Agency, Security and Governance of Small States: A Global Perspective [1 ed.] 9781032410487, 9781032410555, 9781003356011

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Agency, Security and Governance of Small States

Agency, Security and Governance of Small States examines what seems to be a defining paradox of Small-State Studies: the simultaneous coexistence (and possible co-dependence) of vulnerability and opportunity related to small-state size. This book analyses small states within the framework of this apparent paradox. Traditionally, Small-State Studies has focused on three guiding questions: what constitutes a ‘small state’? What explains small-state influence in global affairs? Are small states truly vulnerable to security threats given the expansion of multilateralism and regionalism throughout the world? This book contends that new questions should be asked which recognise the important shifts in twenty-first-century security paradigms to better understand how some states deploy their smallness as a resource for agency in supranational contexts. By varying historical, geographical, security, and governance contexts, the book embraces a most-different-cases approach. The historical perspective is often neglected in Small-State Studies but contributes to understanding how small states have often, over time, transformed perceived insecurity into agency. By focusing on different world regions, the authors enable the comparative analysis of collective actions and the creation and implementation of institutions for ‘common sense purposes’ within a geographical region. Of particular contemporary importance, the book includes contributions which contend with hard-security issues alongside other soft-security challenges. The comparison of case studies confirms that hard-security vulnerability and softsecurity opportunities seem to be two sides of the same coin which reinforces the book’s focus on small-state paradoxes and raises the question of whether smallness can be considered the defining characteristic of governance in these countries. This book will have a broad appeal because of the different world regions it analyses. It will be of interest to postgraduate students, scholars, and researchers of international relations, security, sustainability, governance, development, and political economy, as well as Small-State Studies. Thomas Kolnberger is Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Institute for History (IHIST) and Coordinator of various research projects, most recently: Military History of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg in a Transnational Perspective. His fields of interest are the history of Luxembourg; Small-State Studies; military history; and historical and urban geography. Harlan Koff is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Luxembourg; GAMMA-UL Chair in Regional Integration and Sustainability at INECOL, A.C., Mexico; Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa; and Docent in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research focuses on international development; comparative regional integration; and migration.

Small State Studies Series editors: Godfrey Baldacchino University of Malta, Malta—[email protected]

Anna-Lena Högenauer University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg—[email protected]

Nicos Trimikliniotis University of Nicosia, Cyprus—[email protected]

Roukaya Kasenally University of Mauritius, Mauritius—[email protected]

Half the world’s sovereign states have populations of less than 5.3 million, and over 30 have populations of less than ONE million. Clearly, there is scope to consider the impact that small size and scale (of population, civil service, expertise, talent pools, ambassadorial ranks, service providers, and so on) could have on the nature of governance, politics, international relations, economic development, climate action, transportation, etc. This interdisciplinary new series closes the gap in political and social science literature by encouraging studies on the challenges facing small states, their characteristics and their strategies, thus galvanizing scholarship in a previously neglected area. It encourages comparative studies among small states and between small states and larger states. It addresses the predicament of small size and scale as these impinge on institutional and political dimensions (such as public administration and diplomacy) and critically considers the issues and tensions arising from small but archipelagic and/or federated states. Titles in this series include: The Rotating European Union Council Presidency and Small Member States Small States, Big Challenge Ieva Grumbinaitė Agency, Security and Governance of Small States A Global Perspective Edited by Thomas Kolnberger and Harlan Koff

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Small-State-Studies/bookseries/SMALLSTATES

Agency, Security and Governance of Small States A Global Perspective Edited by Thomas Kolnberger and Harlan Koff

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Thomas Kolnberger and Harlan Koff; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Thomas Kolnberger and Harlan Koff to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. With the exception of Chapters 4, 8, 11, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Chapters 4, 8, 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license. Acknowledgement: The publication of Chapter 4 as Open Access has been made possible by the Institute of History at the University of Luxembourg. The publication of Chapter 8 as Open Access has been made possible by Western Sydney University. The publication of Chapter 11 as Open Access has been made possible by the University of Hamburg. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kolnberger, Thomas, editor. | Koff, Harlan, editor. Title: Agency, security and governance of small states : a global perspective / edited by Thomas Kolnberger and Harlan Koff. Description: New York : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Small state studies | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2023016191 (print) | LCCN 2023016192 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032410487 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032410555 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003356011 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: States, Small. Classification: LCC JC365 .A44 2024 (print) | LCC JC365 (ebook) | DDC 321/.06—dc23/eng/20230603 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016191 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016192 ISBN: 978-1-032-41048-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-41055-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-35601-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011 The Open Access version of chapter 4 was funded by University of Luxembourg, chapter 8 was funded by Western Sydney University, chapter 11 was funded by University of Hamburg.

Contents

Preface List of illustrations Notes on contributors Introduction: agency, security, and governance of small states in a fast-changing world

viii x xi

1

HARLAN KOFF AND THOMAS KOLNBERGER

PART I

Small-State theory: reviewing the state of the art, communis opinio, and beyond 1

The power (politics) of the weak revisited: realism and the study of small-state foreign policy

11

13

REVECCA PEDI AND ANDERS WIVEL

2

A theory of shelter: small-state behaviour in international relations

29

BALDUR THORHALLSSON AND SVERRIR STEINSSON

3

The graded agency of small states

49

I VER B. NEUMANN

PART II

Agency: the art of being governed by one’s own interests 4

Forever small? A longue durée perspective on Luxembourg’s extantism, governance, and security THOMAS KOLNBERGER

63

65

vi

Contents

5 Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821): shelterseeking and securitisation in an Early Modern colony

85

EBERHARD CRAILSHEIM

6 Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts: Belize within Central America, the Caribbean, and neighbouring Mexico

104

EDITH KAUFFER

7 What is small-state security policy? ‘Transpolitical propagation’ in the case of Luxembourg, Singapore, and Lithuania

118

ANTONY DABILA AND THIBAULT FOUILLET

PART III

Security: defining and engaging threats 8 Small states in the Pacific: sovereignty, vulnerability, and regionalism

137

139

CHARLES HAWKSLEY AND NICHOLE GEORGEOU

9 Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands: from great-power competition to climate change and back again

158

SALĀ GEORGE CARTER AND JACK CORBETT

10 Cape Verde and the defence and security challenges in the Atlantic corridor: the case of the approach to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)

173

ODAIR BARROS-VARELA

11 “Let’s forget that Slovakia is small”: GLOBSEC, statusseeking, and agency in informal elite networks

185

ALEXANDER GRAEF

PART IV

Governance: interactions between domestic and international norms, rules, and action

203

12 The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s Second World War government in exile: agency and leadership at a critical juncture of Luxembourg’s small-state foreign policy

205

ANDRÉ LINDEN

Contents 13 Between formal and informal democracy: how the domestic politics of small states influence their security policies

vii 224

WOUTER VEENENDAAL

14 African Small Island Developing States (ASIDS) and good international citizenship

238

SUZANNE E. GRAHAM AND MARCEL F. NAGAR

Conclusion: insecurity of their own making? A comparative policy coherence for sustainable development analysis of small-state governance

255

HARLAN KOFF

Index

267

Preface

This volume derives from a research project with the title “Military history of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in a transnational perspective”, which was funded by the Luxembourg Defence Directorate in the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. The objective of the project was, among other things, to link Luxembourg’s military history to International Relations and to the study of systems of political alliances, economic cooperation, and spheres of influence. As part of this research on Luxembourg, the project team organised a workshop in Luxembourg City from September 24 to 25, 2021, titled “Why Lilliput is all but a (theoretical) island: knowledge, security & governance of (and in) small states”. It was organised by the editors with the support of our colleagues Sonja Kmec and Karl Hampel, to whom we are grateful for their contributions to this meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to contextualise empirical research on Luxembourg within emerging discussions in Small-State Studies. The present volume originated in these exchanges with a group of internationally recognised scholars working in this field. Our discussions focused on the state of the art in Small-State Studies, the role of history in this broad area of scholarship, and directions for future research. We thank the participants for contributing to this volume with their conceptual and empirical research and the intellectual exchanges which helped us to more fully develop the analytical framework presented in the book. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg provides an excellent setting for dialogues on security, agency, and governance. Its history highlights a distinct evolution in international affairs: from a small state searching for political survival amidst the rise of nation-states in Europe during the nineteenth century to an industrialised country committed to regional integration in the mid-twentieth century, to a financial capital and normative actor in global affairs in the twenty-first century. Luxembourg has developed remarkable agency in an ever-changing environment characterised by exposure to external political, financial, and environmental shocks. The more integrated Luxembourg becomes in global systems, the more vulnerable it is to shocks. Despite this vulnerability, it continues to thrive. For this reason, Luxembourg is an appropriate setting for a discussion of the small-state paradoxes that are identified in this volume. Through this framework, our book seeks to make an original and accessible contribution to understanding the relationships between challenges and opportunities for small states.

Preface ix In conclusion, we would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their interest and willingness to engage in this project. We are grateful for the assistance of Routledge’s editors throughout the editorial process and for the support of the series editors. And last but not least, many thanks to our proofreader Peter Marsden! We hope that the reflections published here will be enriching to those engaging in Small-State Studies. Thomas Kolnberger Harlan Koff

Illustrations

Figures 3.1 4.1 5.1 6.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 12.1 12.2 14.1

States ordered by role (a structural attribute) and role identity (a unit attribute), with empirical examples Agency and structure of extantism in international relations The Philippines (location data of the chapter) Characteristics of small states according to the World Bank Doctrine, means, and concept—the case of Luxembourg The contemporary strategic and conceptual formation of Lithuania Singapore’s Grand Strategy Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia Men and woman on the spot Luxembourg—a true democracy The six African Small Island Developing States (ASIDS)

57 68 100 105 129 130 132 140 209 216 239

Tables 6.1 6.2 8.1 13.1 13.2 C.1 C.2 C.3 C.4

Belize’s GDP (2020, billions of US Dollars) and GNI per capita in US Dollars in comparison to Central American states (2020) Belize’s population and GDP (2020, thousands of US dollars) in comparison to Caribbean small states (2020) Data on select PICTs (Pacific Islands Countries and Territories) Population of states and regime types Fieldwork in small states Current policies in four small states by sector Scale for measurement of coherence for vulnerability in development Policy coherence for sustainable development scores in four small states Small states in regional configurations based on influence and norm commitments

108 111 141 225 228 258 262 263 264

Notes on contributors

Odair Barros-Varela is a Professor of International Relations and Law at the University of Cabo Verde (Uni-CV), Cabo Verde, and an international consultant, namely of ECOWAS. He conducts research and has several publications in regional integration; international migration; research and higher education in Africa; state governance; post-colonialisms in Africa; and local participation in justice in Cabo Verde. Salā George Carter is Research Fellow at The Australian National University. He is Director of the ANU Pacific Institute. His research interests explore international politics of climate change (negotiations, security, finance, gender, and knowledge); small island states’ foreign policy and diplomacy; and Pacific regionalism and geopolitics. He teaches International Relations; security; diplomatic and Pacific studies; and provides advice to Pacific regional organisations and countries in climate, ocean, and sustainable development multilateral negotiations. Jack Corbett is Professor and Head of the School of Social Sciences at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of seven books, two edited volumes, and more than 70 articles, chapters, and commentaries, the majority of which focus on the politics and development of small states. He serves as the editor of the Topics in the Contemporary Pacific book series and as an associate editor of the Australian Journal of Public Administration. Eberhard Crailsheim is Researcher at the Institute of History of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid. His research is focused on the Spanish Empire in the Early Modern Period. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Graz (2008). Antony Dabila is Associate Professor at Toulouse-I-Capitole University, France, and Scientific Coordinator of the Institut d’Etudes de Stratégie et de Défense (IESD) at Lyon-III University, France. He studies the evolutions of strategic thinking, in particular the new doctrines of collaborative combat, with a special focus on the use of digitalisation in an overall renewal of combat methods. Thibault Fouillet is Research Fellow at the Parisian Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS), France, specialising in air–land operational issues, in particular

xii Notes on contributors the development of collaborative combat and the land doctrines of the major powers. He holds a PhD in Military History from the University of Luxembourg (on the subjects of Grand Strategy and Security Dilemma, particularly in their application to the study of small powers). Nichole Georgeou is Associate Professor and Director of the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI) at Western Sydney University, Australia. Her research interests include Pacific Islands human security; food security; gender and development; and state–civil society relations. Alexander Graef is Senior Researcher in the project Arms Control and Emerging Technologies at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), Germany. His research focuses on conventional arms control and military risk reduction in Europe; Russian foreign and security policy; and sociological approaches to the study of international security. He holds a PhD from the University of St. Gallen. Suzanne E. Graham is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and Vice-Dean: Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a PhD in Political Studies from the University of Johannesburg. Charles Hawksley is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His research interests include Pacific Islands governance; food security; aid and development; foreign relations; and policing interventions. Edith Kauffer is Senior Researcher at CIESAS (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social), Mexico. She conducts research on transboundary waters and river basins; water policy and politics; gender and water in Southern Mexico, Northern Central America, and the Mediterranean; and, more recently, on sediment extraction. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Aix–Marseille University (1997). Harlan Koff is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Luxembourg; GAMMA-UL Chair in Regional Integration and Sustainability at INECOL, A.C., Mexico; Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa; and Docent in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research focuses on international development; comparative regional integration; and migration. Thomas Kolnberger is Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Institute for History (IHIST) and coordinator of various research projects, most recently: Military History of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg in a Transnational Perspective. His fields of interest are the history of Luxembourg; SmallState Studies; military history; and historical and urban geography. He holds a PhD in History from the Universities of Luxembourg and Passau (Germany).

Notes on contributors

xiii

André Linden worked for over three decades as an expert in psychological studies in marketing for a large international group. He is the author of articles on the representation of national identity in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. After retirement, he studied for a master’s degree in European Contemporary History at the University of Luxembourg. His thesis was on ‘Democracy’ in propaganda and communication of Luxembourg’s Second World War-government in Exile. Marcel F. Nagar is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Research Foundation SARChI, African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She obtained her doctoral degree in Political Science from the University of Johannesburg (2019). Iver B. Neumann has worked as Professor at the University of Oslo, Norway and at the London School of Economics, UK. He is now Director of The Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway. He holds doctorates in Politics from the University of Oxford (1992) and in Social Anthropology from the University of Oslo (2009). Revecca Pedi is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of International and European Studies at the University of Macedonia, Greece. She was among the 20 recipients of the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation Grants in Social Sciences for her project Crisis Emerging Diaspora Tendencies Towards Greece. Her research focus is on the international relations of small states. She is one of the two co-chairs of the Small States in World Politics Section of the European International Studies Association (EISA). Sverrir Steinsson is PhD Candidate in Political Science at The George Washington University, USA. His research focus has primarily been on small states, Small-State theory, and Iceland’s foreign policy. He holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Iceland. Baldur Thorhallsson is Professor of Political Science and Founder and Research Director for the Centre for Small State Studies at the University of Iceland. His research focus has primarily been on small states; Small-State theory; European integration; and the foreign policies of the Nordic states. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Essex (1999). Wouter Veenendaal is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Political Science of Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the effects of population size on politics, with a particular focus on democracy in small (island) states. He is the (co-) author of three monographs, as well as numerous articles published in international academic journals. Anders Wivel is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has published widely on foreign policy; small states in international relations; and power politics and international relations realism. He is one of the two co-chairs of the Small States in World Politics Section of the European International Studies Association (EISA).

Introduction Agency, security, and governance of small states in a fast-changing world Harlan Koff and Thomas Kolnberger

This volume seeks to unpack and examine what seems to be a defining paradox of Small-State Studies: the simultaneous coexistence (and possible co-dependence) of vulnerability and opportunity related to small-state size. Small-State Studies has traditionally focused on three guiding questions: what constitutes a ‘small state’? What explains small-state influence in global affairs? Are small states truly vulnerable to security threats given the expansion of multilateralism and regionalism throughout the world? This volume contends that new questions should be asked to recognise the emergence of new security challenges in the twenty-first century. First, the authors in this volume ask whether we really need to continue questioning what constitutes a small state. Thorhallsson’s (2018) review of the field identifies the different responses to this question which have been proposed over the years including size of population, economy (Gross Domestic Product), territory, military, influence in global affairs, and leadership capabilities. Because such criteria vary, some studies include so-called micro-states while others focus on states as large as Canada and Japan (e.g., in relation to the United States and China, respectively). The review also illustrates the lack of consensus surrounding this question by referring to relational definitions of small states (Mouritzen & Wivel, 2005) which contend that a state can be weak in one respect but at the same time powerful in another. Consequently, a small state can be considered powerful in globalised economies but weak when facing a military crisis. This volume contends that defining a small state is not a fruitful intellectual endeavour, and this is compounded by the complexity of security challenges that exist today. This opens up a major question in the field of Small-State Studies: can we discuss ‘small states’ as a homogenous body of countries which follow policy strategies due to their size? The scholarship that falls within the general label of ‘small state studies’ may be attributing too much importance to ‘smallness’. There seem to be important differences that need to be highlighted in this field: advanced industrial countries versus developing ones, landlocked states versus islands (Randall, 2021; Baldacchino, 2010), technologically advanced versus low-tech economies and societies, liberal democracies versus authoritarian governments, and so on. What impacts do these factors have on ‘small-state’ decision-making in global DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-1

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affairs? Smallness is a condition that may not always be a defining characteristic of governance in these countries (e.g., Hey, 2003). A second question that needs to be addressed is whether ‘small states’ have adapted to shifting global security paradigms. Can we identify one singular model of ‘small-state behaviour’ or do small(er) states adopt multiple security strategies depending on the nature of the threat faced? As stated earlier, the literature on small states is only now investigating small-state strategies in relation to soft security. Some authors question whether small states really—almost by definition—have a propensity for establishing collaborative security relations or whether this is limited to certain types of small states (e.g., Koff & Maganda, 2015). Moreover, such studies pose the question whether new security risks arise from the open economies and border integration of small states. Third and finally, this volume interrogates what role ‘large state’ contexts play in small-state foreign policy. Traditionally, small states have been viewed as consensus brokers amongst large states within regional or multilateral organisations, whether it be for shelter-seeking or status-seeking purposes. However, these approaches have focused mostly on Europe where regionalism is institutionalised (meaning that clear rules are established), and there is no singular regional hegemon since comparatively large countries such as France, Germany, and Italy share power. In other regions of the world, such as Africa or the Americas, contexts related to hegemonic power are very different. Also, regionalism is marketbased with less clear rules, which promotes uncertainty in regulation. How do such power-related configurations affect ‘small-state’ behaviour? Koff et al. (2020) have studied Central America, where the lack of a regional hegemon has diffused power to such an extent that small states follow myriad and divergent strategies in relation to soft-security issues. Similarly, Hawksley (2007) demonstrated how European colonial hegemony contributed to legitimacy for centralised states in Pacific small island states. Small states and the vulnerability–agency paradox The paradoxical condition of small states in global affairs is recognised in SmallState Studies, even though this situation has not necessarily been highlighted in the literature (e.g., Kolnberger & Koff, 2021). Early works in this field highlighted small-state vulnerability in military and economic-security terms, as scholars argued that small states needed to join alliances to survive, both politically and economically (Keohane, 1969; Handel, 1981; Ingebritsen et al., 2006). In response, other observers such as Katzenstein (1985, 2003) or Cooper and Shaw (2009) have focused on small-state agency either in global economies (Katzenstein) or in diplomacy (Cooper and Shaw), which promoted innovation and prosperity amongst small states. Small states are portrayed as both vulnerable and adept at risk governance (Koff et al., 2020; Lusa, 2019; Koff & Maganda, 2015; Kolnberger & Koff, 2021). Indeed, small states do not seem to fit into any specific international relations paradigm. In general, realist approaches to the study of international relations

Introduction 3 highlight small-state vulnerability (resulting from their limited size and power), whereas functionalist and constructivist perspectives emphasise small-state agency (which comes from their adaptability and capabilities as consensus-builders in international relations). Realists discuss small states within the framework of threats (e.g., Koff et al., 2020), while constructivists (e.g., Siitonen, 2017; Graham & Graham, 2019; Nadalutti, 2020; Hannerz & Gingrich, 2017), and neo-functionalists (e.g., Schiff, 2014) frame global affairs in terms of opportunities. These divergent points of view are as relevant today as ever. On the one hand, contemporary menaces to human well-being, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, threaten the well-being of small states due to their exposure to global shocks. At the same time, humanity’s need to respond to these threats also provides opportunities for small states as either constructivists (e.g., the SAMOA Pathway, see https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/samoapathway.html where Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have codified normative commitments to climate action) or functionalists (e.g., Luxembourg’s emergence as a prominent actor in green finance). For these reasons, the themes which drive discussions of small states in this volume are security, agency, and governance—all of which concepts are intrinsically linked by the aforementioned paradoxes that characterise small states. Empirical research suggests that there is some truth to these assertions. Some small states are well positioned in transnational economic networks characterised by partnerships between state and non-state actors (Clément, 2013). However, SIDS, for example, have difficulties accessing such networks; this acts as a constraint on sustainable economic development. At the same time, the transnationalism of many small states has particularly exposed them to the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas some SIDS were shielded to some degree from health effects arising from the pandemic. This volume directly addresses these paradoxes, and the chapters presented here suggest that new directions in Small-State Studies should reorient many of the foundational assumptions in this field towards changing notions of security and agency in global affairs. Looking back at Small-State Studies: the Cold War framework The study of small states re-emerged during the 1950s and 1960s due in part to processes of decolonisation, the emergence of these countries in multilateral organisations (e.g., Benedict, 1967; Selwyn, 1975; Jackson, 1990; Baker, 1992; Veenendaal, 2017) and the continuing debate around European “Kleinstaaten” (small and micro-states, see, e.g., Waschkuhn, 1993; Duursma, 1996; Klieger, 2013; Wolf, 2016, 2020). Given this context, three issues emerged which have dominated the field of small state-studies ever since: (1) the definitional question of what ‘small’ means, (2) vulnerability in security terms, and (3) the inherent lack of administrative capacity. In the first issue of the journal Small States & Territories, Thorhallsson (2018) examines these core concepts and illustrates how they have structured the field of Small-State Studies since these countries began receiving scholarly attention. Thorhallsson’s review presents the tension which exists in this field between a

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focus on vulnerability associated with smallness and the identification of opportunities, such as leadership in regional organisations, from which many small states benefit due to their internal characteristics. This has led to two main conceptual constructs in International Relations (IR) debates focusing on small states: statusseeking and shelter-seeking theories, the former concentrating on how small states have exploited an ability to thrive in a multilateral and interconnected world and the latter addressing the relative weakness of small states in security terms and their need to associate themselves with large powers. Consequently, Small-State Studies has evolved within the context of Cold War international relations and, as a field of scholarship, presented a puzzle: how can small states, which have generally been perceived as vulnerable, exert influence on global affairs beyond their territorial and population sizes? This question opened a new line of enquiry in Small-State Studies because it spurred authors to examine domestic-governance characteristics of small states which promote a comparative advantage in a multilateral world. For example, and with middle-sized, central European states in mind, Katzenstein (2003) proposed six defining characteristics of small states: (1) they have relatively homogeneous populations; (2) they are open to international economies; (3) they create niches in global economies; (4) they promote social solidarity due to perceived notions of vulnerability to external shocks; (5) they amplify their influence through regions; and (6) they possess efficient and effective governments because of their propensity for interpersonal relations. It should be mentioned that these characteristics have been identified in a literature that holds a Western bias and so are not necessarily valid in all world regions. However, these characteristics are meant to explain why Western small states are influential in global affairs and domestically stable. Moreover, they also purport to explain why small states are key actors in multilateral organisations at the international and regional levels, which provide them with traditional military security (some small states, such as those in the Pacific, negotiate directly with Western powers; but multilateralism provides the framework for these negotiations). In fact, since the Second World War, most small states have foregone the neutrality that had historically protected them from invasion in favour of supranational integration in security organisations (Lettevall et al., 2012). The need to seek out or join alliances to address vulnerability issues (known as Alliance theory and alliance ‘Shelter’) has been integrated with status-seeking perspectives, as small states increase their influence and ‘punch above their weight’ through commitments to multilateralism. Previously competing perspectives now seem to be two sides of the same coin. For this reason, Small-State Studies scholars are now prompting discussions on a series of new questions. Small-State Studies moving forward: addressing new security agendas Thorhallsson’s 2018 review of Small-State Studies presents an interesting perspective, not only because of its analytical contribution but also thanks to the timeline that the author identifies for the development of the field. In this, he addresses

Introduction 5 the shift from the “deficit-based assumptions” which emerged in the 1960s to opportunity-based proposals that were presented in the 1980s. The author then contends that new paradigms surfaced again only in 2008 in response to the global financial crisis. This gap between the 1980s and 2008 has been identified by various small-state scholars who contend that Small-State theory has not sufficiently addressed new security issues which have materialised in global and regional agendas (e.g., Ingebritsen, 2010; Koff & Maganda, 2015). Since the start of the twenty-first century, security paradigms have shifted significantly. Koff (2016) has argued that global security norms have widened while domestic security frameworks have narrowed. Global security agendas have highlighted and integrated new threats to humanity, such as climate security, environmental security, water security, food security, and cybersecurity. Nationally, however, many political agendas and resulting policies, especially those in large states, have focused on border securities and hard threats such as terrorism, undocumented and illegal migration, and organised crime. While a new focus is being placed on military insecurity and economic vulnerability, the classical smallstate literature has not paid sufficient attention to ‘new’ threats and risks, which include human and animal pandemics/epidemics, cybersecurity, infrastructure breakdowns, interruptions of supply chains, rise of authoritarianism, and natural disasters. Indeed, actual policymaking in many small states has shown less concern with military security, emphasising instead ‘soft’ threats from the effects of increased globalisation, non-state violence, and environmental degradation. This once again underlines the need to address seeming paradoxes in small-state governance. Scholars studying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small states have highlighted the vulnerability of these countries during the pandemic because many small states are economically dependent on open borders and the free movement of people (either for tourism or for cross-border labour) (e.g., Högenauer et al., 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted these economies, which dramatically impacted the livelihoods of their inhabitants. Other scholars have examined the expanding vulnerability of SIDS to climate-change impacts (e.g., Kelman, 2014). While small-state vulnerability exists, these new security threats have also uncovered new opportunities for small states resulting from specific governance features. In their study, Högenauer et al. (2021) contend that small states display specific advantages such as cohesion, flexible crisis management, and easier tracking of infection chains. Similarly, Petzold and Magnan (2019) have argued that climate vulnerability has promoted climate adaptation policies in SIDS. These domestic policy innovations can also impact the global sphere through participation in regional and international multilateral organisations. Because international security norms call for cooperative solutions to global challenges related to pandemics, climate change, disaster prevention, environmental threats, etc., small states should be well placed to take leadership roles in new global security arrangements (Graham & Graham, 2019). For example, SIDS have promoted sustainability and environmental and human security through their adherence to the aforementioned SAMOA pathway and their pivotal role in UN-brokered climate

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action negotiations. This agreement promotes commitments focused on sustainable energy, natural resource management, ocean-based and green economies, and sustainable development partnerships. Its primary focus is climate action. Perspectives of the book: three original features In response to these questions, this volume proposes three important original features, all of which indicate a need to expand the focus of Small-State Studies. First, the book includes historical perspectives that provide a context for a contemporary analysis of small-state strategies. Discussing or analysing historical case studies from the point of view of Small-State theory is rare so far (e.g., Maass, 2017; Kruizinga, 2022). We regard this as a chance for further insights in historical research. Two studies on Luxembourg, by Thomas Kolnberger and André Linden, respectively, demonstrate how small states have traditionally pursued autonomy in policymaking as much as sovereignty preservation. Eberhard Crailsheim’s contribution similarly provides an innovative perspective by showing how the Philippines of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries promoted autonomous security policies due to geographic necessities. As a colonial ‘subnational jurisdiction’ the administration was opposing directives from the administrative centre of the Spanish Empire for its survival. Composite monarchies and empires developed their own logic of ‘big’ and ‘small’ in the context of centres and peripheries. The second proposed originality of this book is its focus on different world regions, not for the sake of simply varying examples but for comparative analysis of collective actions and the creation and implementation of institutions for ‘common sense purposes’ within a geographical region. The research in this field was— and probably still is—preoccupied with the European arena in relation to regional integration and security (Trausch, 2005; Goetschel, 2010; Briguglio, 2016; Bauwens et al., 1996; Reiter & Gärtner, 2001). Our global scope directly questions whether ‘smallness’ defines security strategies in these states or whether other intervening factors are more influential. The volume includes two studies of SIDS in Oceania, two studies of SIDS in Africa, one Central American case, three European studies, and two cross-regional comparative studies, in addition to the three conceptual chapters. Interestingly, these studies suggest that ‘smallness’ is not only a condition, but also it can be a resource used by government leaders for negotiation in global affairs. Edith Kauffer shows how smallness has three different meanings for Belize within the three different political regions in which the country operates. Similarly, Odair Barros-Varela and Alexander Graef demonstrate that small states in different world regions (Europe and Africa) establish definitions of ‘smallness’ which permit them to promote their own visions for regional security. This leads to the third proposed originality of this volume. It includes studies of both hard- and soft-security questions (Archer et al., 2014; Brady & Thorhallsson, 2021). The book includes contributions which contend with hard-security issues such as Chinese military threats or Russia’s invasion(s) of Ukraine while other chapters focus squarely on soft-security challenges, such as water security or

Introduction 7 human security. The comparison of case studies confirms that hard-security vulnerability and soft-security opportunities seem to be two sides of the same coin. Consequently, the book is guided by the three themes introduced earlier: agency, security, and governance. These interrelated themes highlight three important topics regarding small states: the ability of small states to achieve their objectives; the strategies that small states adopt in contemporary security frameworks; and the relationships between small-state domestic political systems and foreign policy strategies. Contents of the volume Apart from this scene-setting introduction, the volume is divided into four parts plus a conclusion. Part I presents three conceptual chapters, which address SmallState theory, penned by leading figures in the field, namely Revecca Pedi with Anders Wivel, Baldur Thorhallsson with Sverrir Steinsson, and Iver B. Neumann. They all critically examine the place of small states in contemporary international relations. Part II then focuses on small states and agency, defined as the ability of small states to “seize their own history” (Baldacchino, 2018), controlling, directing, or actively influencing their own course in regional and global affairs. It consists of four chapters, including two historical analyses (by Thomas Kolnberger and by Eberhard Crailsheim) and two contemporary studies (by Edith Kauffer and by Antony Dabila with Thibault Fouillet). The part integrates analyses of varied cases, namely those of Luxembourg, Philippines, Belize, Lithuania, and Singapore. Part III of the book presents small-state strategies in contemporary security affairs. It focuses on both hard- and soft-security agendas. The first two chapters, by Charles Hawksley together with Nichole Georgeou and by Salā George Carter with Jack Corbett respectively present long-term studies of changing security agendas in the Pacific and of the way small island states have responded. The studies are stimulating because they analyse both hard- and soft-security issues and they highlight adaptation as a conceptual lens in security studies. This is followed by two hard-security studies, by Odair Barros-Varela and Alexander Graef respectively which discuss small-state strategies in regional security organisations in Africa and Europe. Finally, Part IV examines domestic governance in small states and how it interacts with foreign policy. André Linden’s historical study of Luxembourg during the Second World War and its aftermath indicates how a small state’s pursuit of multilateral alliances reinforced emerging commitments to liberal democracy and vice versa. Conversely, Wouter Veenendaal’s comparative chapter examines the breakdown of formal liberal democracy in many small and micro-states due to the importance of informality in these countries and how it affects foreign policy positions. Finally, Suzanne E. Graham and Marcel F. Nagar address SIDS’ participation in global affairs through the lens of international citizenship. All these chapters suggest that Small-State Studies remain characterised by important paradoxes at the intersection of security and sustainability. As stated before,

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these themes are unpacked by Harlan Koff in his conclusion to this volume. Harlan Koff’s review highlights the need to reframe small-state debates within the context of sustainability, and he illustrates how small states can indeed convert vulnerability into opportunities in global affairs. Yet the same small states often also undermine sustainability through short-sighted strategies which create new threats to their security. Unless small states can resolve such paradoxes, sustainable security will remain an elusive goal. This, in our opinion, is the challenge which Small-State Studies should address more directly and completely as the discipline moves forward. References Archer, C.; Bailes, A. J. K. & Wivel, A. (Eds.) (2014). Small States and International Security: Europe and Beyond. Routledge. Baker, R. (Ed.) (1992). Public Administration in Small and Island States. Kumarian Press. Baldacchino, G. (2010). Island Enclaves: Offshoring Strategies, Creative Governance, and Subnational Island Jurisdictions. McGill—Queen’s University Press. Baldacchino, G. (2018). Seizing history: development and non-climate change in small island developing states. International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management 10(2), 217–28. Bauwens, W.; Clesse, A. & Knudsen, O. F. (Eds.) (1996). Small States and the Security Challenge in the New Europe. Brassey’s. Benedict, B. (Ed.) (1967). Problems of Smaller Territories. The Athlone Press. Brady, A.-M. & Thorhallsson, B. (Eds.) (2021). Small States and the New Security Environment. Springer. Briguglio, L. (Ed.) (2016). Small States and the European Union: Economic Perspectives. Routledge. Clément, F. (2013). La représentation sociopolitique des travailleurs au Luxembourg et dans l’espace de la Grande Région. Regions & Cohesion 3(2), 1–21. Cooper, A. & Shaw, T. (Eds.) (2009). The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resilience. Palgrave Macmillan. Duursma, J. C. (1996). Fragmentation and the International Relations of Micro-States. SelfDetermination and Statehood. Cambridge University Press. Goetschel, L. (Ed.) (2010). Small States Inside and Outside the European Union: Interests and Policies. Kluwer Academic. Graham, S. & Graham, V. (2019). Quality political participation and the SDGs in African small island developing states. Regions & Cohesion 9(2), 1–30. Handel, M. (1981). Weak States in the International System. Frank Cass. Hannerz, U. & Gingrich, A. (Eds.) (2017). Small Countries: Structures and Sensibilities. University of Pennsylvania Press. Hawksley, C. (2007). Constructing hegemony: Colonial rule and colonial legitimacy in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Rethinking Marxism 19(2), 195–207. https:// doi.org/10.1080/08935690701219025. Hey, J. A. K. (Ed.) (2003). Small States in World Politics. Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Högenauer, A. L.; Sarapuu, K. & Trimikliniotis, N. (2021). Guest editorial: small states and the governance of the COVID-19 pandemic. Small States & Territories 4(1), 3–12.

