine. But they play a central role, too, in the frightening process whereby very large numbers of people become excited and afraid.
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Widening Security
The main objection to NGOs as a source of security is even more foundational. It may be reasonable to assume that individuals in NGOs are more public-spirited, in general, than individuals in the public or the private forprofit sector (if only because of the relentless vilification of public service in the 1980s and 1990s, and the similarly relentless glorification of the pursuit, within the private sector, of individual profit). But the serious problem with the new political theory of NGOs has very little to do with the psychological circumstances of individuals. It is a political problem, and it follows from the defining characteristic of the NGO as a voluntary organization. There is a stark inequality of voluntariness, in particular, between the "donors" and the "recipients" of security. An international relief charity operating in the zone of a civil war or a distant famine, for example, is made up of individual volunteers (including people who have volunteered to be employed at low salaries) and funded by voluntary contributions (including voluntary contributions, from governments, of tax revenues). The individuals who receive relief are in circumstances of the most extreme lack of voluntariness; they are as far as one can be from the self-sufficiency of the individual will that is at the heart of, for example, Kant's political theory. The oscillation between the public and the private is a continuing and prized quality of civil society. The new, multiple woman of late twentiethcentury political thought (the new mulier civilis) is a doctor, let us say, as well as a Belgian, a Protestant, a volunteer, a mother, a member of an international organization, a Walloon, a professional in private practice. Her theory, above all, is to be found in Albert Hirschman's Shifting Involvements, with its evocation of public action, overcommitment, and private disappointment.95 But the richness of her public life is juxtaposed, under certain circumstances, to the impoverishment of politics in very poor countries (or even in very poor parts of rich countries). African Rights, in its harsh criticism of international "humanitarianism" in Somalia, contrasts the public accountability of official agencies with the voluntariness of NGOs: "while agencies such as UNICEF and WHO have a duty to be present, the presence of NGOs is a privilege." The relationship between people who provide and people who use "social services and health care" is thus one of "goodwill" rather than of "contract." Individuals become "passive recipients" of charity, and they are thereby made even more insecure: "the insecurity of the relationship that results can also undermine the effectiveness of the p r ~ g r a m m e . " ~ ~ The resilience of the metaphor of the political contract is associated, in eighteenth-century liberal thought, with the implied equality of the contracting parties, with the circumstance that the parties to the contract or agreement are all more or less the same sort of men, whose "intentions" and "reasonable expectations" can be the subject of reasoned di~cussion.~' The earlier world of "status" (or of security as something to which one is entitled by virtue of one's status) was a world in which men were unequal by their birth. In the imagined world of Condorcet and other late eighteenthcentury liberals, men and women are equal at birth, and their subsequent equality as reasoning parties is made possible by public instruction. This is
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What is Security?
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enlightenment in the most literal sense, or freedom from the darkness in which one cannot see through other people's intentions. But the world of "goodwill," or of security as something that people enjoy not through status, and not through contract, but rather through the good offices of civil society, is inimical to this politics of enlightenment. The insidious characteristic of guilds, for Adam Smith, was that they were protected by "public law," yet were impervious to public scrutiny. Only a beggar, he said, "chooses t o depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens." y8 The international civil society, in a liberal theory of this sort, is a source of enlightenment, civility, or of the investment in schools and museums that might tend to prevent conflict, hut not of individual security. To the extent that civil society and the politics of states (or empires) are opposed to each other, as strategies or as models of postwar reconstruction, then security, both individual and collective, belongs to the domain of the political. "Civil society and markets alone did not assure the stabilization of Western democratic societies after 1945," as Charles Maier has said, and "they seem increasingly unlikely to do so after 19X9."Y' They are even less likely to assure the invention of democratic society, or the common security of individuals.
Free a n d Equal Discussion
Liberalism is a political theory, not an idiom of political discussion. The word "liberalism," according to Judith Shklar, "refers to a political doctrine, not a philosophy of life. ... Liberalism has only one overriding aim: to secure the political conditions that are necessary for the exercise of personal freedom.- loo The new politics of individual security (of "personal security" for Boutros Boutros-Ghali) is in this sense a perfectly liberal enterprise. It is most new, and most odd, in its international extent, in its insistence that the persons whose freedom is to be secured include very remote persons, or political foreigners. The liberal wishes to secure certain political conditions for himself, and for persons whom he recognizes to be co-participants in a political enterprise (to be the same sort of men). The international liberal has the same objective, but he recognizes the oddest sort of people - here, there, and everywhere. It has been suggested that the "civil society strategy" is an insufficient source of individual security because it is insufficiently political. The civil society is (by self-definition) norgovernmental; individual security is (by the definition of liberal political theory) both the objective of and the justification for government. The civil society is the domain of the voluntary; individual security is the justification for coercion. But the nongovernmental society is itself of notably increased political importance in the post-Cold War world. The new political theory of the NGO is indeed the assertion of a new politics: the assertion that the "we" of civil society, or the nongovernmental and the noncoercive, is a constituent, and even a defining constituent of political life.
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Widening Security
The presumption of this essay has been that the idea of an international politics is, if not straightforward, at least recognizable in a general sense. But the connotation of the political - and thereby of the "political conditions" that Judith Shklar refers to as the overriding aim of liberalism - is the subject of familiar, persistent disagreement. In one sense, the political is indeed the domain of organizations, individuals, and their political discussions. This is the sense asserted in the new theories of civil society; it is Cicero's sense, too (or one of Cicero's senses), of society as a place of teaching, learning, communicating, discussing, and reasoning, and of citizenship as a matter of public places, temples, streets, laws, voting rights, friendships, and business contracts.lOl In a different sense, however, the political is the domain of formal (and coercive) political arrangements, of the "formal democracy," which in the civil society strategy is "not enough," and of the state more generally, with its laws, treaties, and declarations. In a further sense, the political is the domain of political power, or the extent of what states can do, or can arrange to have done. A great deal of modern political thought is concerned, as it was between the 1770s and the 1820s, with the relations between these three domains: with the circumstance that the different domains of politics are not coextensive, but change in extent over time. The fundamental characteristic of the state is as the location of political homogeneity; the nation is defined by homogeneity of birth, race, blood, culture.102But political homogeneity is a matter of (political) culture, of discussing and reasoning, as well as of formal political arrangements. The extent of political power is very much less than the extent of formal political arrangements, for some states, and very much greater for others. Condorcet's prospect of governments that impose principles by force in other countries was made possible by the new political power of several European governments. This power had rather little to do with formal political engagements. It was instead a consequence of technologies (such as canals), economic circumstances (such as the power to raise taxes or borrow money), and political and military conditions (such as the absence, at the time, of powerful opponents). Castlereagh proposed to limit Britain's policies of intervention - her ~oliciesbeyond the domain of formal political arrangements - to the "intelligible and practicable." The intelligible corresponds to the political in Cicero's sense, of the subject of discussion and concern within a political society. The practicable is the political in the sense of present power, or of that which corresponds to the circumstances of political power, at the present time and as understood by the presently powerful. The great liberal theory of the nineteenth century assumed a more orderly relation between these three domains of the political. John Stuart Mill argued, in support of "free and popular local and municipal institutions," that "the management of purely local business by the localities" should be subject only to the most general superintendence by "general government," including the provision of information and the residual power of "compelling the local officers to obey the laws laid down for their guidance"; the result should be "the
greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency." Formal political arrangements were to be organized in an orderly hierarchy of interests and duties, and the domain of these arrangements was co-extensive with the domain of political power. The wider political culture, too, was both influenced by and an irlfluence on formal political arrangements. Mill was uncompromisingly opposed - and in this he followed closely Condorcet's arguments on public instruction - to the idea of political education. But he saw in the practice of local politics the source of the "llabits and powers" that are the foundation of a "free constitution." "" Mill's conception of political order has been o f profound importance to subsequent liberal thought. It is even reflected, in the European law of the 1980s and 1990s, in the idea of "subsidiarity." There is an orderly and liberal core to this turgidly obscure notion: there are different levels of government, of differing generality, and each political function is to be undertaken at the lowest (or least general) level that is compatible with efficiency or practicability.'""t is this hierarchy of political processes that has broken down in the new international politics of the 1990s. There are two reasons, in English political thought, to respect some version of the principle of subsidiarity. One is the Burkean or historicist respect for convention; certain functions have in the past been performed by certain levels of government, and the costs o f constitutional change are likely to be prohibitively high. The other, which is closer to Mill's, is founded o n reason: the functions of government should be subject to continuing review in the light of changing circumstances, and they should be assigned to the least general level that is efficient in these conditions. The rationalist view of subsidiarity is the more compelling one. Rut it imposes an unending reflection on constitutional principles, much as Leonard Woolf's system of conferences imposed an unending reflection on the delineation of the international. It also imposes a great deal of reflection on changing international circun~stances;on the circumstances that have changed so prodigiously in the 1980s and 1990s. The politics of individual securit); inside and outside Europe, is a case in point. O n the one hand, because of the increase in international information, the general interest in the security of distant individuals is great; people know about distant horrors while they are still happening, or while there is still rime to prevent them from happening. O n the other hand, because of increased information, again, and because international interventions are no longer inhibited by the prospect of intercontinental military conflict, the power o f distant states is also relatively great in relation to these horrors. The power of local states, meanwhile, is very much diminished in many modern local conflicts. The distant states may therefore he more "efficient" in protecting personal freedom, to use Mill's term, than the local, formally constituted political authorities. The counterpart of the mulier civilis (the new political woman of civil society) provides a dismal illustration. If one is a Bosnian Muslim woman, then one's security is n o t protected by virtue of one's political identity as a resident of a local con>munity, as a citizen o f the old Yugoslavia, or as a citizen of the new Bosnia.
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Widening Security
One's other identities - as a European, as a member of an international religious community, as an individual with rights, or as a woman with rights provide weak protection. But the European Union, NATO, the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the UN High Commission for Refugees may actually have more power to ensure one's personal security than any local or municipal political institutions. The difficulty, in very general terms, is of a divergence between the different domains of the political. The extent of international political discussion and power has increased enormously. But (formal) political institutions the hierarchy of international, national, regional, and local government have increased only minimally, and in many cases have become, as in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Chechnya, drastically less efficient. One prospect, therefore, is of an extension and improvement in the formal institutions of international government. This is the point of policies for the prevention and demilitarization of conflict, and it is of particular importance in relation to policies for individual or common security. Formal (contractual) commitments to international programs of political and educational investment, formal restrictions on military transactions, formal agreements in respect of the recognition of sovereignty, and formal procedures for the protection of internationally recognized rights constitute the germ (to use Freud's word) of a compulsion to international government. I am not referring to Leonard Woolf's "true International Government" of 1916, made up of voluntary associations; I mean something even more currently unfashionable, in the form of international laws and international authorities with the power of compelling other officers to obey those laws. The state, including the incipient international state, has been the object of criticism in the 1980s and 1990s by an imposing political coalition of the Right and the Left. Its commitments are very often no more than scraps of paper; there is "overwhelming evidence that modern national governments cannot and will not observe international treaties or rules of international law when these become burdensome or dangerous to the welfare or security of their own nation," E.H. Carr wrote in 1945.1°' But there is little alternative, at least in policies for individual or common security, to the reconstruction of state authority. The single most important element in this reconstruction, for international state institutions, would be the power to raise tax revenues, or at least to receive, "automatically," some share of the revenues raised by national, regional, or local governments. The most important form of coercion, in the historical development of national states, was the coercive power of fiscality; it would be the most important power of international institutions as well. In The Man without Qualities, Musil says that the timid diplomat Tuzzi "regarded the state as a masculine subject one did not discuss with women," and the political objective of rediscovering the state is quite remote from the objectives of the new, multifarious civil society.lo6 But the state itself is distinctively multifarious in the post-Cold War world. One consequence of the extension of international political society, or of political discussion, is thus
1
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What is Security?
27
a new disrespect for the prior wisdom of states and their officers. When Castlereagh speaks of different policies as "practicable" or "impracticable" o r when Mill speaks of the "efficient" dissemination of power - the tone is of privileged insight into government finances and opportunities. This tone of effortless self-confidence has been repressed, perhaps beyond recovery, in the past decades of criticism of all the nonmilitary activities of the state (at least in England, the United States, a n d the former Soviet Union). The state is also a largely and increasingly feminine institution a t the end of the twentieth century. The traditionally masculine functions of collecting taxes and organizing wars have heen conspicuously in retreat. It is the traditionally feminine state functions of local government, education, and social security that are most resilient; it is these functions, too, that would be reproduced in the new institutions of international government. The international politics of individual security would be more orderly, in some respects, if the institutions o f formal political commitment were extended in this way. Rut the international political society will still impose a new and prodigious tolerance for political disorder. There is some interest, among the theorists of civil society in the 1990s, in the Stoic metaphor of political identity as an array of concentric circles, in which the individual feels progressively less committed to her progressively more general political identities (as a member of a family, a local community, a region, a nation, an international community, and so forth). Adam Smith took some interest in this metaphor, too, a t least a s a way of questioning the Stoic idea of universal political benevolence.'"' B u t the modern identities with which we have been concerned suggest that the array of commitments is very much less orderly than the metaphor would indicate. I t is a set of ellipses, perhaps, o r a n Epicurean universe, in which the location of the "I" swerves and lurches over time. It leads t o a politics, in turn, that is subject in a quite novel respect to whim and t o chance. "Men are vain of the beauty of their country, of their county, of their parish," Hunle says in his account of the relation hetween objects and passions; they are also vain of climate, of food, "of the softness o r force of their language," of the qualities of their friends, of the beauty and utility of distant countries (based o n "their distant relation t o a foreign country, which is formed by their having seen it and lived in it"). But the modern politics of relatedness is more disordered, or more accidental, than in even Hume's imagination. For Hume, "a beautiful fish in the ocean, an animal in a desert, and indeed anything that neither belongs, nor is related to us, has n o manner of influence on our vanity.""'Vn the modern theory of international (environmental) security, even the beautiful fish is related t o international politics. It is quite plausible, for example, that the individual participants in the new civil society should feel related, and even passionately related to far-off fish in distant oceans. It is plausible, too, that these voluntary passions should come and g o with the accidents of information. One joins the society for the protection of fish because one happens t o have lived, as a child, near the zoo. O r one votes for a party that supports
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Widening Security
environmental assistance because one saw a television program about fish the night before the election. The accidental politics of the 1990s poses new and serious difficulties for political theory and practice. Some of these difficulties were anticipated in earlier periods of political turbulence: Condorcet, for example, devoted great ingenuity to devising constitutional schemes whereby decisions could be drawn out, delayed, or reversed. Other difficulties are very largely new: they are such as to set the impartial regulation of broadcasting and of the new television, communications, and newspaper oligopolies at the very center of present politics. But the most disturbing of the new requirements is to discover a new tolerance for the accidental in politics. This is a very Humean politics, and Hume indeed observed (in his account of accidents from the point of view of the theory of knowledge) that "the custom of imagining a dependence has the same effect as the custom of observing it would have."lo9 Politics, like everything else in life, is a kingdom of emotions and customs, of the aesthetic and the accidental. A politics of this sort is profoundly disconcerting in the terms of even the most minimal liberal thought. For liberalism, like the new politics of the 1990s, is about security: about ensuring the conditions for personal liberty. And security requires the predictability and repetitiveness that are the endless propensities of the state. That is why the rediscovery of the (international) state is at the heart of the politics of individual security. But the state to be rediscovered will be a very different sort of state - more Humean and more complicit in an unpredictable political society. "All the Gods who are deliberating on peace" in the last part of Descartes' ballet about the Treaty of Westphalia decide that Pallas, or wisdom, is their only recourse: "Our interests are so diverse1 That we are not to be believedl In anything to do with glorylAnd the good of the entire universe." Pallas is the personification of Queen Christina, and she combines "prudence" with "valour," and is thereby free of the risk of "too much assurance" or "too much warmth."l1° These quite minimal political virtues are also the useful virtues of the present postwar world. It is the disengagement of politics from militarism, or from military assurance, that has disengaged the old liberalism of the late Enlightenment. There is a "crisis of liberal internationalism" in the 1990s, and there is an even more serious crisis of conservatism, which revered nothing in the state, excepting only its military power. The disorderly world of the new international politics - of politics in the sense of an international political society - is full of danger for this sort of conservatism. But it is full of hope for liberals. Franqois Guizot, one of the great nineteenth-century liberals (and conservatives), wrote of the "epoch of transition" of the 1850s that democracy "is habitually dominated by its interests and passions of the moment" and is, of all social powers, the "most obedient to its present fantasies, without concern for the past or the future.""l But this disorder is also the condition for the entire, subversive enterprise of political liberalism. In Mill's famous words, "liberty, as a principle, has no
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What is Security?
