Security Strategies, Power Disparity and Identity

The Baltic Sea Region

Olav F. Knudsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351149501
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What is power and how is it effective? This volume responds to these questions in terms of regional international relations with a particular focus on the Baltic Sea region, an area still charged with a residue of Cold War conflict and power disparity, in a setting of new cooperative ventures. Each contributor examines the region from a different angle and discusses how its actors coped with the new situation facing them after 1991. The volume looks at how governments have defined their new circumstances, how they have dealt with the opportunity to shift to a new mode of coexistence and collaboration, and how they have tackled the challenge of peacefully converting their region to a security community. The book breaks with tradition by adopting a new, thematic approach based on regional issues and functions rather than a country-by-country discourse. It will be of critical value to readers interested in security studies and European politics.

Chapter 1
An Overall Perspective on Regional Power Strategies

Olav F. Knudsen

Analytical Aims

This book is motivated by a desire to learn more about unequal power relations between neighbouring countries – in casu the Baltic Sea region. In particular we look into how governments deal with the consequences of power disparity and its possible effects on cooperative security and integration. We assume that differences in power can have beneficial effects as well as undesirable ones, and seek to understand how such consequences come about. Power as such is conceived in terms of shared assessments among decision makers of other governments’ capacity to act. An especially intriguing aspect of such assessments is whether they are associated with perceptions of threat.¹

The Baltic Sea region has long been marked by a pronounced difference between what decision-makers have recognized as great powers and small states, differences most clearly visible from the 1930s onwards and reaching a peak during the Cold War years. Subsequently, a great power shift occurred around 1990. We want to know whether threatening power disparity is now a thing of the past in the Baltic Sea region. The experience of a decade of new, relaxed international relations in the region could lead some to conclude that power differentials are of little importance today – or that their threat aspects have disappeared because of Russia’s new profile and the integration of its former allies and all of Germany in European and Transatlantic structures.

Our working hypothesis has been that power differentials are still politically significant. We have been especially concerned to understand the nature of the cooperative security relationships which have been promoted by the governments of the region, with Sweden and Finland in the lead, and with the expansion of the EU and NATO as important elements. The relationship between power differentials and threat is ambiguous, in that threats need not be made to be perceived. Is power disparity between Russia and its regional neighbours in itself an obstacle to better relations? The opposite possibility will also be explored: Great powers have been known to provide resources and opportunities for better relations with their neighbours. Is Russia gradually taking on this kind of role in the Baltic Sea region?

Another factor to which we want to pay attention is the possible change – weakening or strengthening – of state structures relative to integration processes and other transnational phenomena. In this connection, identity aspects of states have particular relevance in the Baltic Sea region, where so many fundamental reorganizations of political units have taken place and are still going on: the experience of the Baltic states in regaining independence and moving on to European integration, the recreation of a federal Russian state, the process and consequences of German reunification.

We want to see the region from a comparative perspective and are conscious that the dimension of time must therefore also be kept in mind. Other eras have seen different power relations in the Baltic Sea region. Historically there have been periods of approximately balanced power in the region, for instance when a stronger Denmark and a stronger Sweden existed alongside an emerging Russian great power and a fragmented Germany. The massive change that took place in 1989-1991 had consequences that must be assessed in a broad historical perspective.

Our broadest questions, then, are the following: Under what conditions may unequal power prevent or encumber the emergence of cooperative security? Can progress towards cooperative security help overcome the threat perceptions often engendered by power disparity? Could strong group identities intervene to determine whether integrative rather than disintegrative effects take place? What is the role of concrete conflicts and specific interests in this connection?

Regional security studies have blossomed during the 1990s and beyond (e.g. Mack and Ravenhill 1994; Lake and Morgan 1997; Adler and Barnett 1999; Knudsen 1999; Buzan and Waever 2003. From older studies (Etzioni 1965; Fox 1977) it is well established that unequal power may have constructive and beneficial effects by providing leadership and resources, and because great power often attracts (Nye 2004), thus giving regional integration an extra boost. However, those studies have not fully examined the simultaneous potentially negative effects, and some of the empirical cases they drew upon (e.g., early e uropean integration, Caribbean integration projects of the 1960s, US-Canadian relations) were inconclusive. Our working hypothesis has been that cooperative security is hampered by power disparity in itself, as well as by concrete conflicts of specific interests, but power disparity is the more serious obstacle.

This working hypothesis is pursued along several avenues of research by individual chapter authors. The project as a whole has left room for both constructivist perspectives, realist perspectives and more eclectic perspectives. In our work we have still held to a common core of concepts, which will be further specified in the following.

