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The Security Problematic of the Third World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Mohammed Ayoob
Mohammed Ayoob
Affiliation:
James Madison College, Michigan State University
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Abstract

This article reviews some recently published volumes on the subject of Third World security and, in the light of the analyses presented in these books, attempts to discuss a series of major issues in the field of Third World security studies. These include (1) the applicability of the concept of security as traditionally defined in the Western literature on international relations to Third World contexts; (2) the domestic variables affecting the security of Third World states; (3) the impact of international systemic factors on Third World security; (4) the effect of late-twentieth-century weapons technology on the security of Third World states; and (5) the relationship between the security and developmental concerns of Third World states. The author concludes that while international and technological factors have important effects on the security of Third World states, the major variables determining the degree of security enjoyed by such states at both the intrastate and interstate levels are related to the twin processes of state making and nation building that are at work simultaneously within Third World polities.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , January 1991 , pp. 257 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1991

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References

1 For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Ayoob, Mohammed, “The Third World in the System of States: Acute Schizophrenia or Growing Pains” International Studies Quarterly 33 (March 1989), 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For example, see Nacht, Michael, “Toward an American Conception of Regional Security,” Daedalus no (Winter 1981), 1–22Google Scholar; and MacFailane, S. Neil, “The Soviet Conception of Regional Security,” World Politics 37 (April 1985), 295–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 There are, however, significant exceptions to this rule and they include Rothstein, Robert I., The Weak in the World of the Strong: The Developing Countries in the International System (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977);Google ScholarKrasner, Stephen D., Structural Conflict: The Third World against Global Liberalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);Google ScholarMortimer, Robert A., The Third World Coalition in International Politics, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Braveboy-Wagner, Jacqueline A., Interpreting the Third World: Politics, Economics, and Social Issues (New York: Praeger, 1986).Google Scholar

4 For a commendable effort at bringing together analyses of the security problems and policies of important Third World countries within some sort of a common framework, see Kolodziej, Edward A. and Harkavy, Robert E., eds., Security Policies of Developing Countries (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1982).Google Scholar See also Al-Mashat, Abdul-Monem M., National Security in the Third World (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985).Google Scholar

5 Lippmann, , U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1943), 51.Google Scholar

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8 For a representative sample of idealist thought, see Angell, Norman, The Great Illusion, 4th ed. (1909; New York: Putnam's, 1913).Google Scholar

9 For example, see Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little Brown, 1977).Google Scholar

10 Ayoob, Mohammed and Samudavanija, Chai-Anan, “Leadership and Security in Southeast Asia: Exploring General Propositions,” in Ayoob, and Samudavanija, , eds., Leadership Perceptions and National Security: The Southeast Asian Experience (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989), 256.Google Scholar

11 Israel is the only exception to this rule because of the intensity of one superpower's commitment to its security, as defined largely by Israel itself. This, in turn, is related to the fact that Israel is a domestic political issue in the United States and not merely a foreign policy concern. Moreover, Israel, in terms of its ideological origins, the organization of its society and polity, the composition of its elite, and its links with strong and important European and American constituencies is not a Third World state. In other words, Israel may be physically located in the Third World but, in terms of the defining characteristics of the Israeli state, is not of the Third World. For details of the nature and evolution of the special relationship between the United States and Israel, see Safran, Nadav, Israel: The Embattled Ally (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1981).Google Scholar

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13 Michael Mann has used the term infrastructural power to denote “the capacity of the state actually to penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm”; Mann, , “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results,” in Hall, John A., ed., States in History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 113.Google Scholar

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16 For an insightful analysis of state making and nation building in the Balkans, see Pasic, Najdan, “Varieties of Nation-Building in the Balkans and among the Southern Slavs,” in Eisenstadt, S. N. and Rokkan, Stein, eds., Building States and Nations (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1973), 2: 117–41.Google Scholar Pasic refers to the Balkan experience as the “missing link” and “a transition between the way nations were formed in Europe at the beginning of the present era and the nation-building now going on in the developing countries” (p. 118). Pasic also makes another interesting comparison between the way the Balkan states were carved out and spheres of influence established among them and the way many Third World states were formed as a result of intraimperial understandings:

From the Holy Alliance and the Congress of Berlin to the Yalta Conference, where spheres of influence in the Balkans were calculated in percentages, the Balkan peoples had their destinies carved out by others. The parceling out of political and national structures in the Balkans was in a substantial part the product of such external forces. In this respect, the historical circumstances surrounding nation-building in the Balkans bear a close resemblance to those in which nations and independent national states have taken shape in other parts of the economically underdeveloped world, (p. 130)

17 Skidmore, Thomas E. and Smith, Peter H., Modem Latin America, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 16.Google Scholar

