Securing Civilization? The EU, NATO and the OSCE in the Post-9/11 World
Abstract
It has become almost a cliché in many Euro-Atlantic political and academic circles to argue that the transatlantic security community that defines itself around liberal-democratic values is facing a particularly dangerous set of challenges and must find ways to adapt to an environment marked by the growing power of unconventional enemies, particularly transnationally organized terrorist groups. But the question is, what has this meant in practice? What are the dynamics and implications of the security policies and practices aimed at addressing the (allegedly) new threat of international terrorism? This book examines the practices enacted by three key institutions of the transatlantic security community - the EU, NATO, and the OSCE - in the name of combating international terrorism, and analyses the ways in which those practices have both been affected by and contributed to changes in the field of security. This book argues that contemporary attempts to respond to the perceived threat of international terrorism reflect a particular ethos of risk-management and involve a combination of two different - an inclusive and an exclusionary - logics of security. This book examines the interplay between the two logics and analyses their implications, including the ways in which they have contributed to processes of reconstitution of boundaries and norms of governance in the security community. In developing this analysis, this book also explores some of the normative and political dilemmas generated by contemporary patterns of inclusion/exclusion. On this basis, it seeks to make a significant contribution to the study of security practices and international governance in the post-9/11 world.
... Scholars have tended to describe the growing interest in practices as a " turn to practice " rather than as " practice theory " because of the broad range of different 1977; Callon 1986; Latour 1987; Hacking 2002; Dreyfus 1991; Taylor 1992; and Schatzki 38 has begun to enter the theoretical vocabulary of IR scholars, they have drawn on a diverse range of different social theorists – with security scholars tending to draw on Pierre Bourdieu (Pouliot 2008; Williams 2007; Gheciu 2008; Abrahamsen and Williams 2011), while IPE scholars have relied more on Michel Callon and Bruno Latour (Best 2009; Langley 2008) 17 . In calling for a turn to practice in our conceptualization of the public, we are not therefore proposing a new singular grand theory, 18 but rather trying to demonstrate the usefulness of the idea of practice for IR theory today. ...
... (Adler 2005, 15) [emphasis in original] 22 Bourdieu, 1977. In this section, we draw on the works of several IR scholars who have applied the work of Bourdieu to international politics: in particular, Adler 2008; Williams 2007; Gheciu 2008; Leander 2008; 2011; Pouliot 2010; Abrahamsen and Williams 2011. 23 Callon 1998. ...
... Scholars have tended to describe the growing interest in practices as a " turn to practice " rather than as " practice theory " because of the broad range of different 1977; Callon 1986; Latour 1987; Hacking 2002; Dreyfus 1991; Taylor 1992; and Schatzki 38 has begun to enter the theoretical vocabulary of IR scholars, they have drawn on a diverse range of different social theorists – with security scholars tending to draw on Pierre Bourdieu (Pouliot 2008; Williams 2007; Gheciu 2008; Abrahamsen and Williams 2011), while IPE scholars have relied more on Michel Callon and Bruno Latour (Best 2009; Langley 2008) 17 . In calling for a turn to practice in our conceptualization of the public, we are not therefore proposing a new singular grand theory, 18 but rather trying to demonstrate the usefulness of the idea of practice for IR theory today. ...
... (Adler 2005, 15) [emphasis in original] 22 Bourdieu, 1977. In this section, we draw on the works of several IR scholars who have applied the work of Bourdieu to international politics: in particular, Adler 2008; Williams 2007; Gheciu 2008; Leander 2008; 2011; Pouliot 2010; Abrahamsen and Williams 2011. 23 Callon 1998. ...
If the public is in fact returning as a major force in global governance, then how do we go about making sense of it? This is the central question examined in this chapter. In order to answer it, we begin by considering whether the existing literatures on the public and private in global governance can provide enough insight into the changes that we are currently witnessing, allowing us to recognize the re-emergence of the public and to understand its novel characteristics. Having identified both the strengths and weaknesses of the existing scholarship in resolving these puzzles, we go on to develop our own framework for making sense of the evolving role and character of the public in global governance. We suggest that the best way of understanding the re-emergence of the public is to understand it as an evolving set of practices rather than as a bounded sphere, state-based authority, or natural set of goods. What counts as public depends more on what is done than on whether an individual or institution is associated formally with what we traditionally define as the public or private realm. Over time, particularly in moments of transition such as the present moment, what counts as public gets contested and renegotiated through transformational practices. In other words, we suggest that distinctions between public and private – just like distinctions between the national and the global, or economics and security – are themselves forms of power-laden practices, which reflect and in turn shape the characteristics of the broader social context in which they are enacted.
