8

Regional Security Complex Theory in

the Post-Cold War World*
Barry Buzan

This chapter explores the problems of using regional analysis to think

through the security agenda of the post-Cold War world. It starts with a
summary of traditional regional security complex (RSC) theory, with its
military–political focus, and its firm regionalizing logic, and looks at how
that view is still relevant in the post-Cold War world. Section 2 surveys the
changes in the nature of the security agenda, examining the rise of
economic and environmental security, with their new types of threat and
new referent objects, and the decline in salience of military–political security
issues amongst the great powers. Section 3 investigates whether three of the
‘new’ security sectors – economic, environmental, societal – contain a
regionalizing logic, and if so, how it works. Section 4 reintegrates the analysis.
It looks at the merits of treating sectors separately, or amalgamating them
into single, multi-sectoral security complexes.

Traditional security complex theory

Logic
Security complex theory was first sketched out by Buzan in People, States and
Fear (1983, 105–15; updated 1991, ch. 5). It was applied to South Asia and
the Middle East (Buzan, 1983), then elaborated, and applied in depth to the
case of South Asia (Buzan and Rizvi et al., 1986), and later to Southeast Asia
(Buzan, 1988). Väyrynen (1988) and Wriggins (1992) have applied versions
of it to several regional cases, and Wæver (1989), Buzan et al. (1990), Buzan

* This chapter is an updated version of Buzan (2000). There has not been space in the
update of this chapter (first written in 1996) to incorporate all of the new develop-
ments of regional security complex theory. Anyone wanting the full operational
version should consult Buzan and Wæver (2003). This update was written before the
US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

140
F. Söderbaum et al. (eds.), Theories of New Regionalism
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2003
 Barry Buzan 141

and Wæver (1992), and Wæver et al. (1993) have used it to study the post-
Cold War transformation in Europe. An extensive update and application of
the theory has been made by Buzan and Wæver in Regions and Powers
(2003).
Like most other regional theory, security complexes address the level of
analysis located between individual units and the international system as a
whole. The theory posits the existence of regional sub-systems as objects of
security analysis, and offers an analytical framework for dealing with them.
Also like most other work in this area, it has been focused primarily on the
state as unit, and on the political and military sectors as the principal forum
for security relations. This framework is designed to highlight the relative
autonomy of regional security relations, and to set them in the context of
the unit (state) and system levels. One of its purposes is to provide area
specialists with the language and concepts to facilitate comparative studies
across regions, which is a notable weakness in the existing literature.
Another is to offset the tendency of power theorists to underplay the
importance of the regional level in international security affairs. This
tendency was exacerbated by the rise of neorealism in the late 1970s (Waltz,
1979), which focused almost exclusively on the power structure at the
system level. It seems reasonable to expect this bias to decline naturally with
the demise of strong bipolarity at the system level, and the advent of a more
diffuse international power structure.
The essential logic of the theory is rooted in the fact that all the states in
the system are enmeshed in a global web of security interdependence. But
because most political and military threats travel more easily over short
distances than over long ones, insecurity is often associated with proximity.
Most states fear their neighbours more than distant powers, and conse-
quently security interdependence over the international system as a whole
is far from uniform. The normal pattern of security interdependence in a
geographically diverse anarchic international system is one of regionally
based clusters, which we label regional security complexes (RSCs). Security
interdependence is markedly more intense between the states inside such
RSCs than with states outside it. RSCs are about the relative intensity of
inter-state security relations that lead to distinctive regional patterns shaped
by both the distribution of power and historical relations of amity and
enmity. The traditional definition of a security complex was a set of states
whose major security perceptions and concerns are so interlinked that their
national security problems cannot reasonably be analyzed or resolved apart from
one another.
This definition was updated to take account both of the formal switch to
constructivist method, and to move away from state-centric assumption.
The standard definition is now: a set of units whose major processes of secur-
itization, desecuritization, or both, are so interlinked that their security problems
cannot reasonably be analyzed or resolved apart from one another (Buzan et al.,
142 Regional Security Complex Theory

1998: 201). This approach sees security as socially constructed rather than
objective. What is crucial is whether securitizing actors can successfully gain
support for defining something as an existential threat requiring emergency
responses. Objective conditions may facilitate or hinder this process, but
they do not necessarily determine it. This constructivist approach to security
is set out in detail in Buzan et al. (1998, ch. 2). We argue there that such an
approach is necessary if one is to keep the concept of security coherent
while extending it beyond the traditional military and political sectors.
States may still be the main units in many regions, but they are not neces-
sarily so, and other units may be prominent or even dominant (cf. Hettne,
Chapter 2; Bøås, Marchand and Shaw, Chapter 11). The formative dynamics
and structure of an RSC are generated by the states within it: by their security
perceptions of, and interactions with, each other. Individual RSCs are durable
but not permanent features of the international system. The theory posits
that in a geographically diverse anarchic international system, RSCs will be
a normal and expected feature: if they are not there, one wants to know
why.
Because they are formed by local groupings of actors, RSCs not only play a
central role in relations among their members, they also crucially condition
how and whether stronger outside powers penetrate into the region. The
internal dynamics of a security complex can be located along a spectrum
according to whether the defining security interdependence is driven by
amity or enmity. This aspect of the theory is quite similar to Wendt’s more
recent constructivist formulation of international social structures in terms
of enemies, rivals and friends (Wendt, 1999; Buzan and Wæver, 2003:
ch. 3). At the negative end comes a conflict formation (Väyrynen, 1984),
where interdependence arises from fear, rivalry and mutual perceptions of
threat. In the middle lie security regimes (Jervis, 1982), where states still
treat each other as potential threats, but where they have made reassurance
arrangements to reduce the security dilemma amongst them. At the positive
end lies a pluralistic security community (Deutsch et al., 1957; cf. Hettne,
Chapter 2), where states no longer expect, or prepare, to use force in their
relations with each other. Regional integration (in Deutsch’s language, an
amalgamated security community) will eliminate a security complex with
which it is co-extensive by transforming it from an anarchic sub-system of
states to a single larger actor within the system. Sub-regional integration
among some members of a complex (such as the nineteenth-century unifi-
cation of Germany) can transform the power structure of that RSC.
The theory assumes that RSCs are, like the balance of power, an intrinsic
product of anarchic international systems. Other things being equal, one
should therefore expect to find them everywhere in the system. There are
two conditions that explain why an RSC may not be present. The first is
that in some areas local units are so low in capabilities that their power does
not project much, if at all, beyond their own boundaries. These units have
 Barry Buzan 143

