Research Papers

Recent events have encouraged scholars and policy practitioners alike to think afresh about Russia’s evolving international role and the present state of wider European security. The response has been varied. Conservative opinion perceives the resurgence of a strong sovereign power guided by an internationally revisionist and domestically authoritarian regime, even to the extent of something like a ‘new Cold War’. Others, perhaps the majority, also recognise the sovereign nature of Russian power but adopt a more benign approach, advocating a sober, pragmatic and interest-based engagement. A few far-sighted policy practitioners and commentators take a different view, arguing that deeper engagement to create a ‘security community’ should be the conceptual and policy framework guiding future interaction between Russia and Europe/the West. This paper argues that , as evolving concepts of security, economic interdependence and changing patterns of integration and disintegration across the wider European security space are forcing policymakers to link previously discrete issue areas, there is fertile ground for a research agenda based in the concept of security community. It interrogates the theoretical framework on security communities, based in the IR literature inspired by Karl Deutsch and more recently by Adler and Barnett, and applies it to the current security environment in the wider Europe; considers to what extent Russia may be viewed as part of a European security community; focuses on a number of unresolved theoretical and empirical problems in terms of how Russia’s relates to this community; and, finally, assesses the prospects for the development of a ‘mature’ security community.