Introduction 9 Ingebritsen, C. (2010). Katzenstein’s legacy 25 years after: small states in world markets. European Political Science 9, 359–64. https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2010.23. Ingebritsen, C.; Neumann, I.; Gstöhl, S. & Beyer, J. (Eds.) (2006). Small States in International Relations. University of Washington Press & University of Iceland Press. Jackson, R. H. (1990). Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge University Press. Katzenstein, P. (1985). Small States in World Markets. Cornell University Press. Katzenstein, P. (2003). Small States and small states revisited. New Political Economy 8(1), 9–30. Kelman, I. (2014). No change from climate change: vulnerability and small island developing states. The Geographical Journal 180(2), 120–9. Keohane, R. (1969). Lilliputians’ dilemmas: small states in international politics. Book review essay. International Organization 23(2), 291–310. Klieger, P. C. (2013). The Microstates of Europe: Designer Nations in a Post-Modern World. Lexington Books. Koff, H. (2016). Reconciling competing globalizations through regionalisms? Environmental security in the framework of expanding security norms and narrowing security policies. Globalizations 13(6), 664–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2015.1133044. Koff, H. & Maganda, C. (2015). Against the current: transboundary water management in small states on two continents. Water International 40(2), 231–50. Koff, H.; Maganda, C. & Kauffer, E. (2020). Transboundary water diplomacy among small states: a giant dilemma for Central American regionalism. Water International 45(4), 275–91. Kolnberger, T. & Koff, H. (2021). Addressing seeming paradoxes by embracing them: small state theory and the integration of migrants. Comparative Migration Studies 9(14), n.p. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-021-00222-8. Kruizinga, S. (Ed.) (2022). The Politics of Smallness in Modern Europe: Size, Identity and International Relations since 1800. Bloomsbury. Lettevall, R.; Somsen, G. & Widmalm, S. (Eds.) (2012). Neutrality in Twentieth-Century Europe: Intersections of Science, Culture, and Politics After the First World War. Routledge. Lusa, D. (2019). Small states and the big European migration crisis: the open borders challenge. Teorija in Praksa 56(2), 700–28. Maass, M. (2017). Small States in World Politics: The Story of Small State Survival, 1648– 2016. Manchester University Press. Mouritzen, H. & Wivel, A. (Eds.) (2005). The Geopolitics of Euro-Atlantic Integration. Routledge. Nadalutti, E. (2020). The ethics of cross-border cooperation and its values. Regions & Cohesion 10(2), 41–63. Petzold, J. & Magnan, A. (2019). Climate change: thinking small Islands beyond small island developing states (SIDS). Climatic Change 152, 145–65. Randall, J. E. (2021). An Introduction to Island Studies. Rowman & Littlefield International. Reiter, E. & Gärtner, H. (Eds.) (2001). Small States and Alliances. Springer-Verlag. Schiff, M. (2014). Small states, micro states, and their international negotiation and migration. Journal of Economic Integration 29(3), 430–49. Selwyn, P. (Ed.) (1975). Development Policy in Small Countries. Croom Helm & University of Sussex. Siitonen, L. (2017). Regional and sub-regional effects on development policies: the Benelux and the Nordic countries compared. Regions & Cohesion 7(2), 34–69.

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Thorhallsson, B. (2018). Studying small states: a review. Small States & Territories 1(1), 17–34. Trausch, G. (Ed.) (2005). Le rôle et la place des petits pays en Europe au XXe siècle/Small Countries in Europe: Their Role and Place in the XXth Century. Nomos Verlag. Veenendaal, W. (2017). Politics and Democracy in Microstates. Routledge. Waschkuhn, A. (Ed.) (1993). Kleinstaat. Grundsätzliche und aktuelle Probleme. Verlag der Liechtensteinischen Akademischen Gesellschaft. Wolf, S. (Ed.) (2016). State Size Matters: Politik und Recht im Kontext von Kleinstaatlichkeit und Monarchie. Springer VS. Wolf, S. (2020). Eine Governance-Theorie des Kleinstaats. Springer VS.

Part I

Small-State theory Reviewing the state of the art, communis opinio, and beyond In the face of the rise of the nation-state as perceived natural ground for societal life in modern times, the existence of smaller states and venerable city-republics was fundamentally challenged. In Europe, Kleinstaaterei (‘small-state-ery’ or particularism) ended before the First World War as the consequence of wars of unification, notably in Germany and Italy. The issue rebounded on a global scale after the Second World War, which marked the beginning of a second wave of decolonisation (after the independence of the Americas about a hundred years earlier). The first academic focus on dozens of newly independent small and micro-states was on their properties, that is quantifiable data about the size of their territory, population, administration, or economic performance aimed at defining ‘smallness’. This inventory was accompanied by an assessment of the role such small states might play in international relations. Capabilities in domestic and foreign affairs were the currency of the day. In this part, three contributions discuss such older, not necessarily outdated, approaches, and in so doing, they go beyond these established theories. Revecca Pedi and Anders Wivel first map the current debates in the study of small states to then argue in favour of a small-state ‘turn’. Baldur Thorhallsson and Sverrir Steinsson concern themselves with the structural disadvantages and vulnerability of small states, which define their ‘role models’ by looking for shelter. Iver B. Neumann extends a systemic theory approach to constructivism and prototype theory to define role structures of small states.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-2

1

The power (politics) of the weak revisited Realism and the study of small-state foreign policy Revecca Pedi and Anders Wivel

The study of small states is based on the fundamental realist assumption that possession and projection of material power are important for the workings of the international system as well as for the foreign policy of individual states. Post-war academic interest in small states originated in the conundrum: how and why do actors unable to defend themselves against enemies and with negligible effect on the balance of power continue to exist and even flourish in the international system? Seeking to solve this conundrum made the Cold War study of small states essentially a study about security and survival in international anarchy, the constitutive problem in the study of small states as well as in realism in general. Despite the historical intertwining of realism and Small-State Studies, crossfertilisation between the two has been surprisingly modest. There are two reasons for this. First, theory development in the study of small states has been largely detached from the study of international relations and foreign policy in general. To the extent that small states are included in realist theory development, they tend to be grouped together with middle powers as secondary states or non-great powers (Bower, 2015; Paul, 2018; Schweller, 2006; Williams et al., 2012). Second, although there has been a large increase in publications on small states in international affairs in the decades following the end of the Cold War, many of them are largely atheoretical or embedded in assumptions about small states with little or no bearing on the discussion of international relations in general. To the extent that these authors discuss the implications of their findings for International Relations (IR) theory, they tend to position themselves as post-realists or constructivists showing how small states can punch above their weight and defy realist expectations about the lack of importance and influence of small states.1 This creates an unfortunate dichotomy in the study of small states between realist Cold War studies understanding of small states as pawns in great power politics and post-Cold War studies seeking to disprove (what was once) the conventional wisdom by showing how small states can punch above their weight. We argue that while this contrast between perspectives is a useful rhetorical move that has opened the door for a better understanding of small states in a globalised and institutionalised international realm than the classical literature, it also risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater by stereotyping a literature which offers useful tools for understanding small states today. DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-3

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Our argument proceeds in three steps. First, we map current debates in the study of small states in international affairs identifying central positions and lacunae in the literature. Second, we present a reading of iconic realist works showing how they help us to fill those lacunae. We conclude the chapter with a discussion of implications for the study of small states and international relations. Mapping the study of small states in international affairs: inevitable pawns or power-brokers? The study of small states is largely disconnected from, and marginalised in, the study of international relations.2 One reason for this situation is the negligible nature of small states. They are generally understood as inconsequential actors with little or no impact on international affairs. They are “impotent in international power politics” and “easily ignored” (Maass, 2017, p. 28). While the focus of Small-State Studies has shifted from the question of why small states survive to considerations of how they thrive and maximise their influence, few would argue that they are capable of setting agendas beyond narrowly defined niches of policymaking coupled to their specific interests and competencies. Another reason is the nature of IR theorising and the gap between how we study international relations in general and how we study small states. IR greats such as Kenneth Waltz or Alexander Wendt write about the big, fundamental issues of international relations, that is how do we conceptualise the nature and consequences of international anarchy? They organise their arguments in paradigmatic pillars serving to support the IR discipline and its so-called grand debates (Waltz, 1979; Wendt, 1999). The study of small states has the potential for contributing to our understanding of fundamental issues, but analyses of small states often do not seek systematically to develop thinking on international relations in a paradigmatic fashion (see also the discussion by Harlan Koff and Thomas Kolnberger in the introductory chapter of this volume). By focusing on understanding the decisionmaking and behaviour of particular small states, students of small states approach the international realm in a fashion more akin to foreign policy analysis than IR in general. The “fading of the ‘paradigm wars’” (Jackson & Nexon, 2013, p. 543) and the rise of more eclectic mid-range theorising (Sil & Katzenstein, 2011; Lake, 2013) have opened a window of opportunity for students of small states to contribute to the study of international relations more generally, but so far evidence of this kind of contribution is modest (Long, 2017). An additional reason for the disconnect between small states and the study of international relations is the parochial nature of Small-State Studies, clustering as it does around certain types of small states and their regional contexts. Many studies of small states grow out of an interest in either European Union politics or postcolonialism (see, e.g., Allen & Monaghan, 2018; Baldacchino, 2018; Grimaud, 2018; Panke, 2010; Steinmetz & Wivel, 2010). They are more closely related to area studies than to the study of international relations and often published in the native language of the country under study rather than in English. The theoretical assumptions of these studies tend to be embedded in specific political and cultural

The power (politics) of the weak revisited 15 contexts, and they rarely aim to test general hypotheses, aiming instead to understand specific cases. These case studies often yield important insights about the state(s) studied, but their narrow empirical focus as well as their publication outlets also constitute a self-exclusionary practice, where new findings are rarely generalised or published in outlets defining the important debates or research frontiers of international relations. The impact tends to be societal (critical analyses and reflection on, and potential change of, the practices of specific small states) rather than academic (affecting how we conceptualise and theorise international relations). In addition, even within the European Union politics and post-colonial subfields, interest between different thematic complexes and geographical areas tends to vary widely. A relatively large number of studies of post-colonial small states focus on island states in the Pacific or the Indian Ocean while very few studies seek to analyse small states on the African continent. Likewise, a relatively large number of studies of small European Union member states focus on Northern European countries, whereas there are fewer studies on Southern European countries, in particular, studies published in journals and books by recognised international publishers and therefore available to a larger readership and feeding into more general debate on international relations. Despite the general disconnect between the study of international relations and the study of small states, two endpoints in a continuum of understandings of the nature, opportunities, and challenges for small states can be identified in the literature. One ideal type is realist, and the other ideal type is constructivist. At one end of the continuum, we find an understanding compatible with Thucydides’s oftenrepeated dictum that “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept” (Thucydides, 431 BcE, p. 302). Understood in this way, small states are the pawns of international relations. They play a marginal role in international affairs with only negligible influence. Consequently, they are “structurally irrelevant” (Maass, 2017, p. 27). Small states constitute an ideal-type understanding of international relations, where states are prisoners of power and circumstance. No matter whether the great powers go to war or cooperate, small states tend to fall victim. According to this understanding, the typical behaviour of small states is defensive, because going on the offensive would potentially threaten the security and survival of the state, when other states retaliate. For the same reason, small states approach international relations reactively, rarely initiating changes due to their limited “margin of time and error” (Jervis, 1978, pp. 172–3). They are also likely to be more susceptible to seeking out multilateral, rather than unilateral, solutions to international challenges and threats valuing the increased predictability and transparency of institutional embeddedness (Neumann & Gstöhl, 2006, p. 20). At the other end of the continuum, size is what small states make of it. Size is perceptual size, that is “if a state’s people and institutions generally perceive themselves to be small, or if other states’ people and institutions perceive that state as small, it shall be so considered” (Hey, 2003, p. 3), or even preference size, that is subject to change with the visions and ideas of policymakers (Thorhallsson, 2006). From this point of view, small states constitute an antithesis to great-power politics

16 Revecca Pedi and Anders Wivel or even to international relations as such. While great powers move to fill a power vacuum to balance or dominate other powers, small states according to this understanding fill the moral vacuums left by interest-maximising great-power politics, for example, as “natural born peacemakers” (Goetschel, 2013, p. 274). Thus, small states in this view are able to act outside the dictates of international anarchy precisely because of their smallness, which leaves them with little or no effect on the balance of power and therefore in a position to deliver to international society an idealist contribution of the power-free. This entails focusing on the common good rather than on the national interest, leading by example rather than leading by power, and deploying diplomatic means, rather than military means to achieve their goals (see, e.g., Ingebritsen, 2002; Theys & Rietig, 2020). Real change in international relations stems not from great powers tied into an enduring struggle based on national interest but from small states promoting the common interest of international society. Great-power politics is cyclical; small-state policies are progressive. To be sure, many, if not most, studies of small states in international relations fall between the two ends of the continuum. In fact, one characteristic of the study of small states in international relations, as noted in the introduction to this volume, is that individual studies rarely stay within paradigmatic borders. However, the two ideal types continue to set the parameters for what we are debating when we debate the role/status of small states in international affairs. Like the paradigms of international relations theory, they cast long shadows in time and space structuring the debate on small states around recurring themes: what is a small state? How do small states adapt to the conditions set by the great powers and the anarchic structure of the international system? When do small states punch above their weight? While these are important questions, they have, to a large degree, served as templates for structuring the debate on small states in international affairs into arguments proving conventional wisdom either right or wrong. The first type of argument focuses on how small states adapt to power and fail to balance and consists mostly of studies carried out during the Cold War and more recently studies of small states outside Europe, or at least outside Euro-Atlantic institutions (see, for instance, Courtney, 2019; Graham, 2017; Newnham, 2015). The second type of argument focuses on how small states overcome a deficit of material power capabilities to punch above their weight and thereby argue that material capability does not determine state behaviour or success. We typically find this type of argument in analyses performed after the Cold War, primarily case studies of European states and, to a lesser degree, small states in East Asia (see, e.g., Björkdahl, 2008; Chong, 2010). One consequence of this structuring of the debate is to leave the study on small states in international affairs stuck between single case studies of the peculiarities of a given small state’s foreign policy and grand claims of what small states are and do. The first of the ideal-type arguments discussed earlier postulates sameness throughout the millennia. The second ideal-type argument (rightly) problematises this position but supplants it with a celebration of the good idealistic small state punching above its weight. While proponents of this position are careful to point to globalisation and institutionalisation as factors facilitating small-state influence,

The power (politics) of the weak revisited 17 they often suffer from privilege blindness in their case studies, focusing on success stories of small states contributing to peace and development. However, it is simply a fact that Lesotho can do less than Singapore and that North Korea’s contribution to international affairs is different from the Swedish contribution. We seek to qualify this debate through a careful reading of four iconic realist works: Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations, Arnold Wolfers’s Discord and Collaboration, Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society, and Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics. We argue that despite their focus on great-power politics, these works provide important insights on how to build a bridge between detailed empirical studies of one or a few cases and the ambition to produce more general knowledge across regions. Seeing small states through the realist lens: identifying the conditions for influence Realists focus on great powers, but they do not “lose sight of lesser ones”, as Waltz (1979, p. 73) put it. They look at small states through the lens of power politics, and they explore when and how small states impact the great powers in the system, the balance of power, and the international order. Realism and small-state scholarship agree that the distinction between great powers and lesser powers is real and important and has important systemic and foreign-policy consequences. Asymmetry of power means inequality, and inequality has systemic consequences for international relations as well as impact on individual great powers and small states. Realists identify three consequences of power asymmetry. First, great powers and small states have different impacts upon the system. Second, the Gullivers of the international system are much less vulnerable than the Lilliputians. Third, the two play different roles and undertake distinct responsibilities in international anarchy. Great powers and small states make different choices as their interests, responsibilities, and the extent of their vulnerability differ. Realists do not object to the view that lesser powers can indeed punch above their weight. Yet they stress the fact that this can happen only occasionally as a result of great-power politics, and, in any case, it does not alter the essence of the asymmetrical relationship. Realists usually refer to small states as lesser states/powers or minor powers signalling that these states are relatively unimportant, insignificant, and inconsequential compared to the great-power agenda-setters (Bull, 1977; Gilpin, 1981; Waltz, 1979; Wight, 1978; Wolfers, 1962). Therefore, realists suggest that small states’ impact upon the international system is negligible. Great powers are the powers that matter. As Waltz (1979, pp. 72–3) famously put it, you do not base a theory of international politics on the foreign policy of Costa Rica or Malaysia, and if you are interested in the distribution of power in the international system, you do not look at units like Switzerland, Denmark, Norway but to Britain, Germany, Russia, and France. Realists expect the weaker actor to be vulnerable in a relationship characterised by power asymmetry. This is particularly the case with international anarchy, where there are a few constraints limiting the strong taking advantage of the weak.

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Morgenthau (1972) notes that a great power is distinct from a small state in that “a great power is a state, which is able to have its will against a small state . . . which in turn is not able to have its will against a great power” (pp. 129–30). In a similar vein, Waltz (1979) argues that “an agent is powerful to the extent that he affects others more than they affect him” (p. 192). He finds that small states are influenced by great-power politics but have little chance of influencing great powers themselves. Bull (1977) states that “in modern international society there has been a persistent distinction between great powers and small” (p. 48) and underlines that the latter are vulnerable to an attack by the former. Buzan (1983) suggests that “weak or strong powers will refer to the traditional distinction among states in respect of their military and economic capability in relation to each other” (p. 66) and argues (in a Cold War context) that inequality affects even the distribution of sovereignty, as Czechoslovakia and Poland cannot secure the same levels of sovereignty as Britain and West Germany (as it then was). Small-state insecurity is pervasive, and its fate hangs in the balance. Indeed, Waltz (1979, pp. 194–5) underlines that small states have narrow margins of action. Their survival is in danger in times of international anarchy. Their rights and even their existence can be sacrificed to the higher cause of maintaining the international order and/or the balance of power (Bull, 1977; Waltz, 1979). Morgenthau (1948) discusses the examples of Belgium, whose fate has been determined by the competition among European great powers several times since its creation, and that of Korea, whose autonomy was a matter of control or intervention of a preponderant neighbouring power or the balance of power. Lesser powers and great powers lead different kinds of lives, according to realism (Bull, 1977; Waltz, 1979). As a result, great powers play the role of the managers of the international system, and small states are the managed (Waltz, 1979, p. 205). According to Bull (1977), great powers perceive themselves as the custodians of the international order while small states are simply objects. In Bull’s logic, what makes a power great and capable of playing a distinct role is that it has special rights and responsibilities recognised by the lesser powers. However, status alone does not make a great power. It is dependent on the ability to co-construct international orders with other great powers, which is in turn dependent upon material capabilities. Great powers can create spheres of influence or render the states that lie in between buffer states or have the right to veto important decisions for them in the United Nations to maintain the international order and/or the balance of power (Bull, 1977; Morgenthau, 1948; Waltz, 1979). Injustice is a price to be paid for the international order to be preserved. As Bull (1977) argues: But the great powers, when they perform these services to international order, do so at the price of systematic injustice to the rights of smaller states and nations, the injustice which has been felt by states which fall within the Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe or the American hegemony in the Caribbean, the injustice which is written into the terms of the United Nations Charter which prescribe a system of collective security that cannot be operated against great powers, the injustice from which small powers always suffer when great ones meet in concert to strike bargains at their expense. (p. 89)

The power (politics) of the weak revisited 19 More recently, this thinking has been updated by John Mearsheimer, who in line with the thinking of the classical realists, has advocated opting for what he sees as the lesser evil in terms of NATO expansion: preserving stability at the price of leaving smaller states as buffer states exposed to Russian aggression (Mearsheimer, 2016). Likewise, Randall Schweller is relatively optimistic, when analysing a world of US retrenchment and Chinese expansion, in seeing the two as compatible and urging US policymakers to allow for a bigger role for China in international affairs despite the concern of small allies (Schweller, 2018). The interests or the wills of the managed are of less importance than the international order, and it is not necessary for the lesser powers to approve the decisions of the powers that are the guardians of the international order. More often than not, minor powers do not even express their desires, because they know that the views of those powers that manage the system are those that matter (Bull, 1977; Waltz, 1979). This does not mean that they cannot pursue their preferred policies successfully. Yet their success is dependent upon the conditions of competition among the great powers in the system and/or the general balance of power. Morgenthau (1939) notes that the neutrality of small states in the interwar years and their influence within the League of Nations would survive as long as it would be functional for the great powers. Four decades later, during the Cold War, Bull (1977) admits that many lesser powers are capable of attaining successful policies of nonalignment or neutrality, but their success is dependent upon the general balance of power. Great powers are charged with the duty to maintain order and are bound by their power (Bull, 1977). “They are always ‘Gullivers’ more or less tightly tied”, as Waltz (1979, p. 187) puts it, while small states can live more frivolous lives, as “they enjoy the freedom of the irresponsible since their security is mainly provided by the efforts that others make” (ibid., p. 185). In this sense, Walz suggests that the exploitation of the powerful by the lesser powers is possible. Wolfers (1962, pp. 73–7) suggests that national goals can be divided into “possession goals” and “milieu goals”. The former are closely related to what we usually call national interests, as they refer to resources that are in scarce supply while the latter aim at shaping the international order in a way that is beneficial and inclusive beyond a state’s borders. A nation’s milieu goals can serve its possession goals. Yet a state’s effort to shape its environment can benefit small states disproportionately. The creation of international organisations, the promotion of international law, and the aid to the underdeveloped world constitute such cases, according to Wolfers. Thus, despite the fact that realists are adamant about the preference of great powers for absolute and relative gains, they also accept that great powers can be common-good providers. Also, not all realists rule out the existence of common interests. As Wolfers (1962) suggests: If some critics of milieu goals expect their country always to be the loser if it engages in costly efforts by which others benefit, they fail to realize that any promotion of peace or international lawfulness, any fight against the trade in narcotics or the spread of epidemics, to cite only a few examples, depends on concerted efforts by many nations and such efforts are not likely to be forthcoming unless they are in the common interest. (p. 76)

20 Revecca Pedi and Anders Wivel The interesting question then is: when and how can small states exercise influence? Waltz argues that small states have freedom to manoeuvre to the extent that their interests do not interfere or conflict with great-power interests (Waltz, 1979), an argument compatible with the small-state literature pointing to small-state influence on soft and niche issues. Moreover, many topics of little interest to great powers may be core national interests of small states. Small states tend to have regional or local interests and they can choose to balance or bandwagon, depending on the proximity and/or the capabilities of the threatening power (Waltz, 1979; Walt, 1987). However, realists point out that small states may not only fill out a power vacuum left by the great powers but also take advantage of relations between great powers. Irrespective of their choice to balance or bandwagon, small states look for ways to maximise their influence and enhance their position. They do not hesitate to threaten the more powerful ally with their collapse or change of camps. Walt (1987) argues that “because the superpowers are so ready to balance against each other, lesser powers can reap ample rewards by threatening to shift their allegiance” (p. 157). Small states harness the need of great powers to have allies, friends, or followers, and they can even spark competition among them. Bull (1977) suggests that “the blunder of the smallest of sovereigns may indeed cast an apple of discord among all the greatest powers, because there is no state so great which does not find it useful to have relations with the lesser states” (p. 162). Small states can also wait and see before taking sides, without feeling anxious about a belated reaction (Waltz, 1979). Exploring the translation of power into influence and how the weak may influence international affairs despite their lack of power is central to the work of Arnold Wolfers. Wolfers (1962, p. 111) recognises that power is not always automatically translated into effectiveness and explores how and to what extent the “power of the weak” constitutes a phenomenon in international relations. In a similar vein, Morgenthau (1948) admits that small states can under certain circumstances pursue their interests at the expense of a great power and therefore warns strong nations of the danger of leaving a weak ally to decide for them. Yet realists suggest that the ability of small powers to overachieve is predicated upon certain systemic and state-specific conditions, and in any case that ability is temporary and does not mean that small states can act as great powers (Morgenthau, 1948; Waltz, 1979; Wolfers, 1962). Thus, small-state influence is situational and contextual, and identifying the right situations, conditions, and contexts is of central importance to IR scholars and small-state decision-makers alike but should not allow small states to imitate the strategies or goals of great powers. Wolfers (1962) suggests that “‘power of the weak’ stems from the relationships among the great powers themselves” (p. 111) and cites Cuba and Albania as two countries that managed to exploit competition between the great powers during the Cold War. As noted by Waltz (1979), when there is a stand-off between great powers, small states harness the opportunity and benefit from it. The preoccupation of great powers with each other forces them to pay less attention to the actions of lesser powers, and the fear that their lesser power-ally could turn its

The power (politics) of the weak revisited 21 allegiance elsewhere or become neutral makes them vulnerable to blackmailing (Wolfers, 1962). Wolfers argues that lesser powers can influence the distribution of power through their alliance choices, including the option to steer clear of unequivocal commitments. One example is Yugoslavia during the Cold War, which despite its ideological allegiance to the Soviet Union, did not hesitate to throw its weight behind the West when it believed that it was threatened (Wolfers, 1962, pp. 124, 128). Wolfers argues that small states are also able to affect regional balances of power, as in the case of the Arab states’ relations with Israel or the balance between Pakistan and India (Wolfers, 1962, p. 128). In both descriptive and prescriptive terms, small states are the opportunists of international relations: they are, and they need to be, alert to changing circumstances and policies of other actors that they exploit and take advantage of (Wolfers, 1962, p. 112). Paradoxically, the high level of tension between the great powers during the Cold War might have facilitated small-state influence within US and Soviet spheres of influence (Bull, 1977). As noted by Mouritzen, great-power détente may be the most dangerous situation for small states as their value and ability to take advantage of the great powers dwindle during periods of great-power cooperation and concert (Mouritzen, 1991). Likewise, the collapse of the balance of power in 1991 resulting in post-Cold War unipolarity left small US allies with less bargaining power and an incentive for small states to “work hard” to secure US support (Hansen, 2010). The diffusion of power, lack of coordination between great powers, and uncertainty that underpins the current multiplex order increase small-state vulnerability and heighten the need for the Lilliputians to be alert and flexible to seize systemic and/or regional opportunities arising from great-power competition (Pedi & Wivel, 2022). Which small-state assets may facilitate international influence? Morgenthau suggests that lesser powers can overperform when they possess something of value to one or more great powers, for example, raw materials such as oil (Morgenthau, 1948, pp. 128–33). He stresses that [A] state which is powerless in all other respects, which is not a major force in terms of traditional power, can exert enormous—and under certain conditions even decisive—power over nations which have all the implements of power at their disposal except one—deposits of oil. (p. 131) Therefore, possession of natural resources can constitute an important asset for a lesser power and even render it ‘irreplaceable’ as an ally. Geographical location is another type of asset that may expand the room for manoeuvre and influence. Morgenthau (1948) also argues that lesser powers and great powers can have complementary interests within an alliance. This benefits the small state that wants to ensure its security and expand its influence upon its region. In addition, and in contrast to what is commonly believed, realism is not indifferent to intangible aspects of power. Morgenthau (1948, pp. 113–65), for example, includes in his elements of national power: national character, national morale, the