29
application to any state o f things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion."'12 We have very little idea, still, o f what free and equal discussion amounts to, between groups and societies as well as between individuals. But we are in the process of finding out.
Notes 1 . Earlier verslons o f thi\ p.lper were presented at the initi'll meeting of the Cornmon S e c u r q Forum in 1992, and at the 1993 Oslo meeting of the l To be sure, this is not to say that C W are not insidious and do not cause horrible suffering - of course they do. Nor d o I argue that such qualities
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Widening Security
have had nothing to do with the prohibition against CW. I mean simply to point out that most if not all other weapons share comparably dubious qualities and thus that these qualities alone do not provide a sufficient explanation of why CW and not other weapons have been proscribed. Few would argue that being torn apart by burning shrapnel is anything other than horrifying and inhumane. The difference is that, in contrast to CW, most conventional weapons have not had such a politically successful degree of odium attached to them, as the term "conventional weapons" itself implies. Michael Mandelbaum has authored the sole sustained account of which I am aware that attempts to address the question of the legitimacy of CW in the context of attitudes toward other weapons. In an effort to understand the differing legitimacy accorded to nuclear and chemical weaponry as tools of politics over the last forty years, Mandelbaum has sought an answer in deep-rooted cultural and institutional restraints. In the end, however, he argues that the aversion to chemical weapons may be deeply rooted in human chromosomes. Because nuclear weapons are of relatively recent origin, he argues, humankind has not had enough time to develop a genetic aversion to them.22 While Mandelbaum's approach goes beyond many of the scholarly treatments of the CW taboo in attempting to place it in the context of moral attitudes toward other weapons, his explanation is so strained and implausible as to not merit serious consideration. The reason for this inadequate explanation is instructive, however. Mandelbaum has made the error of searching for the origins of the taboo in logical reasons derived from contemporary understandings of the important characteristics of CW. He is forced into the Sisyphean position of trying to demonstrate such a rationale because of the ahistorical and apolitical structure of his argument, which treats the CW taboo as a static variable. He deductively tries to account for the present moral status of CW and nuclear weapons without reference to some of the unexpected political dynamics of the past that may have shaped subsequent attitudes. The shortcomings of these approaches suggest that factors other than some inherent aversion to the intrinsic features of CW have played an important role in establishing the political salience of restraints against CW. The Poison Taboo Still, if there is one intrinsic quality of CW that seems to provide a plausible explanation for its prohibition, it is the association with poison. Nevertheless, while it is generally assumed that the ban on poison goes back through time immemorial, more careful examination reveals that poison has been stigmatized in European civilization as an illegitimate and cruel method of warfare for only a few hundred years.23While scattered references to a disdain for poison have been noted in ancient Rome and India, the formative period for a robust and absolute prohibition against poisonous weapons in Europe appears to have been between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.24The prohibition
lit I!. i Chemical Weapons
41
of such weapons was advocated in 1589 by Alberico Gentili, although he treated the issue as controversial. And as Georg Schwarzenberger has noted, the use of poison and poisonous weapons was still being defended as late as 1737.2F A treatise by Grotius dating from 1625 not only offered an explanation for the prohibition on poison but also seems to have constituted a contribution to its co~lsolidation:"Agreement upon this matter arose from a consideration of the common advantage, in order that the dangers of war, which had begun to be frequent, might not be too widely extended. And it is easy to believe that this agreement originated with kings, whose lives are better defended by arms than those of other men, but are less safe from poison, unless they are protected by some respect for law and by fear of disgrace."'" Another dimension in the discrediting of poison was its association with the ideas of womanly deception and the ignominy of a death by poison (in contrast to the glory of a death achieved during an open contest of brute physical strength among men). As Margaret Hallissy has put it, "The dueller is open, honest, and strong; the poisoner, fraudulent, scheming, and weak. A man with a gun or a sword is a threat, but he declares himself to be so, and his intended victim can arm himself: may the best man win and have the public glory of heing acknowledged the best man ... Poison is an insidious equalizer of strength in the battle of the sexes. The poisoner uses superior secret knowledge to compensate for physical inferiority. A weak woman planning a poison is as deadly as a man with a gun, but because she plots is1 secret, the victim is the more disarmed."'The image of poison, then, is that of a potential equalizer in a battle tor domination that needed to he delegitimized in order that the physical contest of strength would determine political power. This process of delegitimation has been so successful that it is often overlooked; we need only recall the widespread conviction of the futility of limitations on effective weapons, noting how it seems to forget that poison is a technology of war. For example, T.J. 1,awrence writes, "The attempts which have been made to forbid the introduction o f new inventions into warfare, or prevent the use of instruments that cause destruction on a large scale, are doomed to failure. Man always has improved his weapons, and always will as long as he has need for them at all."LX This belief cum truism is so dominant that it actually has been invoked in order to explain the ban on poison. Despite the clear implications of Grotius' tract, one of his interpreters has read the accepted wisdom of weapons bans backwards i n t o that essay and has quite incorrectly surmised that the ban "probably reflected the inefficiency of poison as a weapon."" Even one of the more historically sensitive treatments of the CW ban, one that spends considerable effort analyzing the possible links between the CW norm and the prohibition against poison, was able in the same treatise to state that chemical and biological warfare comes the closest to providing an example of totally outlawing a particular means of warfare, all others having failed (excepting for means of no military utility)."' On the contrary, poison has
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Widening Security
been delegitimized as a means of violence, and it is precisely because of its potential effectiveness and the inability to defend against it. To what extent, then, does this robust taboo against poison account for the CW prohibition? It will be recalled that Mandelbaum's attempt to explain the CW taboo took the form of trying to give an account of humanity's special psychological horror of toxic substances. As such, he simply assumed an axiomatic connection between CW and poison. Prima facie this may not seem an unreasonable assumption, for CW often are referred to as "poison gases." For the genealogist, however, the question arises whether we can attribute the rise of a norm proscribing CW to its connection with poison, a weapon believed to have been proscribed throughout the ages by the laws of civilized warfare. The normative discourse concerning CW began in earnest with the assembly of the world's major nations at the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907.31An analysis of the proceedings of the Hague conference of 1899 reveals that the origins of the CW taboo did not issue primarily from an understanding that such weapons were just another version of poison. Indeed, the use of "poison and poisoned weapons" was "especially prohibited" by Article 23(a) of the Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land produced at the Hague, but no link was ever made between this prohibition and the declaration prohibiting asphyxiating shells.32 What the delegates understood themselves to ban at the Hague was the first use of a particular type of explosive shell: "projectiles whose purpose is to spread asphyxiating gases and not those whose explosion incidentally produces these gases."33 CW had yet to be developed, and at the time these weapons were portrayed as a new type of explosive that might be restricted, rather than a toxic weapon that was subject to the customary prohibitions on poison. While a few attempts were made to equate these kinds of shells with poison, such reasoning was strongly countered by other delegates. As attested to by U.S. delegate A.D. White, the discursive strategy that in the end did facilitate the attainment of a prohibition was the perception "that asphyxiating bombs might be used against towns for the destruction of vast numbers of noncombatants, including women and children, while torpedoes at sea are used only against the military and naval forces of the enemy."34 To be sure, it would be unwise to exclude unduly any legitimate influence the association with poison may have had on the early development of ideas concerning CW.35 It is clear, however, that the initial institutionalized form of the CW norm was not primarily the result of a discursive strategy that linked these weapons to a robust norm proscribing the use of poison. Rather, it was reached via a linkage between asphyxiating shells and the threat to civilians, and also because the declaration proscribing asphyxiating shells was seen to be of little significance, as these kinds of explosive shells had not yet been developed.36The galvanizing specter of CW was one of a devastating weapon against which there would be no defense for helpless civilians.
Chemical Weapons
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While the prohibition o n poison does not sufficiently account for the origins of the C W taboo, over time the association of CW with poison and with biological weapons has become important in sustaining the CW prohibition. This has developed as the ~mderstandingof CW has been transformed from their initial assessment as a potentially devastating or at least effective fruit of technological progress wielded by the advanced powers, to the view that CW are a n insidious equalizer wielcled hy the weak. Moreover, this comparison between the two bans brings out the truly intriguing quality of the persistence of the CW taboo: unlike poison and perhaps even nuclear or biological weapons, nothing in the nature of CW would cause them to be defined as a technology against which there is little means of defense. Indeed, of all recent weapons innovations C W are probably the most susceptible to defensive measures. Nor is it simply true, however, that CW are therefore ineffective weapons. While the effectiveness of CW can be reduced due to liabilities such as defensive measures or dependence on wind conditions, CRf can be devastatingly effective in certain tactical and strategic conditions, as both sides recognized during situations in World War 11 such as the D-Day landings at Normandy. In short, it is not possible to account for the peculiar reception of gas weapons during this period simply by virtue of their objective characteristics.
The Genealogical Method As previewed above, providing an adequate account of the CW taboo requires an understanding of the meanings that have served to constitute and delegitimize this category of weapons. This "how" question of understanding meaning is different from the "why" question of causal explanation that is usually the focus of international relations scholarsl~ip.~' Given the predominantly positivist cast of the discipline, and its dominance by U.S. policy issues, scholarship in the field has been grounded in the quest for theories of causal explanation for behavioral outcomes.:' Because the discipline has been so method-driven, interesting questions posed of international political phenomena not answerable in terms of the prevailing methodological orthodoxy - that is, the types of questions often posed by plitical philosophers, social theorists, and anthropologists - have been relegated to the margins of the discipline.'" The inadequacy of previous efforts to give 311account of the CW taboo, however, makes plain the contributions of an interpretive methodology that seeks to uncover the discursive strategies employed to delegitimize the category of CW."' As was shown above, Mandelhaum mistakenly assumed that the present form of a moral interpretation c o ~ ~ account ld for its origins. As such, he committed the same error that Friedrich Nietzsche criticized in his analyses of moral institutions; namely, the error of ignoring "the specific historical and genealogical tangles that produce the contingent structures we mistakenly consider given, solid, and extending without change into the
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future as well as into the past."41 The fallacy of confusing rational functions for origins was a prominent and consistent theme in Nietzsche's writings on the origins of morality.42 As a corrective, Nietzsche proffered the genealogical method, an approach that seeks to uncover the conditions under which moral institutions are devised and to interpret the value that these norms themselves possess.43 The analysis adopted in this article to untie the conundrum of the CW taboo has as its main influence insights generated from this method, one of many traditions of interpretive and constructivist social science.44 The genealogical approach, which more recently has been popularized through the writings of Michel Foucault, is particularly well-suited for an analysis of the norm proscribing CW as it is a method specifically concerned with interpreting the origins of moral interpretations. And as Nietzsche explained with respect to his own studies of asceticism, the chief contribution of such inquiries is on the "how" questions of meaning more so than the "why" questions of explanation: It is my purpose here to bring to light, not what this ideal has done, but simply what it means; what it indicates; what lies hidden behind it, beneath it, in it; of what it is the provisional, indistinct expression, overlaid with question marks and misunderstandings. ... what is the meaning of the power of this ideal? ... Why has it been allowed to flourish to this e ~ t e n t ? ~ " For Foucault, as for Nietzsche, what is most often found at the historical beginnings of things is not "the moment of their greatest perfection, when they emerge dazzling from the hands of a creator."46 Rather, the development of institutions often consists of rationally inexplicable events, "fabricated in piecemeal fashion" out of the vicissitudes of history.47AS a result of the marriage of chance occurrences, fortuitous connections, and reinterpretations, the purposes and forms of moral structures often change in such a way that they come to embody values different from those that animated their origins. As Nietzsche put it, The cause of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart; whatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, ... and the entire history of a "thing," an organ, a custom can in this way be a continuous sign-chain of ever new interpretations and adaptations whose causes do not even have to be related to one another but, on the contrary, in some cases succeed and alternate with one another in a purely chance fashion.48 Genealogy's allowance for contingency seems intuitively appropriate for the rather jumbled history of violations and resurrections of the CW norm. Indeed, the genealogical stance is quite at home with one of the more intriguing aspects
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Chemical Weapons
45
of the CW story - the U.S. position. The United States moved from being the only opponent of the first CW ban (the Hague declaration) to being the primary proponent of efforts to ban CW after World War I (the Geneva Protocol), a ban which the U.S. sought and achieved but then ultimately failed to ratify. The genealogical stance is favorably placed to account for the interests and identities forged out of "the events of history, its jolts, its surprises, its unsteady victories and unpalatable defeatsn4"- a task especially apposite for the uneven record of the norm proscribing chemical weapons. The genealogy of the CW taboo thus seeks to remedy the deficiencies of essentialist and deductive approaches by making the basic move of historicizing the accepted moral interpretations of weapons technologies and the place of CW within this moral domain. This operation reflects an understanding of the role of genealogy as an effort to find history where it is not expected to he - within moral institutions and practices that are usually thought to be exempt from the contingencies of historical tangles."' Besides emphasizing the importance of historical contingency in the social construction of norms, the genealogical method influences the following analysis of the CW taboo through the employment of two of the genealogist's analytical tools: discourses and power. Discourses, the favored analytic focus of Foucault, are theoretical statements that are connected to social practices." These discourses produce and legitimize certain behaviors and conditions of life as "normal," and serve to politicize some phenomena over others. As stattd by James Keeky, discourses "also may produce behaviour defined as deviant, which is then used to justify the maintenance and development of the system intended to control or eliminate it."" For Foucault, the production of disco~~rses is a form of power, which he termed "disciplinary" power." The production ot a discourse constructs categories that then~selvesmake a cluster of practices and understandings seem inconceivable or illegitimate. This disciplinary power sets a field of conceptual possibilities that defines what is normal and natural, and what is unthinkable and r e p r e h e n s i b l e . ' ~ r o h i b i t i o n a r ynorms in this sense d o not merely restrain hehavior hut are productive in that they constitute identities and impose meanings of what is to count as legitimate reality. Norms as conceived in this constructivist account are closely tied to the formation of identities, as "we form our identities hy conforming ourselves over time to tacitly understood norms and generally accepted practices," in the words of David Couzens Hoy. Using these categories of analysis to examine international politics, genealogy injects a different dimension of power into the study of norms, an element that often seems neglected in the attempt to distance the role of norms and ideas from realism's focus on material power.jh While a Nietzschean genealogy might share with realism a focus on the power relation in human affairs, the differences between these two approaches are several and substantial. Conflicts over interpretive truths - that is, the exercise of power - are located at different sites than the power relations usually examined in international relations scholarship. As James Der Derian
"
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Widening Security
has argued, the genealogist's focus on multiple sites of power constitutes a challenge to the state-centrism of realism while not denying the importance of power in international Moreover, Nietzsche radically questions the conception of self-interest employed by realist scholars by rendering problematic the identities that can have those interests in the first place: self-interest cannot be an unproblematic concept if the self is conceived as a set of constructed identities that need not be stable over time.58 What genealogy seeks to offer is not simply an account of the conscious intentions of actors but rather an interpretation of what kind of politics is promoted by a moral system. In this regard, a genealogy does not presume that the power interactions that forge dominant norms simply and necessarily reflect the balance of material capabilities, such as military power. In short, because the CW taboo defies rational expectations regarding weapons prohibitions,5y it plays to the strengths of interpretive and constructivist approaches such as genealogy.60The account that follows also offers empirical support against the technological determinism implied in accepting the idea that no effective weapons ever are banned. In opposition to the thesis of autonomous technology, many thinkers in the philosophy of technology have argued that technology is a social, cultural, and political construction, a position that the argument presented here support^.^' As suggested in the research program outlined by Keeley, then, an analysis influenced by genealogy involves the following more specific undertakings: (1)the identification of contending discourses and how they change over time; (2) the identification of features of CW that came to be regarded as essential in disputes over first, the definition of acceptable behavior, second, the naming and evaluation of the weapon, and third, standards of judgment to be applied; and (3) the identification of the various strategies and mechanisms to "exercise power" - that is, to create, transform, or destroy networks of relations that sustain a discourse and the political space that it orders.62 What follows is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive explanation for the CW taboo and its role at each key moment in the history of the use and nonuse of CW. Rather, the remainder of the article has the more modest objective of illuminating crucial aspects of the CW taboo that have been neglected in the literature. For example, this article contributes to the international law literature on CW by providing a more comparative dimension to the analysis of how CW were effectively distinguished from other weapons. In addition, analyzing the hierarchical ordering of violence involved in the operation of weapons discourses offers a more coherent account of violations of the CW ban, a development that has perplexed much of the literature. Even then, an account of all of the important sources, transformations, meanings, resistances, and consequences of the constitution of the taboo is beyond this article's scope.63 In what follows, I identify selected aspects of the taboo without which we cannot adequately understand how CW have been constituted as a category, how they have been delegitimized apart from
Chemical Weapons
47
other w e ~ p o n s ,and how the t ~ b o ohas pers~stedIn the f x e of o c c a s ~ o n ~ l v l o l a t ~ o n In ~ . particul,ir, the following analys~sh ~ g h l ~ g hthe t s role o t three n , resistdmenslons of the t ~ b o o- contingency, h ~ e r ~ r c h y l d o m ~ n a t l oand ance - In the operation of the C,W moral d~scourse.