... La OTAN parece así relegar temporalmente a un segundo plano su función de defensa colectiva ante un ataque armado, ya que la única amenaza creíble para el territorio de los aliados ha desaparecido. En un momento de aparente triunfo de la ideología del bloque occidental durante la Guerra Fría –el " fin de la historia " de Fukuyama o " nuevo orden mundial " de George H. W. Bush–, la Alianza se considera cada vez más un instrumento de proyección de las normas occidentales hacia los antiguos miembros del bloque soviético (Gheciu, 2008). Se parte así de una visión acorde con la teoría de la " paz democrática " , donde esta forma de gobierno va unida a la ausencia de guerra entre sus miembros. ...
... Esto supone un cambio en su concepción de la seguridad, que afecta incluso a la interpretación de la cláusula de defensa colectiva, hasta entonces entendida como respuesta a una agresión militar por parte de terceros estados. Al transformar sus misiones, la OTAN modifica también la percepción de su propia identidad como comunidad política: el " otro " frente al que se define y al que excluye para protegerse ya no son los estados dictatoriales potencialmente agresivos, sino las redes no estatales que emplean el terrorismo como arma (Gheciu, 2008). Así, la frontera identitaria se desplaza desde el eje " democracia/no democracia " al eje " estados desarrollados/islamismo radical " . ...
La OTAN no se ha adaptado suficientemente al nuevo entorno de seguridad. Una interpretación reduccionista de su identidad como comunidad occidental entra en contradicción con el actual escenario europeo y global, en el que la mayoría de las amenazas son compartidas por miembros y no miembros de la Alianza. El proceso de ampliación ha contribuido a consolidar las fronteras de la OTAN y sus candidatos como línea de exclusión política, deteriorando las relaciones con terceros estados, como Rusia, sin obtener a cambio un aumento sustancial de la seguridad militar. Es necesario reconciliar las distintas identidades de la organización, partiendo del concepto de indivisibilidad de la seguridad surgido al final de la Guerra Fría, y crear estructuras más flexibles, incluyendo a todos los actores europeos que puedan contribuir a la lucha contra las amenazas reales.
... United States), 2. Pluralistic community -created by formally independent states (e.g. the European Union). Th e European Union is considered as the most prosperous example of security community and the reason for that is democratic peace that exist within the EU (Goodby, Buwalda and Trenin, 2002;Cohen and Mihalka, 2001). ...
... Neoliberal norms have served to legitimize the "outsourcing" of functions that were previously seen as falling within the purview of the state, and the partial commodification of securityleading to a situation in which, at least within certain limits, security becomes a service to be bought in the marketplace and a commodity capable of being exported as a set of technical capabilities, knowledge, and skills. 8 The growing presence and importance of private security actors is also linked to the growing emphasis on prevention and risk management in the face of the uncertainties of the late modern world (Beck 1999(Beck , 2004Coker 2002;Gheciu 2008;Ericson and Haggerty 1997). According to Beck, the current international concern with risk is largely a product of globalization, and a related sense of vulnerability in being part of a world system in which old protections (usually provided by nation-states) are increasingly becoming obsolete. ...
... regional organizations across the world (Gheciu 2008;Beyer 2010;González Serrano 2014). Security priorities vary across different regions, and each region generates its own dynamics of power and security. ...
Latin American security is still viewed through a Cold War lens. Yet, the regional scenario has changed since then and is characterized by developments like the disengagement of the United States, the emergence of ‘regional powers’, the creation of ever more multilateral security institutions, and new interpretations of the concepts of regionalism and regional integration. We argue that we cannot understand the management of security challenges without accounting for regional and global power shifts and political dynamics. Therefore, the introductory chapter presents an analytical framework to assess the impact of global and regional power shifts on the regional governance of specific security challenges such as interstate disputes, internal political violence, terrorism, drug-trafficking, and illegal migration. It will also give an outlook on how the different contributions substantiate our argument.
... Neoliberal norms have served to legitimize the "outsourcing" of functions that were previously seen as falling within the purview of the state, and the partial commodification of securityleading to a situation in which, at least within certain limits, security becomes a service to be bought in the marketplace and a commodity capable of being exported as a set of technical capabilities, knowledge, and skills. 8 The growing presence and importance of private security actors is also linked to the growing emphasis on prevention and risk management in the face of the uncertainties of the late modern world (Beck 1999(Beck , 2004Coker 2002;Gheciu 2008;Ericson and Haggerty 1997). According to Beck, the current international concern with risk is largely a product of globalization, and a related sense of vulnerability in being part of a world system in which old protections (usually provided by nation-states) are increasingly becoming obsolete. ...
