Constructing Post-Cold War Collective Security
Brian Frederking
Presented by Kim Yun Kea
Supporting Theory:
 Language Games: Dialogical Analysis of INF Negotiation
Gavan Duffy; Brian K. Frederking; Seth A. Tucker
Opposing Theory:
 The False Promise of International Institutions
John J. Mearsheimer
Summary:
 Rule-oriented constructivism is built on an interpretive method called
dialogical analysis.
 Dialogical analysis models a linguistic conception of social interaction capable
of illustrating constructivist arguments. It assumes the existence of constitutive
social rules and communicatively rational agents constructing those social
rules through the performance of speech acts.
 Building on the rule-oriented constructivism, the author posits four social
arrangements constituting the security structures on world politics: war,
rivalry, collective security, and security community.
 The dominant post-cold war global security trend is the gradual construction
of collective security rules and September 11 did not fundamentally change
the exiting world political order; instead, it exacerbated it. Moreover, the
Kosovo and Iraq wars are embedded in collective security social arrangement.
Q1: Can dialogical analysis effectively explain the international relations?
 Frederking: Yes.
 Dialogical analysis models a linguistic conception of social interaction capable
of illustrating constructivist arguments. It assumes the existence of constitutive
social rules and communicatively rational agents constructing those social
rules through the performance of speech acts. The development of interpretive
methods like dialogical analysis is important if we are to move beyond
epistemological debates between advocates of Science and advocates of AntiScience. (p. 363)


Duffy and Tucker: Yes.
… It [dialogical analysis] combines linguistics analyses of the discourse
contents, argument analyses of parties’ moves and countermoves in this
discourse, and logical deductions to test counterfactual hypothesis. By tacking
between the negotiation discourse and the (empirically supported) background
assumptions that make that discourse comprehensible, dialogical analysis
progressively elaborate deeper and more refined understandings of the
interaction, … (p. 290)
Q2: Does dialogical analysis reflect the existence and importance of social structures
such as norms, beliefs, and identities?


Frederking: Yes.
Dialogical analysis helps make the speech acts constructing post-cold war
security intelligible by showing those acts to be logically consistent with the
social rules-beliefs, norms, identities-constituting global security structures.
(p. 376)


Duffy and Tucker: Yes.
Game theory provides a powerful set of formal tools for explaining political
interactions. Yet the formality of game models sometimes limits their
empirical application. Contextual factors generally held exogenous to game
models may prove decisive for outcomes. These factors include actors’ belief
about the nature of the interaction, their beliefs about other actors’ beliefs, and
the means by which actors convey and infer intentions to and from one
another. Scholars concerned with the role of norms, beliefs, and identities in
social interaction (e.g., constructivists, cognitivists, negotiation theorists,
diplomatic historians) could benefit from a model of social interaction that
captures these contextual factors. (p. 271)
Q3: Are the existence and development of social arrangement rules characterized by
multilateralism?


Frederking: Yes.
Social rules are constantly negotiated and mediated through the actions of
many agents. Whether future global security rules are constituted by collective
security rules or war rules is always being negotiated and renegotiated. (p.
376)


Duffy and Tucker: Yes.
They [the INF negotiations] consisted of intentional exchanges of intent as the
parties progressively elaborated a largely mutual context that promoted the
mutual intelligibility of their utterances. On the constructivist account of
global politics, the substantive commitments that accompany such an
interaction constitute a regime. If so, then the INF language game helped to
transform that regime and, with it, world history. (p. 291)
Q4: Are state’s behavior and action determined by the nature of shared understanding
regarding norms and identity, rather than materialist concept such as military
capability?

Frederking: Yes.

Norms are shared understandings of appropriate action. Norms guide action
and make action possible, enabling agents to criticize assertions and justify
actions…. Identities tell agents who they are and who other are; they enable
agents to make the actions of themselves and others intelligible… interests
stems from a particular, constructed representation of the relationship between
self and other… material structures have meanings for human agents only
within the context of social rules. For example, a state’s military capability has
different meanings depending on whether it belongs to an ally or an enemy. (p.
365)