domestically directed security perspectives, and there is not enough security

interaction between them to generate a local RSC. The second condition
occurs when the direct presence of outside powers in a region is strong
enough to suppress the normal operation of regional security dynamics
among the local units. This condition is called overlay. It normally involves
extensive stationing of armed forces in the overlain area by the intervening
great power(s), and is quite distinct from the normal process of penetration
by great powers into the affairs of local RSCs. Intervention usually reinforces
the local security dynamics; overlay subordinates them to the larger pattern
of major power rivalries, and may even obliterate them. The best examples
of it are the period of European colonialism in what is now the Third World,
and the submergence of European security dynamics by superpower rivalry
after the Second World War. Under overlay, one cannot see with any clarity
what the local security dynamics are, and therefore cannot identify a local
RSC. One only knows what the local dynamics were before overlay.
Security complexes are sub-systems – miniature anarchies – in their own
right, and by analogy with full systems they have structures of their own.
Since RSCs are durable rather than permanent features of the anarchy overall,
seeing them as sub-systems with their own structures and patterns of inter-
action provides a useful benchmark against which to identify and assess
changes in the patterns of regional security. The theory offers some ability
to predict outcomes both in terms of a limited set of possible scenarios, and
expectations about external intervention.
Essential structure is the standard by which one assesses significant
change in a security complex. The three key components of essential struc-
ture in a security complex are: (i) the arrangement of the units and the
differentiation amongst them (normally the same as for the international
system as a whole, and if so not a significant variable at the regional level);
(ii) the patterns of amity and enmity; and (iii) the distribution of power
among the principal units. Major shifts in any of these would normally
require a redefinition of the RSC. This approach allows one to analyze
regional security in both static and dynamic terms. If RSCs are seen as struc-
tures, then one can look for outcomes resulting from either structural effects
or processes of structural change.
The changes bearing on any given RSC are usually numerous and contin-
uous. Power relativities are in constant motion, and even patterns of amity
and enmity shift occasionally. The key question is: do such changes work to
sustain the essential structure or do they push it towards some kind of trans-
formation? Four broad structural options for assessing the impact of change
on an RSC are available:
Maintenance of the status quo means that the essential structure of the local
complex – its differentiation of units, distribution of power, and pattern of
hostility – remains fundamentally intact. For this outcome to occur does not
mean that no change has taken place. Rather, it means that the changes
144 Regional Security Complex Theory

which have occurred have tended, in aggregate, either to support, or else

not seriously to undermine, the structure.
Internal transformation of a local complex occurs when its essential struc-
ture changes within the context of its existing outer boundary. Such change
can come about as a result either of decisive shifts in the distribution of
power, or of major alternations in the pattern of amity and enmity.
External transformation occurs when the essential structure of a complex is
altered by either expansion or contraction of its existing outer boundary.
Minor adjustments to the boundary may not affect the essential structure
significantly. The addition or deletion of major states, however, is certain to
have a substantial impact on both the distribution of power and the pattern
of amity and enmity.
Overlay means that one or more external powers move directly into the
regional complex with the effect of suppressing the indigenous regional
security dynamic. As argued earlier it is quite distinct from the normal
process of penetration by great powers into the affairs of RSCs.
One can argue about the correct interpretation of the dividing lines, but
one cannot just use the term ‘regional security complex’ on any group of
states (Norden, the Warsaw Pact, the Non-Proliferation Treaty members).
There has to be a distinctive pattern of security interdependence that marks
the members of a security complex off from other neighbouring states. And
this pattern has to be strong enough to make the criteria for inclusion and
exclusion reasonably clear. Thus, there is a European security complex but
not a Nordic one (because Norden is part of a larger pattern of security inter-
dependence), a Middle-Eastern complex, but not a Mediterranean one
(because the Mediterranean states are parts of several other regional complexes).
South Asia is a clear example of a security complex centred on the rivalry
between India and Pakistan, with Burma acting as border towards the
complex in Southeast Asia, and Afghanistan delineating the border with the
Middle East complex. The theory provides a set of descriptive concepts that
can be used to frame comparative studies. It is predictive in that it contains
hypotheses which set out expected relations between regional and global
levels, and which limit the likely changes that any given region can
undergo. The theory is prescriptive to the extent that it identifies appropriate
(and inappropriate) realms for action, and suggests a range of states of being
(conflict formation, security regime, security community) that can serve as
frameworks for thinking about policy objectives.

Relevance in the post-Cold War world

During the period of European imperial dominance, the international
system was largely overlaid. Indigenous regional security dynamics surfaced
significantly with decolonization, but were heavily influenced and pene-
trated by the superpower rivalry. Post-Cold War RSCs have become a prominent
feature of the international landscape, for better or for worse, with more
 Barry Buzan 145

