Third World Security Predicament: state making, regional conflict and the international system

206 Pages·1995·1.511 MB·English

by  Mohammed Ayoob

Contents
Foreword Thomas G. Weiss ix
Preface Mohammed Ayoob xiii
1 Concepts and Definitions: “Third World” and “Security” 1
2 State Making and Third World Security 21
3 Interstate Conflict and Regional Insecurity 47
4 The Third World and the System of States 71
5 The Third World, Bipolarity, and the Cold War 93
6 The Third World and the Post–Cold War Global Balance 115
7 The Third World’s Post–Cold War Security Predicament:
The External Dimension 139
8 The Third World’s Post–Cold War Security Predicament:
The Internal Dimension 165
9 The Security Problematic of the Third World 189
List of Abbreviations 201
Index 203
About the Book and Author 215
Books in the Series 216
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Preface
This book is a modest attempt to apply the classical approach to the study
of one important aspect of international relations, an approach the late
Hedley Bull described as “a scientifically imperfect process of perception
or intuition [that is] characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the
exercise of judgment.”1 In other words, it is an essay in judicious interpre-
tation, which, as Stanley Hoffmann noted, is “the attempt to seize the
meaning of what has been explained” and is “an artistic enterprise rather
than a scientific one.”2
The book sets out to interpret—that is, to dissect, reflect upon, and
conceptualize—the Third World’s security predicament. It is essential to
understand this predicament in order to comprehend the role and place of
the Third World in the international system. The case for the continuing
relevance of the Third World as an analytical category in the post–Cold
War era is made in the first chapter, as is the argument about the crucial
importance of the concept of security in the analysis of the politics and
international relations of the Third World.
The security predicament of Third World states is generated largely by
the twin pressures of late state making and their late entry into the system
of states. I conclude that a paradigm that does not make security its center-
piece will lack adequate power to explain the domestic or international
behavior of Third World states. Simultaneously, I argue that just as it is
essential to make security the central focus of any paradigm that attempts
to explain Third World state behavior, it is also necessary to adopt the
notion of state making as the point of departure for the study of Third
World security. Analyses based on a clear understanding of the security
variable’s centrality and of the importance of the state-making process
within that variable are likely to provide much richer comparative data and
less ephemeral conclusions than those that adopt development or dependen-
cy as their basic organizing concepts.
I also analyze issues that have become increasingly salient following
the end of the Cold War and the transformation in the global balance of
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power. I conclude that the Cold War did not ease the Third World’s securi-
ty predicament and that its demise could make that predicament even more
acute. This could be the case because the end of the Cold War has removed
certain constraints that were imposed by the superpowers on the conflictual
behavior of Third World states to protect themselves from being sucked
directly into conflicts on the global periphery. More important, the recent
relaxation of international norms guaranteeing the territorial integrity of
established and internationally recognized states, and the renewed legitima-
tion of ethno-national self-determination following the end of the Cold
War, are expected to adversely affect the security predicament of Third
World states that are struggling to translate their juridical sovereignty into
effective statehood.
In the book I provide the essential backdrop to the foregoing argu-
ments by analyzing the impact of the emergence of the Third World on the
system of states and that of the international system on the crucial task of
state building currently underway in the Third World. It is impossible for a
single author to provide complete answers to all of the big questions relat-
ing to the nature of the Third World’s relationship with the international
system. However, it is my hope that the unanswered, or partially answered,
questions raised here will offer enough intellectual excitement to inspire
other scholars to follow the inquiry lines I have not developed fully in this
volume. If this book sets off such a scholarly chain reaction, it will have
succeeded in its primary mission.
Let me point out at the outset that this study does not pretend to pro-
vide guidelines or policy prescriptions for statesmen or decisionmakers in
the developed or the developing worlds. I agree with Hedley Bull that “the
search for conclusions that can be presented as ‘solutions’ or ‘practical
advice’ is a corrupting element in the contemporary study of world politics,
which properly understood is an intellectual activity and not a practical
one.”3
It is not the job of serious international relations students to prescribe
quick solutions for immediate problems. It is their obligation, however, to
reflect upon, analytically dissect, and meticulously conceptualize long-term
trends and tendencies in the international system in order to make consid-
ered judgments about them. This is a quintessential academic activity
because it adds to the total fund of knowledge at our disposal about how the
international system operates and makes it possible for the more discerning
scholars to get to the roots of the fundamental problems that face the soci-
ety of states. This reflection also helps to clear the air of wishful thinking,
often posing as faddish analysis in pseudoscientific jargon.