S. D.: Yes.
Why are Iraq, Iran, and North Korea dangerous to America?
Table 1: The World’s Nuclear Arsenals
Country
Suspected Strategic
Nuclear Weapon
China
France
India
Israel
Pakistan
Russia
United Kingdom
United States
250
350
60
100-200
24-48
~6000
180
8,646
Suspected NonStrategic Nuclear
Weapons
120
0
?
?
?
~ 4000
5
2,010
Source: CDI: Nuclear Issue. Last updated February 4, 2003
http://www.cdi.org/issues/nukef&f/database/nukearsenals.cfm
Iraq: 0 (Jehl, 2004)
Iran: 0 (Smith, 2004)
North Korea: 1 - 8 (Edward qtd. in excerpts in New York Times)
Table 2: Military Budget (1995)
Country
Military Budget (in Billion)
China
$29
France
$41
India
$8
Israel
$7
Pakistan
$4
Russia
$63
United Kingdom
$35
United States
$254
Iraq
$3
Iran
$2
North Korea
$6
Prepared by Center For Defense Information. Sources: IISS, DOD, CDI
http://www.cdi.org/dm/dm/images/country.gif
Suspected Total
Number of Nuclear
Weapons
400
350
60+?
200+?
24-48
~10,000
185
10,656
Q5: Are the international involvement, legitimacy, and justification ground important
in institutionalizing the collective security arrangement?


Frederking: Yes.
Collective security orients agents to act with a sense of duty to generate rules
of peaceful behavior and punish those who break the rules. Through the
explosion of multilateral treaties, Security Council resolutions, UN
peacekeeping missions, and nongovernmental organizations, agents have been
slowly institutionalizing a global collective security arrangement in the postcold-war world… A collective security enforcement may enforce only the rule
of state sovereignty, or it could enforce rules regarding weapon of
proliferation, terrorism, human rights, and so on. (p.368)


S.D.: Yes. Kosovo war is embedded in collective security.
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea:
Serb forces were holding 700 Kosovo-Albanian boys prisoner, using them as
“blood banks” for injured troops, and using Kosovo Albanians as human
shields, forcing them to stand in front of Serb tanks for two days, and upwards
of 100,000 Albanian men of fighting age were unaccounted for in Kosovo,
more than 3,500 had been executed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/324173.stm

With a NATO cease-fire in place, the U.N. Security Council gave its backing
Thursday on a NATO-led force that will enter Yugoslavia as peacekeepers
while Yugoslav troops withdraw from Kosovo… As the cease-fire was
announced, the vanguard of a 50,000- strong peacekeeping force – dubbed
KFOR – prepared to move into Kosovo.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9906/10/kosovo.05/

4/20/99
06/10/99
The U.N. war crime tribunal indicted the former Yugoslav president Slobodan
Milosevic and his four aides: the president of Serbia, the Yugoslav deputy
premier, Serbia’s interior minister, and the head of Yugoslav army.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9906/03/kosovo.peace.06/
5/27/99
Q6: Can it be assumed that in war social rule, state’s sovereignty is not recognized
and its survival is determined by military capability?
 Frederking: Yes.
 In war, agents identify each other as enemies (rule 1), perhaps even an enemy
that threatens their existence. Agents do not recognize the autonomy of others
or perhaps even the right of others to exist (rule 2). Survival demands a
military capability greater than one’s immediate enemies (rule 3) because the
military capabilities of others are interpreted as a threat to one’s existence. The
directive rule in war is to surrender (rule 4), supported by the commitment to
attack until the other does surrender (rule 5). Because others are enemies with
the military capability to threaten one’s existence, the use of force is
considered inevitable, necessary, and appropriate (rule 6).


S.D.: Yes.
At dawn of World War II, Japan invaded Manchuria and Germany acquired
Czechoslovakia and Poland respectively by force. During the course of the
war, nine formerly independent states had submitted to the domination of
Berlin in various guises, ranging from outright annexation in the case of
Austria to a fictitious independence in the case of the Vichy regime in France.
The remaining nations of the continent had become either military allies or
economic vassals of Germany except Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and
Sweden that managed to cling to precarious neutrality. In Asia, the Western
colonial possessions such as Singapore, the Philippines, Malaya, Indochina,
most of the Dutch East Indies, and Burma had come under Japanese military
occupation, while Thailand became the subservient client state of Tokyo. The
war was brought to an end when the ally army captured Berlin and two nuclear
bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki of Japan, forcing Germany
and Japan unconditionally surrender to the U.S. and ally force. (Keylor, 2001:137247)
Q7: Is the international security system constituted by the rules of social
arrangement?


Frederking: Yes.
These social arrangements [war, rivalry, collective security, security
community] constitute global security in the way that the rules of chess
constitute chess; participants use them to “go on” and act in intelligible ways.
Sometimes one social arrangement is more institutionalized than the others;
sometimes the social arrangements are more institutionalized in different
geographical areas. (p.367)


Mearsheimer: No.
The international system is portrayed as a brutal arena where states look for
opportunities to take advantage of each other, and therefore have little reason
to trust each other. Daily life is essentially a struggle for power, where each
state strives not only to be the most powerful actor in the system, but also to
ensure that no other state achieves that lofty position. (p. 9)
Q8: Are genuine cooperation and global peace feasible in the international politics?


Frederking: Yes.
In security communities, agents identify each other as friends committed to
the peaceful resolution of conflict (rule1). Agents in security communities
have a strong consensus about the obligation to follow the rules of their
community (rule 2) and they engage in peaceful, multilateral decision making
to ensure security through political relationships (rule 3). The directive rule to
follow the rules of community does exist in security communities (rule 4), but
enforcement does not include the possibility of force (rule5 and 6). (p. 368-9)


Mearsheimer: No.
Genuine peace, or a world where states do not compete for power, is not
likely... state inherently possess some offensive military capability, which
gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly to destroy each other. States
are potentially dangerous to each other. A state’s military power is usually
identified with the particular weaponry at its disposal, although even if there
were no weapons, the individuals of a state could still use their feet and hands
to attack the population of another state…state can never be certain about the
intention of other states. Specifically, no state can be certain another state will
not use its offensive military capability against the first… they may
miscalculate from time to time because they operate in a world of imperfect
information, where potential adversaries have incentives to misrepresent their
own strength or weakness and to conceal their true aims. (p. 9-10)
Q9: Is the relationship between agents and social structures a two-way relationship?


Frederking: Yes
… agents and structures construct each other. Rules make agents and agents
make rules. The (social) world is made by people, who in turn are made by
that (social) world. (p. 364)


Mearsheimer: No
… those rules reflect state calculations of self-interest based primarily on the
international distribution of power. The most powerful states in the system
create and shape institutions so that they can maintain their share of world
power, or even increase it. In this view, institutions are essentially “arenas for
acting out power relationships.” … In short, the balance of power is the
independent variable that explains war; institutions are merely an intervening
variable in the process. (p. 13)
Q10: Is it likely that state’s self-interest and freedom of actions are limited by the
shared responsibility?


Frederking: Yes.
In collective security arrangements, agents [states] are citizens whose
sovereignty is limited by obligation to follow community rules and to use
multilateral military force to ensure compliance with those rules. (p. 369)

O.D.: No.
Table 3: Wars 1990-2002
Countries
Type of war
United
Kingdom
Site of war
War began
Interstate
clashes
Regional civil
war
Iraq
1998
Northern
Ireland
1969
Interstate war
Kuwait / Iraq
1991
Intervention in
Sierra Leon
2000
Combat status
2002
Continuing
Suspended by
agreement
1994
Suspended by
agreement
1991
Withdrew
United States
Sierra Leon
Intervention in
Afghanistan
Interstate
clashes
Interstate war
Afghanistan
2001
2001
Continuing
Iraq
1998
Continuing
Kuwait / Iraq
1991
Interstate war
Yugoslavia
1999
Intervention in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan
2001
Suspended by
agreement
1991
Suspended by
agreement
1999
Continuing
(Smith, Dan. 2003)
Q11: Can the types of social rules be detected by looking at the validity claims that
the disputing parties assert and challenge?


Frederking: Yes.
In the post-cold war construction of collective security, the meaning of the use
of force is defined by how agents understand the act. How will the
international community interpret the use of force? Does it invoke collective
security rules or war rules? In both the Kosovo and Iraq debates, both sides
asserted the validity of collective security rules but differed on whether U.S.
use of force actually invoked those rules. (p. 376)


O. D.: No. Iraq war is not embedded in collective security rule.
Charles A. Duelfer:
Mr. Hussein ended his nuclear program in 1991, and there was no evidence he
tried to restart it… Activities at a storage depot cited by Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell at the United Nations Security Council were not related to
chemical weapons… Iraq’s last banned weapons facility, a biological weapons
plant called Al Hakam, was destroyed in 1996. (qtd. in Jehl, 2004)

Amnesty International has said the terms of the Iraqi special tribunal needed to
be changed. The statute, it said, did not prevent arbitrary arrest or the torture
of detainees to extract confessions. It also suggested there was a lack of
expertise among Iraqi judges in tackling cases involving human rights and
crimes against humanity. Other human rights groups noted there is no
requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0702-02.htm
08/02/04
Q12: Can it be assumed that the global security rule is unlikely to be changed by
single event such as a terrorist one?


