Diplomacy and Security Community-Building

Niklas Bremberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317406631
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book contributes to the ongoing debate in IR on the role of security communities and formulates a new mechanism-based analytical framework.

It argues that the question we need to ask is how security communities work at a time when armed conflicts among states have become significantly less frequent compared to other non-military threats and trans-boundary risks (e.g. terrorism and the adverse effects of climate change). Drawing upon recent advances in practice theory, the book suggests that the emergence and spread of cooperative security practices, ranging from multilateral diplomacy to crisis management, are as important for understanding how security communities work as more traditional confidence-building measures.

Using the EU, Spain and Morocco as an in-depth case study, this volume reveals that through the institutionalization of multilateral venues, the EU has provided cooperative frameworks that otherwise would not have been available, and that the de-territorialized notion of security threats has created a new rationale for practical cooperation between Spanish and Moroccan diplomats, armed forces and civilian authorities. Within the broader context, this book provides a mechanism-based framework for studying regional organizations as security community-building institutions, and by utilizing that framework it shows how practice theory can be applied in empirical research to generate novel and thought-provoking results of relevance for the broader field of IR.

This book will be of much interest to students of multilateral diplomacy, European Politics, foreign policy, security studies and IR in general.

1 Introduction

On 11 July 2002, a group of Moroccan soldiers set up camp on a tiny, uninhabited rock in the Strait of Gibraltar called the Parsley Islet¹ allegedly to strengthen Morocco’s capacity to counter international terrorism (El País, 2002). This would spur one of the most serious bilateral crises between Spain and Morocco since the end of the Cold War as the government in Madrid framed it as an attempt by the Moroccan regime to alter the disputed territorial status of the rock by military means. After a few days of failed attempts to reach a diplomatic solution to the crisis on behalf of the European Union (EU), Spain dispatched a contingent of elite troops and ‘recaptured’ the islet. This was done without a single shot being fired, and the Moroccan soldiers were transported back to the Moroccan mainland, via the Spanish enclave-city Ceuta. The Moroccan government responded by stating that it considered Spain’s action to be equivalent to a declaration of war. Yet war was not declared and the crisis was officially brought to an end a couple of days later when Spanish and Moroccan representatives at a meeting in Rabat agreed to return to the status quo ante. The meeting took place after the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, stepped in as unofficial mediator upon a direct request from the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ana Palacio (Cembrero, 2006; Gillespie, 2006a, 2010; Monar, 2002).

From an outsider’s perspective, the Parsley Islet crisis might seem to be a bizarre incident or at least an anachronistic way of handling a dispute between modern states, one of which being a member of the EU. To some observers it was simply the ‘stuff of farce’ (The Economist, 2002). Farcical or not the crisis spurs a range of questions of relevance not only for students of the EU but also for students of International Relations (IR) and diplomacy. What does the crisis tell us about the ways in which states practise international security (or rather fail to do so) in the twenty-first century and what lessons can be drawn of broader relevance for diplomatic studies and international cooperation? This book argues that the Parsley Islet crisis in many ways highlights the challenges that the EU faces in its southern neighbourhood. These challenges can be said to be even more daunting at a time when the EU is trying to come up with a proper response to the so-called Arab Spring which has led to increasing instability in North Africa and the Middle East (Pace, 2014; Peters, 2012; Youngs, 2014). At the heart of the matter lies the question of whether the EU can promote security beyond its borders and in its neighbourhood. This seemingly straightforward question digs right into a central problem that both mainstream and critical scholars in the field of European integration and IR have sought to address since the end of the Cold War (e.g. Huysmans et al., 2006; Kirchner and Sperling, 2007; Webber et al., 2004).² Of course, the question is only seemingly straightforward since it immediately spurs a host of follow-up questions. What constitute the borders of the EU? For whom does the EU promote security and from what? What does it mean in practice for regional organizations such as the EU to promote security?

