Small States and International Security

Clive Archer, Alyson J.K. Bailes, Anders Wivel, Clive Archer, Alyson J. K. Bailes, Anders Wivel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317755357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

This book explains what 'small' states are and explores their current security challenges, in general terms and through specific examples. It reflects the shift from traditional security definitions emphasizing defence and armaments, to new security concerns such as economic, societal and environmental security where institutional cooperation looms larger. These complex issues, linked with traditional power relations and new types of actors, need to be tackled with due regard to democracy and good governance. Key policy challenges for small states are examined and applied in the regional case studies.

The book deals mainly with the current experience and recent past of such states but also offers insights for their future policies. Although many of the states covered are European, the study also includes African, Caribbean and Asian small states. Their particular interest and relevance is outlined, as is the connection between their security challenges and their smallness. Policy lessons for other states are then sought.

The book is the first in-depth, multi-continent study of security as an aspect of small state governance today. It is novel in placing the security dilemmas of small states in the context of wider ideas on international and institutional change, and in dealing with non-European states and regions.

Part ISmall state security revisited

History, concepts, theory

1 Setting the scene

Small states and international security

Anders Wivel, Alyson J.K. Bailes and Clive Archer

DOI: 10.4324/9781315798042-1

Introduction

Small states have traditionally played a marginal role in the construction and maintenance of international security orders. Accepting the dictum formulated by Thucydides in the fifth century BC, that ‘the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept’ (Thucydides [1954] 1972: 302), small states have tended to pursue pragmatic and reactive security policies adapting to the interests of nearby great powers and aiming primarily to ensure their own survival. As noted by Browning:

[i]n the international relations literature and in world politics size has generally been connected to capability and influence. Whilst being big is correlated with power, being small has been viewed as a handicap to state action, and even state survival.

(Browning 2006: 669)

This was true even as international affairs began to institutionalize. In the nineteenth century, the Congress of Vienna recognized the special role of the United Kingdom, Prussia, Austria, France and Russia, and for almost a century the great powers set the rules of the game by meeting ‘in concert on a regular basis in order to discuss questions of concern, and to draw up agreements and treaties’ (Neumann and Gstöhl 2006: 5). Small states were those states that were not great powers, i.e. the states left to obey the rules of the game, because they were too weak to be taken seriously when the rules were negotiated. In the first half of the twentieth century, conditions seemed to worsen for small states as the development of new weapons technology widened the gap between them and the great powers. As noted by Annette Baker Fox in her classic study of the power of small states:

[d]uring World War II it was widely asserted that the day of the small power was over. Not only could such a state have no security under modern conditions of war; it could have no future in the peace that presumably one day would follow.

(Fox 2006 [1959]: 39)

Superpower rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union following the end of the war simultaneously intensified and ameliorated the security predicament of small states. On the one hand, the institutions of international society were strengthened. On a global scale, the establishment and subsequent development of the United Nations served as an important vehicle for decolonization (supported by both superpowers), which helped to create a large number of new small states. Subsequently the UN served as a platform for small states voicing their concerns over international developments and cooperating on promoting their values and interests. On a regional scale, a proliferation of new regional trade agreements and organizations, most notably the precursors to the European Union, helped small states to achieve some of the economies of scale that had traditionally been the privilege of great powers. On the other hand, a world with two superpowers of continental size and global reach was also a world of even greater power disparity than had been the case before the war, with a sharp delineation between the security- (and insecurity-)producing superpowers and small state security consumers unable to defend their own territory against external (and sometimes internal) threats.

A transformed geopolitical environment after the Cold War, 9/11 and the Iraq war have fundamentally altered the security challenges of small states in Europe. Most importantly, the end of the Cold War reduced the traditional military threat to most European small states significantly. In much of Europe — at least — small states need not fear military invasion for the foreseeable future. This has widened the foreign policy room of manoeuvre considerably for these small states, as they need no longer fear that policies provoking or irritating the strong will lead to military subjugation or extinction. In addition, from the 1990s onwards, intensified globalization and increased interdependence reduced the importance of traditional military instruments in a way that highlighted both the diplomatic and institutional competencies of small states, and their possible non-state (business, intellectual, environmental) assets.

However, new security challenges soon emerged. The Gulf War of 1990–1991 and the struggle over former Yugoslavia created new demands for active conflict management, and small states were expected to contribute to their solution even if their immediate security interests were not under threat. The repercussions of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, emphasized the global aspect of small state security. As the European experience has illustrated, this does not necessarily mean the end of great power politics. The gradual development of the EU as a security actor, and the frequent use of informal big member state consultations in EU security policy making, illustrates that Euro-peanization entails challenges as well as opportunities (Wivel 2005). At the same time economic, societal and environmental security issues present all states with a new set of challenges including financial crisis, increased competition over markets, migration, terrorism and global warming.

The aim of the book

The aim of this book is to conceptualize, map and explain the security challenges of small states today. We specifically aim both to identify the challenges and the opportunities of small states and to discuss the costs and benefits of the different security strategies followed by small states inside and outside Europe. Throughout the history of international security, small states’ relative lack of power has given them less influence over international events and a smaller margin of time and error (Jervis 1978: 172–173). As permanent security consumers they have had little to offer the great powers and therefore, also, a limited room for manoeuvre when pursuing strategic goals beyond security and survival. As the stra-tegic environment of small states is changing, so are their opportunities and incentives to engage actively in the creation and maintenance of security orders.

Even though the literature on small state security has been growing rapidly since the end of the Cold War, there have been few attempts to go beyond single country studies and provide a comprehensive overview of the general pattern of challenges, opportunities and strategies facing small states in the current security order. Now, as in the past, the study of small states is plagued by a lack of cumulative insights and coherent debate. This book aspires to fill this void by taking three steps towards a more generally applicable understanding of small state security. First, we discuss how the transformation of small state security necessi-tates the development and application of new security concepts, and extends the range of possible solutions. Second, we analyse a number of European cases in order to describe and explain the security predicament of small European states today and how they respond. Third, we explore examples of small state security in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean to see how they compare or contrast with the European experience. All this helps to produce comparative insights, drawn from the conceptual discussions and empirical analyses, and reflected in the chapters of Part III.

We do not seek to prove a certain theoretical school — realist, liberal or constructivist — right or wrong. Our research strategy is to start from a shared definition of small states, to focus on the security challenges and opportunities of small states today and in the recent past, and to structure the analyses within each part of the book with a set of questions to be answered by each chapter within that part. Thus, our aim is not to construct and test a grand theory of small states, but to offer a structured and focused analysis of small state security today. We also acknowledge that different theories may shed light in different places, and that variations in historical, geopolitical and institutional contexts will affect the applicability of general theories to small state security over time and space.

Defining small states in international security

Students have not reached a consensus on how to define a small state or which behavioural characteristics may be seen as typical for small states, beyond the general tendency of such states to adapt to — rather than dominate — their external environment, and (where applicable) to seek influence through membership of international institutions (Amstrup 1976: 178; Antola and Lehtimäki 2001: 13–20; Archer and Nugent 2002: 2–5; Christmas-Møller 1983: 40; Hey 2003: 2–10; Knudsen 2002: 182–185; Panke 2010: 15; Steinmetz and Wivel 2010: 4–7). ¹ Thus, although most students would agree with Hey, that today ‘[s]mall states […] enjoy more international prestige and visibility than at any other time in history’ (Hey 2003: 1), they would find it hard to agree upon what exactly constitutes a small state.

Despite this lack of consensus, analyses of small state security tend to focus on material power capabilities, i.e. the possession of — or rather the lack of — power resources in absolute or relative terms; most often measured by proxies such as population size, GDP (gross domestic product) or military expenditure. Historically, this type of definition follows directly from the development of international society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the number of small states rose sharply as a consequence of the break-up of empires and decolonization. The class of small states was a ‘residual category’, referring to those states that were not great powers and thus were defined by ‘their presumed lack of power in a quantitative sense’ (Neumann and Gstöhl 2006: 4). Theoretically, this type of definition typically follows from a starting point in the realist school of international relations, which has historically been the dominant approach to the analysis of international security, including the security problems of small states. ²

Three benefits follow from defining small states in terms of capabilities. First, if we are to analyse the opportunities, challenges and limitations of a specific state, indications of absolute and relative capacity are important, because they inform us of the absolute and relative limitations on these states’ capacity to handle different types of challenges. Second, an absolute and universal threshold between big and small states of, for example, a population size of 15 million people, or a GDP of €500 billion, has the benefit of creating a clear and easily applicable definition of small states. The same can be said of a relative definition defining great powers as the ‘top ten’ in the world, or the ‘top five’ in a specific region — measured in, for example, population size, GDP or military expenditure — and the rest as small states. Also, the existing power indexes of the (realist) IR literature, which seeks to combine a number of parameters in order to evaluate the aggregate power of states, may be adapted to the analysis of small states (Kennedy 1987; Schweller 1998; Wohlforth 1999).

Third, starting from a power possession definition allows us to draw on the comprehensive literature on power and security in international relations in order to identify why, when and how the security challenges of small states are distinct from those faced by stronger states. For instance, Kenneth Waltz, the pre-eminent scholar of relative capabilities, discusses the implications of power (and the lack of it) and notes that: (1) ‘power provides the means of maintaining one’s autonomy in the face of force that others wield’, (2) ‘greater power permits wider ranges of action, while leaving the outcome of action uncertain’, (3) ‘the more powerful enjoy wider margins of safety in dealing with the less powerful and have more to say about which games will be played and how’, and finally (4) ‘great power gives its possessors a big stake in their system and the ability to act for its sake’ (Waltz 1979: 194–195). Following this discussion, it could be argued that small states: (1) are not able by themselves to preserve their own autonomy in the face of force that others wield; (2) have a narrow range of action; (3) have little to say about which games are being played, and how; (4) have only a small stake in the system and are unable to act for its sake. These four points correspond closely with a traditionalist view of small states in international security. Throughout the book, the authors of individual chapters use these four assumptions as a starting point for discussing to which extent this view is still relevant for the states ana...