At first glance, scholars and practitioners seeking to understand the transformation of the field of security in post-Communist Europe might be tempted to interpret developments in those countries in terms of a straightforward evolution leading to the establishment of Western-style liberal-democratic arrangements. From that perspective, processes of liberalization and European integration – involving the accession of most Central/East European countries to the EU and NATO – necessarily involved the creation of new types of public actors that are distinct from the (also newly created) private domain of activity. In contrast to the abusive behavior characteristic of the Communist era, we are told, the new public actors are engaged in the provision of domestic security in ways that conform to liberal-democratic norms and principles – above all, respect for human rights, transparency, and accountability. Yet, a closer analysis of the dynamics of domestic security provision in former Communist states reveals a far more complicated – and normatively problematic – picture. As I suggest in this chapter, neither the nature of actors engaged in the provision of security as a key public good nor the practices performed by those actors can be understood unless we transcend conventional boundaries between public/private and domestic/international. In this chapter, I focus on developments in Bulgaria and Romania to illustrate my points. However, those developments are part of a broader set of transformations involved in the construction of liberalism in the former Communist bloc. Contemporary security providers in those countries are networks of actors that are not confined to a particular space or institutional domain; rather, they are both global and national, state and non-state, new and yet often with strong connections to old (Communist-era) organizations. Those actors can be conceptualized as particular “communities of practice” that have emerged in a specific historical context – particularly post-Cold War processes of liberalization – and have been shaped by – but have also contributed to – a broader process of redefinition of what and where the “public” is.
... This means that institutions set up for one function, with time, will shift and change to be focused on something else instead, because the conditions that ensure their survival change. NATO's post-Cold War shift towards post-conflict peacekeeping operations in the 1990s is a commonly cited example of this (Williams 2007, Gheciu 2008. This is because the shift notably ran counter to the EU's then-growing humanitarian intervention frameworkde facto meaning many European states had to choose which security institution to support with military involvement, with most choosing the older and more entrenched NATO framework. ...
There is a profound disconnect between the practice and scholarly study of security in Europe. The 2010 Internal Security Strategy added disasters such as forest fires, earthquakes, and floods to the list of European Union (EU) internal security concerns, expanding on the more traditional anxieties over militaries, border protection, and the effects of poverty. This article explores how evolving practices of disaster response, a policy area once separate from EU security discourse, have become part of the EU's wider security provision and with what implications. Based on interviews conducted at the Directorate-General (DG) for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO), it provides a detailed study of three EU disaster response practices - monitoring, training, and information co-ordinating - and their circulation to the wider field of EU internal security provision. It uses this case to outline that new understandings of what it means to “voluntarily co-operate” in European security projects have been radically under-theorized.
... In the post cold War security environment, as NATO confirmed its role in addressing traditional inter-state threats, the sharp increase of intra-state conflict (Eriksson and Wallensteen, 2004) in which the EU has been involved (Gheciu, 2008), in a broader context of evolution of war into warfare (Kaldor, 2006), has uniquely shaped the Union's understanding of its security (Waever, 1998). Therefore, the ESDP developed a focus on human security to ensure the military and civilian means to meet challenges in post-conflict theaters (ESS, 2003). ...
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... The European efforts focus on actors, terrorists, and their supporters – real, accused, and potential ones. Vis-à-vis these actors the EU pursues a strategy of inclusion or exclusion (Gheciu 2008). Individuals who seem to be at risk of being seduced or indoctrinated by terrorists are to be supported in order to ensure that they stay or become non-radical subjects. ...
1. Introduction Taking the risk discourse in social sciences as its conceptual point of departure, this paper will argue that the European Union (EU) constitutes a risk community. It will analyze the EU's policies regarding energy and terrorism as empirical examples. Being rooted in different public and academic discourses, both issues were recently highly politicized and even securitized in Europe. The main aim of the paper will be to identify the risk assessment and specific forms of risk governance in the EU. The paper will proceed in three steps: (1) it will develop the theoretical propositions defining risks and risk governance as characteristic aspects of modern societies and political affairs; (2) this conceptual apparatus will be applied to the study of the EU and delineate a research program on the EU's role in risk governance; (3) and finally, to demonstrate the plausibility of the research program, it will conduct empirical studies on European risk governance in the cases of terrorism and energy security. Beyond its scientific value for the research on European integration, framing the EU as a risk community will attain a twofold outcome: In practical terms this concept can help make European risk management more effective. At a more abstract level, the concept of a risk community may create a new narrative for European integration.
Many international relations scholars argue that private authority and private actors are playing increasingly prominent roles in global governance. This book focuses on the other side of the equation: the transformation of the public dimension of governance in the era of globalization. It analyses that transformation, advancing two major claims: first, that the public is beginning to play a more significant role in global governance, and, second, that it takes a rather different form than has traditionally been understood in international relations theory. The authors suggest that unless we transcend conventional wisdom about the public as a distinct sphere, separate from the private domain, we cannot understand the dynamics and consequences of its apparent return. Using examples drawn from international political economy, international security and environmental governance, they argue that 'the public' should be conceptualized as a collection of culturally-specific social practices.
Many international relations scholars argue that private authority and private actors are playing increasingly prominent roles in global governance. This book focuses on the other side of the equation: the transformation of the public dimension of governance in the era of globalization. It analyses that transformation, advancing two major claims: first, that the public is beginning to play a more significant role in global governance, and, second, that it takes a rather different form than has traditionally been understood in international relations theory. The authors suggest that unless we transcend conventional wisdom about the public as a distinct sphere, separate from the private domain, we cannot understand the dynamics and consequences of its apparent return. Using examples drawn from international political economy, international security and environmental governance, they argue that 'the public' should be conceptualized as a collection of culturally-specific social practices.