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quality of diplomacy, and the quality of government, accompanied by geography and other material factors. With regard to national character, Morgenthau (1948) notes that during the First World War, German leaders miscalculated American power because they underestimated the qualities of the American character, such as individual initiative, gift for improvisation, and technical skill, which together with the other material factors and under favourable conditions might more than outweigh the disadvantages of geographical remoteness and of a dilapidated military establishment. (p. 149) In addition to national character, Morgenthau emphasises national morale, which he defines as “the degree of determination with which a nation supports the foreign policies of its government in peace and war” (ibid.). For him, the quality of government–society relations is crucial to a high national morale. According to him, inclusiveness matters: Any segment of population which feels itself permanently deprived of its rights and of full participation in the life of the nation will tend to have a lower national morale, to be less “patriotic” than those who do not suffer from such disabilities. The same is likely to be true of those whose vital aspirations diverge from the permanent policies pursued by the majority or the government. Whenever deep dissensions tear a people apart, the popular support that can be mustered for a foreign policy will always be precarious and will be actually small if the success or failure of the foreign policy has a direct bearing upon the issue of the domestic struggle. (ibid., p. 152) Interestingly, in this context Morgenthau (1948), who focuses on great powers, cites examples of small states. He underlines that the national morale of Denmark under the German occupation from 1940 to the end of the Second World War and the bravery of the Norwegians against the invading Germans illustrate this point no less strikingly than did the national morale of Germany until the defeat of Stalingrad. (p. 154) Morgenthau also stresses the significance of diplomacy. In his view, all the other elements of national power are useless unless there is a diplomatic service of high quality. For Morgenthau (1948), “diplomacy is the brains of national power as national morale is its soul” (p. 155). He notes that “often in history the Goliath without brains or soul has been smitten and slain by the David who had both”. Without doubt, these words would fit well in any small-state analysis focusing on the second idealistic type discussed earlier. Also, he refers to the value of

The power (politics) of the weak revisited 23 gaining “the support of the public opinion of other nations” (ibid., p. 164), that is status and reputation. The power of a nation . . . depends not only upon the skill of its diplomacy and the strength of its armed forces but also upon the attractiveness for other nations of its political philosophy, political institutions, and political policies as he put it (ibid., p. 165). This is not only relevant for great powers: “an underdeveloped nation that could increase in a spectacular fashion the health, literacy, and standard of living of its people would thereby have achieved a considerable increase in its power in other underdeveloped regions of the world” (ibid.). Morgenthau’s observations are clearly embedded in another time. His international reality is the Cold War, and his understandings of both the ontology and the epistemology of international relations have their roots in the first half of the twentieth century. However, it is striking that some of his observations have been successfully translated into contemporary international relations. Few would today use national character as an analytical category, but the substance of what he writes about comes close to what we call strategic culture—a prominent variable in neoclassical realism. Likewise, his arguments about societal inclusion and raw materials fit well with another neoclassical realist variable, state–society relations. His arguments on diplomacy connect well to neoclassical realist arguments on domestic institutions and leader images.3 (Re)connecting realism and the study of small states The study of small states investigates how power asymmetry affects small states. Small-State Studies do not focus on immaterial sources of power because they think that military or economic capabilities are without importance. On the contrary, their preoccupation with the importance of intangible factors is due to the recognition of the limitations that small states have to confront because they lack economic and military power (Neumann & Carvalho, 2015, pp. 1–2). Their aim is to identify the sources of small-power strength and to investigate how different small states tap into them. In this sense, a realist reading of power, greatness, and smallness is inherent in small-state scholarship, which accentuates the distinction between great powers and small states, underlines the centrality of great powers in international politics, and stresses the limitations of smallness. Small states would have proved realism wrong if they had been able to act as great powers. They can ‘punch above their weight’ due to a combination of beneficial external and internal circumstances that they manage to harness. Small states, despite their more limited capabilities and limited margins of error, can act strategically and pursue their interests by making good judgements on their limitations and opportunities and effective, prudent use of their power resources. Therefore, small states reconfirm rather than defy the essence of realism. This said, there are good opportunities for cross-fertilisation between realism and Small-State Studies. The rapidly expanding literature on small states is a good

24 Revecca Pedi and Anders Wivel reminder to realists that international politics is more than a great-power game and that weaker actors may provide vital support, inflict serious damage or just ‘something else’ than great powers and thereby change the course of events as well as the texture of international relations. But realism also has an important contribution to make for those wanting to understand small states in international affairs. First, a self-referential, near-obsessive interest in defining what a small state ‘is’ has over the years constituted the main cross-regional and cross-thematic debate in the study of small states. This is paradoxical, because for many analyses of small states, choosing one definition over the other would have virtually zero analytical consequences as their authors intend to study only one or two states and the results are rarely framed in a generalisable manner. The definitional debate reflects the two ideal types discussed in an earlier section of this chapter and is therefore never-ending (see, e.g., Long, 2017; Maass, 2009; Rickli & Almezaini, 2017, pp. 9–11; Thorhallsson, 2006). It offers a continuous replay of a boxing match between small states defined by their material capabilities, that is the geographical, demographic, or economic size of the country, and small states as constructed entities, although the case studies used to illustrate these constructed entities typically live up to material criteria for defining a small state. To escape this deadlock, Small-State Studies will do well to focus on relational asymmetry rather than objective or constructed characteristics of small states. Instead of assuming that the small state is inherently either a pawn or a power broker, the study of small states can build on, test, and specify the insights from Morgenthau, Wolfers, and others. Doing so, they will acknowledge that small states typically find themselves as “the weaker part in an asymmetric relationship, unable to change the nature or functioning of the relationship on [their] own” (Wivel et al., 2014, p. 9) but continue to explore when and how they can nonetheless maximise influence under these constraints. This allows us to shift our focus away from behavioural characteristics and instead study the synchronic and diachronic variations in small-state policy and explore how these states navigate between challenges and take advantage of opportunities. For a systematic examination, analysts can begin from strict realist assumptions but gradually relax these assumptions and connect to the growing field of literature on asymmetry (Chamberlain, 2016; Long, 2022; Womack, 2016) or even hierarchy and pecking orders in international relations (Pouliot, 2016; Zarakol, 2017). Second, in both realism and the study of small states, power is at the same time a key concept and left oddly underspecified. The twentieth-century realist works discussed in this chapter will help to take us some way towards fixing this. In particular, Morgenthau’s deconstruction of power into material capabilities and less tangible factors such as diplomatic capacity and competence, societal cohesion and what we would today term strategic culture is helpful and provokes a number of research questions: how and to what extent can competence and strategic choices compensate for lack of capacity? How does political will translate into influence? Do some small states have cultural traits allowing them greater influence on actors with stronger material capabilities? Can other small states learn from this? These

The power (politics) of the weak revisited 25 questions link up with some of the most interesting research agendas in the study of small states in international relations today, including the literature on statusseeking (Carvalho & Neumann, 2015), the literature on small states in international negotiations (Panke, 2017), and explorations of how small states may ‘perform’ their weakness and ways of compensating for lack of material capabilities (Corbett et al., 2019). Finally, the growing literature of neoclassical realist analyses of small states would benefit from reconnecting with the realist classics (see, e.g., Edström et al., 2018; Gvalia et al., 2019; Magcamit, 2020; Steinsson, 2017; Wivel & Crandall, 2019). The iconic works discussed earlier are more explorative and less analytical than more recent contributions, but precisely because of that they open up ‘thinking spaces’ in regard to the study of small states in international relations and allow us to (re-)connect with the broader IR discipline and the big and important questions in international relations. Conclusion Realism has been stereotyped as oblivious to small states, yet our analysis shows that it is not. This chapter has revealed that the dichotomy between Small-State Studies and realism is a false one. Realism can offer useful insights for the study of small states. Our examination of iconic realist works has demonstrated that the popular view that small states defy realist expectations because they can ‘punch above their weight’ is mistaken. Realists do not dismiss the ability of lesser powers to overachieve under certain systemic or state-specific circumstances; intense competition among great powers, possession of assets of value to great powers, national morale and character, high-quality diplomacy, and a good reputation are among them. Our analysis has much in common with the current wave of non-paradigmatic, ‘post-isms’-analyses of international relations. Rather than seeking to establish or reconstruct a sub-field of Small-State Studies, we argue in favour of a small-state ‘turn’ in the study of international relations. By explicitly taking small states seriously as a category of analysis defined by asymmetry rather than by absolute unit-dependent criteria, we have reconnected the study of small states to the study of international relations, showing how this can add important insights to our understanding of international affairs. Notes 1 For recent overviews and discussions of the literature, see Baldacchino and Wivel (2020) and Long (2022). For surveys of earlier research efforts, see Amstrup (1976), Browning (2006), and Ingebritsen et al. (2006). 2 For a survey of connections to classical and new IR literature, see Thorhallsson (2018, pp. 22–7). 3 The most prominent discussion on these neoclassical realist variables and how they connect is that of Ripsman et al. (2016).

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A theory of shelter Small-state behaviour in international relations Baldur Thorhallsson and Sverrir Steinsson

There has been a marked increase in research on the challenges and opportunities for small states in the international system in recent years. However, much of this research focuses on small states within narrow policy areas or small-state behaviour within specific institutions or the particular foreign policies of individual small states. This makes it hard to explain, evaluate, and predict the behaviour of small states at large and to comprehensively account for small-state behaviour. The international relations (IR) theory literature on small-state behaviour is small and considerably dated and largely works on the assumption that small states operate according to the same logic as great powers. This literature insufficiently captures small-state behaviour and is largely inconsistent with the large body of quantitative and qualitative research on the effects of state size. This extensive literature has never been used to construct a theory of small-state behaviour. In this chapter, we present a theory of small-state behaviour, namely shelter theory. The theory, derived from a diverse and extensive literature on smallstate vulnerabilities and behaviours, holds that small states operate according to different logics than large states—as discussed by Harlan Koff and Thomas Kolnberger in the introduction to this volume. Owing to their size, small states face unique disadvantages and have vastly different needs. To alleviate these vulnerabilities and satisfy these needs, small states seek shelter. Small states’ chances of survival and prosperity depend crucially on the nature of their shelter. The vulnerabilities of small states can be categorised as status-seeking in political, economic, and societal terms. Small states seek shelter for each type of vulnerability (Thorhallsson, 2010, 2011, 2019). Types of shelter-seeking Political shelter

Due to small economies and low populations, small states are militarily weak, have less power in disputes with other states, and lack a margin of time and error in their dealings with other states. This makes small states more vulnerable to coercion by powerful states. Small economies and low populations also limit the administrative capacities of small states, making it harder for small states to run effective and DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-4

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functional governments. Economies of scale also make the transaction costs of diplomacy burdensome for small states. Small states therefore seek political shelter in the form of diplomatic, military, and administrative backing by large states and international organisations. Political shelter also comes in the form of beneficial norms and rules in the international system, as they shape the behaviour of large states and set the standards for what interactions are acceptable between states of differing sizes. Political shelter decreases small states’ exposure to coercion, reduces the power asymmetry between the small and the large, and allows small states to run more effective and functional states. Economic shelter

Due to smaller domestic markets, small states are more reliant on trade. Small size also reduces sectoral diversity. The greater reliance on trade, coupled with low sectoral diversity, makes small states more vulnerable to adverse price changes, restrictions on trade, and loss of key trade partners. Large states are not so vulnerable, as they trade less and have large domestic markets and sectoral diversity. International economic fluctuations therefore affect small states considerably more. To alleviate these vulnerabilities, small states seek out economic shelter in the form of close trading relations with large states and economic integration. Due to a vulnerability to economic shocks, small states are also in far more need of economic assistance to minimise crises and ensure short-term and long-term recovery. So small states not only form domestic buffers to minimise the dangers of exposure to the fluctuating international economy—as identified by Katzenstein (1985) and Rodrik (1998)—but we argue that they also form external ones. Societal shelter

Due to their size, small states also run the risk of social, cultural, and educational stagnation unless they are well connected to the outside world. Homogeneity, tradition, risk-aversion, and entrenched interests prevent a vibrant and effective marketplace of ideas from developing in isolated societies in the long term (Cardwell, 1972; Mokyr, 1994, 2006, 2016). In small societies, this problem is particularly acute. There are smaller populations from which to draw unorthodox and influential innovators, artists, businesspeople, and rulers; a lack of economies of scale in producing innovations, art, and ideas; and greater collective action problems for individuals to organise challenges against entrenched elites. By striking up relations with other societies, small states achieve an exposure to ideas and inventions—a vibrant competitive market in ideas. Not all ideas are good, but better or popular ideas should win out over time in an open contest (see, e.g., Rokkan & Urwin, 1983). In short, these vulnerabilities lead small states to pursue shelter: small states subordinate themselves to, or ally themselves with, large states; seek membership in international organisations; and promote norms and rules conducive to small-state security and prosperity. To obtain military and diplomatic backing; strong trade ties, economic integration, and economic assistance; and ideational interaction,

A theory of shelter 31 small states yield considerably more sovereignty and incur greater costs than large states are willing to pay in exchange for similar benefits. In fact, historically, small political units have been known to surrender their full sovereignty to merge with other units and thus obtain the benefits of size. Small states are far more willing to incur these sovereignty costs than large states because large states do not face these vulnerabilities to the same degree, and large states face impediments to cooperation with other large states that small states do not. There are therefore fewer benefits and greater costs—in other words, fewer incentives for large states to engage in similar behaviour: the logic of great-power behaviour differs from that of smallstate behaviour. The impediments to interstate cooperation identified widely in the IR literature apply more to relations between large states than between states of vastly different sizes. Our theory aims to fill a gap in the literature and contributes to explaining, evaluating, and predicting small-state behaviour. Given the large number of small states in the international system, and a strong likelihood that this number will increase, a theory that explains small-state behaviour is needed. As is the case with all theories, ours is an intentionally simplified depiction of the world. Consequently, the theory cannot explain every action taken by a small state but is instead intended to account for broad patterns and serve as a helpful framework in analyses. The aim is to reduce the noise of the infinitely complex world that we occupy to produce an intellectually interesting, generative, and practically useful theoretical framework of small-state behaviour. This chapter is organised as follows. In the first three sections, we examine each type of shelter (political, economic, and societal) in depth, showing how our assumptions regarding small-state vulnerabilities are correct; how each type of shelter solves these vulnerabilities; how small states have historically pursued these types of shelter; and how small-state survival and prosperity depend on shelter. The fourth section considers the costs of shelter and what these costs imply for our theory. We conclude by summarising the main points and offering some thoughts on the implications of the theory. Political shelter and its influencing factors Military power

Small states are at a disadvantage when it comes to ensuring the core interest of all states: security from violence. It has traditionally been identified as the main vulnerability of small states (Vital, 1967; Rothstein, 1968). Small states are vulnerable to violence because size largely determines the factors that primarily predict successful war outcomes: industrial production, population, military expenditures, and military personnel (Bennett & Stam, 1998). First and foremost, small population size limits the raw numbers of forces that can be fielded. Second, it sets a low ceiling for mass mobilisation. Third, it limits research and development of military technology, making the military less technically sophisticated. Fourth, a small population and a modest economy limit the sustainability of military campaigns.

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Fifth, smaller economies of scale make it costlier for the citizens of small states to maintain comprehensive military forces and capabilities. Sixth, small territories give the small states a very limited buffer against threats, making it hard for small states to recover from military setbacks. With these constraints in mind; it is unsurprising that weak actors have historically been at the losing end of conflicts (Arreguin-Toft, 2001), with buffer states being particularly vulnerable to conquest (Fazal, 2004). Bellicist theories of state formation emphasise how the failure of small political units to compete militarily with the emerging nation-state has led to the sharp decline in the number of European states and greatly increased median state size (see, e.g., Tilly, 1975). Small states respond to this military vulnerability by entering into bilateral or multilateral defensive alliances or seek suppliers of arms and other military resources; promote norms respecting the neutrality and sovereignty of states; and enter into regional or international organisations where large states can be constrained; peaceful norms can be promoted; and informal security guarantees achieved. Small states pursue defensive alliances to enhance their security and power by pooling resources. Provided that allies are willing to fulfil their commitments, small states become as militarily powerful as the combined power of their allies. Provided that alliances deter aggression, small states become less likely to be targeted by adversaries and less likely to become involved in conflict. Through economies of scale, alliances allow states to specialise, share the burden, and decrease security spending. They allow states to plan long-term. Defensive alliances have been shown to deter conflict, reduce the likelihood that allies be targeted, guarantee military assistance to allies in case they are attacked, and increase economic ties and diplomatic assistance between the allies (Leeds, 2003). Besides relying on formal alliances and pacified environments, small states that find themselves threatened externally but unable to find credible alliances with large states and in chaotic, unstable environments may join up with other small states facing the same dilemma and form a federation. The United States, Switzerland, and Germany are examples of the kinds of federation formed partly in response to external military threats but without other sufficient means to achieve security (Riker, 1987; Gilpin, 2001). The growing military expenditures and indebtedness of Piedmont also motivated its push to unify Italy and thus expand the tax base needed to field an adequate military (Ziblatt, 2006, pp. 74–6). By solving the security vulnerability of small states, alliances prevent small states from disappearing as a result of them gobbling up smaller states and becoming large joining other small states or large states through federations or annexations; or by being gobbled up themselves by large states or other small states. Alliances are an important means by which small states survive. When alliances are complicated, shifting, and unreliable, small states may favour neutrality, provided that they can convince great powers to respect their neutrality. Neutrality can be a credible deterrent if there are costs associated with violating the sovereignty of the neutral states. The viability of neutrality always depends on the strength of norms to resist conquest and the willingness of large states to come to the neutral state’s rescue. Neutral states therefore find themselves reliant on great

A theory of shelter 33 powers to uphold the norms and rules necessary for the protection of small states, such as the norms of state sovereignty and ex-colonial self-determination and the principles of reciprocity and juridical equality of states. These norms, which have only been upheld to any large degree in the modern period, are a crucial component in the sustainability of small states in the modern international system and explain why so many states have both been created and avoided state death since the midtwentieth century (Fazal & Griffiths, 2014). As Jackson (1991) writes, “before the present century there was no special international regime that catered for small or weak states. All sovereign states today . . . enjoy an unqualified right to exist and high prospects for survival” (p. 24). Whether through formal security guarantees, informal security guarantees, or international norms, small states need to compensate for their military deficiency with military shelter. Diplomatic power and administrative capacity

Small states have less diplomatic clout than large states. In terms of personnel and resources to be deployed to diplomatic ends, small states have smaller bureaucracies, fewer embassies, and fewer diplomats. More importantly, small states do not have the aggregate structural power that large states derive from their economic and military weight (Habeeb, 1988). Small states are consequently at a disadvantage in achieving favourable outcomes in negotiations. Due to their limited resources, small states also find the transaction costs of diplomacy far more burdensome than their larger counterparts. The lack of resources makes it harder for small states to study the foreign policy issues of interest to them and to take informed decisions. This has clear disadvantages for the clout that small states can bring to bear, as diplomats will, in general, not be as qualified, informed, and resourceful as diplomats from states with larger populations and larger economies. To overcome these disadvantages, small states use multilateralism, coalition-building, and networking and seek to share diplomatic and administrative resources with other states or get those states to negotiate on their behalf. Regional and international organisations are a means by which to overcome some of these diplomatic disadvantages. By shifting negotiations from the anarchic international system to institutions of rules and norms, the asymmetry in economic and political power in negotiations is reduced. Organisations often formalise the say of their smaller members. Norms of fairness and a desire for legitimacy constrain large states from overruling the smaller states. It is also costly for large states to violate the rules, as the rule-violating state will be worse off. If large states want to maintain a privileged position within a mutual-gains framework, it is in their interest to essentially restrain themselves and follow the rules and norms of the international system and the organisations to which they belong (Ikenberry, 2001). By promoting the work of international organisations and the institutionalisation of rules for the international system, small states also reduce the role of pure power in negotiations. While decision-making procedures privilege the great powers, those decision-making procedures share similarities to the ways in which decisionmaking occurs within democratic states. Debate and compromise are the rule rather

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than oligarchy and unilateralism. International cooperation and institutionalisation are chiefly beneficial to the small states, which explains why they mainly go along with large states. Large states also mostly take upon themselves the burden of enforcing rules and punishing wayward states, which is as Lake (2009) notes, “perhaps, one of the most beneficial activities carried out by dominant states” (p. 100). The web of rules and the enforcement of them alleviate the anarchic state of the international system, something from which small states benefit disproportionately for the sake of their prosperity and survival. Multilateralism also has practical benefits that are often ignored or underrated in the academic literature because it is only on small states that they have a noticeable impact. Forums considerably reduce the transaction costs of diplomacy for small states. They provide logistical support for large meetings by bringing together state and non-state actors from across the world. This gives small states unique opportunities to collaborate and build relations with vastly more states than is possible on a strictly bilateral basis. Multilateral frameworks also provide small states with information, which is something of less significance to large states with vast bureaucracies. This information can be in the form of research and analysis or just dependable information about the preferences, actions, and practices of other states. Small states also pursue close ties with large states in the hope of diplomatic backing and the sharing of resources. Large states may, for instance, negotiate on behalf of smaller states. Large states may also help small states prepare for meetings in international organisations and share offices and embassies with them. Corbett and Connell (2015), for instance, note how Australia shares office space with the smallest Commonwealth states in New York so that the smallest states can sustain permanent missions there. Small states also pool resources with other small states. Recognising what little effect each small state brings, small EU member states use coalition-building as a means of influence within the European Union. Small states may consequently find shelter in these formal or informal groups of other small states. Quality of domestic political institutions

Small states are at a disadvantage when it comes to running functional and effective states. Small states spend more per capita on public goods; suffer from limited administrative capacity due to shortage of skills, specialisations, and personnel and limited research capacity and face domestic problems that stem from the ease of rent-seeking, the power of vested interests, lack of political constraints, and a lack of political competition in small communities. Through relations with other states, organisations, and actors, small states obtain resources, ideas, and incentives that help them provide public goods, modernise their bureaucracies, and meet standards of democratic governance. The per capita costs of public goods are higher in small states due to a lack of economies of scale (Alesina & Spolaore, 2003, chapter 10). This means that citizens of small states expend more resources on public goods than their counterparts in large states. Research also suggests that small states struggle with administrative

A theory of shelter 35 capacity (Haque et al., 2015; Corbett & Connell, 2015). Small populations necessarily lead to fewer personnel capable of serving in administrative positions. Furthermore, personnel are less likely to have a diverse set of skills and specialisations. This means that the bureaucracies will be less capable of responding to the multitude of issues facing states. This is in contrast to the bureaucracies of large states, which have a larger pool of potential personnel to draw from. This allows them to hire more competent personnel, and foster specialisation, which leaves the large states capable of dealing with any particular issue. Once personnel are hired to the bureaucracies of small states, they are less likely to be able to concentrate on specific issues but have instead to flexibly shift their attention to different issues. Each small-state bureaucrat is consequently more likely to have a superficial knowledge of many issues rather than a deep knowledge of a few issues. Smallstate bureaucrats are in this sense, ‘generalists’. Those who do have specialised skills may prefer to put them to use in private industry at home or abroad or in international organisations (Corbett & Connell, 2015). The aforementioned factors affect the sustainability of small states and may well strongly shape the decisions of small territories to pursue independence. The inability of Greenland to fill administrative gaps left behind by Denmark if it were to pursue independence (Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, 2013, pp. 27–8) may make independence a practical impossibility. A newly sovereign Iceland struggled in its early years to undertake basic tasks, such as setting up an embassy in Denmark, and its small administrative size made it impractical for it to join the League of Nations (Jóhannesson, 2016, p. 17). Newly independent small states can often feel the initial crunch of independence when important roles are left unfilled in government. For example, newly independent Tuvalu had only two university graduates in its population (McIntyre, 2012), which has obvious implications for staffing a skilled bureaucracy. Even larger, more professional small states struggle, as shown by the experience of the early American Republic, which had to hire foreigners as vice-consuls in consulates due to a dearth of sufficiently qualified Americans to fill the posts (Herring, 2009, p. 161). While it has been argued by republican theorists that smaller entities have greater liberties, recent research casts doubt on this proposition, or at least, on whether it holds true in modern times. Small and homogeneous populations and a lack of diverse sectors impose weaker political constraints and a lack of political competition on leaders. This has adverse consequences for the ability of small states to run functional and effective governments. As US President James Madison (1751–1836) hailed as the ‘Father of the Constitution’ pointed out, a greater contest between factions should result in stronger constraints on power and more accountability. In small states, a strong sector or group of individuals can more easily capture the political system and retain it with relatively more ease. Gerring and Zarecki (2012) argue that small states suffer these democratic problems because of an absence of cleavages between elite and populace; a lack of developed, large, differentiated, and professional organisations; a smaller pool of individuals fit to lead in politics, civil society, and academia; and a greater ability to monitor, co-opt, coerce, and exile dissenters.

36 Baldur Thorhallsson and Sverrir Steinsson Recent research also suggests that we overestimate the quality of democracy in small states. While small states do well on formal measures of democracy (as measured by Freedom House), actual politics in small states is far less democratic in practice than the formal measures imply (Veenendaal, 2015). In their study of four supposedly democratic micro-states, Erk and Veenendaal (2014) find that there is substantial group pressure, intimidation, personalism, cronyism, family ties, vote-selling (particularism), and weak press freedom (close ties with politicians and direct interests and non-existent independent and neutral media) that cast doubt on the degree of democracy in these states. It is hard to quantify the influence of outside interactions on domestic political institutions, but an extensive literature suggests that interactions with the outside world can remedy the aforementioned shortcomings. Most prominently, the prospects of EU accession prompted democratising and liberalising reforms in Eastern Europe. As Risse (2009) notes, “there is a consensus in the literature on Eastern Europe that the EU membership perspective had a huge anchoring effect for the new democracies” (p. 254). Multilateralism may improve political institutions in states, as Keohane et al. (2009) show. International commitments and rules may offset powerful special interest groups within states, protect minorities from a tyrannical majority, and improve the quality of democratic deliberation (ibid.). While Keohane et al.’s (2009) arguments apply to states of all sizes, we argue that they apply to small states in particular, as these are domestic political problems that are particularly pronounced in small states. Emigration to Western Europe has also been credited with democratising Moldova (Barsbai et al., 2017). Spilimbergo (2009) finds that for less democratic states, having individuals study in democratic countries fosters democracy in the sending countries. Gift and Krcmaric (2015) show that having Western-educated leaders significantly improves a country’s democratisation prospects. Other research finds that exposure to democratic norms through migration opportunities boosts democratisation in the sending country (Batista et al., 2012; Beine & Sekkat, 2013). These examples demonstrate how vital it is for small states to have access to the broader world: it is of central importance for the emergence and maintenance of a vibrant democracy and functional society to engage with foreign political and social norms. Economic shelter and its influencing factors State size has many economic implications. The size of small states makes them highly vulnerable to international economic fluctuations; limits the productivity and innovation in their economies; and adversely affects the quality of fiscal institutions. The vulnerabilities that small states face are unique and highly determinative of behaviour. The prosperity and survival of small states are highly dependent on the free movement of goods, capital, and labour; economic assistance in times of crisis; and external assistance with fiscal monitoring and fiscal policy. Small states can alleviate some of their vulnerabilities via the unilateral reduction in trade barriers and by unilateral adoption of foreign currencies, but this only partly alleviates their vulnerabilities. Small states also need unhindered and stable access

A theory of shelter 37 to large markets and depend on relationships with large states and alliances with groups of states to ensure that access. Market access and trade

There are good reasons to believe that the state of the world economy determines the number and size of states in the international system: high trade costs lead political units to join large states or form federations. Key steps in German unification began with a customs union in 1834, allowing German states to trade with low trade barriers during a period when European states were erecting trade barriers (Alesina & Spolaore, 2003). Similar concerns motivated the creation of a common market in the United States (Moore, 1966) and the push for the unification of Italy (Ziblatt, 2006, pp. 64–7). As trade costs decline, small states thrive. Liberalisation of markets is certainly good for all states, but these benefits are far greater for small states. In a world of trade restrictions, localities within large states will have unhindered access to a large market regardless of the national domestic market. The same does not apply to small states, which do not have a large national domestic market. Without external market access, small states wither. Small domestic markets make small states more reliant on trade. Small states trade with a greater share of GDP than their larger counterparts (Frankel & Romer, 1999; Easterly & Kraay, 2000). Small states also lack the means to develop highly specialised industries. Large economies will be more competitive, resulting in higher productivity and lower prices (Melitz & Ottaviano, 2008). Large economies will also be more innovative (Desmet & Parente, 2010). As Eaton and Kortum (2002) note, “not surprisingly, all countries benefit from freer world trade, with small countries gaining more than big ones” (p. 1742). It is therefore essential for small states to obtain good conditions for trade. Thus, small states need access to markets. It is of central importance for small states to strike trade deals with other societies. This sounds fundamental, but it is only very recently that small states have been able to enjoy relatively open and stable market access. The small states of Europe have historically had to contend with illiberal trade policies on the Continent, as well as disruptions to trade caused by regular wars (Findlay & O’Rourke, 2003). Small-state access to foreign markets has been made easier through government actions in the form of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, in addition to unilateral tariff reduction. Changes in communications and transportation technology have also allowed small states to access an increasing number of markets. These innovations have also reduced small-state vulnerability to the cost of trading at a distance, which makes them less adversely affected by trade barriers within their region. Small states need prices for imported goods to be low and for their exports to be competitive in other markets. Borders are significant barriers to trade. Even when tariffs are low, borders have a profound impact on trade. Anderson and van Wincoop (2003) show that a border reduces trade between developed countries by roughly 30%. The dissolution of borders has also been shown to substantially increase economic growth and lower prices in former border towns (Brakman et al.,