I have touched upon some of the major themes contained in this book
in articles in scholarly journals and in book chapters published earlier.
Some of the ideas contained here have also been presented at various con-
ferences and workshops in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands,
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PREFACE (cid:0)
India, and Australia. I would like to thank the editors of those journals and
books and the conference and workshop participants; their comments have
enriched my understanding of the subject and improved the quality of this
final product.
The book has been made possible by the generosity of various institu-
tions and individuals to whom I am extremely grateful. Although I have
been interested for a dozen years in conceptualizing both the role of the
Third World in the international system and the security problematic of the
Third World, I began to conduct sustained research on the central themes
presented here in 1989–1990 at the Center of International Studies,
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton
University, where I spent eighteen months as SSRC–MacArthur
Foundation Fellow in International Peace and Security. I would like to
thank the MacArthur Foundation and the Social Science Research Council
for funding the initial phase of this project. I am particularly grateful to
Henry Bienen, then director of the Center of International Studies at
Princeton and now president of Northwestern University, for extending the
center’s hospitality to me during that crucial phase of the project. Richard
Falk, Richard Ullman, Atul Kohli, and Robert Gilpin also deserve my
thanks for their intellectual input and constant encouragement during my
time at Princeton.
Work on the project continued from 1990 to 1993 simultaneously with
my teaching duties at James Madison College, Michigan State University—
a truly unique institution that combines the ambience of a small college
specializing in public and international affairs with all of the advantages of
the large university within which it is situated. Many of the ideas that form
the core of the book comprised major themes of my senior seminar, “Major
Dimensions of Third World Security.” I am greatly indebted to two groups
of very bright students at Madison College who brought fresh perspectives
to bear on this subject and helped me refine my arguments and sharpen my
conclusions. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Michigan State
University, Michael Schechter, Norman Graham, and Linda Racioppi, for
acting as sounding boards for my ideas, sometimes without realizing they
were performing this role. Kenneth Waltzer and William Allen, the former
acting dean and the current dean of James Madison College, respectively,
provided enthusiastic support in more than one way to enable the comple-
tion of this project.
I am very grateful to the Ford Foundation’s Program on Peace and
Security and to the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown
University for awarding me the Ford Foundation Fellowship in
International Security at the Watson Institute for the 1993–1994 academic
year so I could complete the project. I am particularly grateful to Thomas
G. Weiss, the associate director of the Watson Institute, for extending the
hospitality of the institute, for his keen interest in the project, and for writ-
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(cid:0) MOHAMMED AYOOB
ing the foreword to this volume. His constant encouragement and percep-
tive advice contributed greatly to the completion of the project within the
time frame of the fellowship. I would also like to thank Fred Fullerton,
Mary Lhowe, and Susan Costa at the Watson Institute who worked hard to
give this volume its final shape. I am grateful to Gia Hamilton and Cheryl
Carnahan at Lynne Rienner Publishers for their very professional handling
of the editing process.
I am extremely grateful to my wife, Salma, who has been a constant
source of unstinting support during the years I have worked on this project,
as she has been in all my academic endeavors.
Finally, as a token of appreciation for his friendship and support, I ded-
icate this book to my very good friend and former colleague at the
Australian National University, Robert O’Neill, currently Chichele
Professor of the History of War at All Souls College, Oxford, who has been
a great source of inspiration to me intellectually and in many other ways
during the two decades we have known each other.
—Mohammed Ayoob
Notes
1. Hedley Bull, “International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach,” in
Klaus Knorr and James N. Rosenau (eds.), Contending Approaches to International
Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969): 20.
2. Stanley Hoffmann, “International Society,” in J. D. B. Miller and R. J.
Vincent (eds.), Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990): 17.
3. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977): 319–320.
