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Describes the interrelation between security and democratic consolidation as a process in specific national and regional contexts. The analysis combines a systematic approach to hypothesis building with an empirically based discussion, and seeks to place developments in Eastern Europe into a wider analytical framework. The chapter argues that the relationship between security and democracy in Eastern Europe is based on the concept of dual conditionality. The relationship is a reciprocal one in which security conditions democratic development as much as democratic consolidation conditions regional security and peace building. Finally, the chapter discusses several caveats concerning the interrelation between security and democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe.

This chapter presents a view of China's approach to security multilateralism in Pacific Asia. It argues that the three main challenges that China faces in regional security are the potential for conflict on the Korean peninsula, Japan's politics of military aggressiveness and the meaninglessness of its non-violent constitution, and the Taiwan separatists' denial of ‘One China’. Despite the likely persistence of these problems, the discussion presents some grounds for optimism in building regional security multilateralism, in terms of the modes, fields, and driving forces of cooperation. Nevertheless, it indicates how far the prospect for multilateralism is dependent on the emergence of a consensus between China, Japan, and the USA as to its desirability, capability, and purposes.

This chapter traces the process leading to the emergence of changing perceptions of the EU in East Asia following the establishment of an EU—China techno‐political linkage and the proposal to lift the EU arms embargo on China. The first part examines Europe's traditional involvement in East Asian security affairs, including the Taiwan question and cross‐Strait relations. In the second part, this chapter analyses the novelty represented by the promotion of EU space and defence interests in China, including its impact on a regional environment characterized by the security dilemma and balance of power logic. This chapter concludes with a discussion on whether, and to what extent, the promotion of EU space and defence interests in China coupled with the peculiar characteristics of East Asia's international system has made the EU to be perceived as a novel strategic factor in the region.

The chapter seeks to relate the concepts of ‘regional power’ and ‘regional security’ to the relatively unexplored concept of ‘regional leadership’ by comparing the regional security problématiques of Brazil, India and South Africa, the three most visible emerging powers in the global South. While the exercise of regional power is in its essence a control operation, the establishment of regional leadership requires the generation of consent. The chapter also seeks to understand the interplay between policy initiative and regional context. To what extent are the regional policies of Brazil, India, and South Africa conditioned by their respective regional contexts? What is the role of innovative domestic and regional policy in transforming the regional context? Thus, the subject matter of the chapter also gestures to a fundamental issue in social science research, the agent-structure problem.

This chapter explores the Russian perspective on China. This perspective is shaped by a complex amalgamation of geopolitical, economic, historical, and cultural factors that add up to a profound ambivalence toward their rapidly growing neighbor. Despite this ambivalence, Russian policy toward China for the past two decades under Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, and now Dmitri Medvedev has been driven mainly by pragmatic considerations, resulting in a gradual rapprochement and thickening of the relationship. Such perspectives are also very indicative of Russia's identity and view of its place in the world as a uniquely Eurasian power. Additionally, Russian perspectives on China and international relations more broadly tend toward traditional realpolitik considerations of the dynamics between rising and falling great powers. Topics covered include Russian domestic politics, regional security and ideology, and the cooling of U.S.–Russian relations. Despite perceptions of a shifting balance of power and the genuine cooling in U.S.–Russian ties, Russian elites remain at best ambivalent about the emerging Chinese superpower. For historical, cultural, geographic, and economic reasons, Russia's preferred option is to lean west, while improving ties with China both for intrinsic reasons as well as to enhance its leverage with the United States and Europe.

This chapter describes the various aspects of Sino-Russian defense ties in terms of their evolution, current programs, future projections and limitations, and the implications for regional security and U.S. policy. It argues that Sino-Russian defense ties will continue in the coming years, barring (and even despite) dramatic developments such as the lifting of the European Union (EU) arms embargo, with China continuing to make sizeable albeit selective purchases of Russian weapons systems. However, Beijing will seek to lever its position as a key customer to demand more advanced systems and greater technology transfers in an effort to further improve its own domestic defense industrial base. The chapter begins by highlighting Chinese arms acquisitions from Russia since the 1990s. The issues and prospects of Sino-Russian defense cooperation are covered. The future direction of Sino-Russian defense ties will continue to be determined by the overall politico-strategic relationship of the two countries.