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2012; Ploeckl, 2013). It is therefore crucial for small states to reduce both tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. International organisations, such as the WTO/GATT, have played a key role in liberalising trade worldwide (Bown & Irwin, 2015). The European Project has substantially reduced barriers to trade, culminating in the creation of a single market which has in theory integrated the EU member state economies as profoundly as a national economy. There are good reasons to believe that world trade is vastly more liberal today than in previous historical eras (Bown & Crowley, 2016). Economic assistance during crises

Small states face an elevated risk of economic crisis (Katzenstein, 1985; Rodrik, 1998; Easterly & Kraay, 2000) for several reasons: in general, small states conduct underregulated fiscal policies and loose monitoring, are more exposed to international economic shocks due to their dependence on trade and their low sectoral diversity, and do not have the means by which to bail out their own economies (also see the discussion about Katzenstein’s 2003 work on small states in the introduction to this book). Small states are also at a disadvantage when it comes to fiscal monitoring and fiscal policy. As Alexander Hamilton noted and recent economic studies (Alesina & Spolaore, 2003) affirm, there are economies of scale in fiscal policy. Tax collection will be more inefficient in small states; monetary and financial systems will be less developed; and professional and fiscal institutions will be weaker. One motivation for German unification in the nineteenth century was the inability of individual German states to levy effective taxes due to their small administrations (Ziblatt, 2006, pp. 48–9). For many of today’s smallest states, there is no adequate monitoring of public expenditures and financial accountability (Haque et al., 2015). Small states’ vulnerability to international fluctuations (one consequence of their reliance on trade) compounds problems caused by poor fiscal policies and monitoring. One way that small states reduce their vulnerability is through high government spending (Rodrik, 1998) and the adoption of democratic corporatism (Katzenstein, 1985). Due to limited trade partners and low diversity in exported goods, the loss of a market or adverse price changes can have drastic consequences for small states, at least in the short term, until new trade ties are made. The collapse of the Soviet Union spread economic calamity to Finland. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War caused an economic slump in Iceland, as its export market for saltfish dried up. Small states lack the means by which to prop up their own economies during times of economic crisis. Large states have regional and sectoral diversity. When one sector or region hits a slump, the rest of the state is able to alleviate the crisis through transfers from booming regions to the busting region. This facilitates unhindered access to capital. In a large state, it is also easier for laid-off workers to find work in booming regions of the state. If the whole economy is undergoing a crisis, large states still have, thanks to economies of scale, the means by which to recover largely on their own through bailouts. This is in contrast to the situations

A theory of shelter 39 that small states find themselves in when crisis hits. Small states lack economic diversity. This means that a crisis in the main national sector of the small state economy will be a national economic crisis. Due to formal and informal barriers to labour mobility, small states find it harder to lay off unemployed workers. Small states in crisis cannot seek help anywhere, except outside the state. Without outside insurance, busts will be more drastic in small states (Alesina & Spolaore, 2003, p. 4). This assistance, whether in the form of direct aid or loans, depends on small states’ successful relations with large states and international organisations. Small states need timely and favourable assistance. Small states place themselves in a position to receive assistance that does not come too late, is too small or comes with harsh conditions. A failure to have sufficient economic shelter prior to a crisis may push the small state towards drastic shelter-seeking post-crisis, as could be seen in Sweden’s decision to join the European Union in the wake of the banking crisis of the early 1990s and the Icelandic government’s decision to apply for EU membership in 2009 during its financial crisis. One reason why small states have proliferated since the end of the Second World War is that economic assistance in the form of development aid and concessional lending is increasingly available (Fazal & Griffiths, 2014; Sharman, 2017). Societal shelter and its influencing factors Small population size has profound disadvantages for states when it comes to technological, educational, and cultural ideas and practices. This is something that is often ignored, since most societies are so closely interconnected with other societies and thus have a healthy diffusion of ideas, which goes largely unnoticed and is often taken for granted. For more isolated small states, the pursuit of societal shelter has been much more noticeable and the benefits (costs) of societal shelter (lack of societal shelter) far clearer. But even within large societies and between interconnected societies, economic historians have found that the diffusion of ideas, technologies, and culture is far greater where ties are closer and more productively institutionalised between cities, regions, and states. States that see a greater influx of ideas and persons have far better development outcomes. For small states, it is therefore crucial to have societal shelter. A greater degree of isolation and barriers between the small state and the outside world has profound implications for access to new innovations, technology, ideology, and culture. Poor societal shelter leads to a worse quality of life and to stagnation. The central basis underlying the stagnation thesis is Cardwell’s Law, which holds that a single economy moves inexorably to technological stagnation and can experience only temporary technological innovation (Cardwell, 1972, p. 210). One possible explanation for this is that within societies there are powerful forces that resist change because they have a vested interest in the status quo (Mokyr, 2006). Those who have the skills or assets—be they “formal skills, tacit knowledge, reputation, specialised equipment, ownership of certain natural resources, barriers to entry that secured monopoly positions, and community-based non-pecuniary assets”—tied to existing technologies, systems, and sectors have an interest in

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maintaining the status quo (Mokyr, 1994, p. 564). Individuals and systems consistently stop the adoption of more efficient production methods, new ideas, and government policies to safeguard their own position in society and the status quo. Mokyr (1994) shows that Cardwell’s Law does not hold in a world where separate economies compete with each other. In other words, it does not hold in a world where individuals and ideas can easily move between a large number of societies. Small states consequently need to be exposed to different ideas and see a competition between new and old technologies, ideas, and systems. Such competition allows inferior systems to be replaced or improved. Mokyr (2006) writes: If the world were divided into small insulated islands, the obvious scale economies of generating an invention or a discovery would never be realized. If the world were a single Empire, there would not be enough competition. Some intermediate level would be optimal, a world in which the market for ideas was much larger than the unit of control. (pp. 10–11) We would add to Cardwell’s Law and Mokyr’s theory that small population size makes isolated small states worse off in this regard than isolated large states. States with small populations already lack political competition and constraints on leaders, making it easier for them to suppress ideas. Small states furthermore lack the economies of scale to do research and development, which adds to the problem of spurring innovation. Small societies are also generally more homogeneous. This is not a fatal flaw for small states, as they can access the benefits of inventions and research through their diffusion. But that means that they need societal shelter: external ideational diffusion. Small states consequently depend on the free flow of ideas across their borders. Not all ideas are good, but on the whole, beneficial ideas will do well in a competition of ideas and take hold if they are an improvement on past ideas. An extensive literature evidences the importance of ideational diffusion. Squicciarini and Voigtlander (2015) show that knowledge elites are crucial to productivity and development outcomes. In Rivera-Batiz and Romer’s (1991) model of international trade, spillovers of knowledge across borders are key to the marginal contribution of trade to growth. International spillovers of knowledge are also a crucial component in the relationship between trade, growth, and welfare in Grossman and Helpman’s (1991) model. Research suggests that social proximity between different groups of people, entrepreneurs, and innovators in particular, has a significant impact on development outcomes. Social ties and interpersonal contacts mediate the transmission of knowledge. De la Croix et al. (2018) show how institutions that allowed the effective person-to-person transmission of tacit knowledge played a significant role in terms of technological creativity, population growth, and per capita income in pre-industrial Europe. Agrawal et al. (2017) find that US highways boost patenting, showing how “roads facilitate local knowledge flows, increasing the likelihood that innovators access knowledge inputs from local but more distant neighbors” (p. 417). Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott (2016) find that

A theory of shelter 41 international long-distance flight hubs, thanks to the movement of people, foster economic growth. Breschi and Lenzi (2016) show that inventors within a US city innovate more if their interactions with other innovators within the city are dense and if the social proximity to inventors in other US cities is high. As Breschi and Lenzi (2016) write: In the context of a co-invention network, knowledge and information tend to diffuse more rapidly, and with less noise, when relatively few intermediaries separate inventors (i.e., when internal social proximity is high), than when members are connected by longer chains of ties (i.e., when internal social proximity is low). As a consequence, new information or ideas generated within the network may rapidly reach (or flow to) all other members of the network and be recombined with their own knowledge, thereby improving inventive productivity. (p. 67) A lack of connections to external knowledge can be detrimental to inventive potential. It has been argued that the Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe precisely due to the existence of a competitive marketplace of ideas, where knowledge elites had low barriers to entry and low transaction costs and could circumvent restrictive taboos (Mokyr, 2016). When one European state repressed innovators and heterodox ideas, the repressed could seek refuge in a number of nearby European states. In this sense, the fragmentation of Europe into numerous territorially small states contributed to innovation. That the states were small was not per se the reason for the innovation but rather that individuals, capital, and ideas could easily flow between a large number of states. The point here is that it is crucial for small states to participate in marketplaces of ideas and that small states benefit disproportionately from exposure to interstate flows of ideas. The free movement of goods, capital, and people contributes to the ideational diffusion. Economic studies show that trade allows countries to benefit from foreign technological advances and that small neighbours happen to benefit most from the innovation that occurs in large states. Eaton and Kortum (2002) find that Canada, for example, benefits almost as much as the United States from a U.S. technological improvement. Germany’s smaller neighbors experience more than half the gain from an improvement in German technology [than] Germany itself. At the other extreme, Japan, which is both distant and large, gets little from either Germany or the United States. The results point to the conclusion that trade does allow a country to benefit from foreign technological advances. (pp. 1772–3) According to Keller (2004), “foreign sources of technology are more important for small (and relatively poor) than for bigger countries, which is what one expects given the size difference in domestic R&D investments” (p. 776). Guellec and van

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Pittsburghers de la Potterie (2001) also find that small states engage in more international research collaboration, which is presumably a way for them to compensate for their lack of indigenous knowledge. Costs of shelter The pursuit of shelter can impose costs on small states. In one extreme, small political units have been known to surrender their sovereignty in full by joining federations or merging with nation-states to obtain the benefits of size. These mergers have been driven by the aforementioned vulnerabilities that small states face in terms of security, economy, and administrative capacity. Shelter providers may exploit small states’ dependence in opportunistic ways. The large states may interfere domestically in the small states, as the larger states try to align the small states ideologically, culturally, and economically to coax out non-military benefits while also ensuring that strategically important small states stay long-term allies. As a result, small states seek out shelter providers who signal their benevolence. For instance, the West European states did not fear that the United States would treat them in ways similar to the USSR’s treatment of its satellites or even the United States’s treatment of its Latin American allies. States continue to buy into the US-led international order or the European project because there are few fears of coercion by the larger entity. The consideration of costs and benefits in terms of political, economic, and societal shelter can be helpful in evaluating the viability of decentralisation and secession. Regions that have distinct political and cultural preferences within large countries often have greater autonomy, are more decentralised, and/or receive fiscal transfers as a result. That is why many would-be secessionist regions, such as Quebec, regions of Italy, Scotland, and Northern Sweden accept their membership of a greater whole. Regional autonomy underlies the organisation of federations, as diverse regions surrender sovereignty in exchange for the benefits that come with being part of a larger whole. Autonomy, decentralisation, and fiscal transfers allow diverse units to work together while still allowing that public-goods provision to reflect each region’s preferences. A failure by the shelter provider to furnish assistance and benefits may be a key component of state secession. Some small states may find a highly restricted number of shelter options. Buffer states are particularly vulnerable to interference and coercion by their powerful neighbours, which is why state death is particularly common among buffer states (Fazal, 2004). Russia’s neighbours may be forced to partake in an abusive relationship of dependence in a context of potential violence and political intervention. Even when shelter providers come to the rescue of a small state, the costs of rescue may be high and come with extensive political interference. For instance, Reinhart and Trebesch (2015) document the pitfalls of external borrowing for Greece in the course of its independent history. Throughout its history, the country has faced bouts of debt crisis and external interventions. Greece’s small size

A theory of shelter 43 and external dependence means that it has only poor economic and political leverage in the face of tax-external creditors. That Greece owes its debts to external creditors (instead of domestic creditors) leads to delayed resolutions and protracted disputes and domestic political interference when rescue loans come with conditionality. While the IMF puts conditionality on rescue loans, debtor nations have faced far more severe political interference, such as military interventions by creditor governments in the case of Venezuela (Mitchener & Weidenmier, 2010) and direct administrating of fiscal policy by foreign bureaucrats in the cases of Egypt and the Ottoman empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Tomz, 2007). Close relations with large states may lead to social, cultural, and ideological discomfort as ideas and culture from the large states flow into the smaller states. Some of these fears stem from a belief that the ideas and culture of the larger state are undesirable and suboptimal, and that the large state crowds out national culture. There is some research that substantiates these fears. Due to small domestic markets, smaller states have less national cultural production (Waterman, 2005; Fu & Sim, 2010) and greater consumption of foreign media (Oh, 2001; Puppis, 2009). Due to these fears, small states choose shelter from states and organisations where cultural and ideological distance is shorter. While diplomatic relations with states and participation in organisations reduce transaction costs of diplomacy, they also burden states in some ways. Over participation in international organisations and unnecessary relations may stretch diplomatic and administrative resources thin. This can make the bureaucratic constraints inherent in small size worse than they were, as bureaucrats gain superficial expertise at the expense of deep knowledge; research is stretched across a greater set of issues; and precious funds are wasted on trips and meetings. For instance, Corbett and Connell (2015) argue that the burdens of international organisations have increased over time for small island states: International forums are increasingly highly technical arenas and both political leaders and public service delegates rely heavily on the advice of officials for analytical support. However, while complex international negotiations require complex technical knowledge, skilled human resources are scarce, and recruitment, development, and retention of high quality officials are perpetual challenges. (p. 446) Participation in regional and international organisations can also, if the appropriate exemptions are not achieved, lead to burdensome implementation and enforcement of foreign legislation of no significance. It is therefore essential that diplomacy be seen as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Small states often need assurances that they will not have to adopt onerous legislation or expend considerable resources on diplomacy in these organisations. For instance, small states in the European project have been granted exemptions from some legislation to reduce their administrative burden (Frommelt, 2016, p. 155).

44 Baldur Thorhallsson and Sverrir Steinsson Conclusion We propose the shelter theory of small-state behaviour. As documented by an extensive literature, small states have disadvantages and needs that large states do not. This causes small states to act according to different logics than large states. Small states are prepared to yield sovereignty to large states and international organisations to an extent that large states are not. They do this to alleviate their size-related vulnerabilities. To prosper and survive, small states need protection that they cannot provide for themselves; administrative and diplomatic aid because their own administrations are insufficient; access to markets because their own are so small; economic assistance because they are so vulnerable to economic shocks and unable to bail themselves out; and an exposure to foreign individuals and ideas because a small, isolated society would stagnate. Hence, small states seek political, economic, and societal shelter provided by larger states and international organisations. Shelter theory is valuable for a number of reasons: First, it is the first comprehensive theory to explain broad patterns of small-state behaviour. Second, it provides an overarching framework, which helps us simplify and grasp an infinitely complex world in which small states have to find ways to survive and flourish. Working on a few assumptions (concerning the unique vulnerabilities of small states and the abilities of large states or organisations to alleviate those vulnerabilities) and excluding noise, shelter theory expects small states to seek shelter and their prosperity to be dependent on the nature of the shelter. Third, theories transform our understanding of important issues and explain puzzles. Small-state behaviour has largely been neglected by IR theories. This is unsatisfactory given that small states comprise most of the states in the international system and will likely increase in number in the coming decades. Shelter theory will hopefully spur further research and bring greater attention to small states among IR scholars. This will encourage further theorising, tests of shelter theory, and modifications of it. Fourth, our theory contributes to effective policy decision and evaluation. By identifying small-state vulnerabilities, solutions to those vulnerabilities, and expected behaviours, policymakers will have a tool by which to determine the best strategy for achieving desired goals. This should prove particularly helpful, given that existing theories on state behaviour do not fully account for the challenges and opportunities faced by small states. Fifth, it informs retrodiction. Shelter theory provides a framework from which scholars can look at the past in different ways and better understand the behaviours of small political units in history. Finally, shelter theory guides analysis when facts are scarce. As information about small states may often be sparse, the theory helps to identify the most important variables and predicts general patterns of behaviour in lieu of perfect

A theory of shelter 45 information. The limited resources of small-state foreign ministries also make shelter theory a valuable tool for small-state diplomats in formulating policies and responding to challenges. References Agrawal, A.; Galasso, A. & Oettl, A. (2017). Roads and innovation. Review of Economics and Statistics 99(3), 417–34. Alesina, A. & Spolaore, E. (2003). The Size of Nations. MIT Press. Anderson, J. E. & van Wincoop, E. (2003). Gravity with gravitas: a solution to the border puzzle. American Economic Review 93(1), 170–192. Arreguin-Toft, I. (2001). How the weak win wars: a theory of asymmetric conflict. International Security 26(1), 93–128. Barsbai, T.; Rapoport, H.; Steinmayr, A. & Trebesch, C. (2017). The effect of labor migration on the diffusion of democracy: evidence from a former soviet republic. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9(3), 36–69. Batista, C.; Lacuesta, A. & Vicente, P. C. (2012. Testing the ‘brain gain’ hypothesis: Micro evidence from Cape Verde. Journal of Development Economics 97(1), 32–45. Beine, M. & Sekkat, K. (2013). Skilled migration and the transfer of institutional norms. IZA Journal of Migration 2(1), 1–19. Bennett, S. D. & Stam, A. C. (1998). The declining advantages of democracy: a combined model of war outcomes and duration. Journal of Conflict Resolution 42(3), 344–66. Bown, C. P. & Crowley, M. A. (2016). The empirical landscape of trade policy. In K. Bagwell & R. W. Staiger (Eds.), Handbook of Commercial Policy Volume 1 Part A (pp. 3–108). Elsevier. Bown, C. P. & Irwin, D. A. (2015). The GATT’s Starting Point: Tariff Levels Circa 1947. NBER Working Paper No. 21782. National Bureau of Economic Research. Brakman, S.; Garretsen, H.; Marrewijk, C.; Oumer, A. (2012). The border population effects of EU integration. Journal of Regional Science 52(1), 40–59. Breschi, S. & Lenzi, C. (2016). Co-invention networks and inventive productivity in U.S. cities. Journal of Urban Economics 92, 66–75. Campante, F. & Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2016). Long-Range Growth: Economic Development in the Global Network of Air Links. NBER Working Paper No. 22653. National Bureau of Economic Research. Cardwell, D. S. L. (1972). Turning Points in Western Technology. Neale Watson. Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. (2013). Future Scenarios for Greenland. Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. Corbett, J. & Connell, J. (2015). All the world is a stage: global governance, human resources, and the “problem” of smallness. The Pacific Review 28, 435–459. De la Croix, D.; Doepke, M. & Mokyr, J. (2018). Clans, guilds, and markets: apprenticeship institutions and growth in the pre-industrial economy. Quarterly Journal of Economics 133(1), 1–70. Desmet, K. & Parente, S. L. (2010). Bigger is better: market size, demand elasticity, and innovation. International Economic Review 51(2), 319–33. Easterly, W. & Kraay, A. (2000). Small states, small problems? Income, growth, and volatility in small states. World Development 28(11), 2013–27. Eaton, J. & Kortum, S. (2002). Technology, geography, and trade. Econometrica 70(5), 1741–79.

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Erk, J. & Veenendaal, W. (2014). Is small really beautiful? The Microstate mistake. Journal of Democracy 25(4), 135–48. Fazal, T. M. (2004). State death in the international system. International Organization 58(2), 311–44. Fazal, T. M. & Griffiths, R. D. (2014). Membership has its privileges: the changing benefits of statehood. International Studies Review 16, 79–106. Findlay, R. & O’Rourke, K. (2003). Commodity market integration, 1500–2000. In M. D. Bordo, A. M. Taylor & J. G. Williamson (Eds.), Globalization in Historical Perspective (pp. 13–64). University of Chicago Press. Frankel, J. A. & Romer, D. (1999). Does trade cause growth? American Economic Review 89(3), 379–99. Frommelt, C. (2016). Liechtenstein’s tailor-made arrangements in the EEA: a small state’s creative solutions in European integration. In S. Wolf (Ed.), State Size Matters: Politik und Recht im Kontext von Kleinstaatlichkeit und Monarchie (pp. 131–59). Springer. Fu, W. W. & Sim, C. (2010). Examining international country-to-country flow of theatrical films. Journal of Communication 60(1), 120–43. Gerring, J. & Zarecki, D. (2012). Size and Democracy Revisited. Working Paper. Boston University. Gift, T. & Krcmaric, D. (2015). Who democratizes? Western-educated leaders and regime transitions. Journal of Conflict Resolution 61(3), 671–701. Gilpin, R. (2001). Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton University Press. Grossman, G. & Helpman, E. (1991). Innovation and Growth in the Global Economy. MIT Press. Guellec, D. & Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, B. van (2001). The internationalisation of technology analysed with patent data. Research Policy 30, 1253–66. Habeeb, W. (1988). Power and Tactics in International Negotiations: How Weak Nations Bargain With Strong Nations. Johns Hopkins University Press. Haque, T. A.; Knight, D. & Jayasuriya, D. (2015). Capacity constraints and public financial management in small pacific island countries. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies 2(3), 609–22. Herring, G. C. (2009). From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. Oxford University Press. Ikenberry, G. J. (2001). After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars. Princeton University Press. Jackson, R. H. (1991). Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge University Press. Jóhannesson, G. Th. (2016). Fyrstu Forsetarnir. Sögufélag. Katzenstein, P. (1985). Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe. Cornell University Press. Keller, W. (2004). International technology diffusion. Journal of Economic Literature 42, 752–82. Keohane, R. O.; Macedo, S. & Moravcsik, A. (2009). Democracy-enhancing multilateralism. International Organization 63(1), 1–31. Lake, D. A. (2009). Hierarchy in International Relations. Cornell University Press. Leeds, B. A. (2003). Alliance reliability in times of war: explaining state decisions to violate treaties. International Organization 57, 801–27. McIntyre, W. (2012). The partition of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. Island Studies Journal 7(1), 135–46.

A theory of shelter 47 Melitz, M. J. & Ottaviano, G. I. P. (2008). Market size, trade, and productivity. Review of Economic Studies 75(1), 295–316. Mitchener, K. J. & Weidenmier, M. D. (2010). Supersanctions and sovereign debt repayment. Journal of International Money and Finance 29(1), 19–36. Mokyr, J. (1994). Cardwell’s law and the political economy of technological progress. Research Policy 23, 561–74. Mokyr, J. (2006). Mobility, creativity, and technological development: David Hume, Immanuel Kant and the economic development of Europe. In G. Abel (Ed.), Kolloquiumsband des XX. Deutschen Kongresses für Philosophie, Berlin (pp. 1131–61). Felix Meiner. Mokyr, J. (2016). A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy. Princeton University Press. Moore, B. (1966). Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Beacon Press. Oh, J. (2001). International trade in film and the self-sufficiency ratio. Journal of Media Economics 14(1), 31–44. Ploeckl, F. (2013). The internal impact of a customs union; Baden and the Zollverein. Explorations in Economic History 50(3), 387–404. Puppis, M. (2009). Introduction: media regulation in small states. International Communication Gazette 71(1/2), 7–17. Reinhart, C. M. & Trebesch, C. (2015). The Pitfalls of External Dependence: Greece, 1829– 2015. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, vol. 2015(2), pp. 307–28. NBER Working Paper No. 21664. www.nber.org/papers/w21664. Riker, W. H. (1987). The Development of American Federalism. Springer. Risse, T. (2009). Conclusions: towards transatlantic democracy promotion? In A. Magen, T. Risse & M. McFaul (Eds.), Promoting Democracy and the Rule of Law: American and European Strategies (pp. 244–71). Palgrave Macmillan. Rivera-Batiz, L. A. & Romer, P. M. (1991). Economic integration and endogenous growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, 531–55. Rodrik, D. (1998). Why do more open economies have bigger governments? Journal of Political Economy 106, 997–1032. Rokkan, S. & Urwin, D. W. (1983). Economy, Territory, Identity: Politics of West European Peripheries. Sage Publications. Rothstein, R. L. (1968). Alliances and Small Powers. Columbia University Press. Sharman, J. C. (2017). Sovereignty at the extremes: micro-states in world politics. Political Studies 65(3), 559–75. Spilimbergo, A. (2009). Democracy and foreign education. American Economic Review 99(1), 528–43. Squicciarini, M. P. & Voigtlander, N. (2015). Human capital and industrialization: evidence from the age of enlightenment. Quarterly Journal of Economics 130(4), 1825–83. Thorhallsson, B. (2010). The Icelandic crash and its consequences: a small state without economic and political shelter. In R. Steinmetz & A. Wivel (Eds.), Small States in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities (pp. 199–217). Ashgate Publishing. Thorhallsson, B. (2011). Domestic buffer versus external shelter: viability of small states in the new globalised economy. European Political Science 10(3), 324–36. Thorhallsson, B. (Ed.) (2019). Small States and Shelter Theory: Iceland’s External Affairs. Routledge. Tilly, C. (Ed.) (1975). The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton University Press.

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Tomz, M. (2007). Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt Across Three Centuries. Princeton University Press. Veenendaal, W. P. (2015). Democracy in microstates: why smallness does not produce a democratic political system. Democratization 22(1), 92–112. Vital, D. (1967). The Inequality of States: A Study of the Small Power in International Relations. Clarendon Press. Waterman, D. (2005). Hollywood’s Road to Riches. Harvard University Press. Ziblatt, D. (2006). Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism. Princeton University Press.

3

The graded agency of small states Iver B. Neumann

The question of small-state agency is a function of the definition of what a small state is. If a small state is defined by its relative smallness relative to great powers in terms of factors such as territory and population size, it follows that we are talking about smallness on the level of aggregated agency, and so that agency has to be small as well (see, e.g., Waltz, 1979; Wivel & Paul, 2019; Harden, 1985). If, on the other hand, we disaggregate the question of smallness in terms of issue areas, fields, regional influence, and the like, then we move the area of validity of the answers regarding smallness from being a general one that is given to a specific one in need of empirical investigation. To give but three examples: the Netherlands may have a limited territory, but it has played a disproportionately important role for the emergence of international law; Gabon may be small, but it dominates the world’s market in manganese; Qatar may have a population of less than three million, but it is a major player in the structuring of global humanitarian aid. It is facts such as these that have made the question of small-state agency and the question of how to define small states “inherently problematic”, to quote Geoffrey Baldacchino (2018, p. 4; see also, Fox, 1959; Maas, 2009; Baldacchino & Wivel, 2020). These questions matter, for they pertain to a large number of states. Indeed, the membership of the UN caucus Forum of Small States that was initiated by Singapore in 1992 has about a hundred members, which is very close to half of the total UN membership (Kassim, 2012).1 In this chapter, I will take a different tack. I will investigate the question of smallness on the aggregate level, that is, on the systemic level. A system consists of units and relations between them, and these relations have their own logics. SmallState Studies has followed the lead of Waltz and others by thinking about these relations in terms of material capabilities—population and territory size, size of arsenals, and so on. However, that is not the only way of thinking about systems on offer. We also have systems theories that define systems not in material terms but in social terms. Amongst these, Alexander Wendt’s (1999) theory stands out. Wendt’s focus on how states think about their own agency and size on the one hand and how they are being thought of by others is particularly promising for Small-State Studies. Consequently, the first section of the chapter will introduce this theory to Small-State Studies, with a view to applying it to the question of small-state agency. In this perspective, smallness and small-state agency become questions DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-5

50 Iver B. Neumann of the relationship between how states themselves understand their relative size— what Wendt calls role identity—and how that agency and size are understood as a role on the level of the system, which to Wendt is part of the structural phenomenon that is collective knowledge. In such an optic, a certain unit’s own role identity as a small state will vie with the role of small state that the system holds out for states to fill. Size and agency will depend on how such vying turns out. To put it in Wendtian terms, smallness and small-state agency are co-constituted by unit agency and a structure’s culture and must therefore be understood as what states make of them. However, such a Wendtian answer is hardly the last word on smallness and agency. To navigate in the world, agents have to categorise it. In Wendtian parlance, we have to investigate exactly the system’s collective knowledge about small states. In the conclusion to this chapter, I will turn to this question. As the very existence of phenomena like the UN caucus Forum of Small States and SmallState Studies goes to show, large and small seem to be basic social categories, on a par with up and down, left and right, and so on. The standard way of thinking about categories in the Western tradition hails from Aristotle, who famously concentrated on the fact that a thing could not be red and not red at the same time. In a generalised form, categories like small states have to be mutually exclusive, and the stuff inside categories has to be homogenous. This Aristotelian view has been challenged by Prototype Theory, which argues that the stuff making up a category is not necessarily seen as homogenous. Some shades of red, say, what the natural Colour System actually calls psychologically primary red, will be seen redder than others, say, carmine. By the same token, whereas Wendt suggests that small-state agency and smallness itself are graded phenomena, Prototype Theory would argue that some small states are seen as more typical of the category small states than others. Which these types are we can read directly out of extant debates within Small-State Studies: they are the hapless small state (e.g., Melos) postulated by material systems theory and the savvy niche player that is punching above its weight (e.g., Luxembourg) postulated by those who investigate smallness on the level of disaggregated agency. One way of reading this volume is as an attempt to play up a Wendtian view of small-state agency and live down extant prototypical ideas of what a small power is. Wendt’s constructivism For Wendt, structure is defined not only by the distribution of material capabilities (human nature, natural resources, geography, forces of production, and destruction) but also by the distribution of knowledge. It follows that, while units are prior to the/a system because they are self-organising entities, they are also constituted by the system. The basic job is to give ontological status to a system (is it constituted by material or ideational factors or both?), to the units that make that system up (are they real?) and to the relations between them (which take precedence, how?). Systems theory can work in two ways. First, one may study a system at the macro level. That means looking at the effects a system has on “patterns of state behavior at the aggregate or population level” (Wendt, 1999, p. 11).2 Alternatively, one may

