Collective Security Communities - A New Global Order Among Chaos and Coherence?
Collective Security Communities - A New Global Order Among Chaos and Coherence?
Collective Security Communities - A New Global Order Among Chaos and Coherence?
After the end of cold war and the bipolar system the world experienced 25 years of mutation toward
a new world order, that cannot be defined yet. The American hegemony, called unipolar world at the
beginning, has not been balanced by any other great power in this time (the famous balance of power, the
main assumption of realism has not been realized yet). The international system has been moving towards
something new that has been difficult to define. Sometimes scholars (like Ian Bremmer 1) defined it “zero-
polar” world, others (like Richard Haas2), “no-polar world”, others (like Fareed Zakaria3) multipolar world.
We don’t know where we are going towards, but what we know is that the future of the world order will
have to deal with national security issues in a new way with respect to the old Balance of Power and
This paper builds on the concept of ‘security communities’, first introduced by Karl Deutsch in the
1950s, arguing that ‘Collective Security Communities’ will play an important role, even if not an
exclusive one, in shaping the future global order. The birth of several potential Collective Security
Communities in the last two decades, in particular in Asia, demonstrates that socialization is increasing
in global regions even if we don’t know if also among regions. The paper therefore uses the constructivist
framework, in particular the communitarian approach of Emanuel Adler, to analyze regional security
communities in formation around the globe, from the more integrated as the Organization of American
States (or OAS) to the more pluralistic as the Association of the South East Asian Nations (or ASEAN),
from the more established like the EU to the more in fieri as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (or
SCO) explaining how through international community of practices and shared knowledge the
international system is mutating, with a cooperative regional trend counteracting the also present
1
Bremmer, Ian. Every Nation for Itself: What Happens When No One Leads the World. Portfolio Trade, 2013
2
Haas, Richard. The age of nonpolarity. Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008.
3
Zakaria, Fareed. The Post American world. W. W. Norton & Company, 2009
1
forces of hegemony and rivalry. The main question for the future will be to understand if these
Collective Security Communities will socialize enough to increase the trust and the interdependence among
them, creating the world security community that UN was unable to build, or on the contrary they will
represent blocks one against the other, recreating the rivalry of an anarchic world.
This analysis is not based on an idealist view, that dreams of a world government to avoid the
anarchy of international system, even if ethical and moral issues towards a new world order will be more
and more important in the chaos of the post-bipolar era and the “new globalization” (after older types of
globalization like the Silk Road or the European colonization of the Americas). Neither is it based on a
neoliberal institutionalist view, even if it is important to take into account the power of international
institutions and norms, in encouraging cooperation and shaping global order. Instead it uses a constructivist
lens that sees the presence of a plurality of forces, not only rational politics, power or systemic forces, but
values, identities and social processes that represent transnational immaterial forces able to influence the
way states relates among them and shape the world order. It is close in some way to the English School,
which focuses on the norms of society of states but admits balancing behavior (like neorealists) as we are
The paper uses a constructivist approach because it believes that rationalist theories are more
useful when they are combined with constructivist elements, like the importance of shared knowledge,
social practices and identities. Analyzing the role that communities and collective identities, and in this
case Collective Security Communities, play in international relations can help our theoretical and empirical
understanding of world politics. We could say that to Liberalism, Constructivism adds consideration of the
effects identities have on both formal and informal institutions; to Realism, it adds consideration of the
effects of ideational rather than material structures (for example the effects of identity on actor interests);
and to Idealism it adds considerations that ideas can be studied both as a ‘result’ and as a ‘prescription’.
