A Qualified Success for Collective Security: The Concert of Europe and the Belgian Crisis, 1831

Some scholars claim that collective security always fails. This article analyses a case where it succeeded. When Belgians rebelled against Dutch rule in the early 1830s, all five great powers agreed no fewer than four times to threaten or to use force against one or both sides. Why? Drawing extensively on diplomatic correspondence from Austrian, German and Russian archives, I show that the Concert of Europe functioned as a security regime, helping the powers to agree. Great power consensus broke down when Britain and France imposed a peace settlement on the Dutch in 1832. Yet the Belgian case—like Iraq's 1991 expulsion from Kuwait—shows that collective security can sometimes succeed against cross-border aggression.     

A Crude Bargain: Great Powers,Oil States,and Petro-Alignment

Abstract

Petro-alignment, a quid pro quo arrangement whereby great powers offer security in exchange for oil states’ friendly oil policies, is a widely used and yet undertheorized energy security strategy. One consequential aspect of this exchange is that great powers choose different levels of security commitment to keep oil producers friendly. With what criteria do great powers rank oil states? How do we conceptualize different types of petro-alignments? What exactly do great powers and oil producers exchange under each petro-alignment type? I posit that a mix of market power and geostrategic location determines the strategic value and vulnerability of individual client oil states, which then generates four corresponding types of petro-alignment—security guarantee, strategic alignment, strategic favor, and neglect. Two carefully selected case comparisons—Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1970–91, and Azerbaijan and Ecuador in 1990–2013—show how great powers created, utilized, and maintained petro-alignments under the unique logic of oil markets and across varying geopolitical settings. The findings have important implications on great powers’ grand strategies, strategic behaviors of oil states, and the role of oil in international security.     

Sovereignty at Sea: States and Security in the Maritime Domain

The oceans present a variety of perils to both states and private actors, ranging from smuggling to direct attacks on vessels. Yet, a disconnect exists between states’ maritime power and sovereign fleets due to the emergence of open shipping registries in the 20th century. How have great powers like the United States responded to threats generated by transit of the oceans for legitimate and illicit purposes? The nature of peacetime security threats that states confront at sea has shaped divergent responses. The main maritime powers draw a distinction between threats aimed at states and threats to commerce. Where perceived threats to the state are concerned, great powers have sought to revise understandings of the protections sovereignty provides—specifically, by seeking expanded interdiction rights—to further their own security goals. When maritime powers perceive that international commerce is under threat, they delegate the sovereign protection function both upward to internationally sanctioned maritime coalitions and outward to private security firms. These policies are responses to the security challenges that result from the decoupling of sovereign power and the merchant fleet that followed the emergence of open shipping registries.     

Africa Isn’t an Island: An Emerging Continent and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century

Long treated as marginal to United States strategic interests, political, economic, and security, developments on the African continent have forced a reconsideration of Africa's geopolitical (and geoeconomics) significance in the twenty-first century. Moreover, the success of efforts to lower carbon emissions and other measures to combat the effects of climate change are highly dependent on access to Africa's mineral reserves—another factor driving both global and regional powers increasingly to become engaged on the continent. Criticism of former President Donald Trump's reported statements about African countries notwithstanding, the significant shift towards analytical realism under that administration—including not treating Africa in isolation from global trends—should be a lasting legacy.     

War/Truth: Foucault,Heraclitus and the hoplite Homer

This article extends and critiques Michel Foucault's political sociology of war by taking it beyond its modern subjects. Positioning his work alongside Homer, Heraclitus and Plato, it analyses relations between war, truth and race in the transition from Archaic to Classical Greece. In doing so, it approaches philosophical texts as direct reflections on specific historical experiences of war, making the case for a political theory of fighting as a necessary and under-developed aspect of critical war studies. Such an approach, the article concludes, opens up new scholarly possibilities for the political sociology of war and resources political intervention against war-waging powers whose authority—inside and outside the academy—derives from a supposedly authoritative relation to the history and conduct of fighting.     

