This pathbreaking study brings together international experts to consider security issues and the experience and potential for cooperation in the subregions of the former Soviet Union. Appendices to the volume provide maps, a guide to acronyms, profiles of existing subregional organizations, and a chronology of cooperative agreements signed in the region since 1991.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Eurasian security governance has received increasing attention since 1989. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the institution that best served the security interests of the West in its competition with the Soviet Union, is now relatively ill-equipped resolve the threats emanating from Eurasia to the Atlantic system of security governance. This book investigates the important role played by identity politics in the shaping of the Eurasian security environment. It investigates both the state in post-Soviet Eurasia as the primary site of institutionalisation and the state's concerted international action in the sphere of security. This investigation requires a major caveat: state-centric approaches to security impose analytical costs by obscuring substate and transnational actors and processes. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon marked the maturation of what had been described as the 'new terrorism'. Jervis has argued that the western system of security governance produced a security community that was contingent upon five necessary and sufficient conditions. The United States has made an effort to integrate China, Russia into the Atlantic security system via the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. The Black Sea Economic Cooperation has become engaged in disseminating security concerns in fields such as environment, energy and economy. If the end of the Cold War left America triumphant, Russia's new geopolitical hand seemed a terrible demotion. Successfully rebalancing the West and building a collaborative system with Russia, China, Europe and America probably requires more wisdom and skill from the world's leaders.
The outgrowth of a conference jointly conducted by the Russian Littoral Project, the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, this volume analyzes the interplay between state-building and military power in the post-Soviet states. Focusing on conventional military forces, it explores and clarifies the influences shaping conceptions of national security and military policies in each country. These influences include shifting national identities, political and economic upheaval, and a volatile external environment. Paper edition (unseen), $22.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Sections include: building security in Post-Cold War Eurasia; the evolving role of the CSCE/OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in Eurasian security; the role of OSCE missions and other field activities in managing conflict; democratization: long-term conflict prevention; preventive diplomacy; conflict resolution; post-conflict security building; evaluating OSCE missions and field activities; U.S. foreign policy and the OSCE; U.S. attitudes toward the OSCE; and recommendations for U.S. foreign-policy makers: how the U.S. can strengthen the OSCE.
While European integration advances, many of the countries along Europe's eastern and southern periphery have fallen prey to chronic conflict punctuated by a series of small wars. Exacerbating the situation has been the lack of effective organizational means for mediating local conflicts, facilitating regional development and structuring cooperation with larger regional and international institutions. What are the prospects for enhancing security in the most volatile subregions of post-communist Europe? This text examines the external and internal factors that impede or foster subregional cooperation in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe and the Caucasus. It includes chapters situating these borderlands in the context of a wider Europe with an evolving security architecture.
China has emerged as a dominant power in Eurasian affairs that not only exercises significant political and economic power, but increasingly, ideational power too. Since the founding of the People’s Republic, Chinese Communist Party leaders have sought to increase state capacity and exercise more effective control over their western frontier through a series of state-building initiatives. Although these initiatives have always incorporated an international component, the collapse of the USSR, increasing globalization, and the party’s professed concerns about terrorism, separatism, and extremism have led to a region-building project in Eurasia. Garcia traces how domestic elite-led narratives about security and development generate state-building initiatives, and then region-building projects. He also assesses how region-building projects are promoted through narratives of the historicity of China’s engagement in Eurasia, the promotion of norms of non-interference, and appeals to mutual development. Finally, he traces the construction of regions through formal and informal institutions as well as integrative infrastructure. By presenting three phases of Chinese domestic state-building and region-building from 1988-present, Garcia shows how region-building projects have enabled China to increase state capacity, control, and development in its western frontier. Recommended for scholars of China’s international relations and development policy.
The outgrowth of a conference jointly conducted by the Russian Littoral Project, the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, this volume analyzes the interplay between state-building and military power in the post-Soviet states. Focusing on conventional military forces, it explores and clarifies the influences shaping conceptions of national security and military policies in each country. These influences include shifting national identities, political and economic upheaval, and a volatile external environment. Paper edition (unseen), $22.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
