Globalization and the New Security Agenda in Eastern Europe

In this essay I survey the security environment of Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War and consider how the process of globalization affects the security situation in the region and whether there are prospects for the establishment of a pan-European security order. ¹ Other important related themes include the nature of new security challenges, the interplay of internal and external actors affecting European security at the substate, state, regional, and global levels, and the special roles of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union in integrating the region with the West in the political, economic, and security spheres, as well as the limits of such integrative efforts.

While there are obvious benefits to the spread of democratic values and the market economy to Europe, several trends are apparent that raise concerns. In the military-security sphere, the end of the Cold War has encouraged the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missile technologies, which, along with competing U.S., Chinese, and Russian arms exports to countries like Taiwan, Iran, and India, has contributed to the intensification of regional conflicts. Moreover, the decline of Russian power on the world stage has left the United States and NATO, presumably, in the role of the world's policeman, a role that concerns proponents of multilateral approaches to conflict resolution. In addition, nonmilitary factors figure very prominently as sources of domestic and regional insecurity. These include intergroup conflicts, increasing poverty and economic inequality, anxieties, even in the industrialized states, about the impact of globalization in the economic sphere, and social and political instability.

Globalization and Security: The Theoretical Context

Though it is beyond my scope in this essay to examine the interplay between concepts of security and globalization, a few words are necessary to place these concepts in their proper context. Barry Buzan, a distinguished scholar of international security, refers to the interactions of human groups "in terms of threats and vulnerabilities." ² Traditionally, security analysts and practitioners have placed great emphasis on the nation-state and on military and political aspects of interstate relations (for example, arms balances and territorial disputes) as important subjects for security. However, over time, and especially since the end of the Cold War, a widerperspective has received greater attention in security studies by focusing more attention on nonstate actors and on economic, societal, and environmental aspects (for example, the role of paramilitary authorities in maintaining internal security and access to economic opportunities). Buzan and his colleagues in Security: A New Framework for Analysis suggest a new approach, which combines elements of the traditionalist and wider perspectives.

Explanations of globalization are found in most social science literature. In fact, the range of them is so wide that there is no consensus on what globalization really means, and whether it is more a means or an end. Two explanations, however, are very close in capturing the essence of globalization as understood by scholars and practitioners. Hans-Henrik Holm and Georg Sorensen define the concept as "the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across borders." ³ William Coleman and Tony Porter refer to globalization as "processes whereby the boundaries and imagination of social relations become more autonomous from physical location." ⁴ Tied up in such explanations are two important elements: the transcendence of physical borders (the nation-state) in human relations and the expanded scope of those relations, especially into the economic, cultural, and social realms. Ron Smith refers to four underlying processes of globalization: (1) technological—costs and capabilities for transport and communications; (2) economic—the increased crossborder flow of commodities, capital, labor, and so on; (3) political—the increased significance of international institutions relative to nation-states; and (4) social—the establishment of civil society at the international level. ⁵

There also exists a close connection between security and globalization for people in many societies. Ian Clark, in fusing these two concepts in practical...