latitude for their own dynamics than during the Cold War. With the super-
power rivalry gone, there is a more regionalized international security order.
In the absence of overriding powers and system-spanning ideological rivalries,
a more decentralized pattern of international security is allowed to operate.
Two factors explain the relative prominence of the regional level of security:
the diffusion of power, and the relative introversion of the great powers.
The sources of power have become much more widely diffused throughout
the system. The Europeans/West achieved their extraordinary global control
because they possessed at least three assets not possessed by the other actors
in the system: the political form of the national state, the knowledge and
productive power of the scientific and industrial revolutions, and the firepower
of modern weapons. All of these assets, as well as the mobilizing power of
nationalism and ideology, have been thoroughly, if still very unevenly,
spread throughout the international system by decolonization and industri-
alization. The result is a huge closure in the gap of power differentials that
reached its widest point during the middle of the nineteenth century.
On top of this, and perhaps partly as a result of it, the major centres of
power in the international system are all notably introverted. After the Cold
War, none of them is willing to take on a strong leadership role in inter-
national society, and all of them are preoccupied with their own domestic
affairs. The United States still plays some leadership role, but lacks a mobilizing
crusade, and if not exactly returning to its isolationist traditions, is taking a
much more self-interested, unilateralist and restricted view of its interests
and obligations. The extraordinary sensitivity of the country to military
casualties is one hallmark of its disengagement, as is its antagonism to the
United Nations and overseas aid, and its recent spate of rejections and
renunciations of international agreements. The ‘war on terrorism’ following
the atrocities of September 11 represents a very specific US engagement and
not a general reassertion of leadership (cf. Hettne, Chapter 2; Falk, Chapter 4).
The European Union (EU) has been cast prematurely into a great power
role and has not yet even developed adequate machinery for a common
defence and foreign policy. Although one of the economic giants, it is too
beset by problems of its own development, and pressing issues in its imme-
diate region, to be able to play a leadership role globally. Japan is in some
ways similar: an economic giant, but as yet almost lacking the internal capability
for a robust international role commensurate with its power. Like the EU, it
fails to meet Bull’s criteria that a great power be: ‘recognised by others to
have, and conceived by their own leaders and peoples to have, certain
special rights and duties . . . in determining issues that affect the peace and
security of the international system as a whole’ (Bull, 1977: 202; also cf.
Gamble and Payne, Chapter 3).
Against this scenario of a regionalizing world, it could be argued that
military–political issues in general have declined sharply as the main
component of security, an issue we will explore in section 2. If true, it would
146 Regional Security Complex Theory

bring into question the relevance of security complex theory to the post-
Cold War world. One approach to this problem is to ask whether regional
logic also works in the newer security sectors. This is the burden of section
3. Another is to point out that although the military–political agenda has
certainly lost much of its relevance amongst the great powers, it is alive and
well in many other parts of the international system. Remember that RSCs
can be constructed by relations of both amity and enmity. Security interde-
pendence can be both positive and negative, and on this basis the military–
political agenda remains widely relevant. A quick survey of the present
international system suggests that the traditional politico-military model of
a security complex retains much relevance. This is most obvious in the
Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, large parts of Africa, and the
former Soviet Union (FSU). It is less obvious for EU-Europe (though still
relevant in the Balkans sub-complex), and North and South America. Some
regions, most notably Europe, Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, benefited
from the withdrawal of Cold War rivalries. In other places, the unleashing
of regional relations has exposed zones of conflict, as in the Balkans, the
Caucasus, and parts of Central Asia. Elsewhere, as in South Asia and the
Gulf, zones of conflict that were apparent during the Cold War have continued
essentially unchanged by the ending of the Cold War. These reflect strong
indigenous conflict dynamics, and although the ending of the Cold War has
affected patterns of alliance and arms supply, it has not basically changed
the character or intensity of these conflict formations.
One of the big regional questions is about the fate of East Asia (Buzan and
Segal, 1994). For the first time in modern history this region is largely free
from domination by foreign powers. It is composed of several powerful
states in varying degrees of industrialization. Levels of power are rising
dramatically, the distribution of power is subject to significant change, and
nationalism is strong. The region has few and mostly weak international
institutions, though the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
has constructed a successful security regime in the Southeast Asian sub-
region, and through the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) extended this into
Northeast Asia. It also has a host of historical enmities, border disputes and
cultural divides, some very serious (China–Taiwan, the two Koreas, the
South China Sea). Rising levels of arms expenditure were moderated by the
post-1997 economic crisis, but several countries have the means to become
nuclear weapons states quickly if need be. To a Western eye, East Asia bears
some disturbing resemblances to nineteenth-century Europe, with China in
the role of Germany as the large, centrally positioned, rising, and poten-
tially hegemonic power, and Japan in the role of Britain, as the offshore
advanced industrial country trying to sustain a policy of splendid isolation
and global focus. If such structural similarities count, then one would
predict the emergence of a balance of power based RSC, albeit one mediated
by nuclear deterrence, and susceptible to whether the United States decides
 Barry Buzan 147

to remain engaged in the region, or reduce its security commitments there.

Alternatively, we might be seeing the re-emergence of a modern form of
classical Chinese suzerainty, in which its neighbours perform various
degrees of kowtow to Beijing’s regional leadership. These scenarios are
rejected by those who argue that the parallel with Europe is false, that
Asians have their own transnational way of dealing with things, that
economic rationalism will support a common commitment to development,
and that the United States will stay in the region as the military–political
ring holder and balancer (Richardson, 1994/5; Mahbubani, 1995). Either
way it is clear that the military–political dimension of security remains central
in East Asia.
There are, therefore, good reasons to think that regional security complex
theory remains highly relevant in the post-Cold War world, in terms of both
new and old conflict formations, and in terms of new and old security
regimes and security communities. This remains true notwithstanding that
regional security represents an essentially territorial perspective, and can
thus be attacked by the deterritorializing logic inherent in the globalization
literature. Certainly there is increasing concern about a range of deterritorial
security issues ranging from transnational crime to the global environment.
Since the events of September 11, ‘international terrorism’ has moved to the
top of this list, yet even here territorial logic remains strong (cf. Falk, Chapter 4).
In many of its organizational aspects, such terrorism shares the trans-
national qualities of organized crime: network structures that penetrate
through and around both state structures and the patterns of regional and
global security. Its new and incredibly ruthless methods of mass suicide
attacks and random biological assaults seem, inter alia, purposely designed
to dissolve the key assumption of RSC theory that the transmission of
threats (especially threats of force) is generally and closely linked to
distance. Yet also like organized criminals, ‘international’ terrorists often
have territorial ‘home’ bases. Distinct from crime, the agenda of terrorists is
often closely locked into both domestic (Irish, Basque/Spanish, Israeli,
Afghan) and/or regional (Middle Eastern) politics, and the links between
those levels and the global one. Despite the transnational quality of its
methods and organization, bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network is intimately tied
into the dynamics of the Middle Eastern RSC, and the interplay of those
dynamics with the global level. Although there may well be a kind of
globalist element in Al Qaeda’s securitization (a resistance of the worldwide
faithful against the global cultural assault of capitalism), this does not seem
to be the main motive. Much more prominent in their discourses of securi-
tization are the placement of US forces in the ‘holy lands’ of Saudi Arabia, and
US backing for Israel (generally, as a ‘crusader’ invasion of Islamic territory;
specifically, as the oppressor of the Palestinians). Thus while Al Qaeda
manifests itself as a deterritorialized, transnational player, neither its existence,
its operation, nor its motives can be understood without close reference to
148 Regional Security Complex Theory