Obviously all that is immaterial cannot be quantified so it is difficult to enter in the human mind (and
especially in the mind of social scientists that struggle to follow the colleagues of natural sciences on the
field of quantification) but if we want to overcome the positivism that lead only to determinism, and the
2
rationalism that lead only to materiality, we need the social sciences to open to new models of thinking, as
Introduction
By and large two elements influence the decision making of the states in their foreign policy for
security arrangements: the individual interest and the collective interest. Balancing these two interests is
the difficult task of modern states, which have to build a new world order and at the same time maintain
In a multilateral international system, as the one we are living today, we have many global
challenges that require global strategies for collective interest. Current and future global trends (that
can become also global threats) could affect the decision making of the states towards collective and
cooperative security approaches, counteracting the still present self-interested isolated hegemonic vision of
security, typical of the past bipolar or unipolar worlds. For example the current trend of the international
system towards polycentrism and redistribution of power seems to do that, but also the military trend
towards wars fought with terrorist actions and proxy wars instead of traditional wars require more
cooperative and collective approaches to security. These trends seems to help the international system in
its current mutation not only to shift the definition of security but also to shift the way states relate to create
security and global order. As there cannot be a way for the state to escape the world and leave in an isolated
The self-interest of the sovereign states is surely still present, as we still live in an anarchic
international system (even if Alexander Wendt reminds us that ‘anarchy is what states make of it’4) and
nation states have to exercise self-help to reach their national security (at least in order to guarantee survival
and progress). But self-interest in a globalized world, is becoming more and more entangled with global
and collective interest, and the level of this interrelation is what also may influence the states in their
4
Wendt, Alexander, Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics, International
Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2, Spring, 1992.
3
decisions today. This doesn’t mean that states are not rational anymore, on the contrary it is because they
are also rational actors that they can understand that today often ‘our’ interest and the interest of the ‘rest’
are overlapping and this is something that they have to take into account in their decision making. So
cooperation will increase and collective interest will be more important in the future. Diplomacy will flank
power politics and it is already doing that if we look at the diplomatic approach that the US and the West
Does this mean that competition among states will be replaced by collaboration and
convergence in the future as some scholars argue?5 Not necessarily because if ‘clash of civilization’ is
not considered anymore a valid narrative in international relations, its opposite view, the global natural
convergence towards a world government6, is neither convincing so much as states will still compete and
conflict among them in the near future, in particular among global regions, for resources and power. The
point though is how we will deal with future conflicts, with a communitarian approach or with an individual
one? With collective defense or collective security? With international institutions or with informal
alliances for ‘good enough global governance’ as someone argues?7 I believe that multilateral and collective
approaches could represent one of the main strategies for the future world order. Therefore the most
important question to ask is how the self and collective interest are formed. This is the crucial issue
because it is the process of this formation that make states prioritize one or the other interest and so one or
We know that in international relations the agents and the system influence each other as the
interests and goals of the agents are influenced by the structure of the system and vice versa. But besides
this the interests of the agents are also influenced by their culture, their history, their identity (just
5
Mahbubani Kishore, The Great Convergence: Asia, The West And The Logic Of One World, Public Affairs, 2013
6
Wendt, Alexander, Why a world state is inevitable: teleology and the logic of anarchy, University of Chicago,
January 2003.
7
Stewart, Patrick, The unruled world. The case for good enough global governance, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, N. 1,
Jan/Feb 2014.
4
look at the importance of ontological security for the states8) and also by the relationships that these agents
have among themselves. In the past there was not much socialization among the agents of the international
system (interpreted mainly as nation states) because these agents were living in a quite isolated world
economically and politically (if we except the diplomatic exchanges that for centuries states had among
them) and when they had deeper interactions they often went to conflict and war for their self-interest. But
nowadays the nation states are more and more interrelated, they live in ‘epistemic communities’9,
communities with meanings, and so they influence each other like human beings do. This interaction
actually shifts gradually, even if slowly, their preferences and interests towards more cooperative
approaches because the constant and repeated contact can reduce mistrust and fears typical of isolation (see
the Iterated Prisoner Dilemma theory for example10). Besides this as now we live in an issue driven
international system more than a structure driven one (as some security studies argues11) the national
interest can be closer to the global interest and so cooperative and collective security will have more space
of action.