Frederking: Yes.
… a terrorist event, even a horrific one, cannot automatically change the rules
of global security. Even U.S. foreign policy, although tremendously important,
cannot unilaterally construct a war social arrangement through declarations of
a “war on terrorism” or even by invading Iraq. (p. 376)

O.D.: No

The Pearl Harbor attack
Second World War
Nagasaki. (Keylor, 2001)

September 11 events
U.S. declared war on terrorism
Grand strategy
Shatter old world order
New world order: rivalry or war?
Albania
Algeria
Afghanistan
Azerbaijan
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Belgium
Bosnia
Egypt
Eritrea
France
Germany
India
Countries Where Al Qaeda Has Operated
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Ireland
Somalia
Italy
South Africa
Jordan
Sudan
Kenya
Switzerland
Kosovo
Tajikistan
Lebanon
Tanzania
Libya
Tunisia
Malaysia
Turkey
Mauritania
Uganda
Netherlands
United Arab Emirates
Pakistan
United Kingdom
Philippines
United States
Qatar
Uzbekistan
Russia
Yemen
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/terrornet/12.htm

American full-fledged intervention in the
two nuclear bombs dropped in Hiroshima and
10/8/2004
Jorge Castaneda, Mexico’s former foreign Minister:
The change came with the Sep. 11 attacks. My sense is that Mr. Bush lost and
never regained the gift he had shown for making you feel at ease. He became
aloof, brusque, and on occasion abrasive. The brusqueness had a clear message:
the United States is at war, it needs everybody’s support and that support is not
negotiable. (quoted in Cohen, 2004)

Between 1985 and 2000 US military spending decreased. Since 11 September
2001 it has increased dramatically, and is projected to rise by about 12 percent
annually. By 2003 US military spending will be 40 percent of the world total,
and equal to the next 15 largest defense budget combined. (Smith, 2003)

The continuing growth of unilateralism in US public opinions and its policy
after 11 September
On the question of whether in responding
to international crises the United States
should or should not take action alone if it
does not have the support of its allies, the
proportion saying the United States should
take action alone, rose from 21% in 1998
to 34% in 2002. Even though a clear
majority (61%) says the United States
should not take action alone, this number is
down from 72% in 1998.
http://www.worldview.org/.../graphs/Chap4_1.gif
- US withdrawal from ABM treaty in 2001
- US rejection of Kyoto protocol on Global Warming
- UN-unauthorized wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
References:
Cohen, Royer; David E. Sanger and Steven R. Weisman. 2004. “Challenging Rest of the
World With a New Order.” New York Times CLIV… 53,000, October 12.
Duffy, Gavan, Brian K. Frederking, Seth A. Tucker. 1998. “Language Game: Dialogical
Analysis of INF Negotiations.” International Studies Quarterly 42, (2): 271-293.
Edward, John qtd. in “ Excerpts From the Debate Between the Vice Presidential Candidates
in Cleveland.” 2004. New York Times CLIV…, 52, 994, October 6.
Frederking, Brian. 2003. “Constructing Post-Cold War Collective Security.” American
political science review 97, 3: 363-378.
Jehl, Douglas. 2004. “U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90’s.” New York
Times CLIV…, 52,995, October 7.
Keylor, William R. 2001. “The Twentieth – Century World” An International History.”
Oxford University Press.
Mearsheimer, John J. 1994-1995. “The Fall Promise of International Institutions.”
International security 19, 3: 5-49.
Smith, Craig S. 2004. “Iran Moves Toward Enriching Uranium.” New York Times CLIV…,
52,980, September 22.
Smith, Dan. 2003. “The Penguin Atlas of War and Peace.” Penguin Group, New York.
Tyler, Patrick E. 2004. “The reach of war: Diplomacy: U.N. Chief Ignites Firestorm By
Calling Iraq War ‘illegal’.” New York Times. September 18