both the regional structures of security and the interplay of these with the
global level. International terrorism of the type, and on the scale, unleashed
since September 11 does unquestionably strengthen the non-territorial
aspect of security. But it is not separable from the main territorial dynamics,
and it is nowhere close to replacing them as the prime structuring principle
of international security. Its biggest impact may well be to change not only
the security dynamics within the Middle Eastern and South Asian RSCs, but
also the relationship of both of these to the United States, and the relation-
ship of the United States to the other great powers. That would be no mean
accomplishment, but it would amount to changes within the underlying
territorial structure of international security, not a transformation of it.

Shifts in the security agenda

Elements of the new security agenda emerged well before the Cold War
ended. The decline of military–political security issues at the centre of the
system was visible in the growing awareness that war was disappearing, or in
some cases had disappeared, as an option in relations amongst a substantial
group of states. The core group of this emergent security community was
Western Europe, Japan and North America. The effectiveness of nuclear
deterrence between East and West made it possible to think that the Soviet
Union could also, in an odd way, be included in this sphere, an outlook that
became much stronger once Gorbachev assumed power and embarked on
an explicit demilitarization of the Cold War. After the Vietnam War, there
was also an increasing tendency in the West to question whether war was a
cost-effective method for achieving a wide range of political and economic
objectives. If war was fading away as a possibility amongst many of the leading
powers in the system, then realist assumptions about the primacy of military
security became questionable.
Adding to this question was the increasing securitization of two issues
that had traditionally been thought of as low politics: the international
economy and the environment. Issues become securitized when leaders
(whether political, societal, or intellectual) begin to talk about them – and
to gain the ear of the public and the state – in terms of existential threats
against some valued referent object. The securitizing formula is that such
threats require exceptional measures and/or emergency action to deal with
them. Securitization classically legitimates the use of force, but more
broadly it raises the issue above normal politics and into the realm of ‘panic
politics’ where departures from the rules of normal politics justify secrecy,
additional executive powers, and activities that would otherwise be illegal
(Wæver, 1995; Buzan et al., 1998: ch. 2). It is not possible in this chapter to
unfold these two issue areas in any detail, but the general development was
as follows.
 Barry Buzan 149

In the case of the environment, the securitization process can be traced

back to the 1960s, when books such as Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) first
began to make people seriously aware that the growing impact of humankind
was transforming the natural environment from being a background
constant into a foreground variable. Starting from a concern about pesti-
cides, this grew steadily into a wide range of interconnected issues including
climate change, biodiversity, resource depletion, pollution, and the threat
from meteorites. The underlying problem was a combination of rising
human numbers and rising industrial activity within a finite planetary
ecosystem. Concern was split between a potentially arcadian desire to secu-
ritize the environment itself, to preserve things as they had been before
humans disturbed them, and a more pragmatic worry that if humans
exceeded the carrying capacity of the ecosystem in too many ways, they
would endanger the supporting conditions of their own prosperity, civilization,
and possibly existence. There was also a growing awareness that nature itself
could still deliver huge blows against humankind whose density and urban
concentration made it increasingly vulnerable to major disruptions of trade
and production (Matthews, 1989; Homer-Dixon, 1991).
In the case of the economy, the securitization process arose in part from the
relative economic decline of the United States, and in part from reactions to
the increasing liberalization of the world economy. Relative American decline
was an inevitable result of both the exaggerated position of global dominance
that it held in 1945, and the imperial overstretch that set in with the Vietnam
War. US dominance was challenged both by Europe and Japan recovering
from the Second World War, and by some newly decolonized countries find-
ing effective paths to modernization. By the 1970s some in the United States
were already beginning to feel threatened by dependence on imported oil, by
trade deficits, and by pressure on the dollar. Alongside US decline was the
growing liberalization of the global economy, first in trade, and from the
1970s also in finance. This meant that national economies became progres-
sively more exposed to competition from other producers in a global market,
and to ever more powerful transnational corporations and financial markets.
The whole idea of economic security in a capitalist system is fraught with
contradictions and complications, not the least being that actors in a market
are supposed to feel insecure: if they don’t the market doesn’t produce its
efficiencies (Luciani, 1989; Buzan, 1991: ch. 6; Cable, 1995). Nevertheless
concern did focus on a range of specific issues:

• the ability of states to maintain independent capability for military

production in a global market;
• the possibility of economic dependencies within the global market
(particularly oil) being exploited for political ends;
• fears that the global market would generate more losers than winners,
and that it would heighten existing inequalities both within and
150 Regional Security Complex Theory

between states (manifested at the top of the range by US fears of decline,

and at the bottom by developing country fears of exploitation, debt
crises and marginalization); and
• fears that the international economy itself would fall into crisis from
some combination of weakening political leadership, increasing protec-
tionist reactions, and structural instability in the global financial system.