T h e Political Construction of T e c h n o l o g y
An analysis ot the discourse at the Hague Conferelices reveals that the initial consideration of gas shells was fundamentally different from that of other weapons. Limitations on a number of weapons were discussed at the conferences - submarine mines, muskets, balloons, submarine torpedoes, explosives, field guns, and so on. With the exception of durn-durn bullets and asphyxiating shells, however, the limitations that were agreed upon took the form of proscribing certain uses of certain kinds of weapons. The dominant understanding within which the subject of weapons linlitations was situated was an interpretation of technology as a value-neutral phenomenon. Technologies were not regarded as in and of themselves immoral; their moral value was understood to depend upon how they were used. The unique aspect of the emergent CW norm at the Hague conference of 1899 is that it did not follow this understanding and simply ban particular uses of such shells (e.g., against civilians), while implicitly conferring legitimacy upon their use against soldiers in the field. Rather, the Hague declaration took the form of a more absolute prohibition in that any kind of first use of such weapons was to be regarded as unacceptable. In this way, the ban served to define gas shells as a particular and distinct category of weapon, a phenomenon that subsequently has proved critical in the politicization of CW. This emergent norm was unique in the sense that it anticipated the introduction of a new technology of warfare.'" The protests that accompany the introduction of a novel weapon usually represent the cries of a surprised and technologically disadvantaged victim. The preemptive proscription of a weapon, however, could lend unusual and more universal force to objections to their introduction, for such an act would constitute a breach of a formal agreement of international law reached by the civilized members of the family of nations."' An analysis of the C W discourse during the course of World War I reveals that this is in fact what occurred. To the extent that gas weapons were singled out and politicized ahove and beyond other new weapons, it was not solely because they were perceived as more cruel than other weapons but because it was understood that their use was a violation of the Hague declaration.'" And quite unlike any other weapon, the use of gas weapons was politicized even though they were used solely against combatants. This difference is indicative of the absolute quality of this carving out of a political space for CW. Again, this is not to downplay the importance of a particular moral revulsion toward gas in the development of the taboo but simply to
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point out other crucial respects in which the CW experience departed from the usual revulsion toward other novel weapons. The CW experience of World War I also was anomalous in that the stipulations of the Hague declaration were adhered to until well into the war. The British development of gas weapons was fully in accord with and dictated by their understanding of the legal stipulations of the 1899 declaration. So, too, British employment of gas weapons was restrained by the nascent CW norm: they only used gas weapons in reaction to German use.67 Similarly, the decision of the French to formally authorize toxic shells was delayed for some time, as French authorities felt bound in some measure by the Hague d e ~ l a r a t i o nNormative .~~ constraints also were important in one further respect. Despite the widespread use of CW during World War I, none of the belligerents intentionally employed CW against civilians even though civilians had been attacked by other means, such as submarine attacks and air raids. This nonevent not only was the product of normative restraint but it also has subsequently helped to set CW apart as a politically potent symbolic threshold, a function these weapons have continued to serve ever since.69 Indeed, it can be speculated that had CW been used against civilians during the war, they would have been grudgingly accepted as yet another inevitability of modern warfare. (Many soldiers who had been exposed to CW resigned themselves to the similar view that CW were just one of many new weapons introduced in the war to which soldiers must accommodate t h e m s e l v e ~ . ) ~ ~ These developments are important because they illustrate significant effects of the discursive definition of CW begun at the Hague conference of 1899 that have gone neglected in CW literature. This neglect is a result of the assumption that the Hague norm could not have played any significant role in the development of the CW prohibition, given its apparent obliteration during World War I. Ann Van Wynen Thomas and A.J. Thomas, authors of one of the most judicious studies of the CW norm, have argued that even if there was a customary norm proscribing the use of CW by the time of World War I, "it did nothing to restrain the use of gas" during that conflict.71 On the contrary, the experience of CW use during World War I demonstrates that the Hague prohibition had carved out a political space for CW - the use of CW was seen as a violation of acceptable behavior, a departure from civilized conduct that needed to be dis~iplined.'~ The peculiarity of this treatment of CW was remarkably in evidence during postwar efforts to reaffirm a ban on gas weapons. At the Washington conference of 1921-22, U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes pushed through an absolute prohibition on any first use of CW despite the unanimous recommendations of a subcommittee of experts that "the only limitation practicable is wholly to prohibit the use of gases against cities and other large bodies of noncombatants in the same manner as high explosives may be limited."73 While Hughes was prepared to accept the same kinds of limitations on CW as on other weapons if the proposal had encountered stiff opposition, the resolution was accepted as Article V of the Washington
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treaty.74 Its acceptance was made possible by the helief of the delegates a t the conference that such a prohibition was neither new nor terribly important. O n the one hand, they saw it as merely reaffirming previous bans (the Hague declaration, whose violation during World War I left little confidence in such treaties, and Article 17 1 of the Versailles treaty, which was essentially an anti-German provision). Furthermore, it was believed that such a treaty was not terribly important as it would not prevent preparations for c l i e ~ n ical warfare. Even though this treaty never came into effect, the clause banning C W lived o n in the sense that it served directly as the basis and even rationale for the Geneva I'rotocol of 1925, which in turn has operated as the focal point of the (:W norm for almost seventy years.-' 111 genealogical fashion, then, the invocation of an institutional tradition as a rationale for renewed efforts t o ban rs~z~~?rriz~ircnt Nr,etcrreirc~eRefi~rcHiroshmw (New Brunswick, N.J.: Trrlnsact~on Kooks, 19861, p. 78. Thu5, w h ~ l ereports o f Japan's use of CW against the Chinese were Ignored, even the suggesrlon that C W w ~ bse ~ n gcontemplated 111 Spain drew preemptory attention froni Britain. The use of tear gas by government forces w ~ reported s and the Insurgents
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claimed that they, too, had gas but "refuse to break the international law which forbids its use." See Times (London), 19 August 1936, p. 10. In response, Britain sent its diplomats to investigate these allegations and convey the grave consequences that might follow from the use of gas even in reprisal. See Times (London) 8 September 1936, p. 12. 91. Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday. Similarly, Fukuyama has drawn a sharp distinction between the power politics behavior of the Third World and peaceful relations among industrial democracies - the historical and posthistorical parts of the world. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). See also Michael Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," pt. 1 and 2, Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Summer and Fall 1983), pp. 205-235 and 323-353; and James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, "A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era," International Organization 46 (Spring 1992), pp. 467-91. 92. And, as Adas has demonstrated, it was the level of technological sophistication -rather than race, religion, morality, or other factors - that served as the chief standard by which the West judged the degree of civilization of other societies. See his exhaustive account in Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). 93. Giornale d'ltalia (Italy) as reported in New York Times, 4 July 1935, p. 1. See also Amy Gurowitz, "The Expansion of International Society and the Effects of Norms," manuscript, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1993. 94. See "Paper Interviews Aziz on Kurds, Other Issues," Kuwait AL-QABAS, 31 October 1988 (in Arabic), Foreign Broadcast Information Servlce (FBIS), 2 November 1988, p. 27; and "WAKH Reports Khayrallah 1 5 September Press Conference," Manama WAKH, 15 September 1988 (in Arabic), FBIS 16 September 1988, pp. 23-24. 95. For examples see the German accounts as reported in "Through German Eyes," Times (London), 29 April 1915, p. 6 from which the quotation is drawn; and James Garner, International Law and the World War (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920), pp. 274-76. 96. Congressional Record 69th Congress, 2d sess., vol. 68, pt. 1, p. 150. 97. As stated by a U.S. senator, "We all know that any proliferation of nuclear weapons threatens humanity. Now we are learning that for other, less costly, easier-to-make weapons, far less sophistication is required, although they may pose a threat approaching the horror of nuclear war and nuclear arms. That is why some are calling chemical and biological weapons the poor man's atomic bomb." U.S. Congress, Chemical Warfare: Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Joint Hearing Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Subcommittee on Energy, Nuclear Proliferation and Government Processes, 98th Congress, 2d sess., 28 June 1984, p. 34. 98. New York Times, 2 July 1988, p. A3. 99. "Paris Paper Interviews Aziz on Chemical Weapons," Baghdad INA, 18 January 1989 (in Arabic) Near East and Southeast Asia, in FBIS 19 January 1989, p. 21. 100. United Nations, United Nations Disarmament Yearbook, vol. 14 (New York: United Nations, 1989), chap. 11. 101. Pierre Morel,"The Paris Conference on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons," Disarmament 12 (Summer 1989), pp. 1 2 7 4 4 . 102. Quoted from Esmat Ezz, "The Chemical Weapons Convention: Particular Concerns of Developing Countries," Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs (Cambridge, Mass.: Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, 1989), p. 216. 103. As one author has remarked, "The major nations' unwillingness to eliminate their nuclear weapons while resisting further chemical (and nuclear) proliferation is seen in some Third World nations as the height of hypocrisy. It sends a message that the lesser nations aren't mature enough for the most powerful of military capabilities." See Victor A. Utgoff, "Neutralizing the Value of Chemical Weapons: A Strong Supplement to Chemical Weapons Arms Control," in Joachim Krause, ed., Security Implications of a Global Weapons Ban (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), p. 97. See also Geoffrey Kemp, "The Arms Race after the Iran-Iraq War," in Efraim Karsh, ed., The Iran-Iraq War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), pp. 269-79.
r
Chemical Weapons
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104. Morel, "The I'aric Conference o n the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons," p. 142. 10.5. Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealog); History," pp. 85-86. See also James Scott, Damrn~ltionand the Arts of Kesrsttrncr ( N e w Haven, Conti.: Yale University Press, 1990). 106. Indeed, I i ~ g h - p r e c ~ s ~conventional on rnun~tionshad heen defined as weapons ot mass destruction in Soblet md~t,lry I~terature of the 1980s. See Stephen R. Covlngton, "The Evolution of Sov~etT h ~ n k ~ no ng the Util~tvof Chemical Wartare In 3 Major European Armed of il Glohal (:hrnrreudney, "The Case Agalnst Linking Envlronrnental Degradation ...," p. 469. S5. Kuzan, "Environment as J Security Issue," p. 25; see pp. 16-19 about the economlc approach. 56. Thrs issue ot the nature o t society (and individuals) I S a debate often replayed under various h e a d i n g such as methodological individualisn~verslrs niethodological collectrvism, o r more fashionably these past few years a s liberal~srnversus communitarianism; see, for example, Tracy B. Strong, ed., The Selfand tile Political Order (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); and Q u e n t ~ nSkmner, ''On Justice, the Cornmon ( h o d and the Priority of Liherty," pp. 2 11-24 in: Chantal Mouffe, ed., Dintenstons of Radical Democvilcy: I'brrulisnr, Cztt~msl71p.(:omnzunity (London: Verw, 1992). F~nally,there is a point In critrcizing dichotomies like the C;emetnschaft/Gesellscl~~zft one, inasmuch as it obscures the important political arena of practices that are neither openly addressed nor a necessary expression of the "soul" of a conimunity but transferred In the form of "practical knowledge." See Kichard K. Ashley, " l m p o s ~ n gInternat~onalPurpose: Notes o n a Problematic of (;overnance." pp. 2 5 1-90, in: E:O. Czernpiel and J.N. Rosenau, eds., Global C h a n p s and T17roretici~lC:hilllen~rs(Lexington: 1.exington Kooks, 1989); and Ole W m e r , "International Society: the lrtrc> 3 0 . n o . 2 ( 1978): 167-1 14.
29. Karl W. Ikutsch et '11.. Polrtrccrl (~ornrn~inity and tlw North Atluntrc Areu (Princeton: Princeton I J n ~ v e r s ~ I'res.;. t? 19 i;)p,. 129. 30. See. for exaniple, Kenneth A. Oye, ed., Coopenrtron Under Amrch?~(Prmceron: i'rtnceron Umversity Press, 1986). The "democrat~cp e x e " argument docs not suggest that authoritarian s ~ a t e sare constantly in a state of w.ir m w n g themselves. Rather, I~hcraltheory posits that the causes of peace a m m g autocracies at-c difterent from the causes tor the "dernocrxic pe;lcrv and that cooperation ,itilong author~r,~r~,in regimes is likely to remain fragile. 3 1. Norms are "collective eupectntlons of proper behavtor tor a given idcnt~ty."In the tollowing, I mainly use the terrn In the sense of rcgzilatrve n o r m that prescribe or proscribe behavior for alread? constituted tdcntities. The ronstitrltive rri~rnrsof these tdentiries are the values ;ind rules of democratic decision ~n,iking111 the d o m e s t ~ crealm. For these dist~ncrions, see Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenste~n,"Norms, Ident~ty,and Culture in National Security." 12. See Friedr~ch KrritocIi\v~I,KIIIOS,Norms, irm/ ~ ) L ' C I S ~ oO n~ St :l ~ e~onditrorrs of l'rac-trc.lrl and I.r,qnI Reasonrn~rtr Intrnriltro~r~ilRelatrons irrril Domcstrc Affurrs (Cambrtdge: Camhridgt. IJnivcrsity Press, 1989), p. 6.3. 3 3. See Robert I'utnam, "Lhplorn.icy ci~nd1)ornestic I'olttics: ' l h c Logic of Two-Lxvcl G;lnles," Internntronnl C)rgLirnsrtron4 2 ( 1988): 427-60; Peter 13. Evans, ki,irold K. Jacobson, and Robert 5. Putnarii, ccis., l ~ o ~ ~ O l e - E i ~I)rpl~~rni7c~ yc~t/ (Berkeley: Iln~versiryo f (:,ilifornia Press, 1993). 34. I thank M.lrk Lafie), Stcve Weber, and a n anonymous reviewer for alertlng me to the following points. 35. This even \how\ up In qu,intitative studies. I n s t ~ n c e so t m~lirarizeddisputes ,lliiong democracies have declined owl- t i ~ n e .Moreover, most d ~ s p u t e dcases of alleged war m i o n g democracies occurred during the n~neteenth 'ind early twentieth centuries. For dat'i, see liu5sett, Gr'rsprnq the Dcrnoc-ri7trr l'cLrcc,ch. 4. 16. John Me,irsheirner's d~scusswnof social c0nstr~1ctivis111 - which he mislabels "crit~c,ll theory," therehy lumping together '1 variety of different approaches - suffers from the misunderstanding t h ~ ideational t tnctors in world politics 'ire somehow more subject t o change t h ~ n 1i1ate1-~al ones. Collective ~ d e n t i t ~ cannot es be changed l ~ k eclorhcs. See l o h n J. Mcarsheinicr, "The False Promise of 11iternatton.ll Inst~tutions,"Intern~rtroniil Secrlrity 19, no. 3 ( W ~ n r e r 1994/95): .5-49. 37. As Altreci (;rosser put ~ t .19-15 was "no year zero"; s w Grosser, Thr Western AI1rmi-e: htropcirn-Amerrc-an Relutrons Slrrce 103i (New York: Vmtage Kooks, 19821, pp. 3-.33. See also Rohcrt i.arharn, "I.~hcralis~n's 01-der/l.tbeml~srn'sOther: A Genealogy of Threat," AltcrrrLrtrt~r~s 20, n o . I ( 1995): I I 1 4 6 , o n t h ~ spoint. 38. See, for example, J o h n Baylis, "Britain and the Fornlariotl of NATO" (lnternL1tion~l Politics Research Paper no. 7, Department of Inrern,ltional I'oltt~cs, IJniversity Chllrge ot Wales, Aberystwyth. 1989); Best, "(:ooperirtiorr witb Like-Mrtrtic>tiPeoples ";Henry B. Ky'ln, The Visron of Anglo-Anterica (Cambridge: Crlmhr~dgeUn~versiryPress, 1987). 39. On the origins of the conralnrnent strategy, see, for example, John L. Gaddis, Strritegres of C:ontuinn~ent(Oxford: Oxford Un~versity Press, 1982); (;addis, The Long Peacc, pp. ~ A I'sychologic-Lll Explanatzon (Princeton: 20-47; Deborah I..irson, Orr~rnsI I Containment: Princeton University I'ress, 1985); David Mayers, Gc,orge Kewt~~in m d the Dilenzmas of 1J.S. Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxtord Unlversiry Press, 1988). 40. Overview In David D~niblehyand David Reynolds, An 01-ean Apart: The Relationship Bettvecw Rrztarn irrrd Americo I I I the 'fiucwtirth Century (New York: Vintage Rooks, 1 98Y), pp. 170-72.