Collective Security and Non-State Actors in Eurasia

International security cooperation usually takes one of two forms. A classical collective security organization is designed to promote international security through regulating the behavior of its member states. A defensive security organization is designed to protect a group of states from threats emanating from a challenging state or group of states. Both forms of security cooperation bind states to act in concert with respect to threats presented by other states. The emergence of non-state actors such as terrorist or extremist organizations challenges traditional forms of collective security. Threats from political extremism, terrorism, and outlaw organizations have grown in visibility during the past decade in the countries of Eurasia. The terrorist attacks of September 11 and the ensuing global war on terrorism have given added impetus to the Eurasian inter-state cooperation in confronting non-traditional threats and challenges from non-state actors. Bearing in mind the theory of collective security, this article analyzes threats posed by non-state actors with respect to Eurasian collective security organizations including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures, and the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization. The article concludes that the effectiveness of these organizations at achieving stated objectives depends upon their capacity to adopt new criteria of effectiveness.     

乌兹别克斯坦再次退出集体安全条约组织的原因及影响

2012年12月19日,集体安全条约组织批准了乌兹别克斯坦关于退出该组织的申请。这是乌2006年8月重返集安组织以来的再次退出。此举的深层次原因是乌对外政策目标与俄罗斯主导的欧亚空间一体化进程矛盾的积累。退出之后,乌将继续在美国和俄罗斯之间寻求一种更加谨慎的平衡关系。乌的退出,对集安组织的负面影响有限,将促使俄罗斯加强该组织内部一体化。     

Constructing Southeast Asian security: the pitfalls of imagining a security community and the temptations of orthodoxy

At the ninth summit of the Association of South‐East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in October 2003, the organisation's leaders declared their intention of transforming ASEAN into a security community. In making the case that ASEAN has functioned as a realist security institution since its inception in 1967, this article argues that the theoretical literature underpinning the ASEAN security community idea is characterised by significant conceptual and empirical flaws. First, a number of problems surround the variables—either norms or identity—that are used to explain the emergence of a putative security community among the ASEAN states. Second, critical issues in the ASEAN security community literature include the tautological nature of the arguments and a failure to rule out alternative explanations. Third, from an empirical perspective, the nascent ASEAN security community has arguably never existed.     

Re-reading the Indian Emergency: Britain,the United States and India’s Constitutional Autocracy, 1975–1977

The period known as the “Emergency” in India—June 1975 to March 1977—is widely recognised as one of the darkest episodes in the nation’s 70-year history. Fundamental rights were suspended, whilst the courts had little or no authority. The security services received emergency powers to make arrests without explanation. Although the political, social, and economic history of the Emergency remains well known, there is nothing on the international history of this period. This analysis provides the first contribution to its diplomatic history. Examining the role played by the United States and Britain, in particular, finds basis largely on declassified papers available in the Indian, American, and British national archives as well as a survey of over 300 newspaper articles on and around the Indian Emergency.     

The United States,Europe, and Homeland Security: Seeing Soft Security Concerns Through a Counterterrorist Lens

The attacks of 11 September 2001 created a new paradigm for domestic security in the United States. The struggle against terrorism, particularly catastrophic terrorism, became the government’s most important priority. In the wake of these attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was established, with broader powers of enforcement, set forth in new legislation such as the Patriot Act. This new focus on homeland security will have a secondary effect on the efforts of the US to deal effectively with a range of soft security threats in that it will increase attention to those concerns, particularly as they are seen as enablers of terrorism. The establishment of the Department of Homeland Security is the largest reorganization of the US government in over 50 years, and will necessitate a reordering of the inter-departmental relationships on security matters as well as those critical to soft security cooperation with friends and allies abroad. Although the new department has absorbed many aspects of enforcing the nation’s laws, other functions key to soft security remain spread throughout other US government agencies. A comprehensive understanding of this new order will be key to enhancing the international struggle against soft security threats.     

Israel and the Emerging Strategic Architecture in the Middle East

The Middle East has undergone significant changes in the past two decades. Most significantly, the region has experienced the dissolution of the post-1991 America-centric regional security complex as the United States reduces its forces and retools its center of effort toward the Indo-Pacific, and the creation of a new gas-centered sub-regional security complex in the Eastern Mediterranean. These changes have impacted Israel’s stature in its region and have led to significant changes in Israel’s foreign and national security policy. While in the past, Israel viewed itself as a “villa in the jungle”—not as an integral part of the region—it now sees itself as part of its surroundings and is pursuing a much more regional-centric policy. This change is clear in issue-specific alliances and collective security arrangements, as well as in long-range economic relationships. This article analyzes the regional changes and their impact in Israeli strategic thinking and policy.     