18 For interesting analyses of the Latin American case, see Scott, Robert E., “Nation-Building in Latin America,” in Deutsch, Karl W. and Foltz, William J., eds., Nation-Building (New York: Atherton Press, 1966), 73–83Google Scholar; and Wiarda, Howard J., “Social Change, Political Development and the Latin American Tradition,” in Wiarda, , ed., Politics and Social Change in Latin America, 2d rev. ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), 3–25.Google Scholar

19 Alain Rouquie comes close to tackling this question while attempting to provide explanations for the military's involvement in Latin American politics, but he inexplicably shies away from addressing it directly in his otherwise knowledgeable treatise The Military and the State in Latin America, trans. Paul E. Sigmund (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

20 Tilly (fn. 15), 71. This conclusion is also borne out by the historical evidence presented by Cohen, Youssef, Brown, Brian R., and Organski, A. F. K. in their article “The Paradoxical Nature of State Making: The Violent Creation of Order,” American Political Science Review 75, no. 4 (1981), 901–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar They argue that “instead of indicating political decay, violence in these [new] states is an integral part of the process of the accumulation of power by the national state apparatus” (p. 909).

21 “Many of the new states of today are engaged in struggles whose logic is similar to that of the European period of primitive central state power accumulation”; Cohen, Brown, and Organski (fn. 20), 902.

22 Stein Rokkan, in a very incisive essay in which he attempted to construct a paradigm explaining the various dimensions of state formation and nation building in Europe, provided four sequential phases over which these twin processes took place and termed them penetration, standardization, participation, and redistribution. For details, see Rokkan, , “Dimensions of State Formation and Nation-Building: A Possible Paradigm for Research on Variations within Europe,” in Tilly (fn. 15), esp. 572–74.Google Scholar Rokkan analyzed the internal variations in the patterns of nation-state building in Europe and concluded that, despite these differences within the European experience, “what is important is that the Western nationstates were given a chance to solve some of the worst problems of state-building before they had to face the ordeal of mass politics” (p. 598).

23 This point is made by Cohen, Brown, and Organski (fn. 20), who argue that “the extent to which an expansion of state power will generate collective violence depends on the level of state power prior to that expansion … the lower the initial level of state power, the stronger the relationship between the rate of state expansion and collective violence” (p. 905).

24 There is a growing literature on this subject, particularly in relation to Africa. A recent, perceptive article on the creation of colonial protostates in Africa is Herbst, Jeffrey, “The Creation and Maintenance of National Boundaries in Africa,” International Organization 43 (Autumn 1989), 673–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the creation of protostates in the guise of mandates in the Middle East, see Monroe, Elizabeth, Britain's Moment in the Middle East, 1914–1916 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963);Google Scholar and for the impact of the European division of Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire on international and regional security, see Fromkin, David, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 1989).Google Scholar

25 For an insightful analysis of the colonial inheritance and its impact on Third World “stateness,” see Migdal, Joel S., Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).Google Scholar See also Young, Crawford, “The African Colonial State and Its Political Legacy,” in Rothchild, Donald and Chazan, Naomi, The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988);Google Scholar and Cellar, Sheldon, “State-Building and Nation-Building in West Africa,” in Eisenstadt and Rokkan (fn. 16), 2: 384–426.Google Scholar For examples of the creation of “traditional” authority structures as well as the evolution of new communal identities during colonial rule, see Migdal (pp. 97–141); and Himmelstrand, Ulf, “‘Tribalism,’ Regionalism, Nationalism, and Secession in Nigeria,” in Eisenstadt and Rokkan (pp. 427–67).Google Scholar

26 It is worth pointing out in this context that Krasner's (fn. 3) assumption that “political Weakness and vulnerability are fundamental sources of Third World behavior” (p. 3) is substantially correct. However, his characterization of the consequent North-South relationship as “structural conflict” is, like its obverse, dependency theory, too extreme, simplistic, and one-dimensional in nature; it does not do justice to the much more complex reality of that relationship.

27 The high incidence of violent conflict in the Third World is borne out by a number of studies, including Zacker, Mark, International Conflicts and Collective Security (New York: Praeger, 1979)Google Scholar; and Choucri, Nazli, Population and Conflict: New Dimensions of Population Dynamics, Policy Development Studies No. 8 (United Nations Fund for Population Activities, 1983).Google Scholar For an earlier, pioneering study of the subject, see Kende, Istvan, “Twenty-five Years of Local Wars,” Journal of Peace Research 8, no. 1 (1971), 5–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 This point was best made by Sisir Gupta two decades ago; Gupta, , “Great Power Relations and the Third World,” in Holbraad, Carsten, ed., Super Powers and World Order (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1971), 105–39.Google Scholar

29 For details of the core-periphery dichotomy, see Galtung, Johan, “A Structural Theory of Imperialism,” Journal of Peace Research 8, no. 2 (1971), 81–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the various works of Immanuel Wallerstein.