Therefore this paper, following the constructivist approach, argues that being states a
reflection of human beings they may have fears and mistrust typical of human nature (as realists argue)
but they also share their fears and their knowledge through socialization, practices and habits, creating a
common knowledge and understanding that influence their decision making. So, together with theorists
8
The ontological security is the security of the self. As individuals have a need of continuity, order and meaning in
regard to their own life (Giddens, 1999) also states have this need besides physical security. This also influence the
perceptions and interests of the states (look for example at Russia attitude or North Korea now that they feel their
ontological security threatened by their decline). See Jennifer Mitzen, Ontological Security in World Politics: State
Identity and the Security Dilemma, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 12 no. 3, September 2006
9
Epistemic communities are networks of professionals that influence policy makers on different issues and play a
role in IR in advocating for policy innovation across countries and so for cooperation. See: Adler, Emanuel, The
Emergence of Cooperation: National Epistemic Communities and the International Evolution of the Idea of Nuclear
Arms Control, International Organization. Vol. 46, N. 1, MIT Press, Winter, 1992. I use this definition for the
communities of states too, as states are becoming more and more social actors facilitating the construction of new
shared knowledge, practices and also new epistemologies among them.
10
Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, 1984. In the Iterated Prisoner Dilemma the repetition
of the meetings and so the creation of a shadow of the future make actors cooperate more, overcoming the Prisoner
Dilemma and so also create more stable security regimes.
11
Buzan Barry, Hansen Lene, The evolution of international security studies, Cambridge UP, 2009.
5
like Emanuel Adler, we can say that besides material power and structures also shared knowledge
and practices influence states preferences, in both agents behaviors and systemic outcomes12, in
Security arrangements among states can take mainly two paths: a ‘collective defense’ path (in some
way more similar to the old alliances of the Balance of Power) and a ‘collective security’ path (with more
regional or global institutions)13. In the collective defense approach the member states protect each other
from an external threat: if one state is attacked the other members will use the force to defend it (NATO,
with its article 5, is a clear example of collective defense regime). Collective security instead see the states
stand for a shared goal that is to solve the future conflicts peacefully and following all the same rules, so if
one of the states resort to violence the others will act to protect themselves from the internal threat.
Collective security is an idea with a long history (already the Peace of Westphalia was influenced
by this concept, also at the base of Kantian ‘perpetual peace’) but its realization has not been easy until now
and instead quite problematic, also because, as this paper argues, of the low level of socialization among
states in the past. The failure of the League of Nations is there to demonstrate it and also the difficult work
done by the UN in the 70 years of its existence. Actually after the end of the Cold War there were hopes
that requirements for collective security would have better satisfied by the UN and the UN would no longer
be paralyzed by the bi-polarity14. Unfortunately in last twenty five years the veto power has still blocked
the UN efficiency as even if Cold War was not there anymore, rivalry was still present at the UN Security
Council. Besides this the UN reflect a world that is not there anymore, and the West, that is holding the
power in the UN and in the other international institutions born after WWII (namely IMF and WB), is not
12
Adler, Emanuel, Communitarian International Relations, Routledge, 2005.
13
Arnodl Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, John Hopkins Press, 1962.
14
Andrew Bennet and Joseph Lepgold, Reinventing Collective Security after the Cold War and the Gulf Conflict,
Political Science Quarterly, N. 2, summer 1993.
6
willing to redistribute that power to the new rising powers of the world from the Global South, blocking in
But the most important problem is that the more countries agree to the sets of rules of a collective
security agreement like the UN, the greater is the legitimacy of the organization and its actions, but at the
same time the efficacy of the institution is difficult to be realized with greater numbers of actors, which is
why collective security may work better in specific regions, through “Collective Security
Communities” (CSC) than globally, through a collective security universal institution like UN with
But how CSC are formed and how their practices can evolve through the socialization of their
member states? Adler and Barnett, in their famous book15, argued that ‘security communities’ can exist at
the international level and that states in these communities can develop a pacific disposition towards
comprised of sovereign states whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change’ –
where peaceful change means ‘neither the expectation of nor the preparation for organized violence as a
The first to talk about security communities was Karl Deutsch in 195717. The Czech political
scientist defined a security community giving the example of the North-Atlantic area, where states have
come to the agreement that common social problems must and can be resolved by processes of “peaceful
change”. Differently from the concept of security community coined by Deutsch (who considered the
transactions as the most important indicator of regional integration) Adler and Barnett based their
concept on constructivist theory and so on shared identities, values and meanings that build
reciprocal long-term interest. As we know constructivism believes that structures, including international
structures, are made of material as well as normative forces, therefore are socially constructed, are made of
15
Adler, Emanuel and Barnett, Michael, Security Communities, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
16
Ibid, pp. 30, 34.
