| Review of: |
Thinking Peaceful Change: Baltic Security Policies and Security Community Building by Frank Möller
Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2006
Pages: 368. $39.95 |
| Reviewed By: |
Peter van Ham |
| Reviewed in: |
International Studies Review |
| Date accepted online: |
10/04/2008 |
| Published in print: |
Volume 09, Issue 02, Pages 269-271 |
Imagining a Baltic Paradise
Frank Möller's Thinking Peaceful Change argues that the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) have developed security policies aimed at constructing their newly independent states rather than taking advantage of an historic opportunity to build a "security community." Möller claims that, after the peaceful retreat of Russian troops in the 1990s, the Baltic states did little to imagine and realize possible new forms of security, based on what he labels "peaceful change." The book radiates regret that the Baltic states have missed an opportunity to reject the classical pattern of state-building, in which an "Other" is imagined and a security discourse is constructed on the basis of confrontation with, and fear of, that "Other" (Walker 1993; Booth 1998). Möller argues that the building of a security community requires a break with conventional security thinking and such arrangements as military alliances and strict border regimes that are based on classical notions of the balance of power. By building up their militaries and joining NATO, the Baltic states clearly chose the "realist path" to security.
Thinking Peaceful Change is a valuable contribution to the foreign policy analysis of the Baltic states, especially given that it takes into account aspects of social memory studies (see, for example, Olick 2003; Ricoeur 2006) as well as discourse analysis. The book is, in this respect, decidedly eclectic in its methodology, which Möller acknowledges at the very beginning when he states that he intends to "take a fairly pragmatic and nondogmatic approach" (p. 16). If anything, this eclecticism makes the book stronger. Möller has a good grasp of what makes the Baltic Sea region tick, and he knows the historical and cultural idiosyncrasies of the people who live there. As a result, he is in a good position to analyze the political discourse in the three Baltic states.
Möller starts off Thinking Peaceful Change with a detailed analysis of the origins of the concept of "security community," which he, of course, traces back to Karl Deutsch (1954). Deutsch saw a security community as a "group of people which has become integrated" (p. 25), which implies that war is no longer seen as a legitimate way to solve disputes and that "war between the political units concerned neither appears possible (any longer) nor is being prepared for" (p. 29). Deutsch further claims that these "political units" do "not necessarily have to be a nation, and the territory need not be a nation-state"(p. 25). This assertion is a basic element in Möller's argument that a security community is a cognitive project that is characterized, as Deutsch has argued, by "stability of expectations of continuing peaceful change" (p. 29). Möller thus follows Arendt Lijphart's assessment that Deutsch's work constituted a major challenge to the realist view of international politics, which was based on the concept of unified state actors and a sharp dichotomy between international and domestic relations (Griffiths 1999:179).
In a chapter entitled "The Construction of Security in the Baltic States," Möller analyzes the Baltic security discourse of the early 1990s, in which the dominant argument was that "there are no alternatives" to a military buildup combined with swift NATO membership. In subsequent chapters, he studies the ways in which the national security strategies of the three Baltic states were conceptualized. Interestingly, Möller concludes that, in the late 1990s, the image of a Russian military threat gradually disappeared from most Baltic security policy documents. In the Baltic discourse, he argues, Russia was increasingly depicted as unpredictable rather than as an outright threat. He claims that the Baltic states originally used the specter of the Russian threat as an argument for NATO membership, but that they could only join after they had accepted the emerging NATO "language game" of cooperation. Although Möller mentions this shift in the Baltic security discourse, he fails to draw the logical conclusion that the desire to join NATO has in itself encouraged the kind of "peaceful change" that he holds so dear.
Apart from the theoretical debates about the ever shifting Baltic reading of security, which constitutes the basic thread of this book, the historical chapters about the role and place of the Baltics in Russia's "near abroad" stand out. Möller's point of departure is that "language constructs rather than reflects reality" (p. 234) and that, in the 1990s, Russia was used "as a negative reference point against which the Baltic nation-states were constructed" (p. 237; see also, Wæver 1995). Möller offers some fascinating insights into how such Baltic myths as the so-called Forest Brothers, who formed the anti-Soviet partisan resistance by hiding in the woods, proved to be guides for contemporary Baltic security policies. He also examines the ways in which geography-that is, the proximity and the territorial inequality of the Baltics and Russia-has influenced Baltic security policies. The two factors have been key to keeping the Baltic security discourse within the realist realm, foreclosing other policy options such as de-militarization.
Still, it may be useful to put some figures on the "growth in the military potential" of the Baltic states that Möller mentions so often. In 2006, the three Baltic states had a combined defense budget of less than US$1 billion and a bit over 20,000 troops, whereas their Russian neighbor had a defense budget of US$25 billion and a defense force of more than one million troops (The Military Balance 2007). The Baltic "military build-up" is, therefore, rather modest and may even be considered too modest given the active role that the Baltic states play in global peacekeeping. In retrospect, and given the history of Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, it is the restraint in Baltic security policy and security discourse that stands out. In this light, Möller's claim-that "a controversial debate of alternative paths to Baltic security has virtually been absent, thus bolstering a one-dimensional understanding of security that is theoretically untenable" (p. 8)-is in itself untenable and even mistaken. We can hardly be surprised that the Baltic states were disinclined to experiment in security matters and have rejected the "Icelandic option" of reneging on armed forces, which Möller suggests.
In his concluding chapter, Möller claims that "NATO enlargement seems to have influenced the evolution of a security community in the Baltic Sea region only modestly" (p. 297). Indeed, the specter of violent conflict has not fully disappeared within the Baltic and Russian strategic discourse. But, as Möller shows all too clearly in Thinking Peaceful Change, this mistrust was to be expected given the long period of Soviet occupation of the Baltic territories. The more optimistic conclusions to be drawn from this important study are, first, that Baltic membership in NATO has contributed significantly to the pacification of the Baltic Sea region and, second, that the militarization of the security discourse may well have been a temporary and even necessary phase toward realizing "peaceful change" (Trenin and van Ham 2000).