The graded agency of small states 51 study systemic effects at the micro level, which in this case means studying the behaviour of states. The second goal is about applying it to International Relations (IR) by “choosing a social system . . ., identifying the relevant actors and how they are structured, and developing propositions about what is going on” (p. 6). Wendt looks at the states system and its units, states, because it is here that violence is regulated, and violence is the key factor of international life.3 What is contested is how exactly to understand what belongs on the macro level and what on the micro level. Wendt writes that It is impossible for structures to have effects apart from their attributes and interactions of agents. If that is right, then the challenge of systemic theory is not to show that “structure” has more explanatory power than “agents”, as if the two were separate, but to show how agents are differently structured by the system so as to produce different effects. (p. 12) What Wendt is saying here is that it is the system that structures the actors. Another way of saying that is that actor identities and interests are shaped by the interactions within, that is, endogenously to the system. Interaction in a system makes units what they are “the construction of actors . . . is one of the most important things a structure can explain” (p. 16). The system holds out certain subject positions for states to play, for example that of a small state. And saying that is to say that the system’s structure is defined first by its “distributions of knowledge” and by its distribution of actor capabilities (material factors) only second (p. 20).4 Regardless of material factors, then, a state may go on to accept or reject the subject position that the system holds out for it. What is distinctive for holism, then, is to endogenies’ identities and interests and ascribe changes in them to changes in structure (that is, to changes in the distribution of knowledge, see p. 27). The precondition is that units are selforganising. As Wendt puts the point, “individualist ontology is not equipped to deal with the constitutive effects of cultural structure” (p. 42). Causal construction, however, may be handled by individualism. Individualists will then call identity and interests ‘preferences’ and look at how these change causally as a result of interaction (e.g., more stress on survival and acquiring military hardware). Wendt draws on scientific realism (scientific because it embraces unobservables and so goes beyond common sense realism) to put ontology before epistemology: What scientific realists claim is that the behavior of things is influenced by self-organizing, mind-independent structures that constitute those things with certain intrinsic powers and dispositions. Discovering those structures is what science is all about. . . . whether an object has an internal, selforganizing structure should be treated as an empirical question, not ruled out a priori by epistemological scepticism.5 (p. 64)

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Causal reference involves two stages: first, a baptism/naming, then the spread of the name by social learning. The first step in becoming a small state is to be named one by others, then there is negotiation. The key move made by Wendt is to add constitutive explanation to causal explanation. This can be done only by endogenising agents to the social process (p. 367). On the level of the state/unit, materialists treat the difference that ideas make as only causal: ideas (and interests) are seen by materialists as intermediate variables between actors and outcomes. Wendt acknowledges that interests and ideas play such a causal role but then goes on to focus on how ideas also constitute social situations and the meaning of material forces. On the level of the system, individualists treat the difference that systems make as a question of “interaction” between independently existing entities. [That is, system and agents.] They ask “to what extent do structures produce agents (or vice-versa)?” This too is a causal question, and it captures an important aspect of the difference that structures make. However, social structures also constitute actors with certain identities and interests. (p. 78) That is, a specific system will have a specific structure, which will produce not just generic actors, but specific kinds of actors, such as small states. Small states will have inevitably to vie with the idea on the systems level that some states are small. Waltz postulates a distribution of material capabilities—to what degree material capabilities are concentrated—as the structure that does all the work. This is fine, for although material capabilities grow out of units, their distribution has effects on the system level, so they are definitely structural (p. 99). The two effects noted by Waltz are security-seeking and self-help; if units do not maximise these, they are selected out of the system (i.e., states die). Wendt smells a rat here. In terms of evolution, it should be units and not behaviour that are selected out. If we were to apply this to small states, we would expect small states to be selected out, regardless of how they behave. That is, however, not what we see in today’s system.6 Wendt’s chapter 4 establishes the ideational face of a system’s structure and the effects it may have. This face (element) is joined by two others: material structure and structure of interests. In IR, the discussion concerns which of the two former elements dominates the last one. By ideational structure Wendt means the distribution of knowledge, with knowledge being what actors hold to be true (a sociological usage, to be distinguished from the philosophical one that knowledge is justified true belief). Knowledge can be private (held by one party only); common, that is, social, in that involved parties take account of one another’s knowledge: “Even if states’ private beliefs are completely exogenous to the international system, . . . when aggregated across interacting states they become an emergent, systemic phenomenon in the same way that aggregate material capabilities are a systemic phenomenon” (p. 141). It can also be common and connected, that is, socially shared, in which case we call it a culture.7 Only holists work on the last possibility, for “individualists say structure can be reduced to the properties and

The graded agency of small states 53 interactions of agents; holists say that structure has irreducible emergent properties” (p. 143), that is they have something that does not cause but constitutes agents by changing agents’ internal properties—that is, their ideas and so their interests. The relationship of this ‘something’ to ideas and interests is supervenience, that is a non-causal, non-reductive relationship of ontological dependency of one class of facts on another. . . . these relationships are constitutive, not causal; the supervenience claim is not that . . . social structures are caused by . . . agents, but that in one sense they are those things’ (p. 156) Note that supervenience means that a structural phenomenon may be multiply realised on the unit level, so that, say, anarchy may instantiate differently in systems sporting it. This is the key issue at the heart of the book, and Wendt sees it as an empirical question. In addition to multiple realisability, there are various other reasons why macro and micro will most often stand in a relationship of supervenience rather than reduction, including “because the extent to which a given unit-level attribute can affect a system depends on its distribution and frequency in the system; and because the interaction of parts often has unintended consequences” (p. 365). Structure, that is, the distribution of material and knowledge, has two layers: macro and micro, where the micro level consists of interaction. This means that Wendt endogenises interaction in structure, which Buzan et al. (1993) do not. The reason for this is that “interaction may have emergent effects that are not predicted by properties alone” (p. 145).8 The conception of the macro level, which is Wendt’s and constructivism’s addition to extant theorising, he suggests that we think of “in terms of Durkheim’s idea of ‘collective’ representations or knowledge. Like the macro-/micro relation more generally, collective knowledge supervenes on but is not reducible to common knowledge, and as such has a reality that is sui generis” (p. 159). At the systems level (as distinct from the unit/state level), at which common knowledge is a micro phenomenon, whereas collective knowledge is a macro phenomenon. Common knowledge exists in people’s heads and is also intersubjective— states know that other states have it and need to take that into account. It is reducible to beliefs and has no existence beyond that. This is important, because it means that this kind of knowledge has no durability in time: it changes every time a belief changes. It can therefore not be the basis for the collective memory that is constitutive of phenomena like ‘the Westphalian system’ and ‘states’. Only collective knowledge, which is not reducible to, but supervenient on, the beliefs of such units can do that (p. 162). So a state may try to argue from its own common knowledge that it is not a small state, only to be trumped by the collective knowledge on the level of the system that it is. As Wendt puts it, “the important idea with respect to collective knowledge is its explanatory autonomy” (p. 164). Like all macro-phenomena, collective representations need to be instantiated on the micro level: “Collective representations are ‘frequency-dependent’ in that they depend for their existence on a sufficient number of representations and/or behaviors at the micro-level” (p. 264).

54 Iver B. Neumann Note also that any supervenient phenomenon is multiply realisable on the structural micro level (interactions) as well as on the unit level (states). For example, any Norwegian will know what ‘celebrating Christmas’ is, and that belief will be constitutive of what ‘Norway’ is, but that does not mean that all families eat the same, at the same time, or have a Christmas tree, identically decorated. This is crucial for our understanding of states, for states’ beliefs, like other groups’ beliefs, “are often inscribed in ‘collective memory’, the myths, narratives, and traditions that constitute who a group is and how it relates to others” (p. 163). Both macro-structure and micro-structure have two kinds of systemic effects on units/states. Causal effects interact with structure and are co-determinative. Constitutive effects cannot be a question of interaction, since there are no independently existing entities that can interact. Instead, structure and agent are conceptually dependent on one another, and effects are mutually constitutive or co-constitutive. Individualists can by definition only relate to co-determinative effects, for they do not accept that such a thing as mutual constitutivity in terms of supervenience exists (p. 166). Individualists can be fine with social construction, as long as it is exclusively causal. For example, symbolic interactionists hypothesise that “actors learn identities and interests as a result of how significant others treat them” (p. 171). Inversely, hardcore holists (say, poststructuralists) cannot relate to causal structural effects, for they do not recognise agents as self-organising and free-standing in relation to structure, only as effects of structure (p. 167). Wendt acknowledges that there is a possible contradiction in acknowledging both a duality and a dualism, both causal co-determination and co-constitution between agent and structure. He wants both, however, and gives two reasons: first, he wants agents because “no matter how much the meaning of an individual’s thought is socially constituted, all that matters for explaining his behavior is how matters seem to him” (p. 180). Second, he needs individuals as a bridge between culture and behaviour: what is the mechanism by which culture moves a person’s body, if not through the mind or Self? (p. 180). This point can be generalised: A purely constitutive analysis of intentionality is inherently static, giving us no sense of how agents and structures interact through time. (pp. 181, 185) Even though agents and social structures are mutually constitutive and codetermined, the mechanism through which this occurs, the first cause of social life, is what actors do. (p. 342) This echoes the critique of discourse analysis for not being able to explain change. Wendt describes what he is doing here as drawing a “distinction between individualism per se and its social terms” and maintains that “the challenge for social scientists is to disentangle what is intrinsically social about agents from what is not, and to maintain that distinction in our subsequent theorising about the ‘structure’ of social systems” (pp. 183–4).

The graded agency of small states 55 So what is gained by establishing a specific category called constitutive effects of macro-structure? Philosophers explain the possibility of co-constitutive effects—the view that the structural phenomenon of culture (common and collective knowledge) constitutes units—by an externalist theory of mind and language. Wendt adds two social science examples in which he contrasts a state’s system in which might is recognised as right with one in which it is not. First, as an example of behaviour, he takes the US action towards Haiti in 1995 and notes that: What makes the statement that the US “intervened” in Haiti in 1995 true, and that it “aggressed against” Haiti false is not a difference in behavior or even in US beliefs, but in the (system-level) cultural context in which it took place. In the contemporary international system it is the community of states which owns the meaning of “intervention” (although it may be contested). A world in which no such shared belief existed would sustain different counterfactuals about US intentionality. This is the key insight of an externalist approach to mental contents. (p. 177) This is acutely important to small states like Haiti, which will by definition have fewer material capabilities than great ones, for it means that how states think about aggression on the structural level of collective knowledge is a resource that small states can use to forestall aggression. Second, difference in the identity of hegemon: In the system where the dominant state is legitimate, it will be empowered by the community of states to perform the functions of, and thus literally be, a “hegemon”. In the other system, where the dominant state’s intentions have a strictly internal basis, other states will attribute to it the identity of “bully” or “imperialist”, and cooperate with its policies only when bludgeoned or bribed. (p. 177) Note that both these systems run on the principle of anarchy, yet their collective knowledge or cultures will be different. Regardless of system, the rules governing social life and social life itself co-constitute one another, so that a given culture becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thus, this mechanism explains how small states are what the system makes of them. For Wendt, [t]he essential state is an organizational actor embedded in an institutionallegal order that constitutes it with sovereignty and a monopoly on the legitimate use of organized violence over a society in a territory . . . whose form is constituted in relation to the society it governs by a structure of political authority. (pp. 213, 243)

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So there are five properties as a minimum for states: an institutional legal order; an organisation claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence (two effects of such centralisation are that a threat to one state organ is a threat to all and that state organs cannot settle their differences by force; a state is a security community); sovereignty; a society (“people have shared knowledge that induces them to follow most of the rules of their society most of their time”, and boundaries exist; p. 209) and territory. The only point that needs further explication here is sovereignty. For Wendt, sovereignty is about being recognised by society as having authority. Sovereignty, then, is not located in a person but is a property of the organisational structure that constitutes the state as a corporate agent. In addition to such internal sovereignty, a state needs external sovereignty. Wendt insists, however, that in Hobbesian international systems states may claim external sovereignty, but others do not recognize it as a right; external sovereignty is de facto or “empirical” only. Sovereignty is intrinsic to the state, not contingent. Empirical statehood can exist without juridical statehood. (pp. 208–9) This is because states are, in a real sense, actors. This is key for small states, for as long as there is actor capability enough to be self-organised, Wendt recognises no lower limit on properties for a unit to be counted as a state. Wendt discusses two examples of the causal powers of anarchic structure: the variation question and the construction question.9 The variation question concerns whether there exists only one logic of anarchy, as Waltz holds, or more than one. If anarchical structures construct their units, and these structures vary at the macrolevel, then they may be multiply realisable on the micro-level. There may be more than one culture (distribution of shared knowledge) of anarchy. The construction question regards how these cultures will be internalised by its carriers: superficially, by force; strategically, by reward; or fully, by legitimacy. Only the third degree of internalisation makes a norm constitutive of actors (p. 273).10 Wendt’s model of how structure constitutes agents is built on a culture’s “terms of individuality”. Note that states will seek to preserve their individuality, but that this does not preclude them from changing their terms of individuality (p. 364). From a small-states perspective, it is here that Wendt makes his most important argument, as follows: role structure is a key part of a system and may be defined as “the configuration of subject positions that shared ideas make available to its holders” (p. 257). A role is filled by an actor. However, these actors can and will change while the role will remain. This means that role is a phenomenon on the level of structure (while a certain actor’s understanding of the role that it plays, its role-identity, is on the other hand a phenomenon on the level of the agent).11 Wendt gives an example: [I]n the nineteenth century, Great Britain played the role of “balancer” in Great-Power politics, but that was a property of the social structure of the

The graded agency of small states 57 Concert of Europe, not Great Britain. Had no state filled that role the structure might not have survived. (p. 259)

large

We may draw up a simple two by two, as follows: Wendt is particularly interested in three roles—enemy, rival, and friend—that he sees as key roles for generalised Others in three different structures that may exist in international systems and that he names Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian. These cultures have different effects for small states, for they ascribe gradually less importance to military capabilities and so are gradually more beneficial as seen from small states. For Wendt, “the deep structure of an international system is formed by the shared understandings governing organized violence” (p. 313). It follows that “knowing which of these cultures dominates is the first thing we need to know about a particular anarchic system, and will enable us to make sense in turn of the role that power and interest play within it” (p. 310). A Hobbesian system has states casting one another as enemies, and “violence between enemies has no internal limits” (p. 261). “As more and more members of a system represent each other as enemies, a ‘tipping point’ is reached at which these representations take over the logic of the system” (p. 264). Hobbesian systems display four tendencies: war is endemic; there is hefty elimination of actors; actors will balance one another to stay in business; and it is very difficult for units to remain neutral. Hobbesian systems like the Ancient Greek one are bad news for small states, which will be the ones that are eliminated and which are the ones that stand to gain most from neutrality. To realists, all systems are Hobbesian and run

Norway

States other than small

Melos

Serbia

Nauru

Israel

small

Role structure

Luxembourg

small

Role identity

large

Figure 3.1 States ordered by role (a structural attribute) and role identity (a unit attribute), with empirical examples Source: Inspired by Wendt (1999).

58 Iver B. Neumann on realpolitik. Here we have the reason why Melos is a standard realist example of the structural preconditions for small-state life. A Lockean system has units casting one another as rivals. Crucially, rivals see one another’s life and liberty as rights: “Underlying rivalry is a right to sovereignty”, which means that it is acknowledged reciprocally (p. 280). An attempt at doing so by Saddam Hussein in 1991, as the rules for a post-Cold War order were being discussed, was stopped by a coercive alliance. A Lockean system displays four tendencies: states stop short of annihilating one another; absolute gains may override relative losses; a balance of threats is still there but is less key to systems logics than in a Hobbesian system; and rivals will show self-restraint by limiting their own violence. This is good news for small states, which will have their sovereignty guaranteed. Note that the state which Saddam Hussein’s Iraq tried to annihilate was Kuwait, a small state. Lockean systems evolve a structural trait, possessive individualism (hence the term ‘LockeWendt’), which determines the terms of individualism for a state in the system. This is a particular kind of type identity, which has immediate repercussions for small states. With reference to Jackson and Rosberg’s (1982) work, Wendt notes a consequence of this, which is that it is not necessarily enough for a non-state polity to clear a territory of another state’s presence by means of physical force in order to be recognised. On the contrary, if a non-state polity self-organises to such a degree that it begins to look like a state, by dint of beginning to fit the type identity of a possessive actor, more powerful states will see them as at least potentially legitimate: In these cases empirical sovereignty seems to presuppose at least tacit recognition of juridical sovereignty rather than the other way around. This reversal of the official procedure is most obvious for failed states in Africa, but it is true of many other Small Powers as well, who were only able to exclude Great Powers because the latter did not resist. The “self-help” here, in other words, is one that depends on the restraint of the powerful, which amounts to a passive form of “other-help”. (p. 292) A Kantian system has units casting one another as friends. As I shall use the term, friendship is a role structure within which states expect each other to observe two simple rules: (1) disputes will be settled without war or the threat of war (the rule of non-violence); and (2) they will fight as a team if the security of any one is threatened by a third party (the rule of mutual aid). (p. 299) Note that, under Kantianism, anarchy seems to be constituted not only by the lacking centralisation of power but also by “the degree of authority enjoyed by the system’s norms” (p. 308).

The graded agency of small states 59 Conclusion: prototypes of small states For small states, a Kantian system is even better news than is the Lockean. Wendt himself happens to think that “the Third Degree Lockean culture is the basis for what we today take to be ‘common sense’ about international politics”, and that “in the late twentieth century . . . the international system is undergoing another structural change, to a Kantian culture of collective security” (p. 314). Empirically, Wendt highlights how, since the Congress of Vienna, the states system has evolved “a collective, second-order awareness” of how collective identity functions, which finds its expression in an emergent global public sphere (p. 375). Again, this is good news for small states, which find in it yet another playing field that is more level than the military one. On a contemporary note, this way of thinking also highlights why European small states are so willing to aid Ukraine against the Russian aggressor in the ongoing war. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that a state in the system—Ukraine—has no right to exist is a textbook example of what Wendt calls Hobbesian thinking about the states system. Given that small states have a larger stake in maturing the states system and so put a dampener on the paramount role played by material factors such as military hardware capabilities than do other states, it stands to reason that they tend to see Ukraine’s struggle as their struggle. European small states’ support to Ukraine may be read as support of a Lockean order against a Hobbesian one and is also an example of small-state agency. A Wendtian approach to small-state agency and the definition of small states focuses on how collective, systems-level knowledge about what a small state is interacts with small-state agency itself to yield a specific kind of agency for each and every small state within a system. The resulting picture is one graded agency, with two bookends. On the one hand, we have a situation where a small state does little or nothing to demonstrate its agency. The result is a small state with absolutely minimal agency. A contemporary example might be Nauru. On the other hand, we have states that refuse to be interpellated into the small state subject position that the system’s collective knowledge holds out for it to fill. A contemporary example of this would be Serbia (Nielsen, 2022). Between these two bookends we find states that accept their smallness, which will have a graded degree of agency. So far, so good. There is clearly value to importing Wendtian thinking into Small-State Studies, for it deepens our understanding of how small states emerge and how to think about their agency. It does that by dint of factoring in non-material elements, factors that have been wilfully left out by small-state scholars who have drawn on material systems theories. However, we may press on and ask exactly what Wendt terms the system’s collective knowledge about small states consists of. Specifically, we may ask not only whether there exists a category of small states— it clearly does—but whether there also exist categories within that category. As noted in the introduction, we need not go further than Small-State Studies itself to find an affirmative answer. There exists a view that small states are hapless pushovers, and there exists a view that small states may (or may not) play important roles in specific fields. If we think within the standard tradition that reaches from Aristotle up till today, these views are not categories, for they do not have

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distinct boundaries and are not mutually exclusive. However, if we don’t think in Aristotelian terms but turn to the major philosophical challenger to the Aristotelian concept of categories, namely Prototype Theory, a different picture emerges. Prototype was inspired by Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblances, which postulated that family members are “fuzzy sets” defined not by one or more specific trait but by vague similarities that shade over one into the other. Prototype Theory (see, e.g., Rosch, 1973, 1999; Lakoff, 1987) is predicated on the idea that categorisation is a graded process, where some units are seen as more typical of the category than others. Note the overlap with post-structural method: categories can never be fully separate, but will always bleed into one another, and there will always be hierarchies between and within categories (‘human’ as being distinct from animals and machines and containing hierarchies pertaining to gender, ethnicity, etc.). For example, as a social fact, an eagle has a longer history and a higher number of family resemblances to a prototypical bird than does, say, a penguin, and it will therefore be more representative of that category. The same goes for small states. If we reconsider the two by two (Figure 3.1), I think we may immediately spot that two of the four possibilities of what a small state may be strike us as prototypical. There is, first, the prototype of the state that considers itself small and comes up short in the distribution of material resources and knowledge within the system. The archetype is Melos; contemporary examples are many, including Nauru, certain Caribbean island states (Braveboy-Wagner, 2008) and perhaps The Ivory Coast. Then there is the prototype of the state that considers itself small, but that is actually doing quite well on one or more types of material or knowledge capability. Luxembourg would make for a good example due to its banking; Nordic small states would also fit comfortably here. Nepal would have a claim due to its specialisation in military prowess. The possession of a produced or naturally occurring item that is vital to the world economy may qualify, in which Gabon with its near monopoly on accessible reserves of manganese would fit the savvy prototype. While structural and prototype theories cannot clinch the perhaps intractable question of how to define a small state, then, they can at least give us an informed account of why it would be wrong to limit the category to agency-less Meloses. The undertaking of excavating small-state agency can take heart from Wendt’s insistence that a system’s collective knowledge of what constitutes a small state can be changed, not least by small states themselves. Such an undertaking is nonetheless up against fairly steep odds, for, barring some specific claim to agency, the present world system’s default view of a small state still seems to be that of a hapless, agency-less unit. Notes 1 Historically, the origins of the category may be traced back to the Congress of Vienna, where those states that sat on all the Congress’s committees were considered great, those that sat on one or a few were middle powers, and those without any committee memberships at all, small (Neumann & Gstöhl, 2006). 2 In what follows, all page numbers refer to Wendt (1999) unless otherwise stated.

The graded agency of small states 61 3 Wendt draws directly on Bhaskar here; see Collier (1994, p. 117). 4 All this contra Waltz. The view that interaction is part of structure is taken from Buzan et al. (1993), but they hold that interaction is unstructured (not dependent on identities and interests), whereas Wendt thinks that it is structured. 5 This implies that we should think about reference by science to kinds as causal. That is, not descriptive like empiricists. Not relational, as poststructuralists would have it, for it cannot account for “the resistance of the world” to certain representations (Wendt, 1999, p. 56). 6 Wendt also smells a rat regarding the claim that Waltz’s model is transhistorical. Wendt demonstrates it by varying the effect of ‘security-seeking’. If states were revisionist, they would seek more than security; they would also like to conquer more territory and gain more sway. However, Waltz presupposes that states are always security-seeking, and this amounts to making “an assumption about the distribution of interests in the system as a whole” (p. 107). So, the area of validity of Waltz’s model is not transhistorical, as Waltz himself claims, for it pertains only to a world of security-seeking states which does not exhaust the logical and historical possibilities. While generally important, this does not pertain specifically to small states, so need not detain us further here. 7 Wendt gives an example to underline the difference: both Spaniards and Aztecs had slavery, which means that they shared that phenomenon. However, since the two versions had developed independently and were reciprocally unknown, that is, not connected, the two parties did not share a culture, see also Wendt (1999, p. 158). 8 Interaction theory is therefore about more than property theory. There exist nonstructural theories in IR, that is, theories that explain outcomes only by a state’s attributes (properties and belief). These are called atomist and are to be distinguished from individualist theories, which simply assume that individuals are ontologically distinct from structure. 9 Note that it is structure, not anarchy, that does the work here, for “Anarchy is a nothing, and nothings cannot be structures” (Wendt, 1999, p. 309). 10 Contra Bull and the English School, any one culture may be internalised to any one degree; it is not the case that the more shared culture—the more shared knowledge grows—the more cooperation. Contra Waltz, “Conflict is no more evidence for materialism than cooperation is for idealism” (Wendt, 1999, pp. 253, 255). 11 Foreign policy role theory, on the contrary, treats role exclusively as a phenomenon on the unit level, but see Walker (2007) and Thies (2009). Note that this holds only on the level of micro-structure, that is, on the level of interaction, and not on the level of macro-structure (and that since realists do not acknowledge the macro level, they do not acknowledge the structural aspect of role).

References Baldacchino, G. (2018). Editorial: mainstreaming the study of small states and territories. Small States & Territories 1(1), 3–16. Baldacchino, G. & Wivel, A. (2020). Small states: concepts and theories. In G. Baldacchino & A. Wivel (Eds.), Handbook on the Politics of Small States (pp. 2–19). Edward Elgar Publishing. Braveboy-Wagner, J. (2008). Small States in Global Affairs: The Foreign Policies of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Palgrave Macmillan. Buzan, B.; Jones, C. & Little, R. (1993). The Logic of Anarchy. Columbia University Press. Collier, A. (1994). Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy. Verso. Fox, A. B. (1959). The Power of Small States: Diplomacy in World War II. University of Chicago Press. Harden, S. (1985). Small Is Dangerous: Micro States in a Macro World. Frances Pinter.

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Jackson, R. & Rosberg, C. (1982). Why Africa’s states persist: the juridical and the empirical in statehood. World Politics 35(1), 1–24. Kassim, Y. R. (2012). S5 vs. P5: The Rise of the Small States? RSIS Commentaries 187/2012. S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/CO12187.pdf (accessed April 20, 2021). Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. University of Chicago Press. Maass, M. (2009). The elusive definition of the small state. International Politics 46(1), 65–83. Neumann, I. B. & Gstöhl, S. (2006). Introduction: Lilliputians in Gulliver’s world? In C. Ingebritsen, I. B. Neumann, S. Gstöhl & J. Beyer (Eds.), Small States in International Relations (pp. 3–36). University of Washington Press. Nielsen, C. A. (2022). “Whoever says that Serbia is small is lying!” Serbia, ontological (in)security and the unbearable smallness of being. In S. Kruizinga (Ed.), The Politics of Smallness in Modern Europe. Size, Identity and International Relations since 1800 (pp. 133–50). Bloomsbury Academic. Rosch, E. H. (1973). Natural categories. Cognitive Psychology 7(4), 328–50. Rosch, E. H. (1999). Principles of categorization. In E. Margolis & S. Laurence (Eds.), Concepts: Core Readings (pp. 89–206). MIT Press. Thies, C. G. (2009). Role Theory and Foreign Policy. International Studies Association Compendium Project, Foreign Policy Analysis Section. www.isanet.org/compendium_ sections/2007/06/foreign_policy_.html (accessed April 20, 2021). Walker, S. G. (2007). Generalizing about security strategies in the Baltic Sea region. In O. F. Knudsen (Ed.), Security Strategies, Power Disparity, and Identity: The Baltic Sea Region (pp. 149–76). Ashgate. Waltz, K. (1979). Theory of International Politics. Addison-Wesley. Wendt, A. (1999). Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press. Wivel, A. & Paul, T. V. (2019). International Institutions and Power Politics: Bridging the Divide. Georgetown University Press.