Many international relations scholars argue that private authority and private actors are playing increasingly prominent roles in global governance. This book focuses on the other side of the equation: the transformation of the public dimension of governance in the era of globalization. It analyses that transformation, advancing two major claims: first, that the public is beginning to play a more significant role in global governance, and, second, that it takes a rather different form than has traditionally been understood in international relations theory. The authors suggest that unless we transcend conventional wisdom about the public as a distinct sphere, separate from the private domain, we cannot understand the dynamics and consequences of its apparent return. Using examples drawn from international political economy, international security and environmental governance, they argue that 'the public' should be conceptualized as a collection of culturally-specific social practices.
This article analyses the role of the CSCE/OSCE in the shaping of European security. The 1975 Helsinki Final Act put forward a broad understanding of security, implying economic, societal and other non-traditional dimensions of security, which was an innovation at the time, and promoted the idea of comprehensive security. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union were understood then as an opportunity for promoting the “Common European home” principles as put forward by Gorbachev. This new context conferred a renewed sense of belonging to the “wide Europe” with no dividing walls. However, European security evolved differently; with different understandings and perceptions about the “other” taking shape, and creating lines of dissension in the articulation of an inclusive security order sought by the OSCE. The article argues the OSCE had difficulties in adjusting to the new postCold War security context, providing a mixed assessment of the organisation’s role in European security. This is so due to several factors, including the working rules of the organisation, the role and positioning of Russia within and towards the OSCE, and the drawing of the European security architecture around NATO and what this means to the OSCE as a piece in the European security puzzle.
In the final analysis, is the security dilemma inescapable? Or can the protagonists in world politics learn to live with never-ending insecurities and the risk of attack without producing precisely the outcomes that they wish to avoid? This article explores this fundamental problem for International Relations theory by performing a thought experiment, in which it applies lessons from aikido to world politics. A form of Japanese budo, or martial art, aikido provides practitioners with a method for harbouring insecurities, and for dealing with attacks that may or may not occur, by empathically caring for actual and potential attackers. The article builds on practice theory in assuming that any social order is constructed and internalised through practices, but also capable of change through the introduction and dissemination of new practices. Although an unlikely scenario, aikido practice could serve as such a method of fundamental transformation if widely applied in world politics. Empirical examples ranging from international apologies and security cooperation to foreign aid and peacekeeping operations are discussed, suggesting that contemporary world politics is at times already performed in accordance with aikido principles, albeit only imperfectly and partially.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching effects, which are primarily being felt in the functioning of the health service, the organization of social life, and the state of the national economy. It is also worth paying attention to the legal and political consequences which are less obvious and noticeable for average citizens. One of the most important is the change in legislation which entails limiting civil liberties and rights. This article is on empirical proof of how Polish legislation is reducing fundamental rights. The authorities in combatting the pandemic are not using the solutions that appear in the Polish Constitution, but use the non-constitutional form of special laws. The authors, therefore, when discussing the problem refer to US legislation and policy which has the notable example of the Patriot Act which can be interpreted as being a pretext for limiting civil liberties in the name of combating terrorism. As stated, such emergencies as the current pandemic or the threat of terrorism, are used to permanently and significantly reduce civil rights.
This chapter introduces the perspective on juxtaposition to explain how different international organizations cooperate through similar structural departments. Juxtaposition is presented based on an analysis of a relationship between the United Nations (UN) Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) with the Conflict Prevention Center (CPC) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) with regard to how these respective institutional departments deal with their own notion on peacebuilding . Through a qualitative analysis on both the PBF and CPC, juxtaposition enables our comprehension to identify peacebuilding dynamics in both organizations and how the UN and the OSCE collectively design strategies aiming peace.
In this chapter, the concept of ‘molecularization of threat’ is introduced as the main feature of the post-9/11 era. Two devastating wars in the last twenty years (Afghanistan and Iraq) stemmed as a response to the action of terrorist groups. The War on Terror has become the legitimization for the resort to force at the domestic and international levels. In Syria, the repression exerted by the Assad regime led to civil war and then to the internationalization of the conflict. The War on Terror changed the Mediterranean Sea, turning it from the ‘American lake’ into the logistic rear of American power projection in the Middle East. The Mediterranean has become Europe’s weak link, the porous wall for the migration flows that the European countries refused to manage in a humane, common, and organized way. The ‘securitization of the migration issue’ was a complete failure, contributing to the conflation of the migration issue and the terrorist threat. The European policy toward Islam and Islamist radicalization was another failure, making the EU more vulnerable to the attacks perpetrated by ‘lone wolves’, pledging allegiance to Al-Qaeda and ISIS/IS and the main furnace of Jihadist foreign fighters.