17
Deutsch, Karl W. et al, Political community and the North Atlantic area; international organization in the light of
historical experience, Princeton University Press, 1957.
7
shared knowledge and practices, and so in our “international anarchical society” (as the definition of Hedley
Bull18), even anarchy “is what we make of it”19. Therefore we construct our reality based on our experiences
and socialization and not only on material power or rational thinking. Adler and Pouliot argues that
socialization happens through practices that create a shared knowledge and international practices are
“competent performances”20, not only actions but actions based on competences, repeated with some
The critic of realism to constructivism is exactly related with this as realism doesn’t believe that
socialization really exist among states and if it exists has no effects on their preferences. Mearsheimer for
example believes that even institutions are a reflection of the distribution of power, based on self-interested
calculations and not an important cause of peace.21 The issue though is that realists principally look at
historical records (as for mostly of their assumptions) and they have flaws and shortcomings in foreseeing
future events that can be different from the past. For example the inability of explaining realities like
globalization and its consequent socialization, not so much common in the past, clearly shows their limits
and the risk of self-fulfilling prophecies as the Thomas theorem teaches us22.
Going back to the concept of security communities we can say that their presence not necessarily
excludes the presence of the other security arrangements that exist in the current international system: the
Balance of Power or the collective defense system. Actually, as again Adler explains23, they can also
coexist: in Eastern Europe signs of BOP showing its face again are evident with the recent actions of
18
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, Columbia UP, NYC: 1977/2002
19
Alexander Wendt, Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics, International
Organization, Vol. 46, N. 2 Spring 1992.
20
Emanuel Adler and Vincent Puliot, International Practices, International Theory, 2011, 3:1, 1-36
21
John Mearsheimer, The false promise of international institutions, International Security, 1994/1995, Vol. 19, N.
3, pp. 5-49
22
Thomas theorem is a theory of sociology formulated in 1928 according to which “If men define situations as real,
they are real in their consequences”. It stays at the base of Thomas Merton’s concept of self-fulfilling prophecies.
23
Emanuel Adler and Patricia Greve, When security community meets balance of power: overlapping regional
mechanisms of security governance, Review of International Studies, Vol 35, supplement 1, February 2009, p. 59-84
8
Russia24, but the presence of a security community like the EU is also evident and so the two things can
overlap. The same in East Asia where inter-states security challenges are serious and where power balancing
and cooperative security coexist as we see from balancing measures of Japan or China and at the same time
Adler and Barnett described also the typical evolution of a security community from nascent to
ascendant to mature, where a nascent security community meets the basic expectations of peaceful
change, an ascendant one has increasingly dense networks and new institutions, while a mature security
transnational elements (in particular in the so defined “tightly-coupled” security communities, respect to
the “loosely-coupled”26). In this paper therefore a “mature tightly-coupled” security community will be
defined a “Collective Security Community” (CSC) while other security communities like ASEAN or OAS
cannot be defined yet “mature tightly-coupled” security communities and so CSCs already formed.
But how do states arrive to form security communities according to Adler and Barnett? First
of all there has to be some causes, which push states to form alliances, what they define “precipitating
conditions” like an external threat, economic, migration or demographic changes etc. Then, when the states
start to coordinate for mutual advantage through regular contacts (platforms, summits etc.) with a ‘voice
opportunity’ for all the members, they start to develop “mutual trust and collective identity”. This because
the states increase the knowledge they have of each other’s intentions but also each other’s interpretation
of reality and so they start to share these interpretations building a collective identity. Finally, through
shared knowledge states create common norms that have to be respected as they build legitimacy for the
24
France and Germany few years ago wanted to avoid the entrance of Ukraine in NATO in order to maintain the
balance of power within Europe and between Europe and Russia, as reported by Adler and Greve (2009), but today
the battle for Ukraine seems to make clear that both Russia and EU wants to control this crucial pivot state.