The central argument in this book is that even though the EU is far from being a coherent international actor it is possibly the world’s most advanced security community-building institution (Adler and Barnett, 1998; Bellamy, 2004; Bremberg, 2015). War is unimaginable among EU member states and the EU (together with other regional organizations such as the OSCE, NATO and the Council of Europe) reinforces security community-building in Europe in terms of an ongoing reimagination of the ‘European space’ through practices of economic and political integration (Zürn and Checkel, 2007). Even though it might perhaps be argued that the ways in which EU member states have responded to the recent economic crisis in Europe could threaten to undermine public support for further economic integration, the EU can nonetheless be said to challenge a closed meaning of security by redefining national security away from an emphasis on territorial defence to non-military threats and trans-boundary risks through multilateral diplomacy and crisis management (Boin et al., 2013; Howorth, 2007; Smith, 2004).

The book’s argument departs from an understanding that there is no reason to assume that this process is neatly confined to Europe, since the EU’s enlargement process entails a dynamic relationship between community-building and boundary-drawing (Browning and Joenniemi, 2008; Christiansen, 2005; Christiansen et al., 2000; Rumelili, 2007; Smith, 1996). Since the end of the Cold War the borders of the EU have expanded in a series of enlargement and the Union now consists of twenty-eight member states. While it seems unlikely that EU enlargement will move beyond the Balkans in the near future, the Union has sought to come up with ways to expand its regulatory and legal frameworks beyond its borders to neighbouring countries without granting them membership, i.e. the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Several scholars suggest that the ENP is best understood as a means for the EU to exercise power and influence over states in its near abroad that are highly dependent on trade and aid from the Union (Bechev and Nicolaïdis, 2010; Börzel and Risse, 2012; Lavenex and Schimmelfennig, 2009; Smith, 2005). Others suggest that it rather serves as a vehicle for an open-ended process of socialization involving both EU members and neighbouring non-members (Manners, 2010). Still others suggest that the recent events in the southern neighbourhood following upon the Arab Spring have proved that the ENP does not work as it was intended to do (Lehne, 2014). To be sure, any attempt to analyse how the EU promotes security beyond its borders needs to take the inherent duality of the Union’s relations with neighbouring non-members as an analytical starting point and the security community concept provides useful conceptual tools to do so as it explicitly seeks to capture the dynamics between power and socialization in international politics.

The evolution of Spanish–Moroccan diplomatic relations in the post-Cold War era is particularly interesting in relation to the question whether the EU promotes security beyond its borders. The EU has sought to promote region-building in the Mediterranean since the 1990s (Pierros et al., 1999; Bicchi, 2007) and the Union is now deeply involved in the complex mix of cooperation and conflict that constitute Spanish–Moroccan relations (Gillespie, 2000; Hernando de Larramendi and Mañé Estrada, 2009). In this book it is argued that the ways in which the EU affects these relations reveal important insights on several issues that are not only of interest to students of EU external relations but also to students of security communities in IR. Focusing on the relations between a member state and a neighbouring non-member is crucial for our understanding of how the EU promotes security because although military threats to European states in the Mediterranean are undeniably scarce, other non-military threats and trans-boundary risks are potentially perceived as threatening both to EU member states and non-members. From a normative perspective it can also be argued that our analytical and empirical focus should not be limited to exploring the conditions for cooperative security practices that only involve EU member states because that risks omitting the question of whether security communities might create insecurity beyond their boundaries (Möller, 2007).

The notions of inside/outside and security/insecurity is highly relevant in this context because since the end of the Cold War the southern Mediterranean has been portrayed as a region of instability by the EU and many of its member states due to a host of problems linked to insufficient economic development, illegal migration, terrorism and religious radicalization (Huysmans, 2000; Del Sarto, 2006; Bicchi, 2007). While these trends pre-date the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, as well as the attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), those attacks are often described as having contributed to tilt the EU’s focus in the region even further towards strengthening counter-terrorism and border control measures and away from other goals such as democracy promotion and economic development (Joffé, 2008; Wolff, 2012). The ongoing securitization of the southern Mediterranean region by the EU and many of its member states might at first sight suggest that there is little room for the EU to act as a security community-building institution vis-à-vis Spain and Morocco. However, an important finding in the literature on security communities is that security dynamics do not necessarily vanish but rather transform themselves as inter-state peace is ‘secured’ (Waever, 1998). In fact, processes of securitization might be a means for security communities to expand through formal or informal inclusion of its periphery (Acharya, 2001; Adler, 2010).