Scholars and practitioners are increasingly attentive to contestation against symbols and institutions underpinning international order(s). Yet International Relations scholarship can benefit from greater understanding of ways in which contestation interacts with salient dimensions of social status in specific international organizations (IOs). Drawing on evidence from the history of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with a focus on democratic governance and human rights, this article analyzes status-related contestation as a significant, yet under-examined type of contestation in multilateral diplomacy. Status-related contestation conveys dissatisfaction about symbols, institutions, and actors which reinforce socially significant divisions that place a state (or group of states) at a social disadvantage in a particular multilateral venue. International organizations provide unique social contexts which affect the content of contestation. Building on scholarship in social psychology, constructivism, and status hierarchies in world politics, the article analyzes the evolution of a dimension (or basis) of social status in the OSCE and illustrates that, beyond domestic and material interests, state representatives communicate social identity-related concerns through language, for example, that expresses discontent with dividing lines, unfairness, or (dis)respect, in attempting to minimize negative social identities in multilateral organizations.
The Legal Framework of the OSCE - edited by Mateja Steinbrück Platise May 2019
In any multilateral setting, some state representatives weigh much more heavily than others. Practitioners often refer to this form of diplomatic hierarchy as the ‘international pecking order’. This book is a study of international hierarchy in practice, as it emerges out of the multilateral diplomatic process. Building on the social theories of Erving Goffman and Pierre Bourdieu, it argues that diplomacy produces inequality. Delving into the politics and inner dynamics of NATO and the UN as case studies, Vincent Pouliot shows that pecking orders are eminently complex social forms: contingent yet durable; constraining but also full of agency; operating at different levels, depending on issues; and defined in significant part locally, in and through the practice of multilateral diplomacy.
What are the deepest implications of this new historic era for NATO’s civilisational referent? Within its post-Cold War reinvention, NATO’s identity has remained essentially the same regarding its representations of time. The Alliance’s constant will to adapt to, and awareness of, change shapes expectations and dispositions (habiti) about what NATO is willing to do to protect North-Atlantic communities from whatever unknown threats. Those new forms of socialisation consist of new ways of behaving for partners and candidates to membership, as they also entail new interdependent relationships. The willingness to belong to NATO as a security community draws on the symbolic power of past memories and the fear of the loss of love as an ontological need for security. As a consequence, post-Cold War NATO set new rules of civilised behaviour, so that civilised identities could be attuned, developing into a civilising security community.
To what extent has NATO as a security community been influenced by the Individualisation of Security as another stage of the civilising process? As a normative transformation of international security, the Individualisation of Security is very significant for the Alliance, for it complements and serves the purpose of its institutional reinvention after the Cold War. Fundamentally, the Individualisation of Security also serves the sustainability of NATO’s civilisational referent. The role of the individual referent of security is assessed in NATO’s military operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, by focusing on particular aspects of each mission: the referent object of security, the justification advanced for the intervention, their formal mandate, their objectives, their normative principles, their self-declared results, always in the light of NATO’s civilisational narrative.
This chapter proposes to individualise the approach of civilisation through a set of different conceptual and theoretical tools, mostly derived from sociology and psychoanalysis, especially the notion of “civilised habitus”. What does civilisation consists of, and how is it related to conceptions of security? How does civilisation contribute to security? Narrowing down the idea of civilisation to individuals, it is argued, is a missing link for an improved understanding of the unconscious dimension of international security. This approach materialises into the conceptualisation of a Civilised Subject of Security, framed within the unconscious processes that compose the ontological relation between civilisation and security. Security, it is claimed, is the ultimate value giving an ontological sense to the process of civilisation, for its deep and metaphysical bonding character in human societies. In short, a civilised subject of the West has been forcefully a secure subject.
As civilisation within NATO is commonly portrayed in monolithic and essentialist terms, important interpretive spaces remain regarding the idea of civilisation and its implications for security. The predominance of short duration perspectives veils the role of individuals, their needs, perceptions and behaviour, for understanding the relationship between civilisation and international security. Civilisation and security need to be reconciled through a more comprehensible, humanising, approach that incorporates the role of unconscious forms of knowledge and social duration. To that end, a long duration approach is needed, one that allows for the historicisation and genealogical development of the idea of civilisation that is at the core of the Alliance, and interconnects human needs, narratives, and security arrangements throughout its evolution.
This book analyses the way in which the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) defines the West after the end of the Cold War and the demise of its constitutive Other, the Soviet Union. The book offers a theoretical critique of liberal approaches to security, and focuses on NATO's construction of four geo-cultural spaces that are the sites of particular dangers or threats, which cause these spaces to be defined as the enemy of the West. While this forges a collective Western identity, effectively achieved in the 1990s, the book also includes an analysis of NATO's involvement in the War on Terror - an involvement in which the Alliance fails to define a coherent West, thereby undermining the very source of its long-standing political cohesion. Contributing to theoretical development within Critical Security Studies, Behnke draws on a variety of approaches to provide an analytical framework that examines the political as well as philosophical problems associated with NATO's performance of security and identity, concluding that in the modern era of globalized, non-territorialized threats and dangers, NATO's traditional spatial understanding of security is no longer effective given the new dynamics of Western security. NATO's Security Discourse after the Cold War will be of great interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Critical Security Studies and International Organizations.