Concepts and Assumptions

Here our central concepts are defined and further clarified by supplementary explications.

Actors and agents

Leaders of large organized groups – here mostly states – are conceived as key actors. The individuals are agents, in the sense of principal/agent reasoning – the organized group is their principal. Other actors are sub-national territorial units, others yet again are non-territorial units. In the region, direct societal contact between individuals of the different groups is ongoing routinely across a wide range of activities. At the same time, actors maintain contact at leadership levels, in ‘collective mode’, and in so doing are agents acting on behalf of their collectivity.

Relationships

Regional politics can be exceedingly diverse. According to a simplified representation, we conceive governments as pursuing their relations alternately in two modes: a) anarchical – without universally reliable, orderly procedures for resolving differences; b) cooperative – according to established traditions and agreements, with conflict resolution undertaken by joint agreement. It is worth noting that as seen here the same actor may deal with some interlocutors in the cooperative mode and with others in the anarchical mode.

In the anarchical mode, actors resort to a wide range of improvised methods to have their way and promote their interests. Some of those methods involve the threat or use of military means or other forms of organized mass violence, other methods are more sophisticated, but all are geared to assuring and asserting the collectivity’s will in the face of uncertainties seen to have been brought on by conflict with other collectivities.

In the cooperative mode, actors’ conceptions of self-interest are pursued within the frameworks and constraints of intergovernmental institutions. In the resultant combinations of cooperation and confrontation, the more long-term strategies for cooperation are of particular interest here.

Power

The concept of power is here defined in terms of actors’ understandings² of the presumed relative capacity of group leaders (one’s own as well as others’) to affect the political landscape within which all actors function. Actors’ interpretations in this regard are taken to be approximate and ‘fuzzy’, seldom explicitly stated or shared between colleagues. Such assessments contribute to the shaping of each actor’s behaviour and her strategies regarding future action. The role of power is thus causal, indirect and subjective, and socially based. It may or may not be associated with perceptions of threat.

It is also contingent on context, which renders it in a certain sense ‘multidimensional’. The distribution of (perceived) power relations for a given actor over different contexts is in some cases rather similar (all strong, or all weak), in which a cumulative effect reinforces an overall image of a ‘strong’ or a ‘weak’ state. In the case of other actors, power varies from context to context.

It follows from the above that power should be seen as a social relationship dependent on mutual readings of past relations, present capabilities and future intentions. By taking this analytical stance, we approach the related idea that power may be conceived as socially constructed, flowing from sources that are part subjective, part intersubjective or objective. We emphasize power relations that are played out in situations where actors have to cope – in contexts of confrontation as well as cooperation.

Power relations are here hypothesized to be linked to conceptions of identity.³ Following Wendt⁴ but taking a slightly different course, we suggest that between actors who see each other as roughly equal in power, identity often becomes linked to rivalry and competition. When power relations are seen to be distinctly unequal, we suggest that a different kind of stereotyping of self and other begins about which Wendt is relatively silent. The experience of facing an apparently overwhelming power has, for instance, in many cases led to the use of simplifying identifications like ‘great power’ (or just ‘stronger’) for the other and ‘small state’ (or just ‘weaker’) for the self.

Cooperative security

The term ‘cooperative security’ refers to policies of governments or organized groups to handle conflict by the conscious use of confidence-building or ‘confidence-preserving’ measures. Cooperative security policies thus (a) reflect the attitudes of former or potential adversaries to the present and future relationship between them, policies which (b) they seek to shift from a more to a less conflictual mode (Knudsen 2003). By proposing confidence-building measures – i.e., moves which would expose the initiator to potential exploitation (even danger) on the part of the adversary – the initiator demonstrates a willingness to put a corresponding measure of trust in the other side. Cooperative security policies seek to develop such first steps into a self-sustaining, longer-range process.⁵ Hence, cooperative security is different from the long-term strategy that Rapoport first called tit-for-tat (Axelrod 1984, viii), in that tit-for-tat involves immediate retaliation when the other side does not cooperate. Cooperative security avoids retaliatory moves.