It was often difficult to separate the attempts to securitize economic issues

from the more general contest between liberal and mercantilist approaches
to economics. During the Cold War the superpower rivalry muted protec-
tionist voices because of the overriding common military and political
security concern that all of the capitalist powers shared against the Soviet
Union. So long as the Soviet threat existed, the capitalist states worried
more about it than about the commercial rivalry among themselves.
When the Cold War finally unravelled at the end of the 1980s, these
underlying developments were thrown into prominence by the rapid
collapse of virtually the whole global level military–political security agenda
that had dominated the world for over forty years. As the Soviet Union first
withdrew its military and ideological challenge, and then imploded, the
political–military rationale of the Cold War security system evaporated.
With the ideological confrontation consigned to history, nuclear forces
suddenly had little to deter, and conventional forces little to contain. But
offsetting this positive development was the loss of the common interest
that had kept the capitalist economies together despite their rivalry. The
image of a ‘new world disorder’ (Carpenter, 1991; Nye, 1992) began to
dominate perceptions of the future, bringing with it a new security agenda.
In the space available it is impossible to attempt an exhaustive tour
d’horizon of the new security agenda. Much of it anyway remains contro-
versial, for we are still far from consensus on what can and cannot legiti-
mately be designated as a security issue or a referent object. There is, for
example, strong resistance in some quarters to securitizing economic and
environmental issues (Deudney, 1990; Walt, 1991; Cable, 1995). A good
case can also be made that business firms by their very nature do not generally
succeed in becoming referent objects of security however much they would
like to do so as a way of escaping the rigours of the market. Some very large
firms and banks can be exceptions to this rule (Buzan et al., 1998: ch. 5).
What can be clearly observed is that the state is less important in the new
security agenda than in the old one. It still remains central, but no longer
dominates either as the exclusive referent object or as the principal embodiment
of threat, in the way it did previously. A range of new referent objects for
security and sources of threat is being set up above, below and alongside the
state. Above the state one finds being elevated to the status of referent
objects of security such things as the set of rules, regimes and institutions
that constitute the liberal international economic order (LIEO); the global
 Barry Buzan 151

climate system; and the various regimes that attempt to control the prolifer-
ation of weapons of mass destruction (the non-proliferation treaty [NPT],
the chemical weapons convention [CWC], and the missile technology
control regime [MTCR]). Alongside the state, nations and religions have
emerged as distinct referent objects (Wæver et al., 1993). Below it, the rising
focus on human rights supports claims to give individuals more standing as
the ultimate referent object for security (Shaw, 1993; McSweeney, 1996). At
the same time, the sources of threat are also diversifying away from the
state. Many of the new threats seem to stem from complex systems both
natural and human-made, and the operation of these systems is often
poorly understood.
What the security priorities are will also depend on how a number of
intrinsically unpredictable things work out. For example, some scientists
argue, on the basis of drill cores from the Greenland ice cap, that serious
climate change in the past sometimes occurred with great swiftness, major
changes in temperature (and therefore in glaciation and sea level) occurring
within a few years. If they are correct, then current observations such as the
breakup of some Antarctic ice sheets could put environmental security at
the top of the global agenda very soon. If they are wrong, environmental
issues could remain on the margin, consisting of particular countries or
regions with particular problems: sea flooding in a few very low-lying countries;
water sharing in the Middle East; nuclear accidents in Europe, and suchlike.
The same could be said about the international economy: if it spins into a
major crisis then it will be a central security issue, but if ways are found to
overcome or contain crises, and keep the system tolerably stable, then most
economic issues will remain off, or marginal to, the security agenda. Many
of the new security issues could become major, but they could just as well
remain marginal, or of high concern only to a few actors.
Unless events take a turn which pushes some issue to the centre of global
security concerns, there is a good case for thinking that the new security
agenda will be considerably less monolithic and global, and considerably
more diverse, regional and local, in character than the Cold War one,
despite the global quality of many of the new threats and referent objects.
Although there will be some shared issues, in the post-Cold War world the
security agenda will vary markedly from actor to actor in terms of both the
issues and the priorities.
For security analysts, one major problem raised by this diversification of the
security agenda is whether the logic of security analysis must become simi-
larly diversified. Traditionalists such as Walt (1991) and Chipman (1992)
complain that such fragmentation leads to intellectual incoherence. Must
each sector have its own security logic – economic, environmental, societal,
political, military – or do they overlap and combine in some way? This larger
problem has been addressed elsewhere (Buzan et al., 1998: chs 1, 8, 9). For this
chapter we need to investigate only in terms of the logic of regions.
152 Regional Security Complex Theory

Regional logic and the ‘new’ sectors

The logic of interaction and interdependence that creates regional security

complexes as typical military–political formations within international
anarchies is clear and well understood. Is there a similar regionalizing logic
in the economic, environmental and societal sectors? If there is, does it
produce the same regions as military–political logic, or different ones?

Economic
On the face of it, one would not expect to find a strong regional security
logic in the economic sector. In most parts of the modern world, the costs of
moving goods and money around the planet are so low as to have substan-
tially eroded distance as a factor in economic relations. In some places local
clusters of resources, industry and markets still make sense, but with
conspicuous exceptions such as Canada and Mexico, most states have
economic relations with distant parts of the world that are equal to or more
significant than those they have with their neighbours. The main contem-
porary feature of the international economy is the globalization of markets,
and not only for commodities, but also for finance and labour. Under these
conditions, it is less and less true that threats travel more easily over short
distances than over long ones. Coffee producers in Africa look to rival
producers in Latin America, and to commodity markets in London and
elsewhere, to find threats. Security concerns focus on one’s competitiveness
within the global marketplace, and on the overall (in)stability of the global
financial and trading systems. A major shrinkage in global credit, or a break-
down of the rules on trade, would create a severe system-wide crisis in the
world economy. There are also more day-to-day security concerns about the
dark side of the liberal world economy such as the trade in drugs, arms,
banned chemicals, and nuclear technology and materials, and the flourishing
of criminal mafias that engage in these trades, and most of these concerns
also reflect global patterns. There is little in the nature of any of these
dynamics to suggest that the territorializing logic of regions should be a
conspicuous feature of economic security.
The increasingly global focus of economic security means that its system
level structures (the market, the trading system, the financial system), and
the institutions associated with them, are rising in status as referent objects
(those entities in whose name security can be evoked). This contrasts with
the discourse in the political sector, where, although various regimes and
institutions can become referent objects, the anarchic structure as such is
almost never invoked in this way (even though the obsession with national
security implies support for anarchic structure). When economic systems,
whether abstract markets or concrete intergovernmental organizations
(IGOs), are constructed as referent objects of security, the question of what
constitutes an existential threat can only be answered in terms of the principles
 Barry Buzan 153