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41. Quoted from Gaddis, The Long Peace, p. 30. 42. See Gormly, From Potsdam to the Cold War, pp. 94-111. 43. Quoted from Leffler, "National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy," p. 29. 44. For conflicting interpretations of U.S. strategic interests after World War 11, see Gaddis, The Long Peace; Melvyn P. Leffler, The Preponderance of Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); Leffler, "National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy," pp. 23-26; Thomas J. McCormick, America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). For an excellent overview on U.S. historiography on the origins of the Cold War, see Anders Stephanson, "The United States," in David Reynolds, ed., The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 23-52. 45. See Latham, "Liberalism's Order/Liberalism's Other," on this point. 46. Stephanson, "The United States," p. 50. 47. Quotes from Truman's speeches in March 1947, contained in Gaddis, The Long Peace, p. 36. 48. See Kennan's "long telegram," in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office), 6: 696-709; 'X,' "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (July 1947). 49. See, for example, Robert Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman (New York: Norton, 1982); Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 14-20; Gormley, From Potsdam to the Cold War. 50. On these alternatives, see Steve Weber, "Shaping the Postwar Balance of Power: Multilateralism in NATO," International Organization 46, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 633-80, 635-38. See ibid, for the following. 51. The first two notions are based on Ruggie's definition of multilateralism. See Ruggie, "Multilateralism." 52. See, for example, Cook, Forging the Alliance; Henderson, The Birth of NATO; Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance; Lawrence S. Kaplan, The Unrted States and NATO: The Formative Years (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1984); Eilnio Di Nolfo, ed., The Atlantic Pact: Forty Years Later (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991); Meier et al., Das Nordatlantische Biindnis, Norbert Wiggershaus and Roland G. Foerster, eds., Die westliche Sicherheitsgemeinschaft, 1948-1 950 (Boppard: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1988). 53. See Best, "Cooperation with Like-Minded Peoples. " 54. On the French position, see Bruna Bagnato, "France and the Origins of the Atlantic Pact," in Di Nolfo, The Atlantic Pact, pp. 79-1 10; Norbert Wiggershaus, "The Other 'German Question': The Foundation of the Atlantic Pact and the Problem of Security against Germany," in ibid., pp. 111-26; Pierre Guillen, "Frankreich und die Frage der Verteidigung Westeuropas," in Wiggershaus and Foerster, Die westliche Sicherheitsgemeinschaft, pp. 103-23. 55. For details on the treaty negotiations, see Cook, Forging the Alliance; Henderson, The Birth of NATO; Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance; Sherwood, Allies in Crisis, pp. 5-29. 56. For details, see Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies, ch. 3. For the following, see ibid., ch.5. 57. See, for example, Haftendorn, Kernwaffen und die Glaubwiirdrgkeit der Allianz; Thomas Risse-Kappen, The Zero Option: INF, West Germany, and Arms Control (Boulder: Westview, 1988). See also Chernoff, After Bipolarity. 58. Transgovernmental relations are defined as interactions among subunits of national governments in the absence of central decisions. See Robert 0. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations," World Polittcs 27 (1974):39-62. 59. I essentially agree with Richard Neustadt's earlier analysis of the crisis. See his Alliance Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). For a similar argument, see Sherwood, Allies in Crisis, pp. 58-94. The major studies on the Suez crisis are David Carlton, Britain and the Suez Crisis (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988); Steven Z. Freiberger, Dawn over Suez (Chicago: Iven R. Dee, 1992); Keith Kyle, Suez (New York: St. Martin's, 1991); Diane B. Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Wm. Roger Louis and Roger Owen, eds., Suez 19S6 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
I
,
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60. See Diane K. Kunz, "The Importance of Having Money: The Economic Diplomacy of the Suer Crisiu," in 1.ouis and Owen, Sstcz 1956, pp. 2 15-31. 2 18-19; Kunz, Thc EconomicIlrplortzrrcy of the Suez Crrsrs. 61. Selwyn l.lo>d, Suez 1956: A Personal Acco~tnt(London: lotlathan Cape, 19781, p. 38. 62. See "Menlorandurn ot Conversation at Kritish Foreign Offrce," Septernher 2 1, 19.56, in U.S. Department of State, b o r r i p Kelirtrons of the linitcd Stirtcs, l9.Y.5-19.(7 Ihere~fter FK U S 19.YT-19.571 (Washington, D.(:.: 11.5. Government Pr~ntingOffice, 1990), 16: 548-50. 6 3 . .'EJc.rl to S c l w y n I Ioyd," C)crr~dgcUn~vcrsityI'res,, 199.7). 10.3. See Re~nIi.lrd llritte, /irpirni Forrign I ' o l r ~ (l.ondon: Iioutledjie, 1990); Peter K,lrzenstein and Yutuka Tsul~n,ik.~,"'Uully~ng,' 'Buy~nji.' and 'Binding': U.S.-Jap,~new I'r,ui\tlation,il lielation\ and I)otnc\tic Structures," in K~sse-K.lppen,NYIIIKIII~ Trizi?~n~rtro~rir/ Kc~lizt~ons K'ri-k 112, pp. 79-1 11; Petei- Katzenstein d11d N O ~ L IO!ia\v.11-,1. O /i7/7i1nk Ni7tioni71 S~~~trrt!': Str~tc.trtrrs.Norms, mtl Poliq*lic~sponses111 a CI~mgin,yWorld (lthdc.~:Cornell lJnive~-\~t) I'rw. 1Y93). See ~ l s oThomas Iierjier'.; contrihut~onto thi, \.olurne. 104. See Walt, T/JC Orlgi7rs of Allriznc-(~s;h41ch~elI~:trnctt. i ' l ~ i s t i t ~ ~ t i oRoles, ~ l s , .1n~l Disorder. The ecemhcr 1992). 26. "l'rolifer~tion of destructive technology casts a shadow over future U.S. security In a way t h ~ cannot r he dlrcctly addreised through superior force o r rend~ness.Serious economic and environmental problems point t o a n inescapable ~nterdcpendenceof 11.5. interests with the interests of other n a t ~ o n \ . "Carter, I'err); a n d Sreinhruner, A N r w C:on~-c,ptof Coopcrutiue Secrtrrty, p. 4. 27. Madeleine K. Allmght, U.S. Permanent licprcsenr~~tivet o the U n ~ t e d N,it~ons, "Realism a n d Ide,~lism in American Foreign I'ollcy T o d ~ y . " U.S. Dr3partn1ent o/ State VoI. 5 , NO. 2 6 (June 27, 1994), pp. 434-417, otfers a n explicit and comprehcns~ve Drsp~~tch, statenlent of these views. 28. See Carter. I'erry, :,.inJSteinhruner, A N e u ~Concept of (:ooperatiue Security, pp. 24-.%I. 29. Koss, w h o IS s y ~ n p , ~ t h c t it co cooper:ltive security, emphasizes rhis point. 30. Carter, I'erry, a n d Sreunbruner, A New Conrrpt of Coopcratrue Srcurity, pp. 8 a n d 9. 31. Srrohe 'Ihlhott, "Why N A T O Should Grow," NEIL'York R ~ I W UofI B o o k s , VoI. 42, No. 1 3 (August1 0, 1 YYS), p. 28: "Enlargement of NAT'O would he a force for the rule of l:~wboth within Europe's new democracies a n d a m o n g them. ... An exp,ulded N A T O is likely t o extend the area in w h ~ c hconflicts l ~ k ethe o n e in the Balkans s ~ m p l yd o not happen." T h e admini\tration's case for expansion incorporates the loge o t cont,linmcnr as well a s that o f cooperative security. As T ~ l b o put t IT,"among the contingenc~esfor which N A T O must he prepared is that Russia will a b a n d o n tlemocracy and return t o the threatening patterns of international behavior that have solnetlnies characrer~zedits history" ip. 2 9 ) . See also Ronald Asmus, Richard Kugler, a n d Stephen 1 arrahee. " N A T O F.xp,insion: T h e Next Steps," Sztruiu~rl.Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring 1995), p. 9; and the \ysternatic crit~qlieottered by Michael E. Brown. "The Flawed I.ogic o t N A T O E x p n n s ~ o n , "Sr~rvi~wl, Vol. 37, No. I ( S p r ~ n g1995), pp. 38-39. 32. Coniin~ssiono n A m e r ~ c and , ~ the New World, C h ~ n g r Ortr q Ways: A~nericaand the Ncw World (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for Intermtional Peace, 1992), pp. 73-75. 33. Advocates seldom n u k e rhis point explicitly, hut a similar point is made by Carter, I'erry, a n d Sreinhruner in A Nrru Concept of Cooperiltiur Serrtrity, p. 5 1 : "many countries that feel threatened hy an intrusive reconnaissance strike c a p a h l i t y they cannot match c ~ r al s p r e t o chemical agents as a strategic c o u n t e r w e ~ g l ~ . " 34. "The Commissior believes that the use of military torce t o prevent nuclear proliferatlon must he retained a s a n option of last resort." C;omm~ssiono n America a n d the New World, Changlng Our Wrrys, p. 75. 35. See Gareth Evans, ".(:.: (:ongre\sioncd Budget Cltticc, M.irch 1996). 6.5. Asrnus, Kugler, and I.arrahee, " N A T O F.xpansion," p. 12. 66. Konald Asnlus, Rich.ird Kugler, a n d Stephen Larrabee, "Building a New NATO," hrc,rgiz Affurrs, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Septemher/Ocroher 1993). p. 3 4 : "While Germany remains preoccupied with the staggering challenge ot the politicnl a n d economic reconstruction o f its Eastern half, the need t o s r a h ~ l ~ Its r e eastern flank is Bonn's number o n e securlty concern." See also Brzez~nski,"A Plan for t'urope," p. 42: "Most important, a united a n d powerful Gcrnrany can he more firml) m c h o r e d within this larger Europe if the t.uropean security sy\tern fully c o ~ n c i d ew ~ t hAmerica's."
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67. Khalilzad, an ardent proponent o f primacy, has written that China "is the most likely candidate for global rival." Zalmay Khalilzad, From Containment to Global Leadership? America and the World After the Cold War (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1995),p. 30. 68. Karen Elliott House, "The Second Cold War," Wall Street Journal, February 17, 1994. She alludes to "the looming threat o f a militarizing, autocratic China" and observes that "a resurgent China flexes its muscles at increasingly fearful neighbors." 69. Thomas L. Friedman, "Dust O f fthe SEAT0 Charter," New York Times, June 28, 1995, p. A19. 70. "Containing China," Economist, July 29, 1995, pp. 11 and 12. 71. See, for instance, Muravchik, The Imperative of American Leadership, pp. 71-82. 72. Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 1 (1991), pp. 31-32. In previous versions o f this essay we classified Krauthammer as a "cooperative security" advocate, but his em~hasison the dominant role o f the U.S. warrants his inclusion here. 73. At least one advocate o f primacy, however, sees the United States as having been, from the start, insufficientlyactive in Bosnia. See Muravchik, The lmperative of American Leadership, pp. 85-131. 74. Callahan, Between Two Worlds, p. 135. 75. Kristol and Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," p. 26. Similarly, Muravchik, The lmperative of American Leadership, p. 138, calls for defense spending that would be "somewhere around 4 percent o f GDP." Khalilzad, "Losing the Moment," p. 102, offersa less ambiguous, and less demanding, multipower standard than do Kristol and Kagan. He proposes that U.S. forces be able to defeat simultaneously "the two next most powerful military forces in the world that are not allied with the United States." 76. O n these issues see Khalilzad, "Losing the Moment?" pp. 104-105; and Muravchik, The Imperative of American Leadership, pp. 152-170. 77. Huntington, "Why International Primacy Matters," p. 70. Huntington more specifically argues that "power enables an actor to shape his environment so as to reflect his interests. In particular it enables a state to protect its security and prevent, deflect, or defeat threats to that security. It also enables a state to promote its values among other peoples and to shape the international environment so as to reflect its values"; pp. 69-70. 78. Muravchik, The Imperative of American Leadership, p. 32: "America is even more powerful today than it was in the immediate aftermath o f World War 11, although that moment is cited by many heralds o f American decline as the apogee o f American power." 79. See Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz, "American Hegemony - Without an Enemy," Foreign Policy, No. 92 (Fall 1993), pp. 5-23; and Benjamin Schwarz, "Why America Thinks It Has to Run the World," Atlantic Monthly, June 1996, pp. 92-102. Layne and Schwarz draw heavily on Melvyn P. Leffler,A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford,Calif.:Stanford University Press, 1992). More extended critiques o f primacy are provided by Callahan, Between Two Worlds; Robert Jervis, "International Primacy: Is the Game Worth the Candle?" International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993),pp. 52-67; Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion"; and Nordlinger, Isolationism Reconfigured, pp. 134-141. 80. Prominent members o f the administration who were associated with the theoretical development o f cooperative security ideas include Ashton Carter, Morton Halperin, Catherine Kelleher, and William Perry; see works cited in footnote 25. John Deutsch participated in the development o f a similar approach to U.S. foreign policy; Commission on America and the New World, Changing Our Ways. 81. A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement. Since the administration's presentation o f its strategy has been more consistent than its actions, we focus here solely on the third version o f this Clinton White House document (February 1996). 82. U.S. leadership appears to be necessary in every class o f international problem; the word "leadership" appears four times on p. 2 alone. See A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, p. 2. Military requirements are discussed on p. 14, where the language o f primacy also emerges: " A strategy for deterring and defeating aggression in more than one theater ensures we maintain the flexibility to meet unknown future threats, while our
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continued engagement represented hy that strategy helps prc~lzrdc~ such threats troni cleveloping in the first place" ( e ~ n p h , ~ s,idded). is 83. Ibid., pp. 3, 9-12, 21. 84. Ihid.. p. L7. 85. Ibid., p. I X. 86. Dick Kitschten, "Mixed Signals," Nntionul /ourmil, M J 27, ~ 199.5, pp. 1274-1177; see also Roherr Greenherger, "T1.1teline C;ipitol Hill: The New Majority'\ Foreign I'olicy," Fwcign Poliqi No. 101 (Winter 199F-961, pp. lS9-lh9. 87. Jeffrey Gartcn, "Is A m e r i u Abandoning M ~ l r i l ~ l t e r 'l'r,lde?" al Forergn Affi~irs.Vol. 74, No. 6 (NovemhrrIDecemher 1995), pp. 50-62. For the mosr pirr, economic tenriont did not directly affect the security relation\hip. b ~ former ~ t Amhassador t o J'lpan Michael H. Artnai-o\r suggests that "trade frictions generated mistrust and resentment that threatened to c o n t ~ n i i narc our security relritk)ns." r\rniaco\r, Frrends or K ~ c d s ?T / J ~Irrsrrier's > Arronnt of U . S . - / L ~ ~ L I ~ Relutions (New York: Columbia Un~versityPress, 1 996), p. 194. 88. Casimir Yo51 and Mary lmcke, "The Raid o n Aid," L'Iiirsh~n,ytorzPost, luly 78, 1996, p. (:I. 89. See Congression,il Budget Office, Redltcrng thca L)czfriit: Spending and Ke~wzrre O p r ~ o l ~(Washington, s D.C.: C B 0 , August 1996), Figure 3-1, p. 98; U.S. Arms Control , ~ n d Disarmament Agency, World M i l i t i q Expencfrtttrc~sm d Artns Trmzsfers, 199.7 ( W a \ h i n p r i , D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1996), F~gui-e4, p. 4. 90. See Bob Dole, "Shaping America's (;lobal Future," t o r e i p Polrcy, No. 98 (Sprmg 1995), pp. 29-4.3. One q ~ ~ o t ~reveals t ~ o ~much: i "From Bosnia t o China, from North Kore'i to Poland, our ,illies and our ,ldversaries doubt our roolbe ,und question our co~ntn~rment"; p. 3 1. See also "Remarks by Senate M ~ j o r i t y1.eader Dole, March 1 , 1995," F o r r i ~ nPolrcy Rrrlletrn. Vol. 5, No. 6 ( M ~ y i J u n e199.5), pp. 33-35; and B ~ k c r ,"Selective Engagement."