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Concepts and Definitions:
“Third World” and “Security”
The Third World has a multidimensional relationship with the international
system. The most fundamental dimension of this relationship is a direct
result of the Third World’s weakness toward what Robert Gilpin has called
the two organizing principles of international social life—the sovereign
state and the international market.1 This weakness is manifested at both of
the levels at which the Third World interacts with the international system:
as a group, and as individual sovereign states.
Many scholarly attempts to explain this weakness have been made
from many different perspectives. These attempts include the world system
critique of the current international order, which provides the philosophical
foundation on which much of the dependency literature is based;2 the
reformist prescriptions for improving the position of the developing world
by co-opting the more important countries, particularly the more important
socioeconomic strata within those countries;3 and the neoconservative jus-
tification of inequality embedded in that order.4 This entire spectrum of
views, from the revolutionary through the reformist to the most ardent
defense of the status quo, accepts the notion of Third World weakness and
vulnerability, even though the proposed solutions range from radical
restructuring of the international order to vehement opposition to even tin-
kering with it. Even more interesting is that few, if any, analysts of these
various persuasions have taken their arguments to their logical end by con-
cluding that Third World state behavior, whether at the individual or the
collective level, is largely determined by the insecurity that is aggravated
by the overwhelming feeling of vulnerability, if not impotence, among its
state elites.
Stephen Krasner probably comes the closest to this conclusion in his
analysis of North-South relations, which he terms structural conflict
between the affluent, powerful North and the poor, weak South. He attrib-
utes this conflict primarily to the Third World’s quest to change interna-
tional regimes, especially those covered by the New International
Economic Order (NIEO) agenda, by making such regimes more authorita-
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tive and thereby redistributing benefits (an economic value) and power (a
political value) to the Third World through its numerical superiority in
international forums.5 However, even Krasner fails to capture the multidi-
mensional nature of North-South relations because of his excessive preoc-
cupation with the Third World’s NIEO demands to the exclusion of many
other issues. The neglected issues are found in the field of political and mil-
itary security and also in the economic and technological spheres, including
aid, trade, investments, and technology transfers. Economic and technolog-
ical limits severely constrain the Third World’s capacity to bargain effec-
tively with the developed countries of North America and Western Europe,
and they contribute to the South’s multifaceted dependence on the North,
as individual states and as a group. Economic and technological dependen-
cies and political and military weaknesses therefore have greater bearing on
North-South relations than the failed dialogue around NIEO. In fact, it is
the vulnerabilities and dependencies in the political and military spheres
that largely explain the South’s failed attempt to get the North to accept its
NIEO demands.
The main reasons for the lack of attention to security, which should be
considered the major variable determining Third World state behavior both
domestically and externally, are not difficult to decipher. In the case of the
world system theorists, led by Immanuel Wallerstein, this lack of attention
to security has arisen from the relative neglect of political variables in favor
of economic ones and from the theorists’ almost exclusive concentration on
the systemic level of analysis at the expense of the unit level. Although one
offshoot of the world system dependency school—that is, the dependent
development subschool—does bring the state back as an explanatory fac-
tor, it does so in a reductionist form.6 As Atul Kohli noted, commenting
generally on the neo-Marxist analysts of the Third World and particularly
on the dependent development subschool, “Even though the significant role
of the state in development has been widely recognized [by them], varying
explanations of this role share one blind spot: they insist that it must reflect
the interests and goals, not of the political elite, but of specifiable economic
actors.”7
The neoconservative position, to which both Robert Tucker and
Stephen Krasner subscribe in varying degrees, has distorted the major dri-
ving force behind the foreign policies of Third World states by misreading
the relationship between security and power in determining such policies.
Although Third World states, as with all states in the international system,
seek to enhance their capabilities and to improve their standing within the
international hierarchy, the primary objective of Third World state elites is
not to substitute one type of inequality among nations for another (as
Tucker argues) or to change the rules by which the game of nations is
played (as Krasner seems to think) but to reduce the deep sense of insecuri-
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CONCEPTS & DEFINITIONS (cid:0)
ty from which Third World states and regimes suffer domestically and
internationally.