Indo-Japanese Strategic Partnership and Power Transition in Asia

As the U.S.-led security order in Asia gradually comes under stress, regional powers such as India and Japan are formulating a strategic partnership to hedge against the vulnerabilities accruing out of the unfolding power transition in Asia. China’s unprecedented economic and military rise coupled with America’s perceived relative decline is drawing New Delhi and Tokyo into a strategic embrace. To insure their interests in this era of great power transition, New Delhi and Tokyo are keen to hedge against America’s possible failure in containing China’s growing assertiveness in Asia. This hedging strategy is evident in their growing strategic partnership which consists of a triple hedge: increasing bilateral defense partnership against fears of American retrenchment; economic engagement against an over-dependence on China; and a multilateral hedge against China’s growing influence in international and regional institutions. However, for Asia’s two prominent middle powers, transforming these nascent attempts into an effective strategic response to Asia’s current power transition would also require cooperation in the nuclear domain, an area where their policies continue to diverge.     

Identity,Insecurity, and Great Power Politics:The Tragedy of German Naval Ambition Before the First World War

Why did Germany pursue naval expansion at the turn of the twentieth century? This question has long puzzled scholars of international security, who consider German naval ambition to be an instance of suboptimal arming—a decision that decreased Germany's overall security and risked the survival of the German state. This article argues that the social desire to be recognized as a world power guided Germany's decision to challenge British naval hegemony. From the beginning of its naval planning, Germany had one clear aim: a powerful fleet of battleships stationed in the North Sea would alter the political relationship with Britain in such a way that it could no longer ignore Germany's claim to world power status. Reconceptualizing Germany's naval ambition as a struggle for recognition elucidates the contradictions at the center of German naval strategy, explaining how the doomed policy could proceed despite its certain failure. The article concludes that the power-maximizing practices of great powers should be seen as an important component of identity construction and an understudied dimension of contemporary security practice.     

Time to up the game? Middle Eastern security and Chinese strategic involvement

In view of the resources invested by China in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the geopolitical-security dynamics at play, it is helpful to examine the notable security risks and uncertainties of the project. Embedded in this broad context, the paper at hand zooms in on one of the world’s most volatile regions—the Middle East, situated strategically at the juncture of the overland and seaborne routes. Substantively, it focuses on the security dynamics in the region and China’s current engagement therein, with a view to assessing whether and the extent to which China will boost its strategic presence in the BRI context. Some conclusions can be drawn from the research. First, the Middle East faces a multiplicity of security risks and challenges, compounded by a problematic existing security architecture based on inadequate cooperation among regional actors and questionable ad hoc interventions by major outside powers. Second, China’s current relations in Middle Eastern countries have been overwhelmingly economic and driven by energy. Its political-security presence, albeit growing, remains marginal. Third, given the imperatives for China to play a more substantial role in Middle Eastern security (not least the need to ensure the BRI’s security) and the risks/costs of doing so, it would make sense that China seeks to step up its game in areas that are conductive to stabilising the region and yet do not entail intensively investing strategic resources and publicly taking sides (e.g. infrastructure and conflict mediation). This offers reasonable prospect of further EU-China cooperation.     

“The Worst of all Worlds:” Oil Sanctions and Italy's Invasion of Abyssinia, 1935–1936

Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 caused a crisis for the League of Nations. League members imposed limited sanctions against Italy and debated at length the imposition of an embargo on oil shipments to Italy, which came to stand as a symbol of the League's determination to punish the Italian aggressor. The British government conducted a detailed investigation to determine whether or not an oil sanction could compel Italy to abandon its invasion. Although Italy imported the vast majority of its oil, British and League experts concluded that an oil embargo would not succeed. Even if the League instituted a comprehensive embargo amongst its members, Italy could still have secured sufficient supplies from non-members, particularly the United States, which could not legally prevent American companies from trading with Italy. Italy could also have secured additional supplies through third-party transshipments. An additional ban preventing Italy from using League tankers to carry its purchases would not have succeeded either, although the various sanctions together would have increased Italy's costs to import oil and the amount of pressure on its gold reserves. In spite of the technical difficulties involved in implementing an embargo, the British Cabinet continued to support the idea for domestic political reasons; it needed to placate the British public that considered it vitally important to put into practice the League's collective security rhetoric. The League's unwillingness to impose an oil sanction and its evident failure to prevent Italy's conquest of Abyssinia discredited the League and its collective security provisions.     