Imagined (Security) Communities: Cognitive Regions in International Relations Emanuel Adler
Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone. 'But which is the stone that supports the bridge?' Kublai Khan asks. 'The bridge is not supported by one stone or another', Marco answers, 'but by the line of the arch that they form'. Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: 'Why do you speak to me of stones? It is only the arch that matters to me'. Polo answers: 'Without stones there is no arch'.]
A
renewed interest in the study of security communities calls for a careful examination of the relationship between changes in what John Ruggie labels 'social epistemes' -what people collectively know about themselves and others, or intersubjective images of reality - and the places and regions that people feel comfortable calling ' h ~ m e ' During .~ the last few centuries, 'home' - as far as political organisation, authority, and allegiance are concerned - has come to mean the nation-state. Benedict Anderson portrays national 'homes' as 'imagined communities', because 'the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of the c~mmunion'.~ As has been confirmed since the end of the Cold War, national 'imagined communities' are not about to disappear as the basic reality of international life any time soon. Nevertheless, secular changes in technology, economic relations, social epistemes, and institutions are causing globalising and localising pressures that are squeezing the nation-state from both above and below.4 As a consequence, people have begun to imagine new communities, or 'homes'. When it comes to their security and well-being, in some parts of Source: Millennium: Journal
appeared in Millennium.
of International Studies, 26(2) (1997):249-77. This article first
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the world, growing numbers of people have begun imagining that they share their destiny with people of other nations who share their values and expectations of proper behaviour in domestic and international political affairs. Forty years ago, Karl Deutsch developed the concept of 'pluralistic security communities'. In this article, I extend this concept by arguing that such communities are socially constructed 'cognitive regions' or 'community-regions' w h o s e people imagine that, with respect t o their o w n security a n d econornic
well-being, borders run, more or less, where shared understandings and common identities end. People who are territorially and politically organised into states, owe their allegiance t o states, and act on their behalf, will also take their identity cues from the community region as these communities become more tightly integrated. Further, liberal community-regions, in particular, are more prone to turn into security communities b e c a ~ ~ s e of shared practical knowledge of peaceful couflict resolution and a propensity to develop strong civil societies and a transnational civic culture. Nevertheless, non-liberal community-regions may also become security communities since, as this article will argue, ( 1) the conditions for a community to develop are socially constructed - by the individuals and, more generally, the states that eventually form the community, as well as hy international organisations and, ( 2 ) since, international institutions can diffuse 'selected' liberal practices t o non-liberal regions. Finally, I argue that what binds pluralistic security communities into a unit is not principally 'feeling' (subjective emotion), but intersubjective knowledge and shared identity. Accordingly, since international and transnational institutions can help diffuse and internalise norms and knowledge about how to peacefully resolve conflicts - the norms and knowledge which form the basis of security communities - they can play a critical role in the social construction of these communities. Section 1 introduces the notio~lsof 'cognitive region' and 'communityregion'. Section 2 discusses and redefines Deutsch's concept of a security community as a special instance of a 'cognitive region'. Section 3 suggests a constructivist explanation for the relationship hetween pluralistic security communities and liberal ideas. The 4th Section discusses the relationship between knowledge, power, and community, t o elucidate how material and socio-cognitive factors combine t o set in motion the construction of security communities. Section S examines the role shared identities play in the evolution of pluralistic security communities, and it purports that sovereign states, in the process of becoming representatives of a security community, may ultimately redefine their interests and the meaning of sovereignty. Subsequently, I argue that the social construction of plz4ralistic security communities may depend on pre-existing security community-building institutions. By way of illustration, I show that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),' although a creature of the Cold War, exhibits the attributes of an institution conducive to building. a .pluralistic security community. I end this article with some thoughts about the relevance of security communities for international relations theory.
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Cognitive Regions 'Dirt, as Mary Douglas ... has noted, is matter out of p l a ~ e ' For . ~ traditional realist and neorealist accounts of international relations, everything that is outside the realm of territorially-based states and their 'co-actions' or relations is, in the sociological sense, 'dirt'. Hence, the conventional view in the International Relations (IR) discipline is that 'a state is a fixed territorial entity ... operating much the same over time and irrespective of its place within the global geopolitical order'.' This view lies at the root of the classic understanding of international relations. To begin with, the modern territorial sovereign state has rested on the principle of spatial exclusion, which entailed that '[ildentification of citizenship with residence in a particular territorial space became the central facet of political identity' - or, in Alexander Wendt's terms, of the corporate identity of the state.8 This principle meant that states became the primary vehicles for individual citizens to form societies and achieve human progress - that is, security, economic welfare, and justice. Politics, 'in the sense of the pursuit of justice and virtue, could exist only within territorial bo~ndaries'.~ By taking the state as an abstract individual unitary actor, endowed only with a corporate identity, and by artificially separating the domestic and international realms, realism lost sight of the social identities of states.1° I argue instead, from a constructivist perspective, that state social identities and interests are not fixed but evolve from the diffusion and convergence of causal and normative understandings across national boundaries, high levels of communication, economic interdependence, and cooperative practices. Furthermore, not only do identities and interests evolve, they also have the potential to converge." Moreover, as several authors point out, and as John Ruggie articulates, territoriality 'has become unbundled'.12 For example, international regimes and common markets occupy a 'nonterritorial functional space'.13 Epistemic communities, social movements, and issue-networks not only inhabit this space, but are actively involved in determining its boundaries. More importantly, state authority in the realms of security, economic welfare, and human justice (human rights) is increasingly being distributed across these international functional cognitive spaces.14 Ruggie is right to say that international society is anchored in this nonterritorial space,15 and societal relations regarding global issues, such as the environment, do take place in what Ronnie Lipschutz perceives as a primitive 'global civil society'.16 However, what some people are tenuously starting to perceive as 'home' and 'insideness'," is not the whole 'Planet Earth', but a transnational region where they imagine sharing a common destiny and identity.18 People who share ethnic or national identities and organise themselves into states imagine boundaries that separate 'us' from 'them'; as citizens occupying the space within state boundaries, they give expression to community life. When, however, for reasons referred to above, their self-identification
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and loyalties begin to change, their identities will be directed to (and boundaries will be imagined to run between) ( a ) territorial regions or locales within states, ( b ) newly formed territorially-based (super) states, or (c) transnational nonterritorial regions constituted by peoples' shared values, norms, and practices. It is this last kind of imagined human con~munitythat has trail-blazing potential for international and transnational relations. It suggests an evolution towards socially constructed and spatially differentiated transnational community-regions which national, transnational, and international elites and institutions, sometimes under the leadership of outstanding individuals, help to constitute. Community-regions are regional systems of meanings (an interdependent group of meanings among individuals or collectivities), and are not limited to 3 specific geographic place." They are made up of people whose common identities and interests are constituted by shared understandings and normative principles other than territorial sovereignty and (a) who actively con~n~unicate and interact across state borders, ( b ) who are actively involved in the political life of an (international and transnational) region and engaged in the pursuit of regional purposes, and (c) who, as citizens of states, impel the constituent states of the community-region to act as agents of regional good, on the basis of regional systems of governance."' Within comn~unity-regions,people give their cultural allegiance to nations (here broadly referring to cultural community) and their political allegiance to states as political entities. At the same time, people institutionalise commonalities running through the whole region, including shared perceptions of external threats, and promote reciprocally non-threatening practices. Postwar Western Europe is the most advanced con~munity-regionso far. People of the 1.5 Western European states have started to organise themselves into, and to join in the practice of, a supranational system of rule, which Ruggie calls a 'multiperspectival polity'." However, only in a formal political union would people give political allegiance to a centralised regional government. For example, this would be the case if people in the countries of the European Union would give political allegiance primarily to Brussels. While community-regions possess a territorial dimension, they are not merely a physical place. Instead, we may view them as cognitive regio~zsor cognitive structures that help constitute the interests and practices of their members, whose meanings, understandings, and identities help keep the region 'in place'.'2 The social construction of a cognitive region out of intersubjective understandings, values, and norms enables people to achieve a community life that transcends the nation-state and indeed any territorial base. According to this interpretation, the United States and the European Union inhabit the same cognitive space." Australia and Canada are also part of this space. Tel Aviv is 'closer' to London and New York than it is to Riyadh or Amman, and closer to Warsaw than it is to Jericho (now under the Palestinian Authority). In special circumstances, and within the cognitive boundaries of the community-region, the people of these communities may acquire mutual
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responsiveness, that is, they may gain the ability to more or less predict one .~~ another's behaviour and come to know each other as t r ~ s t w o r t h yWithin some community-regions, then, people, while organised into states may nevertheless be able to exploit this mutual trust to develop pluralistic systems of intra-regional governance that minimise or even eliminate the threat of war in that community-region. We may refer to such fortunate communityregions as 'security communities'.
Security Communities
In a pioneering 1957 study, Deutsch and his associates introduced the concept of security community, that is, a group of people who have become integrated to the point where there is a 'real assurance that the members of that community will not fight each other physically, but will settle their disputes in some other ~ a ~ ' . ~ ~ A c c o r to d i Deutsch, ng security communities may be either 'amalgamated' or 'pluralistic'. In an amalgamated community, two or more (sovereign) states formally merge into an expanded state. On the other hand, a pluralistic security community retains the legal independence of separate states but integrates them to the point that the units entertain 'dependable expectations of peaceful change'.26 A pluralistic security community develops when its members possess a compatibility of core values derived from common institutions and mutual responsiveness - a matter of mutual identity and loyalty, a sense of 'we-ness', or a 'we-feeling' among states.27 More recently, Michael Barnett and I have redefined the concept of pluralistic security communities as those 'transnational regions comprised of sovereign states whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change'.28Furthermore, we used the following criteria for distinguishing between loosely and tightly coupled pluralistic security communities: the depth of trust between states, the nature and degree of institutionalisation of the governance system of the region, as well as whether states reside in formal anarchy or are on the verge of transforming it. A 'loosely coupled' pluralistic security community maintains the minimal definitional properties just mentioned. 'Tightly coupled' pluralistic security communities, on the other hand, possess a system of rule that lies somewhere between a sovereign state and a centralised regional government. This system is something of a post-sovereign system, comprised of common supranational, transnational, and national institutions, and some form of a collective security system.29 Deutsch, Barnett, and I agree that the existence of security communities does not mean that interest-based behaviour by states will end, that material factors will cease to shape interstate practices, and that security dilemmas will end. Nor do we argue that security communities transcend the mutual dependence between regional orderly security arrangements and stable economic transactions.
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To date, according t o these criteria, there are only a few pluralistic security communities. These include the European Union, which is tightly coupled, and the Atlantic community, which is partly tightly coupled. Scandinavia as well as the United States and Canada also form security communities. In the future, perhaps, the states that comprise the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the incipient regional communities in South America and in Southeast Asia (revolving around the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN))may hecome such communities. Given that we are discussing collective cognitive phenomena, there may be controversy about boundaries and membership. These controversies arise because states may be members of more than one community-region as a result either of their 'liminal' status (e.g., Turkey) or of concentric circles of identity."' For example, citizens in the states of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) 'inhabit' a shared cognitive space with citizens of the European Union, who, in turn, share some core constitutive norms with citizens of Canada and the United States. All of these states together constitute the North Atlantic security community. Since the end of the Cold War, the states of Eastern Europe, including Kussia, have been knocking a t the doors of the institutions that symbolically and materially represent this North Atlantic community - the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Council of Europe, and even the Western European Union (WEU). These countries are seeking an avenue through which they can exert an influence o n politics in the 'West', as well as reap the benefits of Western markets by becoming full members of a political community 'where the very fact of such membership empowers those included in it t o contribute to the shaping of a shared collective destin),'." From the perspective of the states already organised in this North Atlantic security community, however, new members can be admitted only after the 'applicants' have learned and internalised their norms. For the original members, 'it's not enough t o behave like us, you have t o be one of US'. The status of '~artnership',invented by the European Union, the Council of Europe, and NATO, intends t o provide a probationary status t o states that wish t o join the North Atlantic security community. Besides testing the intentions and institutions of applicant states, this probationary s t a t ~ is ~ sintended t o enable members of the security community to distinguish whether applicants are making instrumental choices or are adopting the shared identity." In addition, their partnership in common economic and security enterprises is meant t o play a major role in changing the identities of the applicants to make them 'more like us'. The OSCE has taken a different approach. Rather than waiting for 'the other' t o change its identity and interests before it can be admitted t o the security community-building institution, the OSCE has incorporated, from the outset, all states that express a political will t o live up to the standards and norms of the security community, hoping to transform their identities and interests. Thus, the OSCE is building security by means of inclusion rather than exclusion or conditional future inclusion. According t o Paul
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Schroeder, since the end of World War 11, international order increasingly depends on 'associations' based on a normative consensus that 'certain kinds of international conduct ... had to be ruled out as incompatible with [states] general security and welfare', and on the power of these associations to offer and deny ' m e m b e r ~ h i p ' . ~ ~
Liberal Pluralistic Security Communities In principle, we could conceive of community-regions that might be constituted around (to give an extreme example) fascist or Nazi ideologies. However, such communities are likely never to become security communities. In communities where ideologies consecrate state goals and condone every possible means that can lead to the achievement of these goals, individuals and states know that one day their fellow community members might stab them in the back, just as they themselves, given the chance, would do. Thus, the mere fact that people in different territorial spaces share knowledge does not lead them to feel safe from organised violence. In other words, while people within totalitarian communities may achieve shared understandings, they are most unlikely to develop mutual The quality of the relationship between people is crucial. Accordingly, security communities are socially constructed and rest on shared practical knowledge of the peaceful resolution of conflict^.^^ Moreover, security communities are socially constructed because shared meanings, constituted by interaction, engender collective identities? They are dependent on communication, discourse, and interpretation, as well as on material environments. Practical shared knowledge of the peaceful resolution of conflicts goes a long way in explaining why the majority of existing security communities developed out of liberal community-regions. This knowledge, however, characterises only parts of the world, is associated to collective historical experiences, and is related to British hegemony in the nineteenth century and American hegemony in the twentieth century, which helped diffuse and institutionalise liberal values.37 Practical liberal knowledge of the peaceful resolution of disputes is not just institutionalised in the memories of elites, but it is also being continually reconstituted through the dense networks of relationships among civil societies and their members. This knowledge becomes an identity marker that helps to create the boundaries between 'us' and 'them'. In other words, liberal community-regions become security communities because of intersubjective understandings among people, their shared sense of identity, and their common notion that they inhabit a non-territorial region, or space, where, being at home, they can feel safe.38Accordingly, in theory, it is possible to identify a liberal community-region without it being a security community, but it is very likely to become a security community. However, since security communities are socially constructed, non-liberal community regions may develop into security communities. First, liberal