In today’s world, a significant portion of international security politics is conducted through multilateral channels, often from the halls of international organisations such as the United Nations or NATO. This article theorises and empirically documents the production, reproduction, and contestation of local diplomatic hierarchies that practitioners often call ‘international pecking orders’. According to conventional wisdom in IR, the sources of international hierarchies are primarily structural, stemming from the interstate distribution of (material) capabilities. Yet the growing prevalence of multilateral diplomacy in the governance of international security generates distinctive forms of social stratification organised around a struggle for diplomatic competence. As they pursue their instructions and manage security politics, state representatives posted to international organisations make use of the opportunities and constraints of a given situation and compete for rank through the display of practical know-how. The article illustrates this process by looking at how a key set of multilateral practices lend themselves to pecking order dynamics, from
esprit de corps
to reporting through brokering. By taking the multilateralisation of security politics seriously, the article shows that international hierarchy, far from an unobservable reality, is actually part of parcel of each and every practice that makes the world go round.
This book explores the scope and limits of what is appropriate for regional action in the maintenance of peace and security. It offers a comparative study of legal regulation of the use of force in the maintenance of peace and security of different security regions in the context of the UN system and general international law. The book examines the post-Cold War legal documents and practice of the regional organizations of six security regions of the world (Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, the Russian sphere of influence and the Euro-Atlantic region), and in doing so offers a unique international and comparative perspective towards regional characteristics that may influence the possibility for coherent action in a UN context.
Jacqueline Best argues that the 1990s changes in IMF, World Bank and donor policies, towards what some have called the ‘Post-Washington Consensus,’ were driven by an erosion of expert authority and an increasing preoccupation with policy failure. Failures such as the Asian financial crisis and the decades of despair in sub-Saharan Africa led these institutions to develop governance strategies designed to avoid failure: fostering country ownership, developing global standards, managing risk and vulnerability and measuring results. In contrast to the structural adjustment era when policymakers were confident in their solutions, this is an era of provisional governance, in which key actors are aware of the possibility of failure even as they seek to inoculate themselves against it. Best considers the implications of this shift, asking if it is a positive change and whether it is sustainable. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Books Online and via Knowledge Unlatched.
This book constitutes a critique of the illusions of globalists and cosmopolitans, especially the idea that a new world order based on universal principles of justice and rights, and devoid of nations, states, and power struggles, is possible. It presents the argument that particular political communities are an ethically desirable and historically inevitable feature of collective life (Chs. 4-5). However, the ethical principles that govern them, especially self-determination and sovereignty, require reformulation. The book presents an argument that nation-states violate the principle of self-determination, an idea best understood as justifying minority rights and patriotic attachments, not nationalism (Chs. 1-3). Self-determination is also understood as entailing a new concept of ecosovereignty. This idea is meant to capture the need for a new understanding of political community that can protect and further the rights of indigenous peoples, and the needs of ecological regions for a sustainable form of development and security from environmental destruction (Chs. 6-8).
Many international relations scholars argue that private authority and private actors are playing increasingly prominent roles in global governance. This book focuses on the other side of the equation: the transformation of the public dimension of governance in the era of globalization. It analyses that transformation, advancing two major claims: first, that the public is beginning to play a more significant role in global governance, and, second, that it takes a rather different form than has traditionally been understood in international relations theory. The authors suggest that unless we transcend conventional wisdom about the public as a distinct sphere, separate from the private domain, we cannot understand the dynamics and consequences of its apparent return. Using examples drawn from international political economy, international security and environmental governance, they argue that 'the public' should be conceptualized as a collection of culturally-specific social practices.
Since 11 September 2001, the ‘Muslim world’ has become a novel religio-culturally defined civilisational frame of reference around which American foreign policy has been partly reoriented and reorganised. In parallel, the ‘Muslim world’, is increasingly becoming, at this historical juncture, a civilisational social fact in international politics by being progressively embedded in, and enacted onto the world by, American foreign policy discourses, institutions, practices, and processes of self-other recognition. This article theoretically understands and explains the causes and consequences of these changes through an engagement with the emerging post-essentialist civilisational analysis turn in International Relations (IR). In particular, the article furthers a constructivist civilisational politics approach that is theoretically, empirically, and methodologically oriented towards recovering and explaining how actors are interpreting, constructing, and reproducing - in this case through particular American foreign policy changes - an international society where intra- and inter-civilisational relations ‘matter’.