Tucker’s argument is far from convincing because of the obvious
inability of Third World states to change the international pecking order in
any meaningful fashion. This was demonstrated above all by the unrealistic
euphoria surrounding the oil price rise of 1973 and 1974. This euphoria
was considerably eroded by the end of the 1970s and was thoroughly dissi-
pated by the mid-1980s with the crash in oil prices and the disagreement
over production quotas among Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) members. The Gulf War of 1990 and 1991 further
emphasized the lesson that weak, one-product economies cannot hope to
change international power equations because such rentier income does not
significantly decrease their vulnerabilities—in fact, the situation throws
their weaknesses into sharper relief. This was demonstrated in Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia as well as in Iraq.8
Similarly, Krasner’s thesis about the Third World’s interest in chang-
ing the rules by which the international system operates misses the point
that such an interest by developing countries is selective as well as instru-
mental. Their primary concern is to reduce their vulnerabilities; they may
occasionally find authoritative international regimes attractive only because
they believe such regimes may be able to help them inch toward the over-
riding goal of reducing state and regime insecurities individually and col-
lectively. Furthermore, as Robert Rothstein has pointed out, the Third
World campaign in favor of NIEO, on which much of Krasner’s central
argument rests, had already fizzled by the time Krasner’s analysis was pub-
lished in the mid-1980s, thereby demonstrating the ephemeral character of
his argument.9
By concentrating on Third World attempts in the mid-1970s and late
1970s to tinker with the international economic regimes to make them more
responsive to Third World interests, Krasner also glosses over the point
that whereas Third World states may have a selective interest in changing
certain norms in the international economy, their commitment to the central
postulates of the international system—sovereignty, nonintervention, self-
help, codes of diplomacy—has been strong. Third World commitment to
these postulates is, in fact, stronger than that of the developed states of the
West, which were initially responsible for the formulation and global dis-
semination of these governing principles of the international system.10 In
fact, Third World state elites have internalized the dominant values of the
Westphalian system to such a degree that Western states find this increas-
ingly exasperating as their own international agenda moves beyond the
Westphalian framework.11 The Third World state elites’ commitment to
Westphalian values is derived from their acute sense of internal and exter-
nal insecurity. They see the Westphalian values in their pristine form as the
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greatest normative and ideological bulwark against both domestic and for-
eign threats to states and regimes in the Third World.12
Although there is an obvious relationship between power and security,
for most Third World states power is not viewed exclusively or primarily as
an end in itself but as an instrument to ease their security predicament. This
viewpoint is related to two factors: the early stage of state making in which
Third World states find themselves, and their late entry into the system of
states in which they form the weak, intruder majority. Both of these dimen-
sions of the Third World’s security problematic are analyzed in later chap-
ters.
The Third World state elites’ major concern—indeed, obsession—is
with security at the level of both state structures and governing regimes. As
Ali Mazrui has pointed out, the predominance of insecurity and the preoc-
cupation with security in the social life of the Third World state is primari-
ly the result of the dissonance between “the defining characteristics of any
state . . . the twin principles of centralised authority and centralised
power.”13 In most Third World states there are competing locations of
authority; these are usually weaker than the state in terms of coercive
capacity but equal to or stronger than the state in terms of political legiti-
macy in the view of large segments of the states’ populations. This situa-
tion reflects a lack of adequate stateness—defined as a balance of coercive
capacity, infrastructural power,14 and unconditional legitimacy15—on the
part of Third World states; this lack of stateness prevents them from impos-
ing a legitimate political order at home and from participating effectively in
the international system.
Furthermore, a lack of adequate stateness makes the states acutely vul-
nerable to external pressures—political, military, economic, or technologi-
cal—from other and usually more developed states, from international
institutions, and from transnational actors, including multinational corpora-
tions, irredentist groups, and supranational movements.16These vulnerabil-
ities and the consequent permeability of Third World states explain the
obsession of Third World state elites with the notion of security, which is
why it is not possible to construct a paradigm that has sufficient power to
explain Third World state behavior internally or externally without the con-
cept of security at its center. It is such a paradigm—an alternative to the
developmental and dependency theses—that I attempt to explicate.
Western Concept of Security
Before proceeding further, it is necessary to define the two key concepts
that pervade this book—namely, security and Third World. I define the
concept of security in the sense that it is used here. Although the dictionary
definition of the term—namely, to be free from danger, anxiety, and