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international institutions may socialise non-liberal states into adopting and institutionalising 'selected' liheral practices. Second, non-liberal ideologies for example, a shared ideology of development perhaps similar to that pursued by Southeast Asian states - may promote a joint project characterised by increasing interdependence and the development of common institutions. Such a project might conceivably promote collective purposes around which emerge a shared identity and, thereafter, dcpcndablc expectations of peaceful change.'" However, liberal and non-liberal community-regions cannot become security communities ~mlesstheir shared knowledge of the peaceful settlement of disputes is institutionalised in some kind of rule of law o r regulation structure that generates trust - 'the expectation that another's hehaviour will he predictably friendly'.4" In liberal dctnocracics, for cxample, this practical intersubjective knowledge is part of a 'civic culture','" whose concepts of role of government, legitimacy, duties of citizenship, and the rule of law constitute the identities of individual^.^' The behaviour of member-states in a pluralistic security coninlunity reproduces this civic culture, which, in turn, constructs a comrnunityregion civic culture. This culture further helps t o constitute the identities and interests of the individuals, elites, and organisations whose interactions form the community. Unstable democracies and non-democracies are characterised by an absence of these shared understandings." In a liberal community-region, people learn the practices m d heliaviour that differentiate aggressive states from peaceful states. In other words, each side develops a common knowledge of 'the other's dovish~less'." r11 this sense, the democratic nature of a state becomes an indicator of its 'dovisl~ness'.~'It follows that the process of socialisation and social integration that enters into the building of a security community provides policy-makers, in Harvey Starr's words: w ~ t hoverwhelm~ilg~ n f o r m a t ~ ownh ~ c hallow\ them to have full confidence In how they separate states. Those state5 w ~ t hwhom they form a securlty communltp 1 ~ 1 twhom h they begm t o share a common ~ d e n t ~1t p are doves, averse to the use of force. All the members of the securlty conimunlty have learned t h ~ P Furthermore, liheral denlocracies and their civic cultures encourage the crcation of strong civil societies - and of transnational networks and processes that promote community bonds and a coninion identity through the relatively free interpenetration of societies, particularly with regard to the movement and exchange o f people, goods, and ideas.-'- For example, strong civil societies greatly facilitate the spread and strengthening of practices that promote human rights and environmental protection." These, in turn, help produce and reinforce community bonds and common identity.-'%oreover, social networks constituted around liberal norms facilitate the transfer of democratic norms and practices t o societies that lack them."' I believe that a socially constructed civic culture may help to explain, more than anything else, the findings of studies that deal with the last two centuries of warfare,
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which have more or less conclusively shown that democracies do not fight each other and create among themselves a 'separate peace'.jl Flows of private transactions in conjunction with transnational institutions (such as epistemic communities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs))and community law (such as European Union law) can play important roles in transmitting and diffusing shared normative and causal beliefs of a civic culture (beliefs or knowledge about, e.g., that CFCs cause depletion of the ozone layer and, therefore, that the use of them should be regulated). International institutions - which provide a forum in which state and non-state representatives debate and bargain about their understandings and interests, and in which ideas flow back and forth between the domestic and international arenas - can play similar, if not, indeed, more important roles than civic cultures.j2
Knowledge, Power, and Community
Power plays a crucial role in the development and institutionalisation of security communities, a fact that Deutsch did not overlook. According to Deutsch, 'larger, stronger, more politically, administratively, economically, and educationally advanced political units [are] the "cores of strength" around which in most cases the integrative process de~eloped'.~"or decades, realist scholars have defined power exclusively in terms of material capabilities.j4 Steve Lukes' analysis which divided power into three dimensions - sheer power, power to set agendas, and ideological, Gramscian-type power - went a long way to problematise power and make the concept more amenable to a constructivist project.j5 However, we have neglected the power of norms and rules to frame and redefine reality and thereby determine the range and value of political choices.j6 While I do not entirely disregard the presence of Lukes' three dimensions of power in the social construction of cognitive regions, power can also be understood as the authority to determine the shared meanings that embody the identities, interests, and practices of states, as well as the conditions that confer, defer, or deny access to 'goods' and benefits. Since social reality is a result of imposing meanings and functions on physical objects that do not already have those meanings and functi~ns,~'the ability to create the underlying rules of the game, to define what constitutes acceptable play, and to get other players to commit themselves to those rules, because these rules are now part of the self-understandings of the players, is, perhaps, the most subtle and most effective form of power.FXThis means that there is a very strong relationship between knowledge and power. Knowledge is rarely valueneutral, but frequently enters into the creation and reproduction of a particular social order that benefits some at the expense of others. In this reading, power is primarily the institutional power to include and exclude, to legitimise and authorise." Also, in this sense, international organisations are related to power, because they can be sites of identity and interest formation,
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and because states and sometimes individuals and other social actors can draw on their material and synlbolic resource^.^" It is important to keep in mind, however, that if (as I argue) social reality is a result of imposing meanings and functions on physical reality, then material and technological (economic and strategic) resources are also needed to get some actors to accept or internalise the sets of meanings and rules of other actors. N o t o n l y d o matcrial resources facilitate the reproduction of institutional activities,"' they may also provide incentives for outside members to choose an identity. As I h v i d Laitin holds, the choice o f an identity 'is often guided by instrumental reasoning, based on the potential resources available for identifying yourself'.i" Furthermore, recent technological developments actually contribute to the construction of security communities, making possible interactions between agents 'who are not physically co-present' and turning national communities into transnational 'imagined security communities'." Technology (e.g., the Internet) and economic interdependence (e.g., trade, finance, and aid) may also contribute to the thickening of social relations between domestic civil societies. For instance, they facilitate the work of environmental and humanrights movements and NGOs that diffuse understandings from country to country, and help in the creation of a regional civil society. Material structures, such as economic well-being and technological advances, also empower communities since they elicit the formulation of images of political, economic, and social domestic organisation that come to be associated with the material progress of the comn~unity.These images, of, for example, democracy and a market economy, are coupled with normative understandings that define legitimate regional behaviour and create the basis for the development of the shared civic culture o n which a pluralistic security community is based. Economically and technologically weak states, thus, associate positive images of material progress with 'successful' or states or regions, such as the European U n i ~ n . " ~ [Plower can he a magnet; In a communlty tormed around a group of strong powers, weaker members wdl expect to share the securlty and (potent~ally)other benet~tc~ s o c ~ a t ewd~ t hthe stronger ones. Thus, those states that helong to the core of strength do not create securlty, per se; rather, because of therr posltlve Image, securlty comrnunltles develop around them. T h ~ s1s clearly the c x e of Europe, where the former Commurust m t e s , rdther than b e ~ n g~ n v ~ t eto d form part of the securlty communlty, ~ssuedt h e ~ rown m v ~ t a t ~ c m s . ~ ' Thus, provided that domestic political resistance against the idea of community is overcome, successful or strong states may empower this idea with the material and normative resources that are necessary to realise shared purposes and interests. In this way, power provides practical meaning to regional governance systems, that is, to the shared values, expectations, and practices of member states.""
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Although the above interpretation of power may be amenable to a Gramscian explanation, there is, nevertheless, a subtle but still significant difference between the concept of Gramscian hegemony and that of security communities." First, although cultural hegemony may be exerted without the existence of a shared identity, the latter is a necessary condition for a pluralistic security community. When Eastern European states attempt to become part of the institutions and organisations of Western Europe, not only are they not being coerced or lured by Western states, but they also express their identity-affinities with them. Second, whereas Gramscian hegemony is based on a thin concept of society, class domination, and on the language of cultural dominance, and does not require direct interaction for its existence, pluralistic security communities are endowed with a thick concept of society, shared identifications, many-sided and direct or indirect interactions, and the language of community ('we' and 'they'). In the case of Gramscian hegemony, the disregard of norms may result in material or political sanctions. In the case of pluralistic security communities, however, states that disregard norms may undermine their self identity and sense of belonging to the community.68
The Social Construction of Pluralistic Security Communities Common ldentity a n d t h e Construction of Cognitive Structures
Communities exist on the basis of commitments, duties, and obligations, and, more generally, on expectations held collectively by the group.6y To grasp the process by which mutual responsiveness develops in pluralistic security communities, we must understand community not as a matter of feelings, emotions, and affection, but as a cognitive process through which common identities are created.'O In other words, the sense of 'we-ness', of belongingness, which indicates that we are dealing with a community, does not arise from 'social cohesion' or mutual a t t r a ~ t i o n . ~On ' the contrary, the 'first question determining group-belongingness is not "Do I like these other individuals?", but "Who am I?" What matters is how we perceive and define ourselves and not how we feel about others'.72 In this sense, a social category, such as being a democrat, defines persons 'by systematically including them with some, and excluding them from other related categories. They state at the same time what a person is and is not'.73 Following this line of thought, when a state assumes a particular social identity - for example, democratic, law-abiding, respectful of human-rights people in this state will be able not only to answer, in part, the question 'who am I?' but also to guess or know the identities of individuals from other similar states. This knowledge does not merely constrain the state. In a positive sense, it empowers it to act in the world and contributes to the
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development of mutual respons~veness.In t h ~ scase, mutual responsibenes develops more trom h o w ~ n g'who I am' and 'who the other IS' t h a i from some mutu,ll 'feelmg' that people In 'Western-style' democracies m,Iv have towards one other. There IS m u ~ hev~denceIn the soc~alpsycholog\ literature that coopermve behavmur between ~ n d ~ v ~ d uisa lmed~ated s by the perception of membersh~p m ,I c o m m o n ~ a t e ~ o r )A. -d ~ c l ~ t ~ o n a lwl ~l t, h ~ nLomlnunlties we help others, apparently seltlessly, bec'1use we percelve t h e ~ rneeds , ~ n d goal5 as those of our soc~alcategory and hence '15 our very own. Soc~al categorizations w h ~ c hextend self-def~n~t~oii he\ond the ~ n d ~ v ~ d perual son prov~dea s ~ m p l em d elegant mechan~smfor hypassmg the supposed 'egot~sm'of human beings.-'
To sum up this discussion about common identity, when people define their state as belonging to a group of states - 'the den~ocracies',for example - they internalise certain norms that go with that self-definition. Certain behaviours such as concern for human rights - become appropriate, while others - such as torture - become inappropriate or illegitimate. Henceforth, the state follows democratic norms not just because its people believe in democracy, but because the category 'democratic state' now defines, in part, their identity. The key point to remember, when we seek to explain peaceful change, is that the identity factor allows peoples from different states to know each other better. This reduces the uncertainty spawned by the anarchic nature of the international system and increases mutual responsiveness. The corollary to this argument is that when it comes to democratic norms, states not only can know each other better, but they can know each other as states that tend to soll~ctheir inter~laliznd external problems hy pcizrefid n~eans. Is there something in the national identities of peoples that hinders the evolution fro111states to security communities? Social psychology and studies of nationalism do not deny this possibility. Indeed, the notion of concentric circles of allegiance stands on firm empirical '[Hlowever dominant the nation and its national identification, human beings retain a multiplicity of allegiances in the contemporary world.. .. Under normal circumstances, most human beings can live happily with multiple identifications and enjoy moving between them as the situation requires'.-The notion of concentric circles of identity fits well with the argument that while 'nations are not "transient phenomena" ',-%other and broader regional communities o f common identity may develop. For example, events in Western Europe show that, n o t w i t h s t a n d i ~ lthe ~ fact that new and more encompassing identities are developing (such as a European identity), national identities remain strong. Barry Buzan underscores this point when, borrowing from Ferdinand Tiinnies, he describes two processes for the development of international societies - Gcmeinschaft, in which international society develops from a common
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culture, and Gesellschaft, which takes international society as created by a contractual act of ~ o l i t i o n . ' Buzan ~ rightly points out that while Gemeinschaft is too 'civilisational' to act in the short run, Gesellschaft omits the notion of common identity. 'The development of common norms, rules, and institutions', Buzan notes, 'must eventually generate, as well as be generated by, a common identity'.80 He adds, however, that people are quite capable of holding several identities in parallel. 'One can, for example, be English, British, European, and Western all at the same time'.81 Pluralistic Security Communities a n d t h e 'Agent S t a t e '
When pluralistic security communities, such as the European Union, become tightly coupled, can sovereignty still remain the constituting and legitimating principle that 'differentiates units in terms of juridically mutually exclusive and morally self-entailed domains?'82 Do states still have the same authority over their own territory? Outside the European Union, the intersubjective understanding on which sovereignty is based gives countries almost unlimited authority to treat their own citizens as they deem necessary and to act in the international system as independent units, waging war or making peace when required.83 Within the European Union, too, political authority remains essentially in the hands of the state. States are still free to act in the world - but as agents rather than solely as sovereign states. In other words, states also act as the local agents of a regional Thus, within tightly coupled security communities, authority and legitimacy - the conditions under which states view each other as part of the community and give each other certain rights, obligations, and duties - are contingent on their ability to abide by the cognitive normative structure of the cognitive region. My reasoning here is structurationist: cognitive structures like games whose constitutive rules give meaning to the moves - constitute identities, interests, and behaviour, but are, in turn, also constituted by them. Thus, agents (states, or more accurately individuals acting on behalf of states) and structures (pluralistic security communities) socially co-construct one another.85 This means that states can express their agency insofar as they meet and reproduce the epistemic and normative expectations of the community. States remain 'free agents', acting on the basis of their own preferences, as long as these preferences are cognitively framed by the shared understandings of the community. In the European Union, the thirteen judges of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) 'quietly working in Luxembourg, managed to transform the Treaty of Rome ... into a constitution. They thereby laid the legal foundation for an integrated European economy and polity'.86 In less developed or even incipient pluralistic security communities, however, liberal democratic norms need not necessarily be converted into a formal legal framework of obligations. Instead, they may bind its members politically, when, in the wake of the concerted or coordinated political decisions of the agent-states,
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these norms become a matter of practice and public policy in each memberstate and thus, de facto, a system of regional g o v e r n a n ~ e . ~ ' This conceptual framework makes it easier to understand why people acting on behalf of their states can nevertheless decide to identify their security with that of other states. According to the classical intersubjective understanding of sovereignty, states defend their 'local' points of view, ~n security cornrnunitics, howinterpretations, and ~ l o r m s . ~ Vpluralistic ever, states come to defend a regional point of view - where 'regional' is defined in cognitive terms." People may still be able to imagine themselves as belonging to cultural-national communities, organised as states endowed with agency. However, people, as memhers of security communities, also imagine that, with regard t o their security and economic wellbeing, borders run more or less where shared understandings and common identities end. Within tightly coupled security communities, then, states perceive insecurity not only when their authority is challenged or their existence is endangered, but also when the basic understandings that constitute the community are threatened."' (In turn, this may threaten the shared knowledge of the peaceful resolution of conflict.) Again, the European Union clearly exemplifies this notion. The 'constitutive processes whereby each of the twelve [now fifteen] defines its own identity ... increasingly endogenize the existence of the other eleven. Within this framework, European leaders may be thought of as entrepreneurs of alternative political identities'.')' Ruggie's claim, however, raises an ontological problem in addition to a theoretical one. If, in tightly coupled security communities, the community is the structure and its fifteen members are agent statcs, why d o we say that leaders or institutions, too, may be agents in the community region? The answer is that, although leaders and institutions rely on a territorial base and are empowered by states, their identity, roles, and interests are increasingly being shaped by the cognitive community rather than by the particular states.": Thus, in principle, state agency (which people and their political elites reproduce) represents the interests, not just of states, but also, and at t y agent states. the same time, of the c o n ~ n ~ u n i of A crucial question arises now. Can the concept of citizen be carried over from the agent state to the pluralistic security community? Can people fall within the jurisdiction of several authorities, have multiple identities, and possess rights of participation in supranational structures, and thus, be citizens both of their own state and the security community?" In principle, if people are engaged in the political life of their state and their security community, the answer is 'yes'. 'Citizenship', as Dennis F. Thompson writes, is not meant to suggest merely those rights possessed by a passive subject by virtue of residing under a particular territorial jurisdiction. Nor is it meant mainly to connote patriotism or loyalty to a nation-state. 'Citizenship' ... refers to the present and future capacity for influencing politics. It implies active involvement in political life."4
