4 - Seeds of peaceful change: the OSCE's security community-building model

Summary

The essence of European security lies in the process of creating an inclusive community of democratic states. This is the special genius of the CSCE … In this sense, free elections are as much a security measure as ceilings on tanks.

James Goodby

In this chapter, I introduce and analyze the concept of a “security community-building institution.” I argue that collective identities, the “stuff” of which security communities are made, do not always evolve spontaneously; rather, as in the case of the expansion eastward of the Euro-Atlantic pluralistic security community, they are socially constructed by institutions. Although some international institutions - including the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - have, as a collateral outcome of their functional tasks, helped set up some of the building-blocks of security communities, none has gone as far as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in transforming itself into an understanding in the concept of pluralistic security community.

When taken together, the OSCE's innovative security communitybuilding processes and practices suggest a new model of international security. According to this “association-exclusion” - I prefer to call it inside-out - model, security is increasingly defined as “comprehensive” (it links classic security elements to economic, environmental, cultural, and human-rights factors), “indivisible” (one state's security is inseparable from that of other states), and “cooperative” (security is based on confidence and cooperation, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the work of mutually reinforcing multilateral institutions).