Progress in the long-term may lead to the emergence of a security community (Deutsch et al 1957; Adler and Barnett 1998). In the interim, while trust is not entirely certain, cooperative security moves will have enabled governments to cooperate in their own interest and even in the joint interest of all involved. Presumably the experience of joint satisfaction in such ventures will increase the likelihood of the emergence of a full-fledged security community. At the same time, the long-term progress from initial cooperative security moves (here also called phase 1) via cooperation (phase 2) to a security community (phase 3) cannot be taken for granted.⁶

The Baltic Sea region

This term refers to a cluster of geographically proximate countries in Northern Europe bordering on the Baltic Sea. At the same time that specific area is here conceived as an instance of a more general phenomenon: regions of interacting state-societies. As such the region comprises – inter alia – a range of unequal power relations. The political and economic viability of the younger state units in the Baltic Sea region has recently been confirmed by their membership in the European Union. A lingering perception of existential uncertainty nevertheless remains. It involves the identity aspect in the collective mode: Individuals conceive of themselves as part not just of a social system, but of a social body, coexisting with other bodies of the same collective kind. Such relationships involve actors – i.e., individuals acting in formal roles on behalf of collectivities, the latter often being governments of state units, but at times also international organizations, lobbying groups or private business firms (see Walker 1987; on identities also Neumann 1992; 1996).

Security

This concept is used here in a manner traceable to Haftendorn (1991), who gave what she called ‘… a very elementary, “generic” definition of “security” as value and/or system maintenance over time, and the absence of threats to it.’ (1991, 5; emphasis added, see also Wolfers 1962). Haftendorn emphasized international over national security, yet remained otherwise a ‘traditionalist’ in the eyes of subsequent constructivist theorists like Buzan et al (1998). Inspired by Haftendorn, Knudsen later offered a somewhat more concrete specification to the effect that ‘Security ... has to do with how one deals with conflict so as to limit the harm it brings to the physical and social well-being of individuals and the political and economic wellbeing of societies.’ (Knudsen 1999, vii) Thus were listed the policies, the subject matter and the referent groups of security. In the present volume, security complex theory (Buzan 1991; Buzan et al 1998) is seen as potentially relevant, along with security community theory previously referred to.

Power disparity

Unequal power relations and uncertain viability bear on the security of the units. Power plays are moves by actors to assert themselves vis-a-vis and at the expense of other actors. The power context – the issue at hand – determines the salience of a particular power disparity. The maintenance of cooperative relations in the region is an assumed goal. If actors seriously aspire to it, they need to cope with conflict so as to keep power plays within limits (Knudsen 1999).

At present there is little established knowledge on the experience of combining power disparity and integration. Preliminary examination of cases of great powers like the USA, Russia and China and their respective neighbours suggests that more research is needed concerning the conditions under which cooperation and integration are advanced rather than hampered by power disparity.

Power relations undergo continual change over time. Economic and technological dynamics may leave contextual power less clear-cut than conventional notions might suggest. Current processes of change especially relevant to these particular regional power relations are:

1. the integration, expansion and development of the EU;
2. the integration and development of Russia;
3. the development of regional cooperative practices / institutions and the role of smaller or weaker units in them;
4. the relationships between sub-regions and supra-regions;
5. the role of extra-regional states/units.

Structure of the Volume

Chapter 2 further explores the concepts of power and power disparity, while Chapter 3 by Olav F. Knudsen and Christopher Jones surveys the policies pursued by the countries involved in the period covered. Against this general background, each of the book’s remaining chapters examines the region from a different angle and asks how its actors coped with the new situation facing them after 1991. The contributors look at how governments defined their new circumstances, and thus how they dealt with the opportunity to shift to a new mode of coexistence and collaboration. A key underlying question is how they tackled the challenge of peacefully converting their region to a security community. To the extent they have realized the ideal of a security community, have the actors arrived at new understandings of power and identity in the process? To the extent they have fallen short of that goal, what went wrong and what can be learned from the experience?

The book is not organized according to a traditional country-by-country lay-out. Instead, regional problems and functions are at the center of attention. Disparities of power are pursued and illustrated in various contexts.

Chapter 4 by Regina Karp compares policymaking in Finland and Sweden from the perspective that regional policymaking has come under increasing pressure by global change. After 10 years of membership in the EU and extensive relations with NATO, why have Sweden and Finland stayed militarily non-aligned? The chapter argues that these two Nordics have not remained inert; they have rather – each in their own way – adapted significantly to structural changes in their security environment. In doing so th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 An Overall Perspective on Regional Power Strategies
• 2 Power Disparities and the Avoidance of Confrontation
• 3 Events and Ideas in the Region: An Overview 1980s-2000s
• 4 The Conditionality of Security Integration: Identity and Alignment Choices in Finland and Sweden
• 5 Power Disparity and Epistemic Communities: The Paldiski Case
• 6 Threat Images and Socialization: Estonia and Russia in the New Millennium
• 7 Power Disparity in the Digital Age
• 8 Generalizing About Security Strategies in the Baltic Sea Region
• 9 Looking to the Future: Security Strategies, Identity and Power Disparity
• References
• Index