This introductory article explores the multiple synergies between international practice theory and diplomatic studies. The timing for this cross-fertilizing exchange could not be better, as the study of diplomacy enters a phase of theorization while practice scholars look to confront the approach to new empirical and analytical challenges. The article first defines diplomacy as a historically and culturally contingent bundle of practices that are analytically alike in their claim to represent a given polity to the outside world. Then the key analytical wagers that practice theory makes are introduced, and debates currently raging in the discipline are briefly reviewed. Next, it is suggested what a practice theory of diplomacy may look like, discussing a variety of existing works through their common objective to explain the constitution of world politics in and through practice. Finally, a few research avenues to foster the dialogue between diplomatic studies and practice theory are outlined, centered on the nexuses of transformation and reproduction, rationality and know-how, and the technical vs. social dimensions of practices -diplomatic or otherwise.
The article will explore the possible emergence of a civilian capacity community in Serbia comprised of Serbian policymakers, researchers and practitioners who are interested in peace support operations and willing to deploy Serbian experts through multilateral organizations such as the European Union, United Nations and the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe. Having recently undergone a security sector reform, Serbia can offer to share relevant experience and expertise with these organizations through secondment or direct hire, in order to support the countries experiencing complex crises or those that are emerging from conflict. Serbian expertise can serve to soften some of the criticism leveled against peace support operations and provide relevant expertise to those in the field.
In response to the uncertain geopolitical environment which confronted it after the end of the Cold War, NATO adopted a strategy of risk management. Two institutions – the Science and Technology Office and Allied Command Transformation – were responsible for translating this policy into practice. By promoting knowledge development, each institution sought to make NATO a more reflexive and responsive organization. Knowledge development became the foundation for a new model of command and control created by two Science and Technology Office working groups. While this model has vast potential, its implementation has been blocked by internal rifts within NATO.
Many international relations scholars argue that private authority and private actors are playing increasingly prominent roles in global governance. This book focuses on the other side of the equation: the transformation of the public dimension of governance in the era of globalization. It analyses that transformation, advancing two major claims: first, that the public is beginning to play a more significant role in global governance, and, second, that it takes a rather different form than has traditionally been understood in international relations theory. The authors suggest that unless we transcend conventional wisdom about the public as a distinct sphere, separate from the private domain, we cannot understand the dynamics and consequences of its apparent return. Using examples drawn from international political economy, international security and environmental governance, they argue that 'the public' should be conceptualized as a collection of culturally-specific social practices.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATOs) changing role was debated in the face of the Strategic Concept adopted in late 2010. Two main roles can be identified in the debate; that of NATO as a defence organisation and a security organisation. The article analyses the implications of these roles for security governance and the Alliance's legitimacy – with emphasis on the novelties associated with the role of NATO as a security organisation. This development suggests an increasing need for security governance, something which is reflected in the debate. However, how for instance decision-making and implementation function in a more fragmented environment is unclear. If NATO develops its role as a security organisation new audiences are introduced that determine its appropriateness and the basis of the Alliance's input and output legitimacy changes.
This article argues that traditional Westphalian powers are increasingly pressured to move beyond Westphalia towards institutionalization of security cooperation and a broader definition of referent objects of security. Focusing on the case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it notes that the Alliance is severely torn between traditional constructions of ‘the self’ and a need for change. Exploring how NATO handles this dilemma, the article examines how the Alliance articulated its constitutive story during the strategic concept process of 2009–10. Four roles are crystallized from the reading of the narrative: the fire-fighter, the watchdog, the good neighbour and the seminar leader. It is argued that NATO will be able to meet the exigencies of the post-Westphalian world more or less effectively depending on how it develops in each of these roles. The article concludes that NATO largely remains Westphalian in its four roles, but the launching of the seminar leader role indicates that it may be preparing a farewell to Westphalia. NATO is a composite actor and tensions between academic, global reformist and traditionalist regional story-lines will prevail. Nevertheless, the globalized threat environment is likely eventually to force NATO to fully recognize the need for a more post-Westphalian approach to security.
The second part of my title - What's in a Name? - is taken from a moment in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet when Juliet briefly imagines that Romeo could be separated from his name, that he could be appreciated for what he is rather than for what he is called: 'Tis but thy name', she laments, 'that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague'. The audience, of course, knows better - as does Juliet herself, although she would prefer to believe otherwise. Thus, while Juliet's immediate answer to the question suggests that the name is unimportant, that what matters are the qualities of the thing to which the name is attached, the unfolding tragedy of Shakespeare's play presents a very different view, showing that some names have substantial social and political significance. Like the play, this paper disputes the answer given by Juliet's fantasy. It does so in the context of academic debate by showing that the use of a name, 'liberalism' in this case, can have significant implications for political and historical analysis. My aim, in fact, is to question conventional academic characterisations of liberalism and to suggest that the adoption of a different usage not only serves to clarify liberal governmental practice - including many of the recent developments which, for want of a better name, tend to be grouped together under the label of neo-liberalism - but also to provide a fuller and more powerful account of the work of central figures in the liberal tradition. Specifically, the characterisations I wish to dispute present liberalism as focused essentially on one or more of the following concerns:
With an enlarged membership and a wide agenda including politico-security matters, economic and environmental issues and human aspects, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) aims at promoting stability and democratisation in its area, fostering good governance. The September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 have prompted the organisation to reinforce its commitments with regard to the prevention of and combat against terrorism, as a primary goal in the pursuit of its main tasks of conflict prevention and management, and post-conflict rehabilitation. The institutional response of the OSCE has been translating its effort to address the new concerns while promoting its founding principles, both at headquarters and in the field. The extent to which the organisation's institutions and commitments are adequate to respond to the new challenges and promote good governance in the OSCE area are analysed. Are the OSCE principles, agreed commitments and elaborated post-September 11 agenda adequate to meet the many uncertainties and to build cooperation and security in the OSCE space? Is the OSCE prepared to respond effectively to the current challenges particularly with regard to Central Asia? Which means and what actions might the organisation pursue in the context of its new agenda? By matching words with action OSCE's contribution to global governance in Central Asia is clarified through assessing its means, activities and adequacy to meet old and new challenges.