Part II

Agency The art of being governed by one’s own interests Agency, in a narrow sense, refers to the ability to take action or to choose what action needs to be taken in response to security questions. Theories of agency recognise that human beings make choices, have intentions, or exert power— individually or collectively—for instance, through the work of an administrative division or a government department that is responsible for a particular activity. Mainstream definitions characterise ‘statehood’ as a centralised political organisation that imposes rules and enforces laws over a population within a territory which distinguish the rulers from the ruled in a circumscribed environment of autonomy, stability, and social differentiation. As such, the state as an establishment can engage in doing business in the name of its citizens and for other states. In multilateral environments, small states can in particular unfold activities to secure their status and security in international relations. Often, they are the frontrunners of alliances and regional initiatives past and present. In the first contribution of this section, Thomas Kolnberger makes the case for ‘extantism’ as an example of what might be called ‘passive agency’. Historically, the waxing and waning of the numbers of small states forced big players to deal with such recurring political environments. This kind of agency created structural constraints for all concerned and at the same time offered loopholes for active agency on the part of the weak. Eberhard Crailsheim applies concepts of SmallState Studies to another historical case study to point to the ‘active’ agency of an under-resourced peripheral sub-national jurisdiction within an Early Modern empire. Edith Kauffer deals with the geographical fait accompli of a post-colonial small state bordering on three regions, an unusual configuration which actually facilitated small-state behaviour. Three case studies presented by Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet demonstrate how different security policies of small states preserve their very own respective interests.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-6

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Forever small? A longue durée perspective on Luxembourg’s extantism, governance, and security Thomas Kolnberger

In terms of sheer numbers, the small to middle state is the prevalent type of global statehood today. Most of these “Small States and Territories” (SSTs) have emerged only recently and in the wake of the decolonisation process after the Second World War (Lake & O’Mahony, 2004). Still, macro-syntheses of history setting out to reveal long-term patterns of ‘smallness’ are very popular (see, e.g., Duursma, 1996; Klieger, 2014; Simpson, 2014). Such contributions usually offer a narrative of historical events or a teleologically biased review of the past. They tend to overlook the fact that in the past no future was certain. The destiny of a country for largeness or smallness was not manifest, and its contingency remained open-ended (Keating, 2015, p. 19). One key question of the volume’s concept addresses the coexistence and codependence of vulnerability and opportunity related to small-state size; another addresses the ability of small states to adapt to shifting security paradigms. In my analysis, the one major adaptation to shifting security affairs concerns the emergence of small and even smallest nation-states that was based on a certain blueprint: European-type nation building. This, first of all defensive modernisation made not only Luxembourg ‘fit’ for participation in the very first wave of internationalisation in Europe: the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe. This development also made small states in ‘old’ Europe quite different from newly emergent small states. This may also serve as proof that any quest for small-state definitions across history and geography is bound to turn into a Sisyphean task. The coexistence of vulnerable small states, particularly the German states of the former Holy Roman Empire, made shelter-seeking the only realistic option, albeit by means of a proto-typical ‘regionalism’ in the shape of an alliance. The German Confederation narrowed down the security dilemma of German small states by reinforcing policies aimed at protecting physical security and territorial integrity as a collective security agenda. Paradoxically, it was the mere existence of a number of small and even micro-states that ‘forced’ the hand of the Great Powers with regard to security guarantees. Keeping this in mind, I propose in this chapter to adopt a longue durée approach to looking at Luxembourg ‘pre-state’, precisely because it allows me to explore contingencies and potentialities. I will present the security governance of the county (later duchy) during the Middle Ages and of the province of Luxembourg DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-7 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

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as part of the Habsburg composite monarchy during the Early Modern Era before examining the Grand Duchy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—without positing any continuity between these entities. This long-term perspective will enable mixed patterns and sequences of security governance in Luxembourg to be discerned. They will be discussed in trans- and international contexts in the sense of activities between individuals and groups of different entities (state, nation, estates) on the one hand and relations between official representatives of such units on the other. The theoretical framework used here is that of ‘extantism’, which I shall explain in the following section, before presenting the changes and continuities in Luxembourg’s security governance. The rise and fall of small states—tides of numbers On a statistical base, Matthias Maass (2017) was able, in accordance with findings of other research in European history and world politics, to identify two major ‘tides’: the first such wave began in 1648 (The Peace of Westphalia) and led to a rise in numbers of up to 427 small states (and 19 large ones) in Europe, followed by a ‘mass-extinction’ (Kaegi, 1942) 150 years later during the Age of Revolution, particularly after the French Revolution of 1789. Overshadowed by the Napoleonic Empire, the number had dropped to 77 in 1813, the lowest number to that date. In a second global tide, a stepwise upswing occurred after the two world wars: from 50 small states in 1945 to 106 in 1973 with numbers slowly rising to a provisional total of over 250 recognised by the United Nations, at present. While Maass is not comparing apples with oranges in the survey, he clearly uses pears—from the same plant family (pomaceaous fruits) but of quite different shapes and tastes—for his transhistorical collation. What makes things intriguing for a historian is not so much the rise and fall of petty powers but the fact that even under very different sociopolitical conditions small, smaller, and even micro-political units were part of the system. Like their Political Science colleagues, historians of International Relations (IR) across all periods mostly prefer to investigate big players—in other words, the emergence, decline, or collapse of empires, nations, and great powers. The persistency or renaissance of small polities, even of those embedded in empires, was not given the same attention, except for the writing of their own national history and narratives. This is due to thinking in benchmarks (of bigness) and deviations: incompleteness of sovereignty or lack of power, found in smallness. Thus, and contrary to a (neo)realistic view such as that of Keohane (1969), who regards small states as ‘system-ineffectual’ because they adapt to circumstances whilst these circumstances do not depend on them, I argue that small units have always been an integral and system-shaping part of international relations: their ‘extantism’, their mere existence—to give a preliminary definition—was necessary and has been a precondition to bringing order into anarchy, because, to paraphrase Alexander Wendt (1992), anarchy is what states make of it independently of their size. Two historical contexts may help to illustrate my point: to neutralise causes of disagreement, states like Luxembourg were regarded as ‘system-irrelevant’. In

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maintaining the political order as a balance of big-power politics in nineteenthcentury Europe, the great powers agreed on collective security guarantees of nonintervention. However, pushing such neutralised countries out of the game granted smaller states room for manoeuvre; the ‘agency’ needed for their own course was set for full sovereignty. It was this system-stabilising strategy and concerted action that made small states system-relevant in the first place and elevated small states to the rank of players in their own right. After the Second World War, and across all ideological divides of the Cold War, East and West agreed on the necessity of, and the right to, decolonisation. This proclaimed right for self-determination of new states, independently of their capabilities and as legal fiction, created ‘affordance’—the compulsion to take action. The subsequent competition of East and West for fellowship with even the tiniest state to cope with this new extantism was systemic. A global struggle for influence between the two superpowers over smaller and smallest states ranging from development aid to proxy war unfolded. The concept of extantism denotes this affordance of political entities, irrespective of their size, as action possibilities. These depend not only on capabilities but also on goals, beliefs, and experience. Such opportunities for action present themselves not as a one-way and top-down but as a two-way-process as systemic drivers. Extantism as a concept for Small-State Studies While the discussion around the definition of ‘What is a small state?’ may be relevant when analysing a narrow period, in particular Late Modern times, it turns into an unmerry-go-round question if one adopts a deeper historical perspective: states are not ahistorical entities; their features change. Therefore, understanding smallness as a relative and relational category seems to best serve not only IR but also Small-State Studies (Baldacchino & Wivel, 2020; Wivel et al., 2014). However, there are limits to this approach. In classificatory relations of similarity and difference, things (in our case, states) cannot be known except through the relations of their properties. This constitutes a time-bound paradox: a relation, say ‘big to small’, is determined by the features of this very comparison, its relata, which are not absolute but fluid (MacBride, 2020). The only ‘absolute’ property is their existence per se. Extantism builds on the simple fact that existence precedes essence, the properties of a thing. In other words, the reality of states antedates the need to problematise features such as ‘too small’ or ‘large’. This discussion is contextdependent and has its own historiographic past in IR Studies and in the political debate. So far, definitions of small states in this field have been decisionistic: it was not the content of the definition that determined its validity but rather the fact that the definition was made by the proper authority or by using an academically accepted method. To all intents and purposes, these definitions operated as working hypotheses in a pragmatic and time-related field, which may turn out to be anachronistic for another period (Baldacchino & Wivel, 2020). To circumvent such self-referencing, I want to point to the pure existence of polities and their impact on

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environment

historical

security governance in the first place: in a systemic feedback, the sequence of the loop is as essential as the components, as illustrated by Figure 4.1. In the second place, I call into question the anachronistic use of ‘state’ and ‘sovereignty’ in IR Studies. In the past, size mattered, too, of course, but this and other state-related properties and capabilities (population, perception of sovereignty, state of military force or diplomatic activities, etc.) were as relative and context-sensitive as in current affairs. In the following line of argument, I further expand on extantism. In other words, what may appear to be a self-evident truth today, namely that all states are equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, only emerged at a certain period in time. What this turning point was or whether there were repeated trends in favour of such extantism of small and smallest political units in the past, is one question to be answered. So, back to the roots of the neologism. In view of the proliferation of small and micro-states in the age of decolonisation, Bernard Schaffer, a researcher in Development Studies who coined the term in question, concluded that “the formal status of independence tends to be maintained by the ideology of ‘extantism’—the support for already existing nationstates, while formal independence itself helps to improve a country’s score on the dependence/independence scale” (1975, p. 24). Schaffer’s perception was nurtured by the general political climate in support of smaller and even micro-states after the Second World War. Looking further back into history, we can discern tides, a

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Figure 4.1 Agency and structure of extantism in international relations Source: Created by Author. Note: Extantism of small polities affords action by larger polities resulting in the co-creation of subsequent historical environments, which may favour or disfavour the persistency or change of small polities. ‘History’ is the contingent iteration process while the historical system structures the actors.

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waxing and waning of such smaller and smallest political units. I prefer ‘units’ to ‘states’ to encompass quite different qualities of modern and absolutist states as well as political entities in composite ‘feudal’ or absolutist monarchies. In a fundamentalist reading of (neo)realism, polity (‘the state’) and politics are conflated into autonomous ‘like units’, that face similar tasks: “Anarchy entails relations of coordination among a system’s units, and that implies their sameness. [S]o long as anarchy endures, states remain like units” (Waltz, 1979, pp. 93–5). To sum up extantism as concept: asking when and under what circumstances smallness persists in the first place can bridge different time periods better than ‘whatness’ (‘What is a small state?’, ‘What is its essence?’) as a supposed lowest common denominator. Second, extantism is not prejudicing any quality in a system but points to the fact that ‘big’ and ‘small’ mutually define each other. This approach is non-essentialist and in opposition to the view that collective singulars (in this case, subjects of international law) have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity or to be identified as such. Third, political actors, that is, the question of who is entitled ‘to do security’, change. Their role and legitimacy derive from very different historical backgrounds: a Roman nobleman, an Early Modern absolutist monarch, and the government as collective organ of the executive branch of a nation-state democracy are functionally incommensurable; they are not neutral operators on neutral and transtemporal levers of power. That would be a functionalistic disillusion, because they shape function in the very way they fulfil it (and vice versa, actors are shaped by these man-made structures). Fourth, and contrary to Schaffer, reasons for extantism go far beyond ‘ideology’, understood as a political belief system, because practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones in IR. Extantism is not the coincidental coexistence of big and small, it is system-driven. (Or, is it even the driving force and primemover of the system?) Last but not least, extantism in my understanding also goes beyond Bartmann’s positivistic use, “once a state, always a state”, because of the systemic interplay of affordance and agency (Bartmann, 2002, p. 366, compare Baldacchino & Wivel, 2020, p. 2). Extantism is a systemic approach where ‘small and big’ continuously regenerate and realise a network of relations that produce and define them. This historical environment is not absolute (‘ahistorical’) but a “specific spatio-temporal context” (Thorhallsson & Wivel, 2006, p. 654) for a certain length of time. Its contingency may change fundamentally at critical junctures. In this volume and in extension of the time horizon of this chapter, André Linden presents just such an end of an old and the beginning of a new ‘era’ of Luxembourg’s security in the 1940s. In the following section, I will read Luxembourg’s history in retrospective—the only way we can investigate and try to understand the past. Doing so, I will discuss development from the point of view of extantism in “multistable perception”:1 small states have to adapt but so do great powers; the same common political environment shapes small and great powers.

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Why Luxembourg as case study? Luxembourg merits a classification as an archetypal small state. Its territory has been continuously landlocked, in contrast to small-island polities. The geographical character of islands with natural borders accentuates not only their distinctiveness as communities but also their “insularity” (Baldacchino, 2010, p. 53). Deep-blue-sea borders in particular have made a political division in history, with a few exceptions (such as Haiti/Dominican Republic) rather unlikely. Luxembourg has never experienced such ‘islandness’ and border protection (or perception as a ‘natural unit’). Arend Lijphart’s (1971) notion of an interpretive and theory-conforming case study is the rationale of the following account of Luxembourg’s continental persistency in two sections. In this account, I make explicit use of established propositions of Small-State theory by applying them to history before the existence of the nation-state to show that smallness is neither ahistorical nor an ‘invention’ of modernity. Section I: Luxembourg’s lands before the Grand Duchy Siegfried (ca. 922–998), a descendant of Charlemagne and member of the House of Ardennes, acquired a small castle, the Lucilinburhuc which gave its name to the market town and later to the count(r)y. During the European Middle Ages and well into the Early Modern Era, the governance and security of the surrounding lands of that stronghold followed the logic of a proprietary princedom, better known as a ‘proprietary kingship’. Any political interaction of such a social system meant that public and, a fortiori, foreign policy was conducted in the name not of raison d’état or the national interest, but of dynastic interests [and] social relations of international intercourse were largely identical with the “private” family affairs of monarchs. (Teschke, 2009, p. 222) That system entailed political marriages and, inevitably, wars of succession. Lordship diplomacy and empire-building worked as an enlargement of the heritable estates of a dynasty (‘Hausmachtpolitik’) via networking for alliances with either deep personal, albeit extra-familial, bonds (‘feudal’ allegiance and vassalic relations) or loose(r) coalitions (amicitiae, pacta). You could also buy or pawn lord or townships, including the rights over their inhabitants whilst performing reciprocal duties at the same time. Wars of feudal expansion were another means and were particularly prevalent at the periphery of the Christian world. Armed commercial interest of mercantile republics completes the picture. However, it is no coincidence that the modern word state derives from ‘estate’ (landed and personal property). ‘State’ at these times meant, first of all, the quality of the status of the associated persons and their relationship in The Estates of a realm or lordship, that is, the assembly of the landlords and patrician families.

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These non-permanent parlements were basically theatres for negotiations, the parler/parlay for the self-interest of their members, and not a legislative government body of popular representation. These inner circles of the powerful acted in a collective manner mainly to check the ambitions of their overlords, particularly in questions of taxation and warfare. In the checks and balances of the period, even the mightiest monarchs could find themselves ‘entrapped’ by the interests of their peers as an encircled king or queen with marginal room for manoeuvres. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795) was such a tight aristocratic republic, just to give one prominent example. Monarchs and princes were, politically speaking, not ‘heads of state’ but primus inter pares: co-rulers and co-proprietors in a polycentric political world with parcelled sovereignty. Some, like the Holy Roman Emperor, enjoyed the highest charisma while most people were filling the lower ranks on the successive order of prestige down to the commons and non-eligible poor. Great, small, or miniscule power was related to persons and their ability to mobilise resources (a fellowship) and not to a certain territorial government. Even in the face of the eliminatory competition for land, people, and taxes (‘feudal rent’), inter-dynastic compensation for equilibrium did not usually result in the eradication of small polities because the estates continued to work. They needed to. Thus, dynasties were ‘big’ or ‘small’— this size and their capabilities mattered and, as a general rule, it was dynasties and not their lands and estates that vanished (see, e.g., Nexon, 2009). State formation in the later Early Modern Era advanced most in regions where the monarchs did not depend anymore on co-rulers for their main prerogative, that is, foreign policy, which in turn has to be equated with war as ultima ratio. Absolutist monarchs as giant landlords over their demesne had sufficient resources at their disposal. Even a legitimate master of tax and excise of the realm nevertheless needed consent, but some ‘royalties’ were already undisputed or made into a royal monopoly. The development of Luxembourg from the lands of a lordship to a territory is quite typical. Here is an ‘executive summary’ of that history. Siegfried’s descendants soon called themselves Counts of Luxembourg. This branch of the House of Ardennes-Luxembourg died out without a male issue, and in 1136, the lands passed to a cousin of its last scion, who himself was head of another dynasty, namely Henry the Blind of the House of Namur. A political marriage secured the claim of Henry’s heiress Ermesinde. In 1308, Count Henry VII managed to achieve the ultimate elevation in prestige by first being elected King of the Romans and then being crowned in Rome as Holy Roman Emperor (the first of three provided by the House of Luxembourg). His son, John the Blind, gained the ultimate prize in 1310, when he accepted the offer of the Bohemian estates to wear the kingly crown of the richest princedom of the Sacrum Imperium Romanum in today’s Central Europe, after the royal line of the House of Přemyslid had ended there. The new royal dynasty moved their ‘headquarters’ to Prague, the centre of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, making them absentee landlords in Luxembourg. No land bridge connected these very distinct parts of their realms: the smaller one as the ‘private’ economic power base, the other as the political one. In Bohemia, John’s son Emperor Charles IV elevated Luxembourg (and his

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inheritable dynasty) to the status of a duchy in 1353. Itself a composite lordship consisting of four different counties, a marquisate and several townships, the unit became part of various composite monarchies on the next level. First as part of the Holy Roman Empire. After another succession crisis, the possessions of the Luxembourg dynasty were redistributed among their noble co-contenders. The Duchy was mortgaged to a female heiress of the extended royal household, Elisabeth of Görlitz, which created the next succession crisis. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, did not respect the deal struck with Elisabeth in 1441. He broke the contract of co-rulership in a swift military coup, actually a raid, and expelled the Duchess. The Duchy became part of the Burgundian Netherlands, then—and without going into too many details—Luxembourg was inherited by the House of Habsburg and first ruled by the ‘Western branch’ of that mighty dynasty in Austria (1506–1556); then the Duchy fell to the Spanish branch (1556–1714); then, after the War of the Spanish Succession, the lands became part of the Austrian composite monarchy (1714–1794) again. All that time, Luxembourg had been administered from three capitals in overlapping ways: first, from Brussels (for the various historical ‘Low Lands’ or Low Countries); second, from the respective residences of the ruling dynasty in Nancy, Vienna, or Madrid and, finally, from the fortress-town of Luxembourg as site of the regional provincial estates—all power-brokers following their own security governance needs and having to deal with overlapping structures in that process (see, e.g., Margue, 2013; Pauly, 2014; webpage: history.uni. lu/research-luxdynast/). Pre-state extantism—an interim summary

Raymond Aron’s widely used definition of an international system implies that the independent polities “maintain regular relations with each other [and] are all capable of being implicated in a generalised war” (1966, p. 94). Instead of a system of states, we are confronted with a system of dynasties and peer groups as an ‘international system’, bundling lands and rights to resources in their hands within layers of shared, sometimes even excluding, sovereignties. This personalised nature of politics implicated a narrow continuum between (in a literal sense) domestic and foreign, or private and public, affairs: peace (pax instituta or Landfriede) also meant putting an end to pursuing claims by resorting to the ‘private’ use of violence (feuding). Moreover, the extantism of myriads of lordships was supported, on the materialistic side, by the implicit strategy of balancing overlordships, that is persons and not states, realised as bandwagoning, balancing, free-riding, hedging, and shelter-seeking of personal ties on any level against centralised empire-building. This included collegial bodies like city magistrates with or without formal overlordship as well as ecclesiastical principalities. The constant availability of lordships, due to the rolling extinction of dynasties, particularly in cases of male succession, the reshuffle of composite lordships via marriage or incorporation by quasi-permanent and small-scale warfare stabilised the system in the core of the Christian Occident. The expansion on its periphery, from Ireland and the Peninsula to the Slavic East and into the Mediterranean,

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later even as transcontinental enlargement, contributed its share, too, by siphoning off land and rent-hungry war enterprises overseas. On the ideological side, we face an ‘international’ society of landlords and patricians as a system, which—and recalling Hedley Bull (2012)—existed because a group, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions. [A]n international society in this sense presupposes an international system, but an international system may exist that is not an international society. (p. 13) I would argue that in Bull’s sense, system and society were to be equated before the rise of the current, that is the modern nation-state. I have given this account, based on Luxembourg’s history, some space for several reasons. First, ‘international relations’ pre-existed before the rise of the state in the proper sense, and there is no gigantic floating gap in historical IR between the so-called early states and modern states—between Uruk, Athens, or Rome and ‘Westphalia’ (1648). Neither rational actors nor rational policy platforms presuppose states. Family affairs guaranteed dense foreign-affairs communication beyond diplomatic missions, envoys, and ambassadors before the rise of a permanent legation system with embassies in many more countries than the nearest important neighbourhood. Today, the term “paradiplomacy” is used to refer to that form of outreach (Alvarez, 2020). After Westphalia, taken as a waypoint, central regimes (embodied by the prince) had succeeded in widening what I earlier in this chapter called the continuum of domestic and foreign (and of private and public) affairs by excluding intermediaries on local and regional levels. This division into two spheres of internal and external policy does not only mark the beginning of IR as we know it in Political Science but represents a probably underestimated driving force of modern statebuilding in general. Moreover, the persistency of ‘The Prince’ and his prerogative, even monopoly, in foreign and military affairs after the birth of the modern state during the very long nineteenth century of diplomacy and security governance (1750– 1780 to 1918–1945) is still striking. Only the mediation seems to have changed: from estates to parliamentary checks and balances and from the ‘King’s two bodies’ (Ernst Kantorowicz) to the single state, personified by the prince now presiding over the mythical primordial nation. Regarding all these intermarriages, it may be that, taken with many grains of salt, the Great War was the last and ultimate inter-dynastic feud between royal families presiding over the European family of peoples and nations. The second main point with regard to the emergence of the modern state is that we won’t find that one legendary button which triggered the development but, in keeping with the metaphor, we may imagine a switchboard called sovereignty. Authority as domestic and international sovereignty, the former understood as control by an authority within the polity, the latter as control of states’ borders and the recognition of the polity as sovereign independence by others and on a reciprocal

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base, did not materialise simultaneously. On the contrary: while being sovereign in one aspect, historical examples, like Luxembourg, show that emerging states (big or small) could remain non-sovereign in other respects. Some of these features, besides traditional governance tasks in fields such as representation in foreign affairs; monopoly on the use of force; supreme military command; taxation, and so on, were even ‘waiting to be invented’ in the state-building process. On the one hand, the expansion of such government duties on new territory created the call for sovereignty by pulling ‘prototypes’ such as the monetary system into the exclusive orbit of the state. The right of coinage was an old princely prerogative before it became national monetary sovereignty within an international currency system. On the other hand, responsibilities such as nationwide welfare were established for the first time ever. In premodern times, social care beyond family obligations was a local duty of care by villages and municipalities or branches of transnational religious congregations on the spot only. In those cases, the modern central state authorities were most successful in circumventing and not eliminating or replacing their co-contenders. The new state grew and expanded so much in-between them, that the former co-rulers had to resign in view of the mounting field of responsibilities and the need for a bureaucratised apparatus for the management—and the money needed. At the end of this cut-throat competition, which might be called “jurisdictional accumulation” (Pal, 2021), the nobility took their apanage and tried to entrench their privileges, which ended only after the Great War. Sovereignty or not sovereignty has never been out of the question

The question of big or small states arises for the first time for those lands where the process of flattening and disentanglement of sovereignty created territories. That process was accompanied by a new form of representation: the nation-state and parliamentarism. Authorities, understood as a centralised political organisation, could impose and enforce rules over a population within such an emergent territory in a selectively evolutionary or revolutionary manner. However, and in anticipation of future developments in our time, the question of small or big state can be settled only as a paradox: in the past, many sovereign modern states could achieve their statemodernity only by provisionally or permanently suspending, delegating, or simply ignoring key areas of their full sovereignty profile. Enduring non-sovereignty was often the case in matters of defence and security. In our days, we can observe a related, albeit devolutionary phenomenon of sovereign statehood. In the very midst of the decolonisation process of the 1960s, an analyst righty predicted: “Regional economic and defensive alliances may imply a radical renunciation of national sovereignty to some super-national entity in the future” (Wood, 1967, p. 28). The creation of supra- or supernational entities could be one path. Another way to strengthen statehood and independence by not claiming full rule and authority was to “surrender some of their sovereignty-derived regulatory powers, or more precisely choose to use them in a particular way”, in order to encourage nonlocal transitional actors to make use of their regulatory environment. (Baldacchino, 2010, pp. 4–5)

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The most recent publications in the field, which are regularly less theoretical and based on more real-world observations, indicate that microstates can actually use their sovereignty as a bargaining tool in international relations. (Veenendaal, 2017, p. 22) In short, life in the “antechamber” of the state system may look a good deal more attractive to these jurisdictions than the romantic advocates of sovereign self-determination had ever supposed. (Baldacchino & Milne, 2009, p. 4) What Baldacchino et al. have in mind are, in particular, small, or sub-national, island jurisdictions2 or micro-states, which are de facto states (Bahcheli et al., 2004). This question of sovereignty raised or even created the problem of small and big states for the first time, because the environment for extantism had been changing its ‘body politic’ from the sovereign to the nation, understood as an institutionalised ancestral group with a state. This secular up- and downswing in sovereignty will be further described as ‘real-world observation’ along the history of Luxembourg. Section II: from province to de facto state and formal independence—Luxembourg’s nineteenth-century experience In 1795, the French Army invaded and annexed Luxembourg. The revolutionary Republic put an end to the absolutist kingdom in Paris and to various composite monarchies across Europe by expanding the republican, later imperial, borders of France by warfare. The Revolution radically accelerated the ongoing, more evolutionary, implementation of statehood as centralist state policies in France and abroad. The ‘lands’ of Luxembourg disappeared, and the duchy became, after some territorial adjustments, the ‘Département des Forêts’ (1795–1814), one of 130 at the zenith of the French Empire in 1811. These administrative sub-units were selfsimilar reproductions of the central state with bureaucratic layers in a top-down hierarchy from the centre to the province. Foreign and security politics continued to be conducted by the inner circle of the Republic, later on by Napoleon and his advisers in Paris, while the provinces had to deliver money and manpower provided by the central tax administration and the newly introduced general military draft system. These reforms also remained in place as modernisation was achieved after the fall of Bonaparte (1815) in the former annexed and occupied parts, for instance the Netherlands (and Luxembourg). Only the political context changed, with three burning questions for the congress delegations in Vienna to answer: (1) what to do now with all these resurgent monarchies in the shape of modernised ‘post-feudal’ small states in the middle of Europe? (2) how to handle these reformed societies after breaking up the Napoleonic Empire? (3) how to secure peace as a new security culture that would integrate the great, middle and little powers alike? The post-Napoleonic IR was ‘securitisation’-driven and Luxembourg became part of a multi-layered military and security architecture, poised between reform, restoration, and (counter-)revolution (Graaf et al., 2019). Three angles of vision are important for Luxembourg’s extantism.

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(1)

Luxembourg, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–1830/39), and the House of Orange-Nassau

The Congress of Vienna reinvested various princely dynasties or compensated losses by redesigning former principalities on the map table. In doing so, the Congress diplomacy agreed on creating ‘united’ Netherlands as a northern cornerstone to curb France’s ambitions in this part of the continent and to compensate the Nassau dynasty for the cession of old family heritage for reasons of conference diplomacy. Luxembourg was elevated to the royal rank of a Grand Duchy to bolster the prestige of the new Grand Duke, William, Prince of Orange-Nassau, who was self-proclaimed and, in personal union, King of the Netherlands (1815–1840). The kingdom’s territory comprised today’s Benelux states. This possession was intended to enable the King-Grand Duke to muster a sufficiently strong army as a middle power. The Treaty of Vienna authorised him as sovereign to rule the Grand Duchy in accordance with his own plans: he rightfully integrated Luxembourg as eighteenth province of his reign under a common law, the grondwet (constitution), in a tripartite kingdom. William I continued the central state policy, albeit biased in favour of his ‘homeland’, the provinces of the former Dutch Republic now turned into heritable monarchy, which soured domestic affairs. An uprising in the Southern Provinces ended with the secession and the founding of a new middle state: the Kingdom of the Belgians. This Belgian Revolution of 1830–1839 resulted in the controlled break-up of the kingdom—and the beginning of the de facto state status of Luxembourg in 1830 (Kolnberger, 2022a). (2) Luxembourg and the German Confederation (1815–1866)

On a strategic level, the partial restoration of Germany’s former patchwork of principalities, albeit in a less fragmental way than once assembled in the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, created a twofold challenge. First, the extantism of 37 monarchies and four free cities in Central Europe, guaranteed by the Congress, and second, the ‘awakening’ of a new force, instigated by the French Revolution: the German nation (and other nationalisms). A German Confederation (1815–1866/1867) was founded in the name of the sovereign princes and free cities of Germany. This ‘Deutscher Bund’ was the reaction to the multiple affordance of small states and designed as the centre piece of the new European security system with the purpose of “keeping the French out, an equilibrated Austria and Prussia in, and the German nation(alism) down”, to paraphrase Lord Ismay, NATO’s first SecretaryGeneral concerning the purpose of the post-Second World War alliance. However, the Confederation was certainly more political. The twin task of the “Bund” was to provide external security based on a federal military constitution (“Bundeskriegsverfassung”) and internal security to counter revolt, protest, and revolutionary activities within the member states. The “Bund” was supposed to work as a mutual assistance pact with the duties and rights of the ‘steering committee’, the ‘Bundesversammlung’ (‘Federal Assembly’), which was the permanent ambassador conference of the members in Frankfurt, to intervene in support of peace and order in the form of executive orders. Internal and external security was regarded as a rather

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short continuum. Beyond the borders of the Bund, other guardians of the peace order could also intervene to keep the balance of power, as in 1848, when Russian troops ended the Hungarian uprising for the Vienna government. Only the territory of the Grand Duchy, with the Grand Duke as executive German prince, not the other 17 provinces, was a member of the German Confederation. At first only Luxembourg provided a quota of troops for the federal army and contributed to the federal war chest. The Grand Dukedom’s important fortress, situated at a strategic gateway between France and Germany, became one of the Confederation-run and -financed the so-called Bundesfestungen (Federal fortress) with a Prussian garrison, which operated a military base and did not function as an occupation force. On the contrary, its mere presence prevented the Belgian secessionists, who had turned into irredentists, from entirely incorporating Luxembourg (Kolnberger, 2022b). (3) Luxembourg from province to small neutral state (1815–1867)

Luxembourg was fully part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands until 1830. In terms of international security and defence, the Grand Duchy was a special administrative zone, particularly around the federal fortress. In 1830, at the onset of the Belgian Revolution, one half of Luxembourg became a de facto state after the effective division into two parts: the French-speaking West, fully occupied by the Belgian secessionists, which constitutes the present Belgian “Province de Luxembourg”, and the German-speaking East, which is congruent with today’s state borders of the Grand Duchy. This residual state was administrated as a kind of subnational jurisdiction with kings of the House of Orange as Grand Dukes and heads of state until 1890. In the 1840s, and due to the administrative split from the Netherlands, Luxembourg had to build up its own military capacities, independently of the Dutch army. Nevertheless, the Grand Duke (as German Prince) also had to contribute to the German Confederation as King of the Netherlands in order to uphold the previous quota for the federal-army contingent (in compensation for the part lost to Belgium). When the male line of the Orange-Nassau family ended, the head of the Nassau-Weilburg branch, expelled from his Duchy, which was annexed by the Prussians in 1866, took over the title of Grand Duke. This severed the last connection to the modern Netherlands. The German Confederation was disbanded on the same occasion, the ‘Deutscher Bruderkrieg’ (‘German fratricidal’ or AustroPrussian War of 1866), which decided the rivalry between the two leading powers of the Bund. In 1867, the now unsheltered Luxembourg was declared permanently neutral in perpetuity by the still functioning Pentarchy—the Concert of Europe. Luxembourg in the ‘balanced age of neutrals’ (1815–1914/1940) The resurgence of small states after Napoleon’s dynastic reformation and territorial consolidation politics was accompanied by the ‘invention’ of the small-state problem. A particular German and Central European discussion around the pejorative

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notion of “Kleinstaaterei” (literally: ‘small statery’, rough meaning: ‘proliferation of small states’) to denote territorial fragmentation, including Luxembourg (see, e.g., Sieber, 1920; Langewiesche, 2008) unfolded. States became clearly delineated and their borderlines raised to the status of sanctity. The nation rather than the dynasty was the new glue for territories, joining even non-contiguous territories. The self-empowerment of nationalism awarded the nation the right to claim its ‘natural’ borders by expanding beyond former diplomatic compromises (and to assimilate enclaves of other nations in that process). This actually hostile environment for small states nevertheless created for Luxembourg a niche in which to endure. What margins of manoeuvre allowed Luxembourg to handle potential challenging events? As part of the German Confederation’s military, Luxembourg’s quota of around 1,600 soldiers was assigned to the 9th army corps of the “Bundesheer” (the federal army), including 16 members—all but the Kingdom of Saxony were small and micro-states. The 8th and 10th “Armeekorps” were pooled with the other minor military forces producing a mixed corps, to be mobilised only in case of war. Nevertheless, Luxembourg, in the shape of the Grand Duke’s envoy, sat in Frankfurt as a diplomatic peer at the round table of the decisive “Engerer Rat” (‘Inner Council Curia’) together with the Great Powers: Austria, Prussia and, until 1837, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland due to the personal union of this crown with the Kingdom of Hannover. Though the voting rights were weighted according to the population of the members, Luxembourg had a vote and a ‘voice’ and could tip the balance in favour of one side of the Confederate Diet (“Bundestag”). In my understanding of the voluminous protocols of this permanent state conference, the Luxembourg–Grand Duke tandem generally ‘went with the flow’ and voted consensus-orientated, even initiating resolutions together with other smaller powers or in the slipstream of the two dominant members, Prussia and Austria. As ‘minor’ peer, Luxembourg was therefore kept in the loop of major issues in international relations, which had never been the case before: embedded in this security/ securitisation environment, Luxembourg could punch above its weight—or duck away. Actually, Luxembourg (as a regular member state) should also have applied resolutions passed in Frankfurt concerning common domestic security affairs, such as press censorship or extradition treaties. The repeated failure to comply on these and other occasions was justified with the argument that the Council was juridically part of the Netherlands or by reference to their own constitution (in force in Luxembourg since 1842). During its period of membership, Luxembourg managed to opt out of decisions that impacted its ‘national security’ or domestic affairs several times, even after the administrative separation from The Netherlands in 1830, for example, during the Europe-wide 1848 crises. With regard to the Grand Duchys’ factual military contribution, Luxembourg was a profiteer of the Bund’s deterrence. In terms of financial aid and contribution of manpower, it may be considered a free rider: an opportunistic attitude in security affairs was possible because of the gap between the requirements on paper and their fulfilment in reality. To be sure, the Bund was a political confederacy, but it was not designed to work as a federal state with means of law enforcement and executive power of its own: like