by which such systems are organized. The LIEO is existentially challenged

by anything that threatens to unravel the commitments to remove border
constraints on the international movement of goods, services and finance.
More subtly, it is also threatened by the development of monopolies, which
undercut the rationales of competition and efficiency that underpin the
system. The LIEO thus lives in permanent tension with impulses towards
both protectionism and monopoly. To the extent that these gain ground,
the LIEO is diminished, and eventually extinguished. The same logic applies
to IGOs, and this gives a key link to the regional level. In the economic
sector, something like the EU can be existentially threatened by whatever
might unglue the rules and agreements that constitute its single market.
Yet despite the strength of globalism, one does indeed find strong empirical
evidence for economic regionalism. There seems to be a firm connection
between concerns about the security of the LIEO, and securitizing dynamics
at the regional level. Economic regionalism (Anderson and Blackhurst,
1993; Helleiner, 1994) has come back into fashion as a result of the widening
and deepening of integration in the EU since the late 1980s, and the
construction of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
(cf. Tussie, Chapter 6). The most ambitious of these, the EU, trundles onward
despite all of its difficulties, and has unquestionably become the central
focus of security in Europe (Buzan et al., 1990; Wæver et al., 1993; Buzan and
Wæver, 2003: ch. 11). These two regional projects at the core of the global
political economy have spawned both imitators (AFTA, in Southeast Asia,
APEC linking Australasia and North America, Mercosur covering the Southern
cone of South America) and much discussion about other regional
economic zones (ECOWAS in West Africa, SADC in Southern Africa, the CIS
covering the former Soviet Union). East Asia is a puzzling case, with some
interpreting it as lacking formal economic regionalism (and therefore
vulnerable) and others seeing it as developing a distinctive informal,
transnational model of regional integration.
Given the low cost of transportation and communication, economic
regionalism looks to be a peculiar development, especially amongst the
most advanced industrial economies. Given the intrinsic mobility of so
many economic factors it would in purely economic terms make as much
sense for Britain to be linked with North America or Japan as to be part of
the EU. The geographic element of economic regionalism is worrying to
liberals because it seems to go counter to the efficiencies of a global market,
and worrying to strategists because it has echoes of the neomercantilist
blocs of the 1930s that were forerunners to the Second World War. This
parallel with the 1930s seems misplaced. The contemporary economic blocs
are very different in crucial ways from those of the interwar period. They are
voluntary rather than imperial and coercive, they are not motivated by rival
ideologies or a desire for military self-reliance, and because capital is now
substantially internationalized, they do not represent rival national capitals.
154 Regional Security Complex Theory

The possibility for fascist-style political coalitions between national capital

and nationalist political parties has been greatly reduced by the internation-
alization of capital represented by multinational companies (Busch and
Milner, 1994). In addition, the possibility of war amongst the great powers
is constrained not only by nuclear deterrence and an understanding of the
lessons of history, but also by an absence of imperial will or logic. If there is
a move towards regional blocs they will have quite liberal internal trading
structures, and there will still be substantial managed trade amongst them.
Thus while they do not point, as in the 1930s, towards preparation for
war, these contemporary blocs do have political and security elements. They
are cultural defence mechanisms against the powerful homogenizing effects
of open markets. Economically, they are attempts to build stronger operating
platforms from which to engage in the ever more intense trade and financial
competition in the global market, while trying at the same time to reduce
the pressures of an open global economy without sacrificing all economies
of scale (cf. Hettne, Chapter 2; Gamble and Payne, Chapter 3). And they are
fallback bastions in case the global liberal economy succumbs to the effects
of weak management, financial turbulence, intensifying trade competition
and/or the effects of international terrorism and the measures against it.
They can also be seen as attempts to reduce the overstretched management
demands of an open global economy by moving some of them to a more
intimate regional scale (cf. Hveem, Chapter 5; Tussie, Chapter 6). In strictly
economic terms, economic regionalism is not so much about security as
about the politico-economic logic of competition within a global market.
The security element in these ‘economic’ regions is more to be found in
political and cultural concerns.
Liberals like to think of the global market as, ideally, a place of uniform rules
and universal logics of behaviour. But one aspect of economic regionalism may
be culturally based. As Helleiner (1994) points out, the three main economic
groupings all have quite distinctive characters. Europe is heavily institution-
alized and driven by social democratic values. North America is lightly institu-
tionalized and reflects liberal values. East Asia relies mostly on transnational
links and reflects national development values. It could well be that part of
contemporary economic regionalism is based in the desire to preserve politico-
cultural values. In the case of Europe, strong institutionalization reflects the
political security project of preventing a return to Europe’s self-destructive bal-
ance of power past. In this perspective, Islamic economies might eventually
qualify as a separate type with regionalizing tendencies. At least in the banking
sphere, Islamic norms and principles are fundamentally different from capitalist
ones (it is, for instance, forbidden to calculate interest over loans). When
Islamic and capitalist economies relate to one another it might be like IBM and
Macintosh computer systems: compatible rather than hostile, but not without
permanent translation costs. The difference might contribute to regionalization
(higher economic interdependence among the users of the same system).
 Barry Buzan 155

One can conclude about the economic sector that it does contain some
regionalizing logic, mostly in reaction to the hazards of the dominant
globalizing dynamics. But political and cultural factors also play a strong
role in what at first sight appear to be economic regions. In security logic,
there is often a strong cross-linkage between the economic and other sectors
(Buzan, et al., 1998: ch. 5).