This concluding chapter draws on the implications of this book's analysis to suggest ways for designing more effective regional security regimes both inside Europe and beyond. To establish effective regional security regimes, three features must be present. First, a decision-making body must be established that can cope with internal veto players as well as member-state aggression. Second, a regularized, independent enforcement mechanism must be created with the full backing of regional hegemons and great powers. Finally, the regime must engender cooperation between monitors and enforcers to provide effective conflict management at all stages of the conflict—from preventive diplomacy to postwar reconstruction. Securing significant investment from regional powers while protecting against exploitation remains the most difficult task for designers of regional security regimes.

The law of the sea provides the legal framework for national rights and obligations at sea, while it is also an important catalyst for regional security cooperation and dialogue. However, the law of the sea can also be a potential source of tension. All the critical issues with resolving ambiguities in the law of the sea, and the different points of view on particular jurisdictional issues and the freedoms of navigation and overflight, may be found in the seas of East Asia. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and customary international law identify three distinct navigational regimes: innocent passage applying to the territorial sea and archipelagic waters; transit passage through straits used for international navigation; and archipelagic sea lanes passage through archipelagic waters. This chapter examines key areas of disagreement in the region with regard to the freedoms of navigation and overflight, including those in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and discusses some recent incidents involving these issues.

This chapter examines the Central Asia Security Complex, and the involvement of its five states – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – in Afghanistan. Rivalry between strong and weaker Central Asian states, fear of loss of sovereignty, and the need to balance the interests of global powers undermine regional integration. These factors also preclude a unified regional position towards Afghanistan, and – despite the ambitious “Heart of Asia” designs pursued by the US and its allies in the wake of the 2001 intervention – effectively limit their engagement there. While the five Central Asian states share concern about threats to their regime stability and national security, such as terrorism, extremism and criminality, they prefer bilateral over multilateral approaches to cooperation. The asymmetric rivalry of the five Central Asian countries, with their need to balance the interests of external actors, has resulted in a strategy of insulation towards Afghanistan. Afghanistan represents both a threat and an opportunity. While the potential spillover of instability is a concern for CA states, this is peripheral to, and not at the core of, the dynamic of the Central Asian Regional Security Complex.

The USA is still the only power with the capability to have a major impact—for better or for worse—on the security orders in all major geographical regions of the world, most notably the Near/Middle East, East Asia, and Europe. A review of the major dynamics in regional orders shows that seven decades of American hegemony have always been short of the liberal ideal-type expectations—well before Donald Trump entered the scene. However, the Trump administration sees the international and regional security orders primarily as arenas for power competition in which economic and military might are the most relevant currencies. While the erosion of regional security orders is not primarily the result of the deeds and omissions in Washington, the missing liberal hegemon will make it much harder to reverse the trend and to rebuild these orders from within and from the outside.

This chapter lays out the historical and political background for Afghanistan’s fraught relationships to states in its neighborhood. It introduces the analytical framework developed by Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver in their book Regions and Powers (2003), and contrasts that to mainstream analysis, which sees Afghanistan as the center of a wider region. The authors argue that the bilateral relations between Afghanistan and neighboring states is a projection of dynamics elsewhere – within South Asia, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf – and therefore peripheral to more important regional security relations. The failure, in the aftermath of the 2001 intervention in Afghanistan, to foster a regional security cooperation that would contribute to peace and stability in that country reflects the shortcomings of the mainstream analysis. The chapter provides the foundation for an alternative approach, in which a more constructive engagement in Afghanistan by states of its neighborhood relies less on each neighbor’s relationship with Afghanistan than it does on cooperation within each of the three regions that surround it.

This chapter examines the security dynamic within the Persian Gulf, and the involvement of its constituent states – particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia – in Afghanistan. Following the 2003 US intervention in Iraq, the security dynamic within this complex effectively became bipolar, characterized by the antagonistic relations between Iran, a rising power with hegemonic regional ambitions which is using the conflict over nuclear capability to its advantage, and a more insecure Saudi Arabia, which is forced to rely on the security guarantees of external powers against both regional and domestic threats. Global powers, in turn, are used by Iran and Saudi Arabia for the purposes of pursuing their own rivalry. Afghanistan becomes a terrain over which Iran and Saudi Arabia project their ideological and economic ambitions and seek security safeguards. Each competes to shape Afghan domestic politics and future governance, in large part by attempting to curb the influence of the other. They use their connections with various ethnic and religious groups, propagating their distinct religious doctrines, increasing economic ties and attempting to influence insurgent groups. At the same time, both seek legitimacy and relevance by maneuvering to become part of the solution to the Afghan security problem.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has faced a number of serious challenges to its geopolitical position in the Persian Gulf regional security complex. Having long relied upon the United States as a guarantor of its security, recent friction between Washington and Riyadh, coupled with what appeared to be a burgeoning rapprochement between the US and Iran, has caused policymakers in Riyadh to reconsider Saudi foreign policy behavior.

This chapter examines the hypothesis that the main drivers behind the involvement of the states in the wider neighborhood surrounding Afghanistan are to be found in the dynamic within three distinctive regional security complexes – Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and South Asia – rather than in the bilateral relations each state has to Afghanistan. The chapter takes a critical look at the basic proposition – which has informed most post-2001 policy initiatives – that Afghanistan serves as a connector for the countries of the wider neighborhood, examining this proposition from an identity perspective, an economic perspective, as well as a security perspective. The chapter also scrutinizes unfolding processes of change within each of the three regions surrounding Afghanistan, taking the vantage point of Kabul in asking what possible changes this could bring about in the relationship with each neighboring country and the regions of which they form a part, as well as whether we may see a full transformation of the very regional architecture of the neighborhood.

This chapter examines dynamics within the South Asian regional security complex, how the two regional rivals, India and Pakistan, draw in global powers, and how their relationship is projected in Afghanistan. The conflict between India and Pakistan is attributed to historical legacies over territory, including the Kashmir conflict, as well as irreconcilable differences over national identity. The chapter examines how the security dynamics within the South Asian region have in turn been influenced by the rivalries of global powers. These rivalries, argues the chapter, get projected onto the Afghan terrain. In Afghanistan, the main rationale for both Pakistan and India is to check the influence of the other, furthering their regional proxy war, albeit indirectly and with unconventional tactics. For Pakistan, influence over Afghanistan is seen as essential to security, primarily for maintaining strategic depth against India, but also to maintain the current border (the disputed Durand Line), to quash aspirations for a united Pashtunistan, and to foster cooperation with the US. For India, engagement in Afghanistan is largely about constraining Pakistan’s influence, turning public opinion against its main rival, while insulating itself from the dangers of the narcotics trade and fundamentalist Islam. India also seeks international recognition as a major donor.

In this chapter we argue that one of the principal inhibitors of sustainable security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region is that the Cold War has yet to end. Strategic concepts and postures reflecting containment, ‘constrainment’, sphere of influence, expansionism, and territorial competition still inhabit the rhetoric not just of the regional security environment. Regional strategies can therefore be interpreted within the framework of Cold War ‘logic’, thus impeding regional security cooperation. The ‘old’ Cold War has thus been perpetuated, reinforced, and reinterpreted as a ‘new’ Cold War due to geopolitical competition over global and regional primacy. Even within this process of geopolitical competition, old geopolitical concepts such as ‘pivot’ and ‘Indo-Pacific’ have also been reinterpreted and reused to justify new strategies that ultimately continue to foster a new Cold War in the region. Indeed, the Indo-Pacific has returned as a central element of the new Cold War.