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1 The historical development of regionalism in the maintenance of peace and security
Regionalism through universalism
General overview
Maintenance of peace and security is one of the basic tasks any society has had to perform since the beginning of time. With the emergence of States it became one of their core tasks. Collective maintenance of peace and security, however, has had a less systematic character in the course of history. Alliances, unions and coalitions of collective maintenance of peace and security have come and gone, shifting war after war. An undefined regionalism in the maintenance of peace and security precedes universalism.1 It has, in fact, been a step between an individual State-based maintenance of peace and security to an all-encompassing universal collective maintenance of peace and security. Universalism in the maintenance of peace and security cannot truly be traced further back than to the establishment of the League of Nations, followed by the present universal mechanism of the United Nations (UN). Nevertheless, it was not until the past decade that regional organisations started taking up space in law books as significant actors of maintenance of peace and security. With the gradual developments of regionalisation in the maintenance of peace and security, such as the creation of autonomous regional co-operation of the Americas in the nineteenth century, and a few brief provisions in the UN Charter, the modern regionalism in the maintenance of peace and security has truly taken up speed in the twenty-first century, supplementing and sometimes contradicting the post-UN Charter universal order. The aftermath of 9/11 has dramatically catalysed regional activity. Most of the regional mechanisms in place at the moment have undergone a significant make-over in the few years of the twenty-first century to increase their efficiency. On the other hand, the regionalisation of the maintenance of peace and security is, in a way, the return to the roots of the international order that date back to the ancient world. The matter of making political alliances and coalitions has traditionally been connected to a coherent area – a region.2 Before the creation of the universal order, however, regionalism in the maintenance of peace and security was not about regional coherence and speaking in one voice, as today, but rather about constraining the settlement of matters of peace and security within the borders of a limited region. Nevertheless, regionalism was also about distinguishing ‘us’ – the members of the ‘club’ – and ‘them’ – the outside world – even if the restraints on the use of force as such were minimal. The examples of such regional forums for the maintenance of peace and security over the course of history include the amphictyonic leagues in ancient Greece, the Dar al-Islam collective security of medieval Islam and the medieval Christian Europe.
Early regionalism
Since the ancient times regions of security and defence formed on the basis of religion. In the ancient world religious amphictyonic (neighbour) leagues were created by neighbouring Greek cities sharing temples. The most significant of such was the Amphictyonic League of Delphi. The ancient beginnings of the regional religious leagues, however, were not about establishing peace among the States participants, but rather establishing the rules of warfare somewhat restraining the use of force against fellow members of the league,3 amounting to what could be regarded as humanitarian law in modern terms. For wars outside the framework of the league, such limitations were not set; there was a constant natural state of war between Greek and barbarian worlds.4 Ancient Rome, on the contrary, had a practice of concluding bilateral, and not multilateral, alliances. In the early period of expansion, any State that did not have a treaty of friendship or alliance with Rome was considered to be permanently at war with Rome.5
In ancient China an approach was influenced by Confucianism. China was regarded as the only civilization and the outside enemies surrounding the ‘Middle Kingdom’ of China were not regarded as enemies, but as ‘imperfectly integrated into the great global order’.6 The use of force against the ‘uncivilized’ outsiders was not regarded as waging war but rather as law enforcement.7 The Roman approach of putting Rome into the centre of the world security structure was thus similar to the Chinese rather than the Greek model. In antiquity the powers did not interact globally, thus the areas of influence of China and Rome did not overlap and they could perceive themselves as the global rulers. This type of ancient regionalism can, therefore, in today’s perception, be argued to be the universalism of the ancient world. In contrast, the equal-member Greek regions of collective security system were created as a unity against the outside world and thus, dominated by a self-perception as of a distinct region in a wider world. From the ancient world lines can be drawn to the modern world. Today one can also distinguish the maintenance of peace and security in regions with more-or-less equal State participants from that of regions with one hegemon in the centre.
In the Middle Ages, the Islamic States and Christian Europe provide examples of regional maintenance of peace and security. The Qur’an prescribes jihad, translated as struggle or fight, according to Islamic principles. Based on that, Islamic scholars created a security and defence community of the Islamic States – Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam) – outside which was the Dar al-Harb (the house of war). No specific wrong-doing was necessary to start a war against the outsiders.8
The European medieval regionalism was determined by Christianity, thus, once again, on a common religious ground. Here the just war doctrine became the central concept of war-fighting. There had to be a just cause to start a war. However, just as in Islam, war against the infidels was a just cause in itself.9 The prototype of a just war in medieval Europe would thus be a war carried out under the authority of the pope for the defence of the Christian world as a whole against a common outside enemy who threatened the faith or the faithful.10 Thus, the examples of ancient Greek leagues, Dar al-Islam and medieval Europe all evidence a set of rules concerning internal conduct for the members of the regional ‘club’, whilst hardly any limitations have been set up for starting wars against outsiders.