Environmental
As in the economic sector, the logic of environmental issues does not point
strongly towards regionalization, but here that logic is more plainly
reflected in the empirical world. Regional logic builds on the greater intensity
of interaction among neighbouring units, and environmental issues do not
always, or even often, work that way. The environmental agenda presents
an extremely diverse set of causes and effects. Some of them are to do with
nature impacting on human civilization, others with the impact of civiliza-
tion on nature, and the possible return loops from that on the sustainability
of civilization. Some things with global causes (CFCs in the atmosphere)
have local effects (ozone holes at the poles). Some global causes have global
effects (warming, and sea level rises). Some local causes have local effects
(many forms of pollution). And some local causes have much wider effects
(nuclear accidents).
Most of the mainstream issues on the environmental agenda do not
work according to the geographical logic of regions. Global warming, for
example, is in one sense a global phenomenon, but its impacts are very
unevenly distributed. That unevenness does not take regional form. All
low-lying states would be adversely affected by global warming and its
associated rises in sea level, but these do not form a regional group
(Bangladesh, Netherlands, Maldives, Egypt). Some states might benefit
from some global warming, for examples those with extensive territory
now under permafrost (Canada, Russia), but here again there is no
regional logic.
Regionalizing logic only comes into play in the environmental sector if
either (i) a geographically coherent group of actors behave in such a way as
to create a common problem in their own environment, or (ii) an environ-
mental impact with causes elsewhere happens to encompass a region. The
first condition arises most easily in relation to water: seas, lakes, river
systems, aquifers. It may be to do with water shortages and problems of
distribution (Israel–Palestine; Nepal–India–Bangladesh; the Euphrates
valley; the Aral Sea), or with pollution (the Mediterranean Sea, the North
Sea, the Gulf region), or possibly with fisheries management. It could also
arise over some types of air pollution (problems of sulphur dioxide in
Europe). Regional impacts with external causes, such as the ozone holes, are
hard to foresee, and would require detailed knowledge of how complex
physical systems operate.
156 Regional Security Complex Theory

So the environmental sector does contain a weak regional logic, but

only in relation to certain kinds of issues. There is no overall reason to
expect environmental issues to manifest themselves primarily or even
strongly in regional form, though they may sometimes do so. In addition,
the standing of environmental issues as matters of security is also under
serious question (Deudney, 1990). Although some of the rhetoric of the
environmental agenda is cast in security terms, in fact the substance of the
debate is mostly about political and economic issues. Environment as a
security issue is not yet widely enough accepted either by governments or
by public opinion to be unquestioningly incorporated as a legitimate part
of the security agenda.

Societal
In the societal sector, the logic of security relations bears some similarity to
that in the military–political one, and so regionalization should be expected
(Buzan etal., 1998: ch. 6). Like military and political threats, threats to identity
(migration, competing identities) mostly travel more easily over short
distances than over long ones. The question is whether they produce the
same regions or different ones from those in other sectors. Some types of
global threats, most notably that of cultural Westernization, come in global
form but have distinctively regional impacts. Thus the Middle Eastern
Islamic world, and the East Asian world, both generate responses of threat-
ened identity in response to the pressures of Westernization (and especially
Americanization). An offshoot of this is the unease with which Europe and
Islam face each other across the Mediterranean, and the moves in the
former to restrict immigration from the latter.
In the more conventional sense, the dynamics of societal security can
generate regional formations out of interactions amongst neighbouring
units. The ethnic conflicts that have torn apart former Yugoslavia are an
obvious example, and one can find many similarly territorialized ‘tribal’
conflict formations in Africa (Sierra Leone/Liberia; Rwanda/Burundi/DRC/
Uganda; Angola), the Caucasus (Armenian/Azeri) and South Asia (Tamils/
Sinhalese; Hindu/Muslim; Sikhs; etc.). Although having a similar structure
to traditional security complexes, those rooted in the societal sector may
well be rather smaller in scale, often occurring within the boundary of a
state, or across the boundaries of a small number of states. In Europe and
Asia, the main patterns of identity issues often line up fairly closely with the
state structures. Although some minority issues do exist (Tibet, Basques,
Hungarians), societal security in these regions corresponds quite closely to
the military–political pattern.
Thus in contrast to the economic and environmental sectors, the global
logic in this sector is quite weak. There is a strong regionalizing logic, but
where this does not line up with the pattern of inter-state security relations,
it is often on quite a small scale.
 Barry Buzan 157