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the European Union today, the German Confederation depended on the goodwill of the individual member states, and this conference was always overshadowed by the logic of the security culture of the Great Powers. In the typical mixed manner of doing security, Luxembourg became a victim of this very balancing of power politics and containment policy—and was ‘saved’ by it at the same time. The Great Powers considered the ending of the Belgian Revolution the greater good and the creation of an independent but permanent neutral kingdom more important for the stability of Europe than the territorial integrity of the Grand Duchy, on the one hand. On the other, emergent Belgium was prevented by the European Concert from annexing the whole of the Grand Duchy. During nine long years of limbo, between 1830 and the final acceptance of the separation by the King-Grand Duke in 1839, the Prussian garrison of the federal fortress (‘Bundesfestung Luxemburg’) was the military–diplomatic guardian of a truncated ‘rump’-Luxembourg and remained the force of deterrence until 1866, the year of the dissolution of the Confederation. In the same year, another conference in London ‘neutralised’ Luxembourg.3 Neutrality—understood as a permanent or non-permanent or occasional version; ‘credible’, that is armed to deterrence level or as a ‘neutralised’ version or as a guaranteed variety in the form of long-term voluntary neutrals—was the standard default option in conference politics, as Maartje Abbenhuis (2014) has shown: Between 1815 and 1914, every country in Europe, and many others around the world, declared their neutrality repeatedly and as a matter of course when others went to war. . . . Neutrality was a tool of international power politics, utilised with alacrity by great and small powers alike. (pp. 238, 17) Neutrality has status-defined rules as parameters of reciprocally accepted behaviour for belligerents and non-belligerents in times of war. And war was the second default argument of the nineteenth century, complementary to neutrality: war was not the end of diplomacy but the most intensive and risky IR, which probably also made the ‘age of neutrals’ the one and only age of Clausewitzian warfare ever. This twin containment—short war clashes seeking the decisive battle of the adversaries on the one side and the official removal from the conflict by the interested third party as bystanders on the other—created the niche for Luxembourg’s survival. This containment, however, required a state territory as ‘container’: the aforementioned ‘sanctity’ of the border. From boundary to border—a precondition for small-states security In contrast to the multitude of islands which constitute the bulk of small and microstates today, Luxembourg has no natural boundaries. Being a constantly landlocked polity in its history and situated not at the periphery of European concerns, but right in the middle of expanding spheres of interest, made another significant geopolitical difference. Unlike most micro-states Luxembourg has also never been a continental

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enclave either. The same development that created the small-state problem in the first place became part of the solution: hard borders. The change from boundaries to borders began as a statehood practice during the late eighteenth century. It led to a first rush of border commissions in the course of the Congress of Vienna. From that time on, even ‘failing states’ could not, territorially speaking, fall apart that easily anymore due to the foreign side of the same border keeping the enclosed state ultimately ‘together’. This nineteenth-century ‘borderness’ provided the grounds for neutralising a state. It protected the de facto stateness of Luxembourg’s extantism quite well and supported the state-building process as a kind of ‘exclave’ from great power politics to be maintained. This is particularly important for the economic development of the Grand Duchy. As a delineated sub-national jurisdiction (of the Netherlands) on the one hand, Luxembourg was able to join the German Customs Union (“Zollverein”) in 1842 (ANLux, 2019). On the other hand, and as a full small state, the Grand Duchy had to delegate the customs management under the supervision of Prussia, which created a full economic union in terms of the free(r) movement of goods within common customs borders versus third countries. The Union’s customs dues were redistributed amongst its members in quotas, favouring smaller members. The Luxembourg share represented around a quarter of the annual government revenue of the Grand Duchy until the end of the Union in 1918. This income was reinvested in state-building, particularly bureaucracy, infrastructure, and education. Despite the ‘open market’, understood as an enlarged zone of economic protectionism (customs-wise) and shelter (security-wise), Luxembourg was able to prevent its main natural resource, low-grade iron ore, from being shipped off across the borders to feed the furnaces in Germany in accordance with the so-called ‘Verhüttungsklausel’ (‘smelting clause’, 1870–1874). That fully sovereign measure stipulated that at least one-third of the ore mined in Luxembourg had to be smelted and industrially processed within the Grand Duchy (Barthel & Krips, 2011). Consequently, foreign capital and expertise expanded the already-existing iron industry, transforming the agrarian into an industrialised state (with 80% export ratio). This juggling with visible and invisible borders to the advantage of Luxembourg can be best exemplified by the country’s monetary policy. Luxembourg began issuing its own money (low-value coins) only in 1854 and at par with the French and Belgian Franc. The Grand Duchy followed Belgium, in a kind of economic bandwagoning, into the French-dominated Latin Monetary Union (1865–1927) to ‘balance’ German influence—thereby reaping exchange gains. In reality, Luxembourg had no currency of its own but used its sovereignty to fix the exchange rates between two competing currency areas to its advantage, thus saving itself at the same time from the risks of maintaining a full monetary system of its own (Kolnberger, 2023; Calmes, 1907). Conclusion It is not history that repeats itself but structures. In the case of small and smallest polities settings, that repetition favours or disfavours their proliferation. Luxembourg has experienced three distinctive phases of changing sociopolitical

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environments in security affairs, defining its extantism as a small state. According to the proposed model (see Figure 4.1), the re/action of big and bigger actors in the first place to the existence of small and smaller units co-created historical environments of a certain duration. Long-term sociopolitical transformations such as the emergence of nation-states or critical junctures such as the two world wars reformed the environment. The affordance character of small and even smallest units in the system stabilised the extantism of these very unities. Luxembourg’s course in relation to security affairs can be reviewed as follows. In the European Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era, the extantism of competing dynastic lordships incorporated but did not assimilate others. The ‘Good Old Order’ had to be maintained or continued because there was no alternative at hand. In other words: as land and order, the political entity of Luxembourg was safe, but the House of Luxembourg as a dynasty was not safe from being replaced by another overlord as co-sovereign of the princedom. That perpetuum mobile of producing security by dynastic fellowships in face of constant threat by other dynastic fellowships changed fundamentally with the advent of the nation-state. The nation-state can be understood as a “Ressourcengemeinschaft” (‘resource community’, Langewiesche, 2008, p. 36), where the ‘common use of resources’ is guided by a utopian national ‘we’ perspective towards others (‘them’). It is no coincidence that Luxembourg twice disappeared from the political map: at the revolutionary onset of that period subsumed into different French departments for 20 years and again at the end and peak of the development into racist hypernationalism as part of the “Gau Moselland”, de facto annexed by Nazi Germany (1940–1944/1945). Between these events, the bilingual Grand Duchy was neutralised during the long nineteenth century to become a buffer between Frenchand German-speaking (and ‘historical’ Belgian) claims. Security was realised as a guarantee of reciprocal denial in the Concert-conference security environment of that time. The interstice status gave Luxembourg more and more agency and the Grand Duchy rose from a Dutch sub-national jurisdiction to de facto state and ‘full’ state. Before reaching this status in 1867, Luxembourg was sheltered by being part of the German Confederation. In terms of security Luxembourg after the permanent neutralisation, turned into a constabulary small state. Indeed, for Luxembourg, the age of neutrals was a very long nineteenth century ending in 1944 and only after the second German occupation during the two world wars (see André Linden’s chapter) did Luxembourg become a different small state and a founding member of NATO. Luxembourg proved to be an accelerator of the ‘European Integration’ which is today’s strongest source of security. So far, the deflated nationalism of the EU member states and their economic success (which can be redistributed) are safeguarding Luxembourg’s co-extantism. Notes 1 In cases of a metastable (also bistable) perception the observer experiences sequences of spontaneous subjective changes. The transition from one precept (an undefined term) to its alternative (the defined term) is a perceptual reversal, for example, given by

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ambiguous or reversible figures like Rubin’s vase—do we see the ‘small’ state or the ‘big’ power, shaping IR along the same shared lines? 2 Subnational Island Jurisdiction (SNIJ): They all share some measure of autonomous government, and are easily construed as independent states-in-waiting. (Foreword) Island jurisdictions wield many of the benefits associated with political sovereignty while they are delegating responsibilities to, and enjoying the security and reaping the material benefits of, remaining in association with, a larger, and typically richer, patron.

(McElroy & Pearce, 2009, p. 41) 3 Not including the Congress of Vienna and its preliminaries, all great powers attended 26 conferences between 1822 and 1909 (Abbenhuis, 2014, p. 42).

References Abbenhuis, M. (2014). An Age of Neutrals. Great Power Politics, 1815–1914. Cambridge University Press. Alvarez, M. (2020, May 17). The rise of paradiplomacy in international relations. E-International Relations. www.e-ir.info/pdf/82301 (accessed October 10, 2021). ANLux = Archives nationales de Luxembourg (Ed.) (2019). David & Goliath. L’adhésion du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg au Zollverein allemand 1842–1918/Die Anbindung des Großherzogtums Luxemburg an den Zollverein 1842–1918. Archives Nationales de Luxembourg. Aron, R. (1966). Peace and War: A Theory of International Politics. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Bahcheli, T.; Bartmann, B. & Srebrnik, H. (Eds.) (2004). De Facto States. The Quest for Sovereignty. Routledge. Baldacchino, G. (2010). Island Enclaves. Offshoring Strategies, Creative Governance, and Subnational Island Jurisdictions. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Baldacchino, G. & Milne, D. (2009). Success without sovereignty: exploring sub-national island jurisdictions. In G. Baldacchino & D. Milne (Eds.), The Case for Non-Sovereignty. Lessons From Sub-National Island Jurisdictions (pp. 1–10). Routledge. Baldacchino, G. & Wivel, A. (2020), Small states. Concepts and theories. In G. Baldacchino & A. Wivel (Eds.), Handbook on the Politics of Small States (pp. 2–19). Edward Elgar Pub. Barthel, C. & Krips, J. (Eds.) (2011). Terres Rouges. Histoire de la sidérurgie luxembourgeoise. Archives Nationales de Luxembourg. Bartmann, B. (2002). Meeting the needs of microstates security. The Round Table: Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs 91(365), 361–74. Bull, H. (2012). The Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics (4th ed. 1977). Red Globe Press. Calmes, A. (1907). Das Geldsystem des Großherzogtums Luxemburg. Dunckeer & Humblot. Duursma, J. C. (1996). Fragmentation and the International Relations of Micro-States. SelfDetermination and Statehood. Cambridge University Press. Graaf, B. de; Haan, I. de & Vick, B. (Eds.) (2019). Securing Europe after Napoleon. 1815 and the New European Security Culture. Cambridge University Press.

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Kaegi, W. (1942). Historische Meditationen (chapter: Der Kleinstaat im europäischen Denken, pp. 249–314). Fretz & Wasmuth. Keating, M. (2015). The political economy of small states in Europa. In M. Keating & H. Baldersheim (Eds.), Small States in the Modern World. Vulnerabilities and Opportunities (pp. 3–19). Edward Elgar Publishing. Keohane, R. O. (1969). Lilliputians’ dilemmas: small states in international politics. International Organization 23(2), 291–310. Klieger, C. P. (2014). The Microstates of Europe. Designer Nations in a Post-Modern World. Lexington Books. Kolnberger, T. (2022a). Die Luxemburger Miliz des Königreichs der Vereinigten Niederlande (1815–1830/39). In T. Kolnberger & B. Niederkorn (Eds.), Militärgeschichte Luxemburgs—Histoire militaire du Luxembourg (pp. 167–73). Capybarabooks. Kolnberger, T. (2022b). Vom Kontingent des Deutschen Bundes zur bewaffneten Macht eines neutralen Kleinstaates: Luxemburgs Militär 1830 bis 1881. In T. Kolnberger & B. Niederkorn (Eds.), Militärgeschichte Luxemburgs—Histoire militaire du Luxembourg (pp. 193–200). Capybarabooks. Kolnberger, T. (2023 forthcoming). Geldpolitik ohne eigene Währung? Luxemburg im Halbschatten von Lateinischer Münzunion (1865–1914/1926) und Deutschem Zollverein (1842-1919). Vierteljahresschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Lake, D. & O’Mahony, A. (2004). The incredible shrinking state: explaining changes in the territorial size of countries. Journal of Conflict Resolution 48(5), 699–722. Langewiesche, D. (2008). Reich, Nation, Föderation. Deutschland und Europa. C.H. Beck. Lijphart, A. (1971). Comparative politics and the comparative method. The American Political Science Review 65(3), 682–93. Maass, M. (2017). Small States in World Politics. The Story of Small State Survival, 1648– 2014. Manchester University Press. MacBride, F. (2020) Relations. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab. Stanford University Press. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relations/ (accessed December 10, 2021). Margue, M. (2013). Die Erbtochter, der fremde Fürst und die Stände. “Internationale” Heiraten als Mittel der Machtpolitik im Spannungsfeld zwischen Hausmacht und Land. In M. Pauly (Ed.), Die Erbtochter, der fremde Fürst und das Land. Die Ehe Johanns des Blinden und Elisabeths von Böhmen in vergleichender europäischer Perspektive (pp. 27–46). CLUDEM (Luxemburg). McElroy, J. L. & Pearce, K. B. (2009). The advantages of political affiliation: dependent and independent small-island profiles. In G. Baldacchino & D. Milne (Eds.), The Case for Non-Sovereignty. Lessons From Sub-National Island Jurisdictions (pp. 41–9, plus appendix). Routledge. Nexon, D. H. (2009). The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe. Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change. Princeton University Press. Pal, M. (2021). Jurisdictional Accumulation. An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital. Cambridge University Press. Pauly, M. (2014). Geschichte Luxemburgs (2nd ed.). C.H. Beck. Schaffer, B. (1975). The politics of dependence. In P. Selwy (Ed.), Development Policy in Small Countries (pp. 25–53). Croom Helm Ltd & University of Sussex. Sieber, E. (1920). Die Idee des Kleinstaates bei den Denkern des 18. Jahrhunderts in Frankreich und Deutschland (Inaugural-Dissertation, Basel). C.A. Wagner. Simpson, A. W. (2014). A Theory of Disfunctionality. The European Micro-states as Disfunctional States in the International System. Vernon Press.

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Teschke, B. (2009). The Myth of 1648. Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations. Verso. Thorhallsson, B. & Wivel, A. (2006). Small states in the European Union: what do we know and what would we like to know? Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19(4), 651–68. Veenendaal, W. (2017). Politics and Democracy in Microstates. Routledge. Waltz, K. (1979). Theory of International Politics. Addison-Wesley. Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy is what states make of it. The social construction of power politics. International Organisation 46, 391–425. Wivel, A.; Bailes, A. & Archer, C. (2014). Setting the scene: small states and international security. In C. Archer, A. Bailes & A. Wivel (Eds.), Small States and International Security: Europe and Beyond (pp. 3–25). Routledge. Wood, D. P. J. (1967). The smaller territories: some political considerations. In B. Benedict (Ed.), Problems of Smaller Territories (pp. 23–34). The Athlone Press.

5

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) Shelter-seeking and securitisation in an Early Modern colony Eberhard Crailsheim

In the Early Modern Era, the colonial Philippines were a Spanish outpost in an extremely hostile environment. Matters of security were paramount for the colonial government and the Spanish elite in the capital, Manila. In spite of the numerous threats, the Spaniards defended and preserved their colonial power in Southeast Asia for 333 years, until 1898—about 80 years longer than in most Latin American territories. Considering that most contemporary states have not yet reached that age by far, in matters of survival the Spanish colonial Philippines can be considered an outright success. Clearly, a colony is not a sovereign state, an empire is neither an organisation of states nor an international system, and the Early Modern Era is not the contemporary world (Maass, 2017, p. 12). Yet, in this chapter, I propose to take a look at the specific setting of the colonial Philippines and to ponder matters of governance, agency, and security. In this process, parallels can be perceived between today’s analytic angle on small states in Political Sciences and the historian’s view of a remote colonial territory. Unfortunately, Small-States Studies have so far rather disregarded the time prior to 1648 and, above all, displayed a very Eurocentric perspective (Maass, 2020). In this chapter I attempt a thought experiment and investigate issues of security in the Spanish colonial Philippines between 1565 and 1821,1 with a comparative view on present-day Small-States and Security Studies methodologies. To begin with, a brief definition of statehood is necessary, because a sharp fault line separates our understanding of ‘states’, from the time before the French Revolution (Reinhard, 2007, p. 86). To find common ground, I would agree with Iver Neumann et al. (2006) that “In general, statehood requires a territory, a population, and a government. Two additional criteria, international recognition and independence, have been more controversial” (p. 23). The Philippines had a territory, a population, and a government but were clearly not independent. In regard to international recognition, one could argue that in the sixteenth century, neighbouring countries (such as China, Japan, and some sultanates) might have taken the colony for a rather independent entity, a perception which, in turn, had the power to create its own reality. After all, these (erroneous) beliefs created and informed the practice of foreign relations for some years. By the seventeenth century, it had become DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-8

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obvious to most players in East and Southeast Asia that the Philippines were subordinate to an external ruler and yet, a territory, a population, and a government were in place, which still gave the Philippines some sort of state-like features. In terms of size and scope, this chapter is not the place to enter into the ongoing discussion about the definition of small states (see, e.g., Ingebritsen et al., 2006; Cooper & Shaw, 2009; Maass, 2009; Wolf, 2016; Thorhallsson, 2018; Baldacchino, 2018). In any case, the Spanish colonial Philippines can be considered to be small in a series of respects. That holds true for population, territory, economic activity, or military expenditure, in particular compared to China, Japan, European empires, or even other colonies such as Peru or Brazil. The territory of the colonial Philippines should not be equated with today’s Republic of the Philippines with its 110 million inhabitants and 300,000 square kilometres. According to Linda A. Newson, in the eighteenth century, the archipelago under Spanish control2 had between 735,000 and 1.6 million inhabitants (Newson, 2009, pp. 256–7), of whom about 10,000 were Spaniards—either from Europe or from the American colonies (Machuca, 2019). Moreover, the colonial government was far from dominating all of the islands. Its authority was limited to the plains and coastal areas, leaving out the south and the mountainous regions. Moreover, many remote areas were only partially controlled. Another relevant aspect of smallness was that the perception— including the self-perception—of the colonial Philippines was commonly that of a rather puny entity among the other colonies and states. In some respects, the colonial Philippines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and small states of today face the same reality on a structural level. This is particularly true of island states and micro-states, such as the Dutch Antilles, Puerto Rico, Macao, or French Polynesia. All of them have a certain autonomy without sovereignty (Baldacchino, 2004, 2018, pp. 8–9). Being the remotest of all outposts of the Spanish Empire, the Philippines had a quite considerable degree of autonomy, especially in regard to its defence policy. Faced with countless external threats, such as Chinese and Japanese warlords, English and Dutch corsairs, and Malay slave-raiders, the Spanish administrators in Manila needed to mobilise all kinds of measures, ranging from defensive colonial, ‘sub-imperial’ actions against the enemy to ‘rogue politics’ against the government in Madrid and practising creative governance by raising military forces of their own. In a word, the colonial Spanish elite in the Philippines had to develop and grow their autonomy in security affairs. This chapter finds itself at the crossroad of several disciplines and methodological approaches: the overarching viewpoint—in line with this collective volume—comes from Small-State Studies (see, e.g., Katzenstein, 1985; Baldacchino & Wivel, 2020); the relevant International Relations (IR) approach is best understood in the tradition of Constructivist theories (Wendt, 1992; Katzenstein, 1996); the research interest aims at certain aspects of Security Studies (see, e.g., Lipschutz, 1995; Huysmans, 1998; Buzan et al., 1998; Balzacq, 2011; Dunn Cavelty & Balzacq, 2017); and the close reading of the topic is carried out with the historical method, analysing the Spanish Empire in the context of Philippine Studies. All of these approaches will be further developed in the following pages.

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 87 The research angle of this chapter for the context of IR comes from critical constructivist theory (Weldes et al., 1999). The focus is consequently set on the constructed character of reality, especially, identity and self-perception. Contrary to realist or liberalist theories, this perspective takes the internal politics of the state (in this case, the colony) and social dynamics fully into account and addresses the varying perceptions of identity, culture, and religion as being relevant to interstate relations (Theys, 2018; Cho, 2009). Within this setting, this chapter aims at questions that are located in the field of Security Studies, such as threats (Adler & Barnett, 1998; Katzenstein, 1996), and connected to small-states problems, such as insufficient defensive means. From the critical constructivist perspective, the impact of physical threats is perceived as mediated by various forms of representations which again are based on different ideas that give these representations meaning (Cho, 2009, p. 79). Threats are thus primarily not seen as historical realities but as socially constructed phenomena. Within this research angle, the specific innovative value of this chapter can be found. It is the first time that Small-States theories and related concepts are being applied to an Early Modern colony and tested for its applicability. In particular, the small-states practice of ‘shelter-seeking’—related to the inadequacy of small states to defend themselves—will be compared to the relevant communication lines between the Manila government and its ‘patron’ Madrid in the Early Modern Era. To do so and to address the matter of securitisation by small political entities, this chapter addresses the following research questions: what caused Madrid to support Manila? How was a unity created, first, with the centre of the empire to build the necessary resilience against threats and, second, within the colony itself? How did the local colonial elite mobilise the necessary support for their strategic security goals? What needed to be securitised and why? To find answers to these questions, this chapter will analyse the securitisation practices of the Spanish elite in the Philippines, following two lines of threat communication: first, the securitisation of outside threats to an audience in Mexico and Madrid for a comprehensive version of ‘shelter-seeking’—in line with models described for the case of Iceland in more recent periods (Thorhallsson, 2021), and second, a different way to securitise outside threats to the native population, with the aim of augmenting the necessary internal cohesion against a common enemy. This chapter will, first, test how modern theories on small states and IR can serve as analytical tools for remote colonial territories of Early Modern Times and, second, reflect on similarities between that setting and today’s situation of small states and sub-state units. Security in the Philippines The Spaniards initially arrived in Southeast Asia in 1521, in the course of the circumnavigation of Ferdinand Magellan, searching for Asian spices. However, only in 1565 were they able to establish a colony in Asia, the Philippines. Its capital Manila became one of the most central trading hubs in global history, connecting the American trade fairs with the markets of Asia (Giráldez, 2015; Schurz, 1939/1985). The Asian products that flowed into America had a profound commercial impact

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while at the same time the American silver bullion contributed hugely to the Chinese fiscal system (Flynn & Giráldez, 1995). The other vital purpose of the Spaniards in Asia, besides the commercial one, was to implement the Christian faith, which was the task of the religious orders that came to the Philippines and flocked to China and Japan (Fernandez, 1979; Costa, 1961). Finally, geopolitics and a certain spirit of adventure also marked the Spanish presence in Asia. For example, a decade after the conquest of Manila (1571), when the colonial presence on the archipelago was firmly established, voices were raised calling for a conquest of the Chinese Empire. The strategists in Manila—only sketchily informed—tremendously underestimated the Chinese military power at that time. In any case, after the disastrous defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, off the British coast, King Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–1598) put a stop to any speculations about a Chinese conquest and mandated his subjects to concentrate on the preservation of the territories conquered so far (Gutiérrez, 1985). Spain was connected to its Asian colonies not via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean but through Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. This route was established mostly for reasons of security because, this way, the Spanish galleons only passed by friendly coastlines. The foundation of the colony had already been carried out by a fleet that had sailed from the west coast of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, today’s Mexico, financed and organised by the Viceroy. Subsequently, the Philippines became part of the Viceroyalty and were then administered, especially economically, from this intermediary administrative level—one could say that the Philippines was the colony of a colony. However, the most important decisions regarding the Philippines were always taken in the Indies Council in Madrid, which was the highest institution for all colonial agenda. Therefore, the most essential petitions had to cross the Pacific Ocean, the American continent, and the Atlantic Ocean before being presented to the proper institution. After a decision was taken in Madrid, the reply had to travel the whole way back and, frequently, it arrived only two years later in Manila when the mandate had become obsolete because it had been ‘overtaken’ by the contemporary occurrences. Therefore, the colonial government of the Philippines had to develop a flexible way of administering the archipelago that was based on a considerable degree of autonomy. Hence, the colonial habit of reacting to the king’s instructions by obeying but not complying (“se obedece pero no se cumple”), was particularly present in the Philippines. Political scientists might call this kind of action “rogue politics” (Baldacchino, 2004, p. 81). One could argue that due to the enormous distance, the Philippines were the Spanish colony with most autonomy for such ‘rogue’ action. This autonomy was even more necessary as the Philippines were threatened by far more enemies than by any other Spanish colony. A Chinese warlord already attacked Manila in 1574, and another one, who had assembled a huge navy in 1662, was stopped from mounting an attack only by his unexpected death. A Japanese ruler wrote a menacing letter to Manila in 1591, and in 1637, a Japanese army was amassing troops to attack the Philippines, which was prevented only by an internal revolt. In 1579, the English corsair Francis Drake touched upon the Philippines, and in 1762, Manila was in British hands for almost two years, and over

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 89 the centuries, ships from the British Isles captured four Manila galleons, dealing heavy blows to the Philippine economy. Another European threat came from the Netherlands, as the Dutch attacked the Spaniards constantly in the first half of the seventeenth century, in the course of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) (Schurz, 1939/1985; Ojea Saball, 2016). Finally, the most permanent threat to the Spanish Philippines were the Malay raiders from the neighbouring islands, in particular Mindanao, Joló, and Borneo. During the whole colonial period, these incursions devastated the coastal areas of the Philippines in search of easy bounty and slaves while at the same time they were a tool in the hands of the local Muslim rulers to withstand the Spanish-Catholic attempts to incorporate them into their zone of influence (Majul, 1973; Dery, 1997). The colonial Philippines and small island states: the strategies of shelter- and status-seeking The colonial setting of the Spanish Philippines is comparable to sub-national, nonsovereign autonomous island units of today, such as Puerto Rico, Aruba, Greenland, or the Federal States of Micronesia, which currently do not seek independence. For these states, the political affiliation to a ‘patron country’ yields considerable advantages, among which are: [F]ree trade with (and export preference from) the parent country, social welfare assistance, ready access to external capital through special tax concessions, availability of external labour markets through migration, aid-financed infrastructure and communications, higher quality health and educational systems, natural disaster relief, and provision of external defense cost. The current status [autonomy but no sovereignty] is regarded as the best of both worlds. These island jurisdictions wield many of the benefits associated with political sovereignty while they are delegating responsibilities to, enjoying the security and reaping the material benefits of, remaining in association with a larger, and typically richer, patron. (Baldacchino, 2004, pp. 78–9) It is noteworthy that these autonomous units mostly emerged after a certain period of colonisation. Within a colonial setting, “[i]nsularity, isolation, and small size provide the geographical, if not also administrative, logistic, cultural and historical” ground for the development of a strong autonomy (Baldacchino, 2004, p. 80), just as has been the case for the colonial Philippines. Philippine autonomy from Mexico and even more from Madrid was considerable, but independence was barely an option in the Early Modern Era. The advantages of remaining under the umbrella of the colonial system (the equivalent of a current sub-national unit) were convincing. In line with Godfrey Baldacchino’s above statement, being a part of the colonial Spanish system harboured many advantages for the ruling class in the Philippines. They had access to large markets

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in Asia and America; access to external capital through tax concessions (the situado from New Spain); availability of external labour markets through migration from New Spain and Spain; infrastructure and communication lines administered by Spanish and New Spanish officials and missionaries; Church-organised educational systems; financial support for natural disaster relief; and finally and most importantly, provision of defence costs. Just like small states of today, the colonial Philippines was dependent on outside support for the defence of its territory. Today, this support comes from a patron state or a larger alliance and, for the colonial Philippines, it came from the ‘mother country’, Spain, and the ‘mother colony’, New Spain. Analysing small states such as Armenia, Cuba, Singapore, Scotland, or Iceland (Bailes et al., 2016; Thorhallsson & Steinsson, 2021, pp. 7–8), proponents of a ‘Shelter Theory’ claim that small political entities need economic, societal, and above all political (including military) shelter in order to prosper: Small states seek shelter in order to deal with crises that inevitablely [sic] hit them on a regular basis due to their small, fluctuating markets, limited defense capacity, modest diplomatic corps, and limited economic resources. First, small states seek shelter to reduce the risk that crises occur at all. Second, they search for shelter to ensure they will receive assistance during crisis events. Third, they seek shelter to guarantee powerful states and international organizations will provide assistance during crisis recovery. (Thorhallsson & Steinsson, 2021, p. 11) The colonial Philippines fitted into that framework. All vulnerabilities existed there (a small, fluctuating market; limited defence capacity; a modest diplomatic corps; and limited economic resources) and Spain and New Spain were the patrons that provided shelter. One could argue that it was the innate task of a mother country to provide territorial integrity and protection to a colony. However, colonies—in contrast to the territory of the mother country itself—could be abandoned. In the early years of the seventeenth century, it was not set in stone that Spain would remain in the Philippines. Too much expense had to be incurred, too great was the expansion of the empire. Ideas were ventilated to cede the archipelago to the Portuguese, who had several strongholds in Asia and to get Brazil from them instead. However, strategic and religious considerations and the vehement advocacy from Manila (“status seeking”) made Madrid refrain from such projects (Boxer, 1946/1947, p. 158; Crossley, 2011, pp. 171–2). Hence, relations between a mother country and a colony could be flexible just like relations between different states of an alliance, and Manila had to repeatedly demonstrate its worth to Madrid. Moreover, one has to consider the specific context of the Philippines. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were basically the only European colony in Asia with pretensions of controlling a large territory and its peoples (Beherrschungskolonie). Most Portuguese and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, can rather be seen as small fortified strongholds in foreign lands (Osterhammel, 1995, p. 17). Therefore, the Spanish colonial government had to deal with different issues than the governors