In seventeenth-century Europe, the order of maintenance of peace and security found its expression in the Westphalian State sovereignty-based power-balance system. This system replaced the Europe religiously united under the pope. The Westphalian system with the balance of power in the centre,11 however, was not able to ensure a long-lasting peace, with wars frequently raging in Europe.
After the Napoleonic wars, in 1815 the Concert of Europe was created to re-establish public law and the principle of balance of power in Europe.12 The Concert of Europe depended on the agreement of the great powers.13 The right to go to war was now generally unlimited.14 In fact, until as late as the signing of Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928, there were no restraints on using war in international relations as a means of settlement of disputes. While today the right to go to war is strictly limited, the agreement of the great powers is still a leading principle of the maintenance of peace and security, reflected even in the balance-of-power provisions in the UN Charter regarding the role of the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council (UNSC).
The nineteenth century marked the establishment of Eurocentrism in international law, which was still based on the European balance of power.15 The civilized, Christian European States were at the centre of the world order, having a global influence over their colonies around the world. The European States were members of the club, or league – just as in ancient Greek leagues – fighting against and colonising territories outside the region. Over the centuries, starting from the age of discovery (sixteenth century), major parts of the rest of the world were colonised and split between the colonial powers. Especially the African continent was split up and divided along oftentimes straight, rather than ethnically determined lines. This division is still one of the causes for African conflicts, making it the most conflict-burdened region of the world. Also most of the Far East and the Pacific was in the realm of various Western colonisers.
The nineteenth century was also the time when the formerly colonial Latin America gained independence from Europe, establishing the first modern regional system in the world. This regional system for maintenance of peace and security was created to counterbalance the outside superpower influence – that of Europe. The beginnings of the Latin-American system date back to 1826, when Simón Bolivar summoned the Congress of Panama,16 with a formal co-operation framework being established many years later, in 1889.17 The US Monroe doctrine furthermore illustrates the American position of keeping the European influence out of the region.18
In Europe, large-scale and devastating conflicts had usually taken place between the powers within the region, though, occasionally, affecting other parts of the world due to conquests and the colonial influence. Both the Peace of Westphalia and the Concert of Europe, and their balance of power prin ciple had failed to secure not only peace, but also a sense of a regional unity. In the pre-League of Nations world, Europe was a region, but not one of many regions of the world. Europe was, instead, the region that was the centre of power, radiating its influence globally, hence, Eurocentrism. Perhaps the new Eurocentrism was not that far from the ancient perceptions of world order. Just like the Greek amphictyonic leagues, the European core of the world was a group of States with their individual, different, competing interests; despite internal wars – a club of the civilized. The characteristic of the post-Concert of Europe, pre-League of Nations regionalism was the absence of a universal system of maintenance of peace and security, other than the European influence over most of the rest of the world. It is this world-governing European order that the American States broke off from, by establishing a separate region of maintenance of peace and security, and thus setting the example for the modern day regionalism in the maintenance of peace and security.
The beginnings of modern regionalism
It was with the creation of the universal organisations – the League of Nations and subsequently the UN, that closer regional co-operation became distinguished as a separate category. The universalist approach assumed that regional systems would create rivalries, being a cause to future conflicts in themselves, thus a universal system would be needed to avoid the development of conflicts.19 The new regionalists, on the other hand, claimed that regional sub-systems represented indispensable intermediary structures of co-operation over which a universal structure of supervisory nature could span.20 The universalist system was proposed and seen by many as the ideal mode for ensuring peace and security around the world.
The first universalist attempt in the maintenance of peace and security was the establishment of the League of Nations. Universalism was a new alternative for ensuring peace and security, by making every international conflict anywhere in the world a matter of the whole international community. The Covenant of the League of Nations contained a provision on regional co-operation in Article 21. This Article reads: ‘Nothing in this Covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe doctrine, for securing the maintenance of peace’.21 This provision secured the priority of regional security regimes over that of the League of Nations provisions.22
The Covenant referred to regional understandings – alliances, rather than institutions. The only regional organisation dealing with peace and security existing at that time was the International Union of American Republics.23 Other examples of regional co-operation of the inter-war period included the ‘Small Entante’ (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romani...