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Institutions, Legitimacy, and Identity: The Pluralistic Security Community-Building Mission of the OSCE In the last 50 years, a new type of institution - a security community-building ity institution - made its appearance on the world s ~ e n e . ~ ~ e c u rcommunitybuilding institutions are innovators, in the sense of creating the evaluative, normative, and sometimes even causal frames of reference. This type of institution may also play a critical role in the diffusion and institutionalisation of values, norms, and shared understandings. Finally, by establishing norms of behaviour, monitoring mechanisms, and sanctions to enforce those norms, all of which encourage, and also depend on, mutual responsiveness and trust, security community-building institutions may help shape the practices of states that make possible the emergence of security communities. The OSCE provides a clear illustration of a security community-building institution. Being a pan-European security organisation that spans three continents, from Vancouver to Vladivostok, the OSCE encourages the elites and peoples of its 55 member states to imagine that they inhabit a shared cognitive region, increasingly being referred to as 'the OSCE region'. Thus, regardless of its accomplishments, or lack thereof, we cannot understand what the OSCE is or is trying to do unless we embed this understanding in the concept of pluralistic security communities. The CSCE, also known as the 'Helsinki Process', was constituted in August 1975 by the Helsinki Final Act, which 35 countries signed, including Canada, the United States, and all European states (as well as the Soviet Union) except Albania. This act - supplemented over years by a series of follow-up conferences, such as Belgrade (1977-1979), Madrid (1980-1983), and Vienna (1986-1989), as well as by expert seminars and conferences - establishes ten basic principles of behaviour as well as three broad areas (or 'baskets') of activity (security, economics, and the human dimension). As such, the Helsinki Final Act provides a normative framework for its member states, based on adherence to multi-party democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and liberal economic systems. The effectiveness of the CSCE depended on the way in which the three baskets were tied together in political dialogue and processes of negotiation, which became the foundation of the 'cooperative security' of the CSCE system. Until 1990, the CSCE operated as an institutionalised diplomatic conference with no permanent organisational structures. With the end of the Cold War, however, the CSCE began a rapid transition to a full international organisation. In 1992, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the membership of the CSCE rose to 53 states and later to 55.96 The Charter of Paris for a New Europe marked a turning point in the history o f the CSCE. With the addition of important injunctions on democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, what had been a regional code of conduct turned into the normative structure for a security community that OSCE leaders expected to evolve in the CSCE region. In addition, the new CSCE institutions created in Paris actively encouraged the normative structures to develop
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in the region. These institutions include the Secretariat and the Council of Foreign Ministers, the Conflict Prevention Center, and the Office of Free Elections, which later became the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR),along with other institutions that were added in the following years, such as The Forum on Security Cooperation and the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM). They improved the decision-making and enhanced monitoring capabilities of the future OSCE. The CSCE institutions also extended the reach of democratic pluralism, the rule of law, human rights, and market systems eastward, and they promoted the peaceful settlement of disputes. In addition, the CSCE became a regional arrangement, in the sense of chapter VIII of the UN Charter. It established early warning, conflict prevention, and crisis management practices and expanded peacekeeping activities, especially in Nagorno-Karabakh and Bosnia. At the Budapest follow-up meeting, the newly renamed OSCE settled for its present institutional structure, consisting mainly of the Summit of Heads of Government (meeting every two years), the Ministerial Council, the Senior Council, the Permanent Council, the Forum for Security and Cooperation, the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. In addition, the OSCE is administered by a Chairman-in-Office (CIO), a Troika (made-up of the immediate past, present, and future CIOs) and a Secretary General (and Secretariat). Particularly noteworthy is the role the OSCE has been playing in the management of the post-conflict situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina; the approval of a Code of Conduct on PoliticoMilitary Aspects of Security (1994); and the Lisbon Declaration on a 'Common and Comprehensive Security Model for Europe for the Twenty-First Century' (1996)- a politically binding document that outlines the future of the OSCE.'? The OSCE fulfills seven community-building functions: (1) it promotes political consultation and bilateral and multilateral agreements among its members; (2) it sets liberal standards - applicable both within each state and throughout the community - that are used to judge democratic and human rights performance, and monitors compliance with them; ( 3 ) it attempts to prevent violent conflict before it occurs; (4) it helps to develop the practices of peaceful settlement of disputes within the OSCE space; ( 5 )it builds mutual trust by promoting military transparency and cooperation; (6) it supports the building of democratic institutions and the transformation to market-based economies; and (7)it assists in reestablishing state institutions and the rule of law after conflicts. More generally, the OSCE aims to shape new transnational identities based on liberal values and serves as a conduit for the transmission of liberal values, norms, and practices to Eastern Europe, thereby helping create new vested interests in a pan-European cognitive space.'x Three notions are crucial for understanding how the community-building practices of the OSCE work. First, the same practices that offer a means of dealing with specific problems, such as early warning, conflict prevention, and the protection of human rights and minorities, also fulfill the role of
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'building a secure and stable CSCE [now OSCE] community, whole and free'.99 For example, when the OSCE performs tasks - such as sending a mission to Tajikistan or to Estonia, organising a seminar on military doctrines or confidence-building measures (CBMs), or, as part of its CBMs regime, requiring states to open up their military activities for inspection what matters most is not the short-range success of the project, but the construction of a foundation for community practices and behaviour. These practices, together with the normative structure embodied in OSCE documents, institutionalise a new way of cognitively framing regional problems and solutions around liberal ideas. These documents include the 1975 Helsinki Final Act; the 1990 Copenhagen Declaration on democracy, the rule of law, and human rights; and the 1990 Charter of Paris, with its blueprint for a democratic Europe, whole and free. They also help to constitute new vested interests in, and generate the material and institutional resources for, reducing human rights violations, helping minorities, preventing conflicts that can endanger newly created and feeble democratic institutions in Eastern Europe, and facilitating the resolution of secessionist conflicts by peaceful means. Second, to create shared values and mutual responsiveness, the OSCE has cleverly exploited expectations of international legitimacy and fundamentally transformed the constitutive norms of the OSCE region.loO In other words, changing the identities and interests of former communist countries entails setting, promoting, and diffusing two ideas. The first is the expectation that international legitimacy depends on the democratic nature of domestic regimes. This implies that peaceful change is predicated on the knowledge that member states and societies have of one another as liberal democracies, that is, as 'doves'. The second is the accountability norm, according to which OSCE states are accountable to one another and to the OSCE community for what they do to their own citizens. This means that trust and peaceful change are predicated on replacing the non-intervention norm with the mutual accountability norm.lO' Third, developing a 'we feeling' (based on cognition rather than affection) within a region requires institutional resources, incentives, and encouragement. This is why the OSCE has adopted the view that it must first let the largest possible number of states believe that they are part of a cognitive region. Only then, when member states have formally and instrumentally accepted the shared institutional normative structures and practices, does the OSCE socialise state elites by means of continuous diplomatic interaction and a wide range of community-building practices. Thus, the rationale for the crucial 1992 decision to bring all the successor states of the Soviet Union into the OSCE could be phrased as follows: 'we know you are not "us". Let us pretend, however, that you are, so we may teach you to be "us". The far worse alternative - to leave you "outside" and not let you become one of us is most likely to turn you into "them", and against us'. lo2 Me cannot understand the role the OSCE plays in security communitybuilding without taking a closer look at 'cooperative security'. This is the
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OSCE 'demilitarised' security concept that has resulted in imbuing security with political and human dimensions, and in basing security on confidence and cooperation, the elaboration of peaceful means of dispute settlement between states, the consolidation of justice and democracy in civil society, and the advancement of human freedom and rights, including n a t ~ o n a lminor~tyrights."" According to the classic notion of security, no weapon or political intention of an adversary may be beyond the reach of concern of another state."'" According to the OSCE original notion of cooperative security, however, 'no domestic institution or norm is beyond the jurisdictional reach of the CSCE'.'"' Indeed, the constitutive norms, associated institutions, and practices of the OSCE may be conceived as a crude governance system, relying for compliance on a shared identity that creates and maintains public order within the cognitive region. Thomas Buergenthal caught the subtle but crucial essence of the OSCE when he asserted that its 'instruments can be compared ... to those domestic constitutions which are not legally enforceable in national courts'.10h A plethora of new practices, institutions, and mechanisms give the OSCE 'governance system' its practical meaning. For example, the Human Diniension Conference (all Basket 111 issues, such as human rights, human contacts, and other humanitarian issues, grouped together since 1989), together with the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) (which tries to investigate, mediate, and prevent minority conflict), are superficially intended only to prevent ethnic conflict and to monitor the implementation of minority rights provisions.107In practice, however, they also aim at reconstructing the identities of OSCE members and, thus, their preferences. Moreover, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) ~ r o v i d e ssupport for free elections and civil society-related programmes. Additionally, it reviews the implementation of Human Dimension provisions and the results of expert missions, and it also organises expert seminars on a variety of issues. Equally important for community-building are the innovative practices of the OSCE in arms control and peaceful settlement of disputes. In the early 1970s, the CSCE created ex nihilo the practice of CBMs, now diffused around the world.'0x Originally thought (in political and academic circles) to be merely a variant of arms-control measures aimed at enhancing transparency so as to reduce the danger o f surprise attack, CBMs have become a communitybuilding mechanism based on the social construction of mutual trust. Because trust is closely related to the legitimacy of a government 'and the way it treats its people','0" military cooperation and trust, and, more generally, peaceful change in the OSCE region, depend on the compliance of memher states to OSCE norms. Thus, the right to request information and to make representatmns on human r~ghtsare the other s ~ d of e the com of CBMs. As part of t h ~ smutual trust-bu~ldmg~nstrument,'mechan~sms'as they are and convening of b~lateral called, ,dlow for: (1)the exchange of ~nforniat~on and m u l t ~ l a t c r ~ meetlngs l on human r~ghtsv ~ o l a t ~ o n(the s Human D ~ m e n s ~ o n
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Mechanism); (2) the querying of other states about their military activities (Unusual Military Activities); (3) the facilitation of peaceful resolution of disputes by a group of third-party experts (the Valetta Dispute Settlement Mechanism, followed by the 1993 Convention on Conciliation and Arbitration); (4) the holding of emergency meetings at a high political level (the Emergency Meeting Mechanism); and ( 5 )fact-finding, rapporteur, long-term, and sanctions-assistance missions. The Forum for Security Cooperation coordinates CBMs and other arms control activities with security enhancement and conflict prevention activities. The Code of Conduct on security matters sets standards of behaviour for the democratic control of armed forces and the activities of internal security forces of member-states.l1° The institutional processes and attributes of the OSCE,ll' frequently criticised for their lack of coherence and teeth, are, in fact, compatible with the task of community building. First, the fact that most OSCE injunctions are politically rather than legally binding makes 'adherence to stated intentions a test of political credibility rather than an invitation to search for legal loopholes', which promotes mutual trust.l12 Furthermore, politically binding instruments lead to changes in practices, political interests, and public policies, rather than in legal instruments. In other words, politically binding instruments can sometimes be as effective at producing change as legal instruments. OSCE processes work less by constraining political behaviour through law than by promoting public policies that are congruent with regional norms. Second, the accountability norm is particularly important for a system of governance that works through legitimation and de-legitimation. Third, the informality of the Helsinki process, especially in its first stages, has prevented the development of huge bureaucracies. Instead, it has empowered individuals, NGOs, social movements, and other civil-society actors to act on behalf of their rights.l13 In other words, informality helped to generate the dense web of transnational relations throughout the region that is essential for the development of a transnational community.'14 Fourth, the consensus rule, only recently modified to consensus-minus-one in the event of gross violations of OSCE norms, means that once consensus is achieved, 'it has higher moral credibility and greater political weight'."j It also generates the need to persuade other members by peaceful means, thus structurally promoting socialisation and learning processes. Fifth, institutionalised learning also results from OSCE follow-up conferences, which review the effectiveness of previous documents, decisions, and measures. 'This review of practices', Alexis Heraclides maintains, 'was novel not only in the Helsinki process, but also in the history of diplomacy'.l16 Moreover, the follow-up practice breeds the need to define the notion of success and failure, promoting both self-correcting and goaloriented behaviour.l17 Sixth, the Helsinki process promotes and makes prevalent a new type of diplomacy that integrates academic and diplomatic discourse and practice. For lack of a better word, I call it 'seminar diplomacy'. The practice, now widespread in other security organisations, such as the North Atlantic Cooperation
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Council of NATO and the Partnership for Peace,'l5nstitutionalises the diplomatic practice of teaching norms and legitimises expertise as the basis for common agreement."" More importantly, however, seminar diplomacy, as in the case of the 1990 and 199 1 CSCE seminars on military doctrine, helps to generate not only causal understandings about specific technical issues, but also a measure of 'we feeling' and mutual trust among seminar members.""
Conclusions
Merely to imagine security communities does not make them all-pervasive. Balances of power, alliances, hegemonies, and deterrence still are - and probably will continuc to he - part of the international political landscape, not only in areas riven by interstate or inter-ethnic conflict, such as the Middle East, but also in areas where security communities exist, such as in Western Europe, or are in the process of developing, such as in Southeast Asia. The architects of security communities still must compete with and fight against power-political practices and conflicting identities. Moreover, as we look at the institutional map of international relations, it becomes apparent that many contemporary multilateral institutional activities - for example, the international trade, monetary, and nuclear nonproliferation regimes - although themselves the result of processes of social construction, are only indirectly linked to community-building. Instead, to a large extent, they respond to the instrumental logic of self-interested states that coordinate their policies - and thus construct a thin version of society on the basis of consensual principles of conduct."' Regardless of power politics, strong conflicting identities, and the ahove 'weak' version of multilateralism, a 'strong' kind of multilateralism has evolved in the postwar international system. This strong multilateralisni refers to the social construction and institutionalisation of security conlnlunities by means of multilateral dialogue and community-building practices, on the basis of collective normative knowledge forged through new andlor pre-existing institutions. Strong multilateralism - which is partially replacing power politics in parts of the world - and, more generally, the workings of security community-building institutions are, nevertheless, indicators that international security is increasingly associated with the establishment of a security community. They are evidence 'that regions themselves are socially constructed and susceptible to redefinition'."' A constructivist approach is helpful in identifying this phenomenon, as well as discerning the many 'strong' multilateral institutional attributes, processes, and consequences that could otherwise escape our attention. Importantly, constructivism sheds light on the way in which norms constitute identities and, concomitantly, the effect that these socially constructed identities have on the places that people are comfortable calling 'home'. This is why the concept of pluralistic security communities, coupled with a constructivist approach, offers a way to reorder our thinking about
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international security in the post-Cold War period, shifting the focus of security studies away from states and towards transnational social, political, economic, ecological, and moral forces. However, this concept cuts much deeper, because a pluralistic security community suggests not merely a group of states that, thanks to increased communication, have abandoned war as a means of social intercourse. It also implies the social evolution of a community-region in which people have mastered the practice of peaceful change. Hence, pluralistic security communities suggest a social theory of international relations according to which shared international and transnational understandings, identities, and norms play a crucial role in the social construction of national interests, international practices, and regions. According to this theory, security communities are transnational cognitive regions whose people possess collective identities, and share other normative and regulatory structures. Shared cognitive structures, such as liberal civic cultures, provide purpose, meaning, and direction to material structures and power resources, and help to constitute and reproduce common interests. Powerful states, or cores of strength, are necessary for the development of security communities because, like a magnet, they attract weaker states that expect to share the security and welfare associated with them. Economic and social transactions also play a role by encouraging increased communication. Communication helps to thicken the social environment of cognitive regions and, thus, promotes the development of shared identification. In addition, security community-building institutions, such as the OSCE, nurture the development of shared normative structures, facilitate the channelling of material resources in the direction of shared transnational goals, promote political, economic, and social transactions, and play a role in fostering the development of transnational identities and 'we feeling'. Indeed, the positive and dynamic interaction between these variables undergirds the process of collective identity formation and trust which, in turn, drives dependable expectations of peaceful change. This constructivist theory explains how intersubjective understandings, through socialisation and learning processes, help 'frame' international social reality and lead to the development of shared practices and institutions. At the same time, it also explains how the purposeful and sometimes innovative action of individual and institutional agents constitute intersubjective structures. The theory may also be of help in explaining why and how states establish shared political purposes or interests only after their elites and, more generally, their people articulate a common identity within cognitively and spatially defined regional communities.
Acknowledgements I thank Hayward Alker, Michael Barnett, Richard Bilder, Beverly Crawford, Raymond Duvall, Ernst Haas, Arie Kacowicz, Peter Katzenstein, Ann-Marie Burley Slaughter, Alex Wendt, and Crawford Young for useful comments and Jeff Lewis for research assistance. I also thank the
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Davis I n s t ~ t ~ of ~ t Ien t e r n a t i o n ~ lRcl,it~onsa t the Hebrew U n i v e r s q of Jerusalem for financul assistance. A draft of this paper was presented a t the Annual Meeting of the American I'olitical Science Assoc~ation,N e w York, 1-4 September, 1994. Another draft was published as Working Paper 2.28 of the Series: l'olitic~l Relations a n d Institut~ons Research Group, Center for German a n d European Studies, University of Calitorni,~a t Berkeley, J a n u a r y 1995.