30 Klare, Michael T., “The Arms Trade: Changing Patterns in the 1980s,” Third World Quarterly 9 (October 1987), 1257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Rizvi, Gowher, “The Rivalry between India and Pakistan,” in Buzan, Barry et al., South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), 107–8.Google Scholar

32 The availability of large surplus stocks of modern weaponry combined with cold war motivations on the part of superpower suppliers has contributed to regional arms races and to the instability of regional balances, which must constantly be restabilized at higher levels of technological sophistication. As Raju Thomas has pointed out in the case of South Asia, “The net result was that both India and Pakistan acquired substantially more arms than they otherwise would have thus producing less regional security for both states at a much higher price”; Thomas, , “Strategies of Recipient Autonomy: The Case of India,” in Baek, Kwang-Il, McLaurin, Ronald D., and Moon, Chung-in, eds., The Dilemma of Third World Defense Industries: Supplier Control or Recepient Autonomy? (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 188.Google Scholar

33 For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Klare, Michael T., “The Unnoticed Arms Trade: Exports of Conventional Arms-Making Technology,” International Security 8 (Fall 1983), 68–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Ross's contention is borne out by Raju Thomas's study (fn. 32) of Indian weapons procurement and production policy, which, according to its author, attempts “to strike an optimum balance among the three basic strategies of indigeneous production, licensed production and overseas purchases” (p. 199).

35 For details of the latter argument, see Neuman, Stephanie G., “Arms, Aid, and the Superpowers,” Foreign Affairs 66 (Summer 1988), 1044–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 For overviews of the four countries' nuclear capabilities, see, for Israel, , Pry, Peter, Israel's Nuclear Arsenal (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984);Google Scholar for India and Pakistan, Carnegie Task Force on Non-Proliferation and South Asian Security, Nuclear Weapons and South Asian Security (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1988)Google Scholar; and for South Africa, Flournoy, Michele A. and Campbell, Kurt M., “South Africa's Bomb: A Military Option?” Orbis 32 (Summer 1988), 385–401.Google Scholar

37 For a prospective scenario on the Indian subcontinent, see Spector, Leonard S., “India-Pakistan War: It Could Be Nuclear,” New York Times, June 7, 1990, p. A23.Google Scholar For the Middle East, where a situation of de facto nuclear monopoly prevails, see Cobban, Helena, “Israel's Nuclear Game: The U.S. Stake,” World Policy Journal 5 (Summer 1988), 415–33.Google Scholar

38 Ball has correctly pointed out that it is preferable in this context to refer to the “security” sector rather than the “military” sector, “in order to indicate the inclusion of paramilitary forces” and to reflect “the fact that Third World governments frequently use their armed forces to maintain themselves in power, that is, to promote regime security” (p. xvi n. 2).

39 For details, see the following essays in Tilly (fn. 15): Finer, Samuel E., “State- and Nation-Building in Europe: The Role of the Military” (chap. 2)Google Scholar; Braun, Rudolf, “Taxation, Sociopolitical Structure, and State-Building: Great Britain and Brandenburg-Prussia” (chap. 4)Google Scholar; and Bayley, David H., “The Police and Political Development in Europe” (chap. 5).Google Scholar

40 Denoon, David B. H., “Defence Spending in ASEAN: An Overview,” in Wah, Chin Kin, ed., Defence Spending in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1987), 49.Google Scholar

41 For details, see Pear, Robert, “Prospects of Arms Pacts Spurring Arms Sales,” New York Times, March 25, 1990, p. 12.Google Scholar

42 For the latest analysis of this trend, see Grimmett, Richard F., Trends in Conventional Arms Transfers to the Third World by Major Suppliers, 1982–1989 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 1990), esp. 1–3.Google Scholar

43 Notwithstanding the fact that the most highly visible facet of the latest Gulf crisis has been its global dimension involving the United States projection of power in the Gulf, this crisis has its origins in the internal dynamics of the region. These, in turn, are closely intertwined with issues regarding the establishment and legitimization of state boundaries, institutions, and regimes in the Middle East in general and the Persian Gulf in particular. Iraqi ambitions regarding Kuwait date back to the founding of the Iraqi state under British tutelage in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. Iraq's claims on Kuwait rest both upon Ottoman assertions of sovereignty over Kuwait and upon the widespread feeling in the Arab world that post-Ottoman borders in the Fertile Crescent and the Gulf were arbitrarily drawn by Western colonial powers to suit their own selfish requirements and are therefore less than fully legitimate. In recent times Baghdad made two abortive attempts, in 1961 and 1973, to enforce its territorial claims on Kuwait. Viewed in its proper historical perspective, the latest crisis is therefore not exclusively an Iraqi attempt to control Kuwait's huge oil resources and dictate oil production and pricing policies within OPEC. While the American reaction to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 globalized the crisis, it was basically just that—a reaction to a crisis that was fundamentally grounded in regional realities and intimately related to rival claims over both territorial and demographic space (and, of course, over the only major resource of the region), as well as linked to issues of state and regime legitimacy in the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf.