Thinking Peaceful Change
Baltic Security Policies and Security Community Building

Cloth $39.95s    |    0-8156-3108-1    |    2006

Provides a novel analysis of current efforts at security-building by post-Soviet Baltic states amid important political, regional, and international developments.

Description
Frank Möller explores why the states and societies of the Baltic Sea region have not yet evolved into a security community despite the area undergoing, since the mid 1980s, considerable change with little turmoil. This book focuses on the tensions resulting from policies in the Baltic states aiming at an increase in both security and sovereignty. Möller shows how these states’ attempts at increasing their security were intricately bound up with their efforts at autonomous nation-state building. Möller argues that a primary obstacle to security community building was the construction of nation-states based upon an exceedingly traditional template emphasizing the connection between the state, sovereignty, and military security. The Baltic states aspired to NATO membership amid unique challenges, such as the perceived threat of renascent Russian imperialism and the perseverance of a collective memory emphasizing anti-Soviet resistance. Möller also examines such key issues as the demise of the Soviet Union, the nonviolent withdrawal of Russian troops from the Baltic states, and U.S. foreign policy in northern Europe.

Here is a profound, multifaceted look at issues of security in the contemporary world- a crucial tool for researchers and students of peace and conflict studies.

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Author
Frank Möller is a research fellow with the Tampere Peace Research Institute at the University of Tampere, Finland.

6 x 9, 368 pages, appendix, notes, bibliography, index