This article examines the practices of governance enacted within the framework of the international administration of Kosovo, which was established in 1999. I analyse the complex interplay between power and the liberal-democratic norms around which the UN-led mission defined its role in the province. The international administration exercised significant power in the legal/institutional reconstruction of the province, and in its systematic attempts to socialise Kosovars into accepting Western-based norms of liberal democracy as the only reasonable foundation of their polity. At the same time, however, the norms advocated by the international administration proved to be the source of a certain degree of power for the people of Kosovo. Specifically, those norms provided the framework within which Kosovars were able to criticise the international administration, and to claim the right to greater participation in decisions regarding the province. Over the past couple of years, Kosovo has witnessed the emergence of a shared normative framework within which the international administrators and Kosovar political elites articulate often competitive truth claims about the problems of the province, and mobilise different forms of power in support of those claims.
The explanation of social and political life is a notoriously contentious enterprise, and the Anglo — American discipline of international relations is no exception to the general rule. As with so many other disciplines that have been shaped by the broader ambitions of post-war social science, controversy has occurred largely on the terrain of epistemology. All too often, the more far-reaching epistemological problems, posed by those who seek to understand what is involved in making knowledge claims about social and political processes, have been pushed aside in favor of more restricted concerns about method and research techniques. Narrowing the range of potential dispute in this manner has undoubtedly enhanced an appearance of professional solidarity. But it has also obscured many of the more troublesome and, in my view, more important fractures visible to anyone now canvassing contemporary debates about the general nature and possibility of social and political enquiry.
This article explores the potential of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to be an agent of socialization in the five Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. In drawing on both rationalist and constructivist approaches to international socialization it is argued that the organization's inability to provide tangible material and political incentives as well as Central Asia's indigenous culture and institutions impede successful socialization dynamics. Moreover, the power-oriented elites consider the bulk of the OSCE activities to be a threat to their grasp on power, not only making socialization almost impossible but also making OSCE-Central Asian cooperation increasingly difficult to sustain. Recommendations to increase the OSCE's influence in the region concentrate on a better understanding of the cost-benefit calculation of Central Asian governments as well as a more responsive attitude to traditional institutions in the OSCE's approach toward the region.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is one of the most important, but least well known, of the security institutions in the pan-European region since the end of the Cold War. This essay argues that the OSCE has a vital role to play in providing for European security that is not supplied by any other multilateral institution NATO, the European Union, the Western European Union, the Council of Europe, or the Commonwealth of Independent States. The OSCE is the only organization that bridges the military and the human dimensions of security. It plays an especially important role in conflict prevention and in trying to seek negotiated solutions in regions that have experienced violent conflict since 1989. The OSCE is most effective when it works cooperatively with other multilateral institutions in the region, and it constitutes a necessary part of the network of interlocking institutions that have created a trans-European security regime since the end of the Cold War.International Politics (2003) 40, 75100. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800009
The changingstructure of European order poses, for any student of international relations,some fundamental questions about the evolution of world politics. Concepts of European order and of the Europeanstate system are, after all, central to accepted ideas of internationalrelations. Out of the series of conflicts and negotiationsdeveloped ideas and practices which still structure thecontemporary global state system: the equality of states; international law asregulating relations among sovereign and equal states; domestic sovereignty asexclusive, without external oversight of the rules of domestic order. The state system, modern scholars now agree, did not springfully-clothed from the Treaty of Westphalia at the close of the ThirtyYears' War; it evolved through a succession of treaties and conferences,from 1555 to 1714. It remains acceptable, nevertheless, to describe the Europeanstate order as built around the Westphalian system.
The end of the Cold War has profoundly transformed Europe's security situation. Although traditional security issues remain important, the most immediate threats to security since 1989 have originated not from relations between states, but from instability and conflict within states that has threatened to spill over into the interstate arena. States' efforts to shape and control this new security environment have resulted in a unique hybrid arrangement containing elements of traditional alliances, great power concerts, state and community building, and collective security.