25
Katsumata Hiro, East Asian Regional Security Governance: Bilateral Hard Balancing and ASEAN’s Informal
Cooperative Security, paper presented at the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention, 2010.
26
Adler, Emanuel and Barnett, Michael, Security Communities, Cambridge University Press, 1998, P. 56
9
community. And with them the “expectation of peaceful change” is created and the security community
born27.
So if this is the case we can see how the process of socialization stays at the base of the creation of
these communities as there is no shared knowledge and construction of common norms if there is no
socialization before. A groundbreaking consequence of this reasoning is that if CSC exist today, as
they exist, we can fairly say that socialization, before anarchy, is the primary feature of the
international system as otherwise these communities should not even exist. Obviously there are states
that, for their history, culture or geopolitical position, socialize more and others that socialize less, but they
all in some way do socialize, in particular today in a globalized world. So anarchy is what reduces the
natural socialization of the states not the opposite way around, as in non-anarchic systems, namely nation
states systems, socialization of domestic actors have its plain space, while the lack of a world government
in the international system doesn’t allow the states to connect and associate more among themselves.
Socialization is natural because the states are expression also of individuals, not only of structures,
and as such they reflect the human behaviors and needs, among which also belonging and integration. So
we could define states as mainly social entities more than material ones, like human beings are mainly
social animals, before than material ones (they exist in relation to others more than alone) and their different
ability to ‘participate’ is what affect their final decisions in their relations. From this assumption originates
also the fact that if states are allowed to socialize more, in regional forums, meeting, councils etc., the level
of trust increase and as collective security is based on trust (as clearly the ‘security dilemma’ demonstrates)
if socialization rise the trust, it rise also the possibility of collective security. Therefore CSCs as such works
as “learning communities” building a virtuous circle that shape identities towards more socialization, trust,
27
Adler, Emanuel and Barnett, Michael, Security Communities, Cambridge University Press, 1998, P. 38
10
But what are some examples of CSC around the world? The first examples that comes to mind
when we talk about CSC is the EU. The case of the EU remains the most important example of regional
CSC and, with its Common Security and Defense Policy and the Permanent Structured Cooperation in
Defense, it finds itself at an advanced stage of collective security. We could say that it represent the “mature
stage” in the Adler and Barnett definition, with a “tightly-coupled” CSC but also is developing towards
something even stronger, as a supranational organism. The EU obviously has a level of socialization and
shared knowledge very high, with common institutions but also common identity and shared values: with
the passing of time since WWII from a “community of practices” it became a “community of habit”, as Ted
Hopf28 would have said. So we can affirm that the EU is the CSC par excellence. But the EU would have
never reached this stage if it was not for its process of integration among so many different countries. Hard
power and NATO presence would have been not enough for this CSC to born without the forces of
socialization.
ASEAN the “Association of Southeast Asian Nations” and OAS the “Organization of American
States” are also other interesting cases where socialization has been very important. Still far from having
the level of institutionalization and integration of EU, nevertheless ASEAN is a political and economic
organization of ten countries, representing 5 religions and not only one like the EU, that try to increase
economic growth, social progress, but also protection of regional peace and stability. While some scholar
like Katzenstein argue29, the fact of not having a strong sense of collective identity made the multilateralism
in Southeast Asia more difficult than in Europe, others like Acharya30 say that ASEAN can in reality be a
real model of CSC, being more multilateral than the EU model. Therefore notwithstanding the fact that
ASEAN faces serious challenges (not least to decide if accept membership of China, same problem of the
28
On the concepts of communities of practices and habits see: Hopf, Ted, The logic of habit in International Relations,
European Journal of International Relations, December 2010 16, 539-561, p. 539
29
Hemmer, Christopher and Katzenstein, Peter J. Why is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism,
and the Origins of Multilateralism. International Organization 56, 3, Summer 2002, pp. 575–607
30
Acharya, Amitav. Constructing a security community in Southeast Asia. Routledge, 2001. Acharya, Amitav. The
making of Southeast Asia: IR of a region. Cornell, 2013.
