SOME ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF REGIONAL SECURITY COMPLEXES AS APPLIED TO STUDIES OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM IN THE POST-SOVIET SPACE
Abstract
The first shoots of a new regional political system appeared in the post-Soviet space early in the 1990s, the previous hierarchical system of which became anarchical when the Soviet Union collapsed, while the key vectors of security interdependence of the newly independent states remained in place. Here I have attempted to assess the regional system which is functioning across the post-Soviet space from the point of view of the Theory of Regional Security Complexes (TRSC),1 which offers the most comprehensive and effective explanation of how the security sphere is developing in the post-Soviet macro-region. However, its application creates several problems, an assessment of which belongs to the range of questions raised in this article.
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In 1983, Barry Buzan formulated the conception of the regional security complex in his People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, 1983). This, as well as the second edition of the same work (B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, Second Edition, Lynne Rienner Publishers Boulder, Colorado, 1991), demonstrated a classical approach to the security complex conception. Much later, together with co-authors (B. Buzan, O. Wæver, J. De Wilde, Security. A New Framework for Analysis, Rienner Publishers Boulder, London, 1998; B. Buzan, O. Wæver, Regions and Powers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003), he made an attempt to go beyond the limits of the classical conception of the security concept. the authors introduced, among other things, two types of security complexes (homogeneous and heterogeneous) and the securitization conception to remedy the current disparages with the classical conception of the security complex, such as concentrating on the military and political spheres of relations or inadequate attention to the non-state actors, which also create additional vectors of inter-sectoral inter-dependence.
B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, p. 190.
Ibid., p. 191.
See: B. McSweeney, Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations, Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, Cambridge, 1999, p. 63.
B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, p. 190.
See: B. Buzan, O. Wæver, op. cit., pp. 55-61.
See: Ibid., p. 55.
See: Ibidem.
See: B. Buzan, O. Wæver, J. De Wilde, op. cit., p. 12.
K.N. Waltz uses the ordering of the international and domestic systems to explain the difference between the an-archic and hierarchic types of ordering (see: K.N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, McGraw-Hill, Boston, 1979,p. 88).
B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era,pp. 218-219.
According to B. Buzan, in the conditions of chaos, the entire set of the security relations in the region is determined
by enmity since each of the regional actors sees an enemy in the others. As distinct from the initial level, amity is possible even at the first intermediary level—regional conflict formations—dominated by conflict relations among the actors. At the next intermediary level—security regime—regional states cooperate in order to settle the conflicts and avoid a war; they rely on mutually acceptable forms of behavior to achieve security in their relations. At the final stage of the transfer within the functioning security complex and according to Buzan’s conception, a security community appears in which conflicts have been resolved to the extent that none of the members fears aggression from any of the other members of the community.
See: B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era,pp. 188, 189, 191, 195.
B. Buzan, O. Wæver, op. cit., p. 55.
Ibid., pp. 55, 62, 343.
See: B. Coppieters, “Conclusions: The Caucasus as a Security Complex,” in: Contested Borders in the Caucasus, ed. by B. Coppieters, Vubpress, Brussels, 1996, pp. 193-204; S.E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers. A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus, Curzon Press, Surrey, 2001; B. Buzan, O. Wæver, op. cit.
B. Coppieters, op. cit., p. 195.
S.E. Cornell, op. cit., p. 391.
Armenia claims an eastern part of Turkey called Western Armenia associated with the parts of the Ottoman Em-pire populated by Armenians. Today they are the vilayets of Erzurum, Van, Agri, Hakkari, Muº, Bitlis, Siirt, Diyarbekir,Erzincçan, Bingöl, Malatya, Sivas, Amasya, Tokat, and part of Giresun (see: Istoria Osmanskogo gosudarstva, obshchest-va i tsivilizatsii, ed. by E. Ihsanoglu, Transl. from the Turkish, Vol. 1, Vostochnaya literatura Publishers, Moscow, 2006,p. 87 (History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilization, ed. by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Istanbul, 2001).
Under the Treaty of Turkmanchay of 1828, the territory of Azerbaijan was divided between the Russian Empire and Iran and came to be known as Northern and Southern Azerbaijan.
B. Buzan, O. Wæver, op. cit., p. 48.
Ibid., p. 49.
See: Ibid., pp. 47-48.
B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, p. 193.
B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, p. 193;B. Buzan, O. Wæver, op. cit., p. 41.
B. Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, p. 197.
Ibid., p. 193.
B. Buzan B., O. Wæver, op. cit., p. 44.
Ibid., p. 87.
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