Europe Vis-À-Vis the Changing Regional Order in the MENA

Europe’s relations with the states of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are facing a critical juncture. When looking at a regional security architecture, Europe’s overarching interest is stability as it prevents conflict and state vacuums from menacing trade and energy supply routes, creating safe havens for terrorist organizations or hostile powers and fueling refugee flows toward Europe. However, compared to the past, European actors are confronted with a sharply new scenario in MENA that challenges these interests, given a progressive retrenchment of the United States, the rise of China, and MENA actors playing a more assertive role in regional politics and conflicts. The February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is further accelerating these trends. Against this shifting background, MENA countries have intensified efforts to diversify their partnerships with rising global and regional players. European actors still struggle to come to grip with the multipolar scenario in the making—and to design an appropriate strategy to respond.     

Undermining Adversaries: Unipolarity,Threat Perception,and Negative Balancing Strategies after the Cold War

This paper engages the ongoing soft balancing debate by suggesting a new analytical framework for states’ countervailing strategies—a negative balancing model—to explain why states do not form alliances and conduct arms races to balance against power or threats as they previously did. Negative balancing refers to a state's strategies or diplomatic efforts aiming to undermine a rival's power. By contrast, positive balancing means to strengthen a state's own power in world politics. I argue that a state's balancing strategies are shaped by the level of threat perception regarding its rival. The higher the threat perception, the more likely it is for a state to choose positive balancing. The lower the threat perception, the more likely it is for a state to choose negative balancing. I suggest that the hegemon provides security as a public good to the international system in a unipolar world in which the relatively low-threat propensity of the system renders positive balancing strategies incompatible with state interests after the Cold War. Instead, states have employed various negative balancing strategies to undermine each other's power, especially when dealing with us primacy. China's negative balancing strategy against the United States and the us negative balancing strategy against Russia are two case studies that test the validity of the negative balancing model.     

Security and Freedom on the Fulcrum

ABSTRACT

Counterterrorist arguments that justify the erosion of individual rights frequently depend on the claim a balance can—and should—be struck between security and freedom. But this analogy, under both consequentialist and rights-based analysis, is at best misleading and at worst structurally wrong. Calculations from utility resting on the immediate dangers posed by terrorism do not give appropriate weight to (a) the long-term effects of inroads into individual rights, (such as individual harm, blocked political, social, and legal mechanisms), and (b) precedent-setting in a tightly-interwoven structure of individual rights and state power. Constitutive rules further delimit the types of measures that can be introduced, regardless of the “tradeoffs” considered in balancing security and freedom. In the rights-based realm, arguments related to expanded state powers, distributive justice, and practical effect undermine the analogy.     

Disregard for Security: The Human Rights Movement and 9/11

ABSTRACT

International human rights NGOs have warned that human rights have been threatened since September 11. However, the matter is complicated since what is involved is in reality a relationship between two concepts: human rights and security against terrorism. This article demonstrates that there is a tendency for international human rights NGOs to brush aside questions on security against terrorism. NGOs have stipulated that human rights values should be superior, or they have maintained, but failed to show, that there is no goal conflict between security and human rights—even that human rights fulfil a considerable instrumental function with respect to freedom from terrorism.     

The political effects of information warfare: Why new military capabilities cause old political dangers

When collective violence breaks out during periods of regime change, the root cause of that violence is ordinarily assumed to be a failure of state and/or governmental organizations, alongside transition. However, there are limits to the applicability of this understanding, since violence sometimes erupts during regime change, even when state and executive organs remain intact. This paper addresses those puzzling cases, by arguing that transitional violence can be a by-product of competition between, or within, a state's security services—for power and resources in an emerging regime. Competition develops where there is intense uncertainty about the form that the new regime might take and associated uncertainty about the distribution of power and state funds among state security services within that regime. The dynamics of transitional violence through intrastate competition are illustrated in the paper through treatment of two “most different” cases: Indonesia (1998) and Romania (1990).