11
EU with Turkey or Ukraine) the fact remain that this association represent an ascendant (having
There are two important features in ASEAN: first it born not based on an external threat but on an
internal one: the threat of intrastate conflicts, civil wars and rebellions caused by autonomist and communist
movements in the states of Southeast Asia, as Acharya explains in his interesting book31. Secondly ASEAN
was created by states that were not liberal democracies like in the EU, and so the foundational interest was
not the economic integration but the goal of creating a regional social community, the so called “ASEAN
way”, making of it an interesting cased of an ‘imagined community’ before than a community based on
interdependence and transactions. Even if, as Acharya argues, after three decades of progress in promoting
peaceful intra-regional relations, ASEAN today is in need to reinvent itself because of many challenges, it
is still one of the most important regional organizations and one of the most evident CSC in the developing
world.
The OAS instead, could be defined as a cased of mature CSC, given that fact that it adopted a
system of collective security, the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, already in 1947, it has a
“Secretariat of Multidimensional Security” among its institutions, and it has a level of economic integration
that is quite strong. But what makes an OAS a mature CSC is also the fact of having a quite clear shared
identity among all the Latin American countries (finally not so different neither from Canada and the US)
that makes the expectation of peaceful resolution of conflict a very solid and reliable assumption among
the states.
Among the CSCs in the making instead, we could see the case of NATO, that in the last 25 years,
and in particular in the last few years, seemed to transform itself from a system of ‘collective defense’ to
an organization more related with ‘collective security’, especially through partnerships with external states
and with cooperative security approaches32. The NATO now has a partnership framework that is not
31
Acharya, Amitav, Constructing a security community in Southeast Asia, Routledge, 2001
32
Since 2010 NATO adopted a Strategic Concept for the Defense and Security of its Members with Collective Defense,
Crisis Management and Cooperative Security as its three pillars. Cooperative Security is based on the fact that
partnerships can be done with states that not necessarily wants to join in the future, but just want to develop a
12
connected to a regional or thematic area but is adaptable to individual requests for cooperation: if a potential
partner share the ideas and principles of liberty, democracy and rule of law, should be welcomed to
participate even if is not inside the NATO collective defense system. So the NATO today is a hybrid that
demonstrates that collective security communities are in expansion, with new complex and overlapping
systems and regimes that could not be classified easily as in the past33.
Besides the sharing of ideas or principles, like in the case of democratic principles for joining the
NATO partnership, socialization is also fundamental for the states to choose if joining or not a collective
security community. In fact if a state doesn’t have any type of socialization (take the example of North
Korea, one of the closest states in the world) it will have difficulty to take part of a collective security
community, on the contrary, states that tend to socialize more, will build a shared knowledge, habits and
practices that will make them more keen to take part to these communities (take the example of the Eastern
European states that after the end of Cold War created the Partnership for Peace with NATO and later
entered in the organization as full members34). Today though, with the case of Ukraine, it seems that power
politics and the old style of BOP is back to the top for the NATO community and so it seems that the trend
towards collective security for this organization is stopped until further transformations.
But besides these oldest ore the newest attempts of CSCs there has been also a birth of several
potential CSCs in the last two decades, in particular in Asia. From the Collective Security Treaty
global regions even if not necessary among regions. The CSTO for example, is an intergovernmental
military alliance born in 1992 from six post-Soviet states belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent
relationship with NATO. NATO has currently 41 partners, among which states in East (Japan, South Korea) and
Southeast (Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and ASEAN) Asia and has looked also for cooperative approaches with
non-partner states like Russia (even the events in Ukraine seems to demonstrate the failure of this attempt).
33
See on this: Karp, Regina, Military capabilities and the evolution of the transatlantic security community, UI
papers, #3, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, May 2014
34
Emanuel Adler, The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO's Post—
Cold War Transformation, European Journal of International Relations June 2008 vol. 14 no. 2 195-230.
13
States and the current members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan with
Afghanistan and Serbia as observers. The CSTO charter establishes the obligation to abstain from the use
or threat of force while aggression against one member would be perceived as an aggression against all
(similar to NATO art. 5). The SCO instead is also a political and economic, besides military, organization
founded in 2001 between China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. It is
primarily centered on its member security-related concerns, often describing the main threats as terrorism,
separatism and extremism. Obviously we could see these organizations as a result of regional integration
already present during Soviet Union and the risk is that these groups could use more a “collective defense”
than a “collective security” approach, with a defense from an external enemy like for example NATO. But
it is a sign anyway that the regional socialization is present and gives fruits towards security communities.