Importantly, this book departs from an understanding that focusing primarily on discursive representations of security threats runs the risk of losing sight of more low-key and routine-based security practices that the EU and its member states engage in and that are equally important for the formation of intersubjective understandings of what constitute a security threat and, more importantly, how to deal with it. This is an important point to make since it cannot be taken for granted that security has a fixed meaning, especially at a time when inter-state wars are not perceived to be the main security threat and when ingrained military connotations of territorial defence and deterrence are challenged by the acknowledgement of an increasing number of non-military threats and trans-boundary risks (see Kaldor, 1998; Themnér and Wallensteen, 2011). In line with insights derived from practice theory in the social sciences the argument advanced in this book is that we need to focus much more on the ‘praxeology’ of security in order to better understand how the EU promotes security in its neighbourhood because the meaning of security cannot primarily be established deictically but rather by becoming aware of the pragmatic context and social practices in which actors are embedded (Kratochwil, 2011; Neumann, 2002).³ This book therefore seeks to answer the questions of whether, how and to what extent the EU promotes cooperative security practices not only among the circle of member states, but also beyond the Union’s borders in the Western Mediterranean. The empirical focus in the book is set on Spain and Morocco because by asking how the EU promotes change in the way in which security is practised between these two neighbouring, and at times conflicting, states allows us to explore how security communities work in the present era and thus to discuss the concept’s relevance at present times.

Thus, even though the book focuses specifically on the EU, Spain and Morocco the empirical findings are analysed in the broader context of the role regional organizations play in security community-building processes. In order to do so an analytical framework is devised based on three security community-building mechanisms, and by applying the framework in a case study of Spanish–Moroccan cooperation in relation to three EU policy fields (see below) the book shows how recent advances on practice theory in IR can be applied in empirical research generating novel and interesting results of relevance for EU studies and diplomacy. A main finding is that through the institutionalization of multilateral venues, the EU has provided cooperative frameworks that otherwise would not have been available, and that Spanish and Moroccan practitioners have become increasingly embedded in them. Another key finding is that the de-territorialized notion of security threats and a subsequent focus on crisis management increasingly structure the discourse and practice in the field of security and defence in both Spain and Morocco. This has created a new rationale for practical cooperation between Spanish and Moroccan diplomats, armed forces and civilian authorities in the post-Cold War era, even though it has not meant that old and protracted disputes have disappeared entirely. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in the final chapter of this book, together with suggestions as to how to carry the lessons from the case study on to future research endeavours. The book ends with a discussion on how these findings relate to how the EU has responded to the events that are reshaping its southern neighbourhood since 2011.

Studying the EU as a security community-building institution: problems and prospects

The relevant question to ask about security communities today is not ‘do they exist?’ but rather ‘how do they work?’ (Bially Mattern, 2001: 353). Nonetheless, proposing to study the EU as a security community-building institution in order to explore the question of how the EU promotes security in its southern neighbourhood entails ontological, epistemological and conceptual choices that obviously need to be discussed. It also raises the question of what analytical purchase is gained from drawing upon and engaging with the literature on security communities in IR rather than other sets of literature that deal with EU external relations.