Reintegrating sectors: regional security post-Cold War

Taking into account the wider agenda of security, and the particular charac-
teristics of security dynamics in the new sectors, what does the logic of
regional security in the post-Cold War world look like? How, in other words,
does one tackle the question of regions when there are potentially different
region-forming dynamics at work in the different sectors? There are two
ways of approaching this question. One assumes that the different sectors
are operationally distinct, the other that they are aggregated.
If we assume that the sectors are distinct, then a complicated world of
different but overlapping RSCs emerges. Alongside the traditional, state-based,
military–political RSCs one would have to place other regional formations
deriving from economic, societal and environmental logics. In some cases,
these would be based on different units (nations, IGOs, firms) though often
the state would also be a key player. While interactions amongst states
continue to define military–political complexes, in the societal sector the
units will be nations and other identity groups not necessarily represented
by a state. In the environmental sector regions may not be unit-based at all,
but come from the operation of complex physical systems. These different
logics do not necessarily, or even probably, line up. In East Asia, for
example, one finds a conflict formation or a weak security regime in the
military–political sector, but only a faint regional dynamic in the economic
sector, and a semi-regional concern about Chinese minorities in the societal
one. In Africa and North America, societal dynamics are mostly substate in
scale, operating within and between the state structures. Many environmental
dynamics operate on a completely different logic from the other sectors,
and thus generate patterns with little connection to those in the other
sectors. In exceptional cases some or all of these patterns might somehow
line up to give a kind of layer-cake coherence, but there is no reason to
expect this to happen in any systematic way. Taking sectors as always
distinct would, in effect, mean carving Security Studies up into several
separate disciplines.
This fragmentation would only be a problem if regional dynamics in the
different sectors were in fact strongly separate and distinct. There may
indeed sometimes be good analytical reason to focus on the specific regional
dynamics within a particular sector. Occasionally, one might even find a rel-
atively pure single-sector RSC. But as a rule, this is not the case, and taking
this approach would amount to imposing the excessive neatness of an
analytical scheme onto the densely interwoven realities of international
relations. There are at least three good reasons for thinking that an amalgam-
ated approach will be the most appropriate for regional security analysis
in a multi-sectoral security environment. First is the natural overspill
between sectors, second is the way that policy-makers tend to integrate
issues into a single security picture, and third, in some places, is the existence
158 Regional Security Complex Theory

of regional institutions that will try to make issues fit within their own
geopolitical framework. Taken together, these three factors work powerfully
to amalgamate the dynamics of different sectors.
The first amalgamating force is the natural overspill between sectors. The
idea of sectors is essentially analytical: views of the same whole through
different lenses (Buzan et al., 1993: 30–3). It is a way of picking apart compli-
cated wholes in order to understand them more easily. But although the
four social sectors do have distinctive logics (the same ones that define the
corresponding academic disciplines), they cannot be separated operationally.
Politico-military, economic and societal dynamics all operate in close rela-
tionship with each other. Trade and finance require political order. State
structures both depend on identity for stability, and easily pose challenges
to existing identities. Culture and politics both affect, and are affected by,
economic activity. This linkage is particularly clear in the economic sector,
where what on the surface appears to be economic regionalism is in fact
substantially driven by political and cultural motives: what seems to be
economic security is in fact about political stability, military power, or
cultural conservation. The same logic of linkage and overspill also applies to
the environmental sector, even though its dynamics are rooted in the physical
world. Many environmental issues link strongly to both economics (costs of
pollution control) and society (landscape and identity). If it is useful to
unpack the sectors in order to get a clearer view of their dynamics, it is still
necessary to put them back together again to get the whole picture. Only
rarely will one find a single sector security dynamic that does not overspill
significantly into other sectors – or is overspilled into by them.
Nor is there any reason to think that the dynamics of mutual threat
perception will always, or even normally, take place within the confines of a
single sector. It is true that traditional regional security complex theory
generally assumed such sectoral coherence: that military threats would be
countered by military threats. But in a more diverse security environment
cross-sectoral patterns are both possible and likely. The Baltic states, for
example, might feel threatened by Russian military power, while Russia feels
threatened more societally by various forms of discrimination against
Russians living in the Baltic states. Syria and Iraq may feel threatened envir-
onmentally by Turkey because of its control over the headwaters of the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers, whereas Turkey feels threatened politically by
Syrian and Iraqi provision of safe havens for its dissident Kurds. Parts of the
Islamic world feel culturally threatened by the West, but the West is more
concerned about terrorism. Parts of the Third World feel economically
threatened by the West, but the West is more concerned about migration
and environmental threats coming the other way. Much of the reality is
thus one of threat dynamics crossing over sectoral boundaries.
The second amalgamating force is the way that policy-makers tend to
integrate issues into a single security picture. Partly for institutional reasons,
 Barry Buzan 159

and perhaps partly for psychological ones, security policy-making works in

an integrative way. This is most easily seen in the effects of established
patterns of amity and enmity. Where neighbouring states or peoples already
perceive each other as hostile, as in many parts of the Middle East, then
environmental issues (water), societal ones (minorities), and economic ones
(oil production and pricing) are much more likely to become securitized as
part of the overall package. Thus Iraq treats Kuwaiti oil policy and Turkish
dam-building as security issues, choosing a military reply to the former.
Bahrein treats Shi’ites as an Iranian fifth column, and Syria, Turkey, Iran
and Iraq all weave the Kurdish minority problem into their already difficult
political relations. Where relations are more friendly, as within the EU, then
such issues are much less likely to rise above the merely political. Water-use
problems on shared rivers like the Rhine and the Danube may be serious but
they do not generally even get considered for securitization. While enmity
will tend to amalgamate securitization across sectors, amity will tend to
amalgamate desecuritization.
The third amalgamating force is regional institutions that try to make
issues fit within their own geopolitical framework. In Europe, the EU represents
a strong institutional attempt to make the sectors line up. Thus a security
community in the military political sector is coextensive with both an
economic union and (to a lesser extent) a meta-identity project. Where such
institutions exist, they will naturally integrate sectors. While the EU is easily
the most developed of such regional formations, similar but weaker forces
are at work in ASEAN, SAARC, SADC, Mercosur, NAFTA and several other
regional institutions.
If amalgamation across sectors is the rule, then the best general approach
to regional security in the post-Cold War world will be to think in terms of
more heterogeneous complexes than we did in the past. Rather than basing
regional security complexes purely on the state, one will need to allow in
other types of actors and referent objects as well. In looking at the Balkans,
for example, one clearly has a strong mixture of politico-military and
societal dynamics. Some of the actors and referent objects are states, but
some of them are mobilized ethnic groups. A similar picture could be found
within the new regional system(s) emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet
Union. Elsewhere the mix might be different. In the Gulf and East Asia, the
traditional state-based, military–political dynamics remain strong, but
societal actors and issues also play a role, as do economic ones. In this
approach one retains the analytical simplicity of a single form of RSC, albeit
at the cost of an expansion, perhaps considerable in some cases, of the
variety of issues and actors within it.