The CICA instead, that is an inter-governmental forum for enhancing cooperation towards
promoting peace, security and stability in Asia, indicates that socialization for security reasons exist beyond
the ex-Soviet Union republics, as its members go from Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Qatar, Israel in Middle East to
India, China, South Korea, Cambodia, Thailand etc. in Asia, with the US, the UN, the Arab League and the
OSCE among the observers. We could argue that this is a ‘conference’ and not an ‘organization’ but the
level of institutionalization of an association is relative when we think about shared knowledge, values and
organization created in 2002 to promote Asian cooperation in order to integrate separate regional
organizations such as ASEAN, SAARC35 and the Gulf Cooperation Council. This association is not so
much oriented towards security being more related with development but if you look for “peace and
prosperity” as in the chart of this association sooner or later you will have to talk about security.
As we can see the cases exposed have different level of accomplishment in their CSC “identity”.
We could follow as said the taxonomy of Adler and Barnett, or, to follow another classification, the one of
35
To read about the results of SAARC in areas like fight against terrorism and nuclear proliferation and the potential
of this association to contribute to security in South Asia see: Michael Arndt, Sovereignty vs. Security: SAARC and its
Role in the Regional Security Architecture in South Asia. Harvard Asia Quarterly Summer 2013, Vol. VX, No.2: 37-45
14
Andrej Tusicisny36, who differentiate between “interstate security communities” (where war between states
is unlikely) and “comprehensive security community” (where both interstate conflicts and civil wars are
unlikely and probably the only case would be the EU). Whatever definition we follow the important thing
for the argument of this paper is that around the globe there is a formations of CSCs in process and it is
something to take into account if we want to deeply understand the complexities around the foundation of
a new world order. This doesn’t mean that the old BOP is not in place anymore (as Carol Weaver argued
for example, even security communities, in order to endure, need to be based on balanced multipolarity37).
The problem for the future is to see if these new CSCs would become potential elements of a
global collective security community or on the opposite regional blocks one against the other in a new
cold war, challenging stability instead of increasing it. Actually the Asian multilateral organizations that
I presented could have potential conflicts among themselves but at the same time China has a big and
sometimes dominant role in them and the US is not a member. China could challenge the existing world
order through them, may be slowly building a new world order as someone suggests talking about a Pax
Sinica38. But some other scholars argue that future possible CSCs could extend not only ‘inside regions’
but ‘among regions’, between China and ASEAN for example39, if China will be able to do what the US
has done in the past with the EU, that is protection and development (ASEAN has a partnership with China
and other Asian countries40); or between US and East Asia, if the Trans-Pacific Partnership will represent
36
Tusicisny, Andrej (2007). “Security Communities and Their Values: Taking Masses Seriously”, International
Political Science Review 28 (4): 425–449
37
Weaver, Carol, The Politics of the Black Sea Region: EU neighbourhood, conflict zone or future security community?,
Ashgate Publishing, 2013. Weaver argued that the Black Sea needed a balanced multipolarity in order not to become
a conflict zone and the last events in Crimea showed that he was right.
38
Pax Sinica, The Economist, September 20 2014. From:
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/docview/1564164421/839EBEEE86964C95PQ/34?accountid=12967
39
Mahbubani, Kishore, High trust needed in China-ASEAN ties, Global Times, 3-4-2014. From:
http://www.mahbubani.net/articles%20by%20dean/High%20trust%20needed%20in%20China-ASEAN%20ties.pdf
40
ASEAN has a ‘Defense Ministers Meeting Plus’ with the 10-members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
plus eight more countries (the US, Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Russia)
See on this: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/08/30/ASEAN-Defense-Ministers-Meeting-Plus-
ends-joint-declaration-signed/UPI-18761377857943/#ixzz2r59XpFHR
15
the embryo of a deeper union (like the CEE has been for the EU). But still the two main powers, US and
China would be on opposite formations, unless their bilateral relation will build enough trust and
cooperation in the next decades to avoid the risk of major conflict, as some forums are trying to foster and
stimulate41. At the end of the day, as Adler and Barnett says, “trust can best be understood as believing
despite uncertainty”42 but we don’t know if the CSCs will be able to cooperate among themselves, creating
finally the universal CSC that the UN was unable to build or will clash among them. The hope comes from
the fact that at some point the regional CSCs will overlap with some global organizations (like the G20 for
example) and this will require to choose between cooperation and rivalry.
