9. The Building of Regional Security Partnership and the Security-Culture Divide in the Mediterranean Region

Abstract

Fulvio Attinà examines the concept of "regional security partnership" both theoretically and in the context of Euro-Mediterranean region-building. He argues that this partnership is an intermediate venture on the road to the possible appearance of a Euro-Mediterranean security community. By discussing the difficulties of negotiating a security partnership in the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, Attinà highlights the security culture divide on both sides of Mediterranean. The differences in the security culture between European and Arab states have deepened in recent years in view of regional and global developments, constituting a major obstacle to the implementation of a security partnership. Attinà argues, however, that the interaction between the two shores of the Mediterranean in coping with globalization-driven problems may prevail over the factors that have led to a deepening of the security culture divide in recent years. According to the second interpretation, instead, the Partnership's goal is to build a zone of prosperity, stability and peace 1 and no room for deliberate construction of unequal relations between the partners. To achieve this goal, the European Union institutions and governments act to lead the Med-partners to respect norms and practices needed to achieve economic growth, political stability and peaceful conflict resolution. In this perspective, the Barcelona Process is, at the same time, a gap-reducing process between the societies and states of the two shores of the Mediterranean, an inclusion process of the Med-partners in the neo-liberal global system (Tovias, in this volume), and a mutual socialization process of all the partner countries to the same practices, as largely discussed in the Adler and Crawford's introductory chapter in this volume) 2 . Fulvio Attinà, University of Catania1 As spoken out in the Barcelona Declaration. The need for revising the perspective on regional cooperation is forwarded by scientists that maintain that regional cooperation occurs in the contemporary world when governments recognize that negotiation to set up policy coordination is important to cope with the problems shared by the states of a geographical area (see, for example, Coleman and Underhill, 1998;Vayrinen, 2003). This interpretation largely relies on the conviction that, irrespective of culture distance and institution difference, global trends cause dangerous effects to the countries of an area in as different fields as environment for the problem of pollution, demography for the problem of migration, and public security for the problem of organized crime and illegal trade. Because geographical proximity reinforces interconnection between contemporary societies and states, one country's action and inaction regarding trans-border problems directly affect

The Arctic security region: misconceptions and contradictions

“…This ultimately develops into a regional organization and later even a regional security community. Hettne (1999) and Attinà (2004) draw similar parallels, with regions culminating in a regional security community or a regional security partnership, respectively. Thus, the concept of security communities becomes linked with regional security developments.…”

Converging, Diverging and Instrumentalizing European Security and Defence Policy in the Mediterranean

“…Sven Biscop (2003: 191) refers to the Mediterranean as a single security complex, arguing that 'though the Mediterranean partners are a very diverse set of countries, from the EU's viewpoint they are involved in an interrelated set of security issues: unresolved disputes and conflicts across the region, militarization and proliferation, and violent Islamism, to name just the major 'hard' security factors'. Some scholars also point to the existence of differentiated security cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean space (Attinà, 2006;Bilgin, 2004;Ruacan, 2007). From that perspective, the existence not only of different strategic interests but also different security cultures has impeded the countries of the Euro-Mediterranean space from moving towards a 'security community' understood as a region or group of countries for which war has ceased to be conceivable as a means to resolve their disputes.…”

Regional powers and security: A framework for understanding order within regional security complexes

“…Such categorization would be appropriate for the classification schemes of Buzan and Waever (2003) or Wendt (1999) as they imply levels of security attainment. Such a classification would also be appropriate for those who view regional security as a latter stage of the process of regionalism in general (for example, Attina, 2004;Fawcett, 1995;Hettne, 2000). As stated above though, the success of different security orders in achieving higher levels of accommodation and de-securitization is an empirical question.…”