To begin with, EU member states closely resemble the definition of a pluralistic security community proposed by Karl W. Deutsch as a group of sovereign states integrated to the point where there is: ‘real assurance that the members of that community will not fight each other physically, but will settle their disputes in some other way’ (Deutsch et al., 1957: 5).⁴ In contrast to most realist explanations in IR regarding the demise of inter-state wars among the major European powers in the post-1945 period which would typically point to a particular configuration of balance of power under US hegemony (e.g. Mearsheimer, 1990; Rosato, 2011; Waltz, 1993),⁵ transnational transactions among societies and mutual responsiveness between governments which was early on stressed by Deutsch seem to better explain the development of dependable expectations of peaceful change in Europe that have endured also after the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. As such, it might appear that the security community concept have a great deal in common with liberal explanations on the peaceful evolution of the European order, such the democratic peace theory (Russett, 1993) or complex interdependence (Nye and Keohane, 1977), especially since security communities are thought to rest on a: ‘perpetual dynamic process of mutual attention, communication, perception of needs, and responsiveness in the process of decision-making’ (Deutsch et al., 1957: 36).⁶

However, there are indications that security communities might evolve among non-democratic states (Acharya, 2001) and focusing primarily on the convergence of preferences and interests among states as many liberal explanations do fails to account for the emergence of the intersubjective belief that common problems must and can be resolved by institutionalized procedures without resort to physical force which forms the basis of security communities. Indeed, several studies building on constructivist insights on international socialization and collective identity formation have since the 1990s contributed to our understanding of how security communities work (Anderson et al., 2008; Bially Mattern, 2001; Bjola and Kornprobst, 2007; Möller, 2007; Risse-Kappen, 1996; Williams, 2001, 2007; Williams and Neumann, 2000).

Adler and Barnett have made a major contribution in this vein and they point out that the defining quality of security communities is shared knowledge structures which enable new interpretations of social reality, implying that states do not necessarily only seek to achieve security within the: ‘limits of some ontologically privileged anarchy’ (Adler and Barnett, 1998: 436; Wendt, 1999). They also distinguish between loosely and tightly coupled pluralistic security communities and the EU and its member states can be said to closely resemble a tightly coupled pluralistic security community in that the members not only practise self-restraint towards each other but also seek to collectively handle security threats.⁷ But in order to discuss whether, how and to what extent the EU promotes cooperative security practices beyond its borders the relationship between institutions and practices needs to be clarified, and questions on power and agency in security community-building processes need to be addressed.

Regional organizations as security community-building institutions

It is commonly argued in the literature that security communities are essentially embodied in the creation of a ‘we-feeling’ or ‘sense of community’ but it should be said that Deutsch originally suggested that such communities also rest on: ‘institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure, for a long time, dependable expectations of peaceful change among its population’ (Deutsch et al., 1957: 5, emphasis added). To be sure, the roles and functions of international institutions is a much debated issue in IR. Seen from a realist perspective institutions merely reflect underlying power structures and they only survive as long as they serve the great powers that created them in the first place (Mearsheimer, 1994/1995; Rosato, 2011), whereas liberal institutionalists argue that institutions primarily function so as to enhance the prospects for cooperation among states in that they lower transaction costs and improve the possibilities for actors to make credible commitments (Keohane, 1984; Keohane and Martin, 1995; Martin, 1992). Constructivists rather point to the role that institutions play in not only advancing states’ interests but also shaping states’ preferences because interests that motivate actions: ‘emerge from a process of interaction and socialization’ (Checkel, 1998: 326; Iain Johnston, 2005).

In relation to security communities, Adler and Barnett point to the role that regional organizations might play as: ‘sites of socialization and learning [being] able to foster the creation of a regional “culture” around commonly held attributes’ (Adler and Barnett, 1998: 43). Regional organizations function as security community-building institutions to the extent that they promote ‘strong multilateralism’ which refers to: ‘the institutionalization of security communities by means of multilateral debates, dialogue, persuasion, seminar diplomacy, and discursive legitimation, on the basis of collective knowledge’ (Adler, 1998: 150).⁸ To paraphrase Neumann (2013: 4), regional organizations matter in this regard to the extent that they turn generic venues for social interaction into specific sites ‘where something happens’...