41
Building US-China trust through next generation people, platforms and programs, USC Anneberg and The school
of international studies of Peking University, April 2014.
42
Adler, Emanuel and Barnett, Michael, Security Communities, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 46.
16
Conclusions
In our current globalized world, with complexity and interdependence as main features of the
international system and uncertainty and unpredictability as characteristics of human actions, we need to
use different theories and paradigms to increase our ability to understand, explain and prevent future
security issues. Power should not be a monopoly only of realism, institutionalism could also explain ideas
formation, and constructivism should be able to understand security dilemmas. What is important today is
the combination of the IR theories to get different perspectives and understand complexity also in security
studies. The crucial contribution that new critical and constructivist theories can give is to help to
understand that security is a “derivative” concept, as it derives from our peculiar, cultural, historical and
psychological understanding and so not only power, geography, rationality or anarchy matters but culture,
identities, ideas and practices that allow to interpret those elements too.
This paper argued that socialization is one of this complex dynamics, difficult to measure and
quantify but still present and impacting, that explain how shared knowledge and common practices creates
new preferences for the states, and so may shift their decision making towards more collective interest and
less self-interest, increasing the possibility for Collective Security Communities around the world. The
paper also suggested that further research should be oriented towards the interrelation among theories and
should concentrate in particular on the socialization of states, that is what shift and modify ideas,
preferences and needs, understanding the identification between states and individuals not only with more
cultural studies or cognitive psychology but also with new approaches outside “rational thinking”, in order
to have more explanatory and predictive power in international relations and security studies.
We don’t know what will be the future world order but what we know is that will have to be more
inclusive if it wants to reach stability with security for all. The globalization that we are living today doesn’t
seem to go toward the “clash of civilizations”, as per Huntington definition, even if neither toward the
17
“convergence of civilizations”43 as per Mahbubani definition. The proliferation of CSCs have to be studied
more to understand what contribution this proliferation will give to the new world order in formation.
Appendix
I want to end the paper with a question for future research regarding Middle East: in the future
could be possible to contemplate even a CSC also for the region that is considered the less adapt to it, being
it a region where mistrust develop among religious cleavages and unresolved interstate and intrastate
conflicts? It could seem a dream but also for Europe we could not think that it would have enjoyed the
longest time of peace of its history at the beginning of last century. The Middle East have not had until now
the total wars that Europe had last century (and we hope that it will never have them) but in the long run
common threats (like today ISIS and future ones) could maybe represent the cement for such now
unthinkable regional order to happen. Any type of internal or external threat would help a CSC to born, at
the beginning just as an alliance probably, or a collective defense system, like NATO for Europe, but then
with the time security communities increase their level of shared rules, shared ideas and identities, and so
finally are able to build a CSC. Actually many security communities born because interstate violence had
recently started44, or otherwise some intrastate conflict or type of domestic instability had affected the
expectations for the future (like for ASEAN or GCC that were built for confronting domestic instabilities).
Therefore, given the situation now in the Middle East, after Arab Spring and the internal instability in many
countries, from Libya to Egypt, from Syria to Iraq, we could not be so far away from the starting of a
strategic cooperation also in the Middle East. At the end of the day the two moments of major shift in state
identity and new regional ‘associationism’ came after WWII and Cold War, so may be the Arab Spring, or
another impacting event, could represent a catalyst of change, a shock towards a systemic shift for new
43
Actually an interesting UN initiative called “UN Alliance of Civilizations” seems to aim to the second direction,
but it is not a path without challenges
44
See on this the many cases exposed in Adler E. and Barnett M., Security Communities, Cambridge UP, 1998
18
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