Notes I. Italo Calvi~io, In~,rsrOlc(:ities, trans. W. Weaver (S.in Ihego, CA: Harcourt Ur,lce J o v a n o v ~ c h ,19741, p. 82. 2. F.m,in~~el Adler a n d h l i c l i ~ e lRarnett, 'Chverning Anarchy: A Research Agend'l tor the Study o t Security (:ornrn~~nities',Ethics and Itrtcrtz~~troir~d il/jnrs (Voi. 10, 1996), pp. 63-98, ng in International ,ind J o h n G. Kuggie, 'Territoriality and Beyond: P r o h l e ~ i i ~ i r i r ~Modernity Relations', I~rlerriiitronizl 0);yLrrrr;17tr~~ir (VoI. 47, N o . I , 199.3), p. 1.57. 3 Renedict i\nclerson, Iim~rrrcd(:onztizcrnrtirs: Rrflrctrorrs on the Orrgzn m d S p r e d of NLiti(~ncrlrstir(I.otidon: Verso, 19831, p. 15. 4. Z d r a v k o M l ~ n a r ,' I n d i v i d i ~ ~ ~ t.ind ~ o nG l o b a l i r a r ~ o ~ Ti :h e Transformation of Terr~torial S o c ~ a l Org:inu,~t~on', in Z d r a v k o hllin'lr (ed.). I / J ~ M~zttcr With I.~~~erirlisrn (Berkeley, CA: Llniversity of California Press, 1992), p. 105. See also Linklater, 'Citizenship and Sovere~gntyin the PostWestphalinn State', op crt., In notc 20. 12.With respcit t o NATO, scc Jozepl, I.epgold, 'The Ncvt Step Toward ,I More Securc Europe', Tlw jotirnnl of Strategic .Studies (Vol. 17, No. 4, 19941, pp. 7-26. 33. Paul W. Schroeder, 'The New World Order: A H~storicalI'er5pective', T l ~ cWasl~rrt~ton Qurzrterly (Vol. 17, No. 2, 1 994), p. 30. 34. See Rarh,~raA. Miszt;ll, Trust rn Modern Soc-rrties (C:arnhridge: Polity Press, 1996). 35. Constructrursm denote\ the view that social reality IS constructed when individu.ils conie into contact with each other and interact. Constructivists assert that to ~ ~ n d e r s t a nthe d soc~al world, one must begin with shared understandmg and knowledge cind, in particular, practices, and investigate how they help t o detine the rnstirutional and rnater~alworlds. Cognitive and institutional structures give meaning to the material world. They provide people with reasons for the way things are and ttidicdtion\ '1s to how they should u\e their ~ n a t e r ~capabilit~es ~ll and power. In rurn, changes in the identities and interests ot the agents involved continually transform cognitive and instrtutional structures. C.onstructivists d o not deny the realit): of the material world. The): merely point out that the manner in w h ~ c hthe mater~alworld sh;ipes, modifies, and affects human mteracrlon, whtch in rurn affects ~ t depends , on prior dynarn~cepisternic and norniative interpretations of the rn,iterial world. See Ernariuel Adler, 'Seizing the Middle Ground: Constr~rcrivism in World I'ol~tics', Europeim ]orirwizl of Internatronal Relirtrons (Vol. 3, No. 3, 1997). pp. 3 19-63: Friedrich Kratochwl, Rules, Norms, and Decrsrons (Cnmbridge: Ccirnbridge University Press, 1989); Ruggie, op. cit., in note 2; and Wcndt, op. rit., 111 note 1 X. For nn alternative vlew o n the construction of securlty conimunities, see Ole Weaver, 'Insecurity, hecurit); and Asecurity in the West Furopean Non-War Community', in Adler m d Barnett (eds.),op. rit., in note 28. 36. Wendt, op. crt., in note 8 . 37. For the ideational effect of American hegemon); sec John G . Ruggie, 'Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution', In John G. Ruggie (ed.), Mrrltilatcnzlrsrn Matters: TI7e Theory nnd PYIIXIS of 1111 Instrtlrtronul Form (New York, NY: Colurnb~aUniversity Press, 199.3), pp. 3 4 7 . 38. For the 'democratic peace' thesis, see Mrchael W. Doyle, 'Kant, Liberal I.cgacres, and Foreign Atfa~rs:1'art I' I'hilosophy ~zndI ' u h l ~Affairs (Vol. 12, No. 3, 1983), pp. 20.5-35, and Bruce Russetr, Grirsplrzg the l)c~wocriztrc~ Peare (Princeton, N J : l'rinceton University I'ress, 1993). 39. See A m ~ t a vAchary,~,'Collective Identity and ( h t l i c t Resolution In Southeast A,ia', in Adler and thrnett (eds.), op. crt., In note 28. 40. Konald Inglehart, (;rt[turr Shrft n z Advanced Indusrriul Societzes (l'rinceton, N J : Princeton Univers~tyI'ress, 19901, pp. 196-97. See a l w Dtego Gambetta (ed.), Trtrst: M n k ~ r r ~ rzttd Breaking C h ) p e r a t i ~ IZclrzt~ons ~e ( N e w York, NY: Blackwell, 1988). 41. G a h r ~ e lA. Almond and Sidney Verha, Tile C i t w Crrltnr~:Political Artitudcs drtd I)en~ocraryrn F ~ I YNatrons (Boston. MA: L~ttleand Brown, 196.3). 42. Robert I). I'utnnm, Mrzkrn~Dcvnocrmy Work: Ci~lic-Trirditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Un~versit>I'ress, 199.3). 43. lhid. 44. Starr, o p . ~ i t .in , note 24, p. 210. 45. Ibrd., and Uueno de Mescl~litaand Lalrnan, op. cit., in note 24. 46. Starr, op. cit.. in note 24, p. 21 I . 47. See, for example, I'atr~c~aChilton, 'Mechanisms of Change: Social Movements, Transnational Coalrtions, and the Transformation Processes in Eastern Europe', in Thomas RisseKappen (ed.), Bringing Tunnsmtional Relations Back In: Non-Stizte Actors, Dornestrc Strrictures and International Instrtutrons (Chnbridge: Cambridge Unrversity Press, 1995), pp. 189-226. 48. I.ipschut7, op. cit., in note 16. 49. Kathryn Sikkink, 'Human Rights Issue-Networks in 1.3t111America', lnterrzational Organizatron (Vol. 47, No. 3, 19931, pp. 41 1-42, and Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink,
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Activists Beyond Borders: Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, forthcoming). 50. Chilton, op. cit., in note 47, and Daniel Thomas, 'Social Movements and International Institutions: A Preliminary Framework' (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 1991). 51. See Doyle, op. cit., in note 38, and Russett, op. cit., in note 38. 52. Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, 'A Framework for the Study of Security Communities', in Adler and Barnett (eds.), op. cit., in note 28. 53. Deutsch et al., op. cit., in note 20, p. 38, emphasis added. 54. See, for example, Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). 55. Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1974). 56. For an exception, see Stefano Guzzini, 'Structural Power: The Limits of Neorealist Analysis', International Organization (Vol. 47, No. 3, 1993), pp. 443-78. 57. John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York, NY: Free Press, 1995). 58. Adler and Barnett, op. cit., in note 2, and Michael C. Williams, 'The Institutions of Security', (paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, San Diego, 16-21 April, 1996). 59. Williams, op. cit., in note 58. See also Michel Foucault, PowerlKnowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writzngs. 1972-1977, ed. C. Gordon (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1980), and Richard Price, 'A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Taboo', International Organization (Vol. 49, No. 1, 1995), pp. 73-103. 60. Adler, op. cit., in note 35, pp. 336-37. 61. Ira J. Cohen, 'Structuration Theory and Social Praxis', in Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Turner (eds.), Social Theory Today (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), p. 287. 62. David Laitin, 'Political Culture and Political Preferences', American Political Science Review (Vol. 82, No. 2, 1988), p. 591. However, instrumental reasoning may be the first stage of a socialisation process that leads people to internalise an identity. 63. Cohen, op. cit., in note 61, p. 297. 64. For the role of positive images of material progress, see Ernst B. Haas, Nationalism, Liberalism and Progress: The Rise and Decline of Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). 65. Adler and Barnett, op. cit., in note 2, p. 83. 66. Guzzini, op. cit., in note 56, p. 471. 67. See Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971). See also Robert W. Cox, 'Social Forces, States and World Orders', Millennium (Vol. 10, No. 2, 1981), pp. 126-55, and Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 68. Adler and Barnett (eds.),op. cit., in note 28. 69. R. Tuomela, 'Actions by Collectives', in the annual publication Philosophical Perspectives, ed. J.E. Tomberlin, Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company, Vol. 3, 1989) pp. 471-96. 70. See, for example, John C. Turner, 'Towards A Cognitive Redefinition of the Social Group', in Henry Tajfel (ed.), Social Identity and lntergroup Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 15-40. 71. Turner, op. cit., in note 70. 72. {bid., p. 16. 73. Ibid., p. 18. 74. See Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Henry Tajfel (ed.), Differentiation Between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of lntergroup Relations (London: Academic Press, 1978); Henry Tajfel and John C. Turner, 'The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior', in Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin (eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations, Second Edition (Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall, 19861, pp. 7-24; and Jonathan Mercer,
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'An'lrch) and Idcnr~ty',lnterniztronizl Orgartr~atzotz(Vol. 49, No. 2, 1995), pp. 229-52. kor the view that genuine conflict of interest generates intergroup competition, see Muzafer Sher~f, G~OLI[J Conflirt izntf Co-opcrizt~on:Their So~.raIPsyrhology (Imidon: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966). For the importance, as well as limitations, of soci,ll-psycholog~ilalexpl,ln,ltions, see Herbert C. Kelman, Intert~atrorralHehavror: A Social-Psyc.hologica1 Analysis (New York, NY: Holt, Kinehart m d Winston, 1965). 75. Turner, op. cit.. In notc 70, p. 31. 7 h . James S. Colem.l~~, N i g r r ; , ~ .D,zc-kgrotrnd to h'izt;-lI(r~oksO H t 1 (:otnnzi~rz~~~ei~lt/~ ~ (London: Blackwell, 1967), p. 21. 95. Examples of t h ~ sare the OSCE, the European Union, the (huncil of Europe, AS well as, lately, NATO and ASEAN. 96. For some recent studies on the CSCE/OSC'E, see Sret,ln l.ehne, The CSCE in the I9YOs: (;orntizorz Eurol~eanHo~tscr~ J YPotemkin Vi//izge? (Vienna: Ikaumuller, 199 1); Michael h c a s (ed.), TIM C S C t rtz the 19')Os: (:onstnii.trng E u r o p e m S ~ i ~ i r arntd~ Cooperatlr~n(BadenBaden: Nomos, 1993); Vojtech Mastny, TIIP tfclsirtki Process m d tlw Relntegratron of Ezrrop~ 19x6-1991: Analys~satzd 1)oirorzcntatioiz ( N e w York, NY: New York Un~versityPress, 1992); Alexis Heraclides, Seczrr~tya r ~ dCooperiltror~rn Ertropc: T/JC11~1tmrtzDimension, 1972-1 992
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(London: Frank Cass, 1993); Arie Bloed, The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Analysis and Basic Documents, 1972-1993 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1993); Victor-lves Ghebali, L'OSCE duns /'Europe Post-communiste, 1990-1 996: Vers une Identite Paneuropeenne de Securite (Brussels: Bruylant, 1996); and Diana Chigas, with Elizabeth McClintock and Christophe Kamp, 'Preventive Diplomacy and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Creating Incentives for Dialogue and Cooperation', in Abram Chayes and Antonia H . Chayes (eds.), Preventing Conflict in the Post-Communist World (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1996), pp. 25-97. 97. For additional information on the CSCEIOSCE, see Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Charter o f Paris for a New Europe (Paris: CSCE, 1990);Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Challenges of Change: CSCE Helsinki Document 1992 (Prague: CSCE Secretariat, 1992);Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Toward A Genuine Partnership in a New Era: Budapest Document 1994 (Prague: CSCE Secretariat, 1994); Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Lisbon Document 1996 (Lisbon: OSCE, 1996);and Chigas et al., op. cit., in note 96. 98. See James E. Goodby, The Diplomacy o f Europe Whole and Free', in Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (ed.),The Helsinki Process and the Future o f Europe (Washington,DC: The Wilson Center Press, 1990),p. 59. Note that I do not claim that there is already a security community, or that the OSCE would ultimately succeed in establishing a security community, in the entire OSCE region. 99. Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE),'Toward a Genuine Partnership in a New Era', Budapest Document, 1994 (Budapest:CSCE, 1994). See also a statement made by the head o f the US delegation to the CSCE, Ambassador John Kornblum, at the CSCE Seminar on Early Warning and Conflict Prevention, Warsaw, January 20, 1994, to the effect that CSCE practices 'are designed to be part o f a process o f community building'. 100. Marianne Hanson, 'Democratization and Norm Creation in Europe', Adelphi Papers 284 (London: Brassey's for the International Institute for Strategic Studies ( I I S S ) , 1994),p. 34. 101. Ibid. 102. Heraclides makes a similar point. See Heraclides, op. cit., in note 96, p. 15. 103. Janie Leatherman, 'Conflict Transformation in the CSCE: Learning and Institutionalization', Cooperation and Conflict (Vol. 28, No. 4 , 1993), pp. 413-14. Transparency, the absence o f nuclear deterrence, intensive and regular communications, diffusereciprocity, and a set o f interlocking security, human rights, economic, and environmental organisations characterise a fully developed model o f cooperative security. For cooperative security, see Janne E. Nolan (ed.), Global Engagement: Cooperation and Security in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1994). 104. See, for example, Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), Chapter 10. 105. Buergenthal, op. cit., in note 87, p. 382, emphasis added. 106. Ibid., pp. 380-81. 107. Lehne, op. cit., in note 96, p. 5. For the Human Dimension the reader may refer to Heraclides, op. cit., in note 96, and Arie Bloed and Pieter van Dijk (eds.),'The Human Dimension of the Helsinki Process: The Vienna Follow-up Meeting and its Aftermath (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1991). O n the HCNM, see Alexis Heraclides, Helsinki-11 and its Aftermath: The Making of the CSCE into an International Organization (London: Pinter Publishers, 1993). 108. Lehne, op. cit., in note 96, p. 62. 109. Ibid., p. 15. 110. For OSCE institution building the reader may refer to Heraclides, op. cit., in note 107. 111. For a critical account o f OSCE institutional processes, see Richard Weitz, 'Pursuing Military Security in Eastern Europe', in Robert 0. Keohane, Joseph S . Nye, and Stanley Hoffmann (eds.),After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989-1991 (Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 342-80. 112. Mastny, op. cit., in note 96, p. 2. 113. US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Beyond Process: The CSCE 's Institutional Development, 1990-92 (Washington, DC: 1993). For social movements, see Thomas, op. cit., in note 50.
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1 14. h i d . 115. For the quote, see L,ehne, op. cit., in note 96, p. 73. The 'conse~~sus-minus-one' provision fro111 1992 reters only to thc human d~mensionand not to ,111 the co~nmitmentsand princ~ples o f the OS(:E. However, in prxtice, the provision has heen used more widely. O n paper, at least, there also exists a ' C O I ~ S ~ ~ S U S - I ~ ~ I ~ prov~sion L I S - ~ ~ V ~In' the case of directed concihation procedure, d~rectingtwo disputants to \eek concil~arionirrespective of t h e ~ rwill. Heraclides, o p . clt.. In note 107, pp. 179-80. 1 16. Hrt-acl~des,op. c-rt., tn n o t e 96, p. 5 1. 117. Mastny, o p . cit., in note 96, p. 3. 1 1 8. Mantred Woerner, 'NATO Transformed: The S i g n ~ t ~ w n oc fe the Rome Summit', NATO R e l m ~ o(Vol. 39, N o . 6, 199 I), p. 5. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council was replacrd and upgraded by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council in May 1997. i 19. Martha Finnemore, 'International Organ~zarionsas Te.lchers of Norms: The United Nations Education,~l,Scientific, and Cultural Organization , ~ n dScience Policy', Intrrr~atrond Orgnizlzntron (Vol. 47, N o . 3, 19931, pp. 56.5-97. 120. Conceptually, semn,ir diplomacy 3tands o n s ~ r n ~ l hut a r broader grounds than Herlicrt Kelman's social-pychological 'Problenl-Solwng Workshop' dpproach for settling international confl~cts.See Herhert C. Kelman and Stcphan I? Cohen, 'The Problem-Solv~ngWorkshop: A S o c ~ a l - l ' s y c h o ~ ~ gContribution ic~~~ to the Resolutioil o f Internat~ond( h f l i c t ' , /otcrrzal of Peme Resmrch (Vol. 13. N o . 2, 19761, pp. 79-90. 12 1. See Kuggie (ed.), op. cit., in note 37. 122. Adler and Rarnett, o p . rlt., in note 2, p. 77.