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 91 of Macao or Batavia. Also, by comparison with the Spanish American colonies, the Philippines stood out, not only in regard to the greater distance and larger autonomy but also in regard to foreign policy, because neither New Spain nor Peru (the largest Spanish colonial entities) had to deal with neighbours such as China or Japan. Hence, the very peculiar character of the Philippines in the setting of the Early Modern world and the specific need to seek shelter from the mother country. Lines of communication The Philippines were controlled by a governor-general, who united in his person almost all levels of colonial power. He was the chief civil administrator, the highest military commander, and the representative of the patronato real, which meant that he had authority over church matters. Typically, he also was the president of the royal court of justice, so that only the financial sector was out of his direct reach (Cushner, 1971). The governor-general, together with the highest judges (oidores), the prelates, the provincials of the religious orders, and the highest military commanders, jointly with the richest merchants in the capital, formed the elite of the archipelago. Their voices were heard in Manila and in Madrid when it came to taking important decisions, in particular, in regard to the defence of the Philippines. Matters of security were mostly decided by the Indies Council in Madrid. The most frequently recurring issue was the lack of adequate military equipment, including troops, weapons, ammunition, canons, ships, and financial means to reinforce the defensive infrastructure. Especially the soldiers who were sent from New Spain were a bone of contention, and Manila complained constantly that besides being insufficient, the arriving troops were too young, inexperienced, weak, and above all mostly convicted criminals, who had to serve their sentences in Asia (García de los Arcos, 1996; Sales-Colín Kortajarena, 2005; Mehl, 2016; Mawson, 2016). To change this desolate military condition in the face of the various threats, countless pleas were sent to Madrid, demanding an improvement of the situation. However, the Philippines were not the only part of the empire that needed money and troops. For most of the Early Modern Era, the Spanish Crown was involved in European military struggles to attain a political hegemony and later to prevent its decline. It waged wars in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Pacific and sent troops to many battlefields in Northern Europe. This polycentric engagement was possible only due to the large amounts of silver bullion produced in America, which gave the treasury a decisive surplus of income. However, that surplus was not limitless, and what remained at the end of the day was the need to defend an over-expanded empire with restricted means. The fact that Madrid was able to do that until well into the nineteenth century shows that the Spanish colonial system was quite successful for hundreds of years. In any case, resources were limited and the needs were legion. (1)

Communication to the centre: shelter-seeking

As numerous Spanish colonies were competing for the same pot of resources in Madrid, the Philippine elite had to highlight why it was they who needed help the most. The Viceroy in Mexico was always reluctant to send money and troops to

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Manila. Therefore, the Philippine elite had to permanently petition Mexico and Madrid to get the necessary support by constantly confirming the colony’s status as a valuable part of the empire and by stressing the particularity of its situation. Their strongest argument for support was the imminent threat of the Spanish arch-enemy in Asia, the Dutch. Between 1600 and 1648, Dutch ships constantly threatened the Spanish colony and tried several times to cut its lifeline (the Manila galleons) or even attack Manila directly. While the loss of the Philippines would have already been a grave setback for the geopolitical scheme of Spain, losing it to the biggest competitor would have been unbearable. The first appearance of the Dutch took place in 1600, when Oliver Van Noort (1558–1627) arrived with two ships in Philippine waters after having plundered the South American coastline and crossed the Pacific Ocean. In a letter to King Philip III (r. 1598–1621) from June 30, 1601, a judge of the royal court of justice in Manila described the situation as follows: “Governor Don Francisco Tello found himself unprovided with any kind of fleet to resist them by sea; for he had no galleys and no other kind of ship with which to carry on offensive warfare” (BR, 1962, vol. 11, p. 251). The assault was warded off but caused the loss of a galleon, filled with a valuable cargo of Asian goods, which made the Manila city council accuse the captain responsible and complain about the delicate state of affairs, on July 20, 1601: Owing to the lack of men—so great that hardly anyone appeared on the streets—and that of the said artillery and arms of various kinds, this city was in such danger of ruin as never before, if some of the many enemies who surrounded it had attacked it with even a small force. (BR, 1962, vol. 11, p. 246) On June 6, 1602, a high-ranking official of the Philippines, Luis Perez Dasmariñas, wrote a letter to Philip III, expressing his relief at the arrival of new troops in Manila: From this will result the greatest advantages, and great danger to this land will be averted; and thus may be repaired the many losses and destructive raids which this country may suffer, which may result from the inroad of those demons of English and Dutch heretics, with their intentions and desires. We should have aid, and means of communication, and strongholds in these regions, and especially in this one of Maluco, which is the most important, dangerous, and near to these islands, and whose people are unfriendly. Our enemies, the Xoloan and Mindanaos [inhabitants of the southern islands of today’s Philippines], avail themselves of it, and are succored therefrom, and with this aid have inflicted many damages, which they will continue to do, if they are not checked. Great cost and expense must be incurred in these islands, merely to preserve and defend them; and there are great hindrances and difficulties in the way of their growth. (BR, 1962, vol. 11, pp. 302–3)

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 93 By calling them demons and heretics and by associating them with the Muslims from Sulu (Xoloan) and Mindanao, the author highlights the religious aspect of the threat and puts even more pressure on the decision-makers in Madrid. In 1605, the city of Manila sent an illustrious representative to Madrid as procurator-general to lobby directly at the court for their needs, namely Hernando de los Ríos Coronel (1559–1623). For many years (1605–1610 and 1616–1623), De los Ríos held that position and published several booklets on matters pertaining to the archipelago. The defence of the colony was one of his main themes. One of his petitions (1619) was to send ships directly from Spain via the Cape of Good Hope to the Philippines, because that way support could reach Manila earlier, at a time when the colony was preparing for an attack of 18 Dutch vessels (Crossley, 2011, pp. 191–4). A year later, on April 7, 1620, De los Ríos wrote another memorandum, in which he highlighted the Dutch menace and the need for Spanish support: Hernando de los Rios Coronel, procurator-general of the Filipinas Islands and of all their estates [and author of this text], declares that he came the past year to inform your Majesty and your royal Council of the Indias, in the name of those islands, of the desperate condition to which the Dutch enemy have brought them. Desiring that your Majesty understand the importance of the matter, he gave you a long printed relation in which he discussed points important for their recovery from the enemy and the expulsion of the latter from that archipelago . . .; [to send relief] of both men and money, and to employ this . . . with as great care as the gravity of the matter requires, and to realise the fact that, were it lost, both Eastern and Western India [Spanish Asia and America] would be endangered. They would be in great danger, as would also these kingdoms [Spain]; for it would mean to permit the enemy to become so powerful and so rich as all know who are aware of the wealth of those regions. Besides, it would mean the extinction of whatever Christian element is there, and would shut the doors to the preaching of the gospel, which your Majesty and your ancestors have procured with so great glory and so many expenses. (BR, 1962, vol. 19, pp. 25–6) Hence, in this memorandum, De los Ríos appealed to the King as Catholic monarch and protector of universal Christianity, obliged to honour and defend the accomplishments of his ancestors but also to uphold the strategic interests of the Indies Council in Asia and, even bound by the amplest geopolitical considerations, stressing that the security of the whole empire was at stake here. In 1637, very much in line with De los Ríos, his successor as procurator-general of the Philippines in Madrid, Juan Grau y Monfalcón, presented the King with five reasons why it was essential to maintain the Philippines as a part of the empire instead of abandoning it. (1) The promulgation of the Catholic faith; (2) the security of the East Indies (Spanish and Portuguese at that time); (3) depriving the Dutch of their trade; (4) seek the relief of the West Indies (Spanish America); and (5) care for the reputation of the Crown (Grau y Monfalcón, 1637, n. 40–4). Here again,

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religious reasons are paired with geopolitical ones (including commerce) and, in addition, combined with the argument of ‘reputation’—similar to the ‘glory’ argument put forward by De los Ríos. In any case, the lobbyists for a continuance of Spain in Asia were successful and the troops and material that were sent to Manila were enough to allow for an effective defence of the colony. The Dutch menace to the Philippines and to the Spanish Empire became less imminent after the end of the Eighty Years’ War in 1648. And yet, matters of security remained pressing in Asia. Overall, the letters to the King proposing that he improve the state of the colony are abundant. Sending more troops and supplies was just one of the measures among many others (against corruption, mismanagement, laziness, etc.), and yet it was a decisive one, which was always present right up to the end of the Spanish regime in the Philippines. Moreover, it was the clearest measure which could be attributed to the concept of shelterseeking: outside military resources were requested to ward off external enemies from a small colony. In the eighteenth century, the most dangerous moment for the Spanish Philippines came when the British occupied Manila in 1762 in the course of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). When the foreign troops left after two years, the elite of the capital felt their self-perception shaken and intended to improve the government in many ways. One of the most outstanding thinkers of that time was Francisco Leandro de Viana (1730–1804), a prosecutor of the royal court of justice in Manila. In his memorandum Demonstration of the deplorably wretched state of the Philippine Islands (BR, 1962, vol. 48, pp. 197–338), he proposed a large number of improvements and highlights many necessary reforms. Improving the defences was among the first points he mentioned: For we are surrounded by ferocious and inhuman enemies, such as are the English—who, warned by the events of the late war, will give no quarter if they return to these islands . . . —the Moros [Muslims], who will come to the aid of the said English, or alone by themselves if they see us very weak (and in every way those people are terrible, for they know not what humanity is); the Sangleys or Chinese, who are equally barbarous and bloodthirsty; and even the Indians, who also are cruel and ferocious. (BR, 1962, vol. 48, p. 202) He stated that the British, in particular, would love to see the Spanish abandon the islands because they [w]ould securely establish themselves therein, for they have shown themselves eager and greedy for the advantages which the islands present. In that case, they would easily carry on, by way of the Southern Sea, an illicit commerce with Nueva España—where they could land wherever they might please, and without difficulty make themselves masters of the Californias. (BR, 1962, vol. 48, p. 207)

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 95 Hence, in case the Spaniards were to abandon the archipelago, not only would the British be so cruel as to take over the Philippines, but they would also seek to establish themselves in the much more esteemed American territories of Spain. Leandro de Viana then goes on in his chapter Upon maintaining the islands with respectable forces to highlight the necessity that Madrid reinforce the colony’s defensive capacities by fortifying places; building new strongholds; creating a new coastguard, a permanent navy, more troops, etc. Viana, however, does not request the needed funds for his military reforms from the mother country but appeals to the King to enable economic reforms that would then pay for the excessive extra military expenses. In any case and independently of the way the mother country had to help, the discursively constructed securitisation of enemies in Asia by the Manila elite, served as a vehicle to gain external support— shelter—from Madrid for the desired reorganisation of the colony’s economic and military structure. (2) Communication within: ‘Moro securitisation’

The securitisation of outside enemies in the Philippines was not only useful to gain the support and shelter of the imperial centre, by highlighting its needs over that of other Spanish colonies, but within the colony itself securitisation was vital too. Within IR, the field of Security Studies has gained much momentum since the 1990s (Lipschutz, 1995; Buzan et al., 1998). Among the most promising approaches, the Securitisation Theory stands out, combining as it does “the politics of threat design with that of threat management”: [T]he key idea underlying securitization is that an issue is given sufficient saliency to win the assent of the audience, which enables those who are authorized to handle the issue to use whatever means they deem most appropriate” (Balzacq et al., 2016, p. 495). While the threat communication in the context of shelter-seeking was directed at Madrid and Mexico as the relevant ‘audience’, in the process of internal communication the audience and the goal were different. Communicating the danger of external threats to an internal audience has the potential to foster inner cohesion, to strengthen collective identity, and increase loyalty to a common government (Coser, 1956/1964, p. 90; Crailsheim, 2019). In other words, the proper representation of external threats can reduce internal separatist currents and, at the same time, increase the defensive power of a society. This might be particularly true in political units like small states with limited defensive capacities and many stronger neighbours. In the context of the Philippines, the colonial government and members of the elite, therefore, had good reasons to highlight the besieged character of the archipelago to its inhabitants and, in particular, to the natives in the rural villages. The natives were prone to outside attacks from the English and Dutch, as well as Chinese and Japanese aggression. However, English and Dutch men-of-war only sporadically laid waste to native villages, and Chinese and Japanese acts of violence were only seldom performed against natives. The most pressing danger for them by far came from the slave-raiders from the South (Crailsheim, 2020).

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The invasions of the raiders are reflected in numerous reports coming from the rural villages, which were mostly written or related by missionaries of the religious orders. These men performed the tasks not only of missionaries but also of village priests, Spanish representatives, connections to the Spanish administration, and they even played an important role in the defence of the villages (Crailsheim, 2022). The reports of these missionaries were collected and used later as sources by the chroniclers of the different orders, such as the Jesuit Pedro Murillo Velarde (1696–1753) or the Augustinian Recollect Juan de la Concepción (1724–1786). In all of this, the information in the reports provided both an immediate and a delayed value. First, it conveyed information regarding the current situation and the immediate needs of the villages to the respective superiors. Second, the news of the distant missionary stations spread amongst the missionaries in the centre of Manila and became available by word of mouth to everyone in and around Manila, who then disseminated it to different parts of the Philippines. Later, when the most outstanding events of the provinces appeared in print—be it in short booklets or full-blown chronicles—the reach of the news, even if fairly delayed, was even greater and longer-lasting. The missionaries frequently reported incursions of fleets from Borneo, Sulu, and Mindanao that laid waste to the villages, burnt the fields and boats, stole what was of value to them, and took the inhabitants captive. Also, they complained that their sacred objects were profaned by the raiders, as for example in the following lines from the Augustinian Recollect chronicler Pedro de San Francisco de Assis from 1756: Barbarously blinded in their treacherous gains as if it were a thing done, they made a practice of going every year to take captives in the islands of our administration, often outraging the temples sacrilegiously and not a single one that was near the beach escaped profanation and they utterly abused everything intended for religious worship, with great scorn to the name of Christian. They cut the sacred vestments into robes and other garments . . ., and they destined the ciboriums and sacred chalices to the dirty use of their wine, tobacco, and buyo [= betel nut chewing in Tagalog]. (BR, 1962, vol. 41, pp. 110–11) The representation of such actions had the potential to incite the fear and anger of all baptised people of the archipelago and unite them against the raiders. (3) The 1754 booklet

One of the most powerful writings in this propagandistic sense is a little booklet that was written and published in 1754 by the Jesuit missionaries of the Philippines in Manila, titled Relation of the valorous defense of the Bisayan natives of the village of Palompong, in the island of Leyte, of the province of Catbalogan, in the Philipinas Islands, which they made against the Mahometan forces of Ylanos

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 97 and Malanaos, in the month of June, 1754.3 It basically consists of two parts, the detailed description of a raiders’ attack on a village and a commented list of raids that were warded off during that same year. The detailed description shows how on June 9, 1754, about a thousand Iranun and Maranao raiders landed with 25 outrigger boats on the Island of Leyte and attacked one of the Spanish-administered villages, Palompong. They destroyed the fields and the natives’ boats and took away everything of value. The inhabitants—335 in number, 135 of whom were male adults—retreated and barricaded themselves in the stone church. While the raiders did not usually engage in long sieges, this time they were persistent and attacked the church several times. The defenders, however, according to the booklet, withstood the assaults—with the spiritual help of their village saint, Francisco Xavier—and even inflicted considerable damage among the assailants by sallying out of the church several times. After nine days of siege, the raiders left and the villagers were able to celebrate their victory, in particular their escape from slavery. The second part of the booklet gives a brief account of ten more villages, where the natives were able to withstand the onslaught of raiders in numerous parts of the central Philippines, that is, the Visayan Islands. The authors of the text lamented the destruction wrought upon the villages but, at the same time, they highlighted the valour of the villagers, which spared them a life of misery in perpetual slavery. The original letters and oral reports from the missionaries of the Visayan Islands, which can be considered the basis for the booklet, were meant to inform the religious superiors in Manila. Learning about the cumulative successes against these attacks—after some years of rather scarce victories against the raiders—the Jesuit provincial was determined to publish the collection in the order’s printing press and spread the good news further in the archipelago.4 Two main reasons can be traced for why the booklet was printed for a broader readership and, at the same time, two different audiences can be discerned. The first reason stands plainly at the end of the text: “And thus, the natives of this archipelago, arousing their own courage by the fortunate successes of their countrymen, can take example therefrom in order to avoid misfortunes in the future” (BR, 1962, vol. 48, p. 51). In other words, the positive outcome of the native resistance against the “Mahometan enemy” was meant to encourage the natives of other districts to emulate their bravery, instead of running and hiding in the woods.5 It may be assumed that the word-of-mouth transmission of this news from Manila to other Philippine provinces would have worked as well, but the distribution of the printed word probably accelerated and enhanced the process considerably. The addressee of this message were the natives of the villages, who consistently fled the villages on the arrival of the raiders. In the process many fell into the hands of the assailants while others never returned to their plundered villages. The raiders’ direct impact on the population was obviously extremely brutal but the indirect impact was strong too, with a double effect. First, the religious orders suffered the loss of parishioners or even parishes and, second, the civil government lost taxpayers. Hence, both segments of the ruling elite tried to avoid such

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behaviour and to make the natives stand their ground and defend themselves. For that purpose, they should, according to the booklet, rely on the guidance of their priests, gather their courage, and even unite with neighbouring villages to combine their strength. By securitising the raiders as an external threat to the community of Spaniards, missionaries, and natives, a bond was created between the latter three groups. This connection contributed to the shared identity of the religiously defined Catholic community under the Spanish Crown, against the ‘Mahometan enemy’. The common foe and the joint victories against it—often under the leadership of the village priest—helped to construct and reinforce the unity between the three groups. In that way, the small and fragile colony could better withstand the onslaught of outside attacks. The weakest part of this union was the Spanish government in Manila. Even though the booklet speaks of the “victorious arms of his Majesty” and mentions the heroism of one of the Spanish provincial governors (f. 126r), the government’s contribution to the defence of the villages was not always noticeable. While it is true that it granted tax exemptions during the time of the constructions of fortifications; encouraged native corsair activities; and sent coastguard ships (Crailsheim, 2017), the government’s shortcomings were evident. It is here that the booklet shows its second aim, that of directly addressing the colonial government. The Jesuits’ reproach can be found in the very first paragraph of the booklet, which states that the raiders entered the harbor with so little fear of being attacked by any armada that during the entire siege they left their vessels . . ., high and dry, as if they were in their own land and enjoying an Octavian peace. This can be read as a slap in the face of the governor-general, who was in charge of the defence of the archipelago. It underlines the inadequacy of the Spanish coastguard in numbers and capacity, which had already been pointed out a century earlier by other chroniclers (Combés, 1897, p. 214; BR, 1962, vol. 41, p. 111). Hence, the second point of the booklet was to urge the civil government to increase its defence spending and improve its naval capacities to intercept the raiders’ armadas at sea. Also in this case, the securitisation of the enemy created the unity between the government and the King’s subjects in the Philippines, in order to focus on a common goal, putting pressure on the governor-general to do his job properly and defend the archipelago, that is, to provide shelter. In the early nineteenth century, a wave of independent movements swept over America and took away most of the overseas territories from Spain. Even the administrative superstructure of the Philippines, New Spain, became independent in 1821. The Philippines, however, remained loyal to their mother country and were integrated into a new, leaner colonial system. They did not have the setting of most Latin American territories, where a strong group of creoles were in power. On the contrary, the creole layer was thin, and an existence outside of the Spanish colonial system was deemed impossible by most of the Manila elite. Hence, with some

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 99 adaptations, they opted to retain the existing arrangement of an autonomy without sovereignty (Machuca, 2019; Díaz-Trechuelo López Spínola, 2001, pp. 260–6). Conclusion By comparing the Spanish colonial Philippines with present-day small states, this chapter has ventured a novel thought experiment. Like present-day small states, the Spanish colonial Philippines between 1565 and 1821 had a territory, a population, and a government; and like sub-national, non-sovereign autonomous island units, they had a large degree of autonomy without sovereignty, being affiliated to some sort of patron. From the viewpoint of the elites in the Early Modern Philippines, the best possible political system was to be a part of the Spanish Empire but with the valuable autonomy brought about by the enormous distance from the mother country. The members of the Philippines’ elite understood the advantage of being part of a larger unit on a series of levels, such as market and capital access; labour market; infrastructure; communication lines; education system; disaster relief; and especially defence costs. While being part of an empire generally seems to clarify the relations between mother country and colony, this was not the case here. The Philippines, at the extreme periphery of the Spanish Empire, had to brace themselves against adverse treatment by the mother country that ranged from extreme neglect to abandonment. To do so, the Manila elite practised politics which can be branded today as ‘statusand shelter-seeking’: by highlighting the value of the Philippines to the whole of the empire (‘status-seeking’) and by stressing the many threats that loomed over the archipelago (‘shelter-seeking’), they lobbied in Madrid for the protection of the mother country. The method of securitising external treats, above all the Dutch menace, can be understood as particularly successful. This securitisation is understood in a constructivist way, being part of internal politics. By discursively constructing an external enemy to various internal audiences, the identity and (self-)perception of the colony were constantly reformulated and reshaped. The securitisation of external enemies was established for two reasons: first, to gain shelter from the patron and second, to augment the interior support from the natives, increasing the inner cohesion among the different subjects of the Spanish King. The dissemination of news regarding the ferocities and cruelties of the slave-raiders and the successful defences of the natives, in particular, served to strengthen unity among the native villagers, the missionaries, and the Manila government and to increase the defensive capacity of the colony. I would argue that it was, in particular, small state-like units that were able to make use of outside threats to foster their internal cohesion because the impact of outside threats is presumably stronger for small states than for bigger ones. In conclusion, it can be confirmed that the application of the analytic concepts of shelter-seeking (from Small-State Studies) and securitisation (from Security Studies) can produce relevant results for the study of the Spanish colonial Philippines; and on the other hand, the inclusion of the period prior to 1648 and of colonial settings, in general, has the potential to yield useful insights for the investigation of present-day small states.

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Figure 5.1 The Philippines (location data of the chapter) Source: Created by author based on https://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=587&lang=en

Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 101 Notes 1 The chapter ends with the independence of New Spain (Mexico) in 1821, because that event changed the relations between Madrid and Manila drastically. 2 Newson includes here the main island Luzon and the island group Visayas, leaving aside Mindanao and Sulu. 3 Relacion de la valerosa defensa de los Naturales de Bisayas del Pueblo de Palompong en la Ysla de Leyte, de la Provincia de Catbalogan en las Yslas Philipinas, que hicieron contra las Armas Mahometanas de Ylanos, y Malanaos, en el Mes de Iunio de 1754 in Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) in Mexico City, Impresos Oficiales 56, Vol. 4, exp. 19, fols. 113–27; translation in BR, 1962, vol. 48, pp. 37–51. 4 To underline the good news in the booklet, it was adorned on the last page with a picture of three putti happily playing the guitar, the harp, and the violin respectively. 5 The resistance and unity of the village of Palompong were even more surprising as the priest as unifying leader was not present during the attack, and the village had only recently been founded as a reducción, that is, it merged several smaller settlements (f. 124r).

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Security in the Spanish Philippines (1565–1821) 103 Maass, M. (2020). Small states: surviving, perishing and proliferating through history. In G. Baldacchino & A. Wivel (Eds.), Handbook on the Politics of Small States (pp. 20–37). Edward Elgar Publishing. Machuca, P. (2019). Historia mínima de Filipinas. (México D.F.) El Colegio de México. Majul, C. A. (1973). Muslims in the Philippines (2nd ed.). Diliman (Quezon City) & University of the Philippines Press. Mawson, S. J. (2016). Convicts or conquistadores? Spanish soldiers in the seventeenthcentury pacific. Past & Present 232(1), 87–125. Mehl, E. M. (2016). Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World. Cambridge University Press. Neumann, I. & Gstöhl, S. (2006). Introduction: Lilliputians in Gulliver’s world? In C. Ingebritsen, I. Neumann, S. Gstöhl, & J. Beyer (Eds.), New Directions in Scandinavian Studies. Small States in International Relations (pp. 3–36). University of Washington Press & University of Iceland Press. Newson, L. A. (2009). Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines. University of Hawai’i Press. Ojea Saball, E. C. (2016). Pacífico: Un océano de enfrentamientos 1574–1762. Espacio Cultura Editores. Osterhammel, J. (1995). Kolonialismus: Geschichte, Formen, Folgen. C.H. Beck. Reinhard, W. (2007). Geschichte des modernen Staates: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. C.H. Beck. Sales-Colín Kortajarena, O. (2005). La escasez de soldados en las Filipinas de la primera mitad del siglo XVII. In A. Gutiérrez Escudero & M. L. Laviana Cuetos (Eds.), Estudios sobre América, siglos XVI-XX: Actas del Congreso Internacional de Historia de América (pp. 775–94). Asociación Española de Americanistas (Seville). Schurz, W. L. (1985). The Manila Galleon. Historical Conservation Society (Original work published 1939). Theys, S. (2018). Introducing constructivism in international relations theory. In S. McGlinchey, R. Walters & Ch. Scheinpflug (Eds.), International Relations Theory (pp. 36–41). E-International Relations Publishing. Thorhallsson, B. (2018). Studying small states: a review. Small States & Territories 1(1), 17–34. Thorhallsson, B. (Ed.) (2021). Iceland’s Shelter-Seeking Behavior: From Settlement to Republic. Cornell University Press. Thorhallsson, B. & Steinsson, S. (2021). Shelter theory and smallness in international relations. In B. Thorhallsson (Ed.), Iceland’s Shelter-Seeking Behavior: From Settlement to Republic (pp. 7–20). Cornell University Press. Weldes, J.; Laffey, M.; Gusterson, H. & Duvall, R. (Eds.) (1999). Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger. University of Minnesota Press. Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics. International Organization 46(2), 391–425. Wolf, S. (2016). Die Erforschung von Politik und Recht in Kleinstaat und Monarchie: Eine konzeptionelle Einführung. In S. Wolf (Ed.), State Size Matters: Politik und Recht im Kontext von Kleinstaatlichkeit und Monarchie (pp. 1–14). Springer VS.

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Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts Belize within Central America, the Caribbean, and neighbouring Mexico Edith Kauffer

Belize represents a critical case in which to study ‘smallness’. Because it is an English-speaking country in Central America which borders on the Caribbean Sea and Mexico, Belize simultaneously belongs to three regions: the Caribbean Community, Central America, and a transnational region including border territory with Mexico. Belize can be considered a small state in all three regions, but this chapter suggests that ‘smallness’ can mean something different in each region. ‘Smallness’ is generally considered to be a condition based on territorial, population, and economic dimensions. The research on which this chapter is based indicates that ‘smallness’ can also be a strategy in global affairs which is adopted by small states according to their interests in specific regional contexts. Smallness can be a resource for agency in international affairs, and states can, in fact, choose ‘smallness’ when it plays to their advantage. As such, due to the presence of overlapping contexts in Belize, smallness simultaneously encompasses both vulnerability to international shocks (such as climate change, transnational crime, and the COVID-19 pandemic) and security through bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Both vulnerability and security are socially constructed, and policymakers can frame smallness as a means to advance foreign policy objectives. The literature in Small-State theory generally focuses on whether small states are shelter-seeking or rent-seeking. Instead, this chapter contends that smallness includes both of these characteristics, and smallstate leaders can decide which one of these notions they wish to prioritise depending on the context in which they are performing or negotiating. This chapter examines Belize’s smallness in the three aforementioned regional contexts, on the basis of two main questions. First: how is smallness expressed in each regional context in terms of the state’s characteristics, that is, size of territory, economy, and population? Second: how is smallness expressed in Belize’s relationships with and within specific regional contexts, especially regarding security, regional integration, and power asymmetries? The analysis highlights how Belize’s smallness may be expressed in different ways for, and in, each specific context. Smallness depends on relations, and it is relative in nature. Consequently, Belize’s smallness in each regional context has diverse meanings and is expressed via completely different political realities. The relative nature of smallness ultimately depends on encounters and negotiations that manifest themselves in different ways in each regional context. This is explored in the following section. DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-9

Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts 105 < 0.2 million population San Marino

Antigua and Barbuda* Bahamas* Saint Lucia* Dominica* Saint Kitts and Nevis* Grenada* Saint Vincent and the Kiribati Grenadines* Marshall Islands Samoa Seychelles Micronesia Nauru Tonga Palau Tuvalu

Bahrain Barbados Cabo Verde Comoros Cyprus Fiji Iceland Maldives

Belize* Bhutan Brunei Djibouti Equatorial Guinea Estonia Eswatini Guyana* Montenegro Suriname*

Islands Malta Mauritius São Tomé and Príncipe* Solomon Islands Timor-Leste Trinidad and Tobago* Vanuatu

Jamaica*

The Gambia Guinea-Bissau Lesotho Namibia Botswana Gabon Qatar

> 1.5 million population

0.2 - 1.5 million population

Figure 6.1 Characteristics of small states according to the World Bank Source: Adapted from World Bank (2022). *Caribbean small states/states with fragility issues are italicised.

Defining smallness: from weakness and vulnerability to opportunity The smallness of states has been a particular object of study, research, and deliberation over recent decades; but a consensus on its meaning has so far remained elusive (e.g., Baldacchino & Wivel, 2020; Long, 2017, p. 3; Prasad, 2009; Payne, 2009). The notion of smallness in Political Science, International Relations, and Development Studies has moved from a quantitative perspective focusing on population size, size of national territory, or economic indicators to further incorporate the results or effects of relationships with and within different regional and international contexts. Small states are traditionally defined by contrasting them with large states (Kehoane, 1969; Baldacchino, 2009). Neumann and Gstöhl (2006, p. 4) consider that smallness is traditionally proposed as a “residual category”, characterised by what those states are not. In that sense, Baldacchino (2009, p. 25) affirms that small states are defined by non-small states. Until recently, the international literature on small states has been published by scholars who were not native to those states.

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The notion of smallness that has been defined according to a dichotomy between large and small states is a constructed reality. Baldacchino (2009, p. 24) questions the traditional dichotomic perspective, arguing that it is gigantism that is the anomaly and that there are only 34 large states among the countries in the world, if we define bigness as having a population that exceeds 50 million. For that reason, Payne too states that there is no real dichotomy (2009, p. 279). The international literature commonly argues that small states are weak, dependent, fragile, vulnerable (Baldacchino, 2009), and isolated. Smallness is sometimes an assumed negative identity that is associated with scarcity, powerlessness, and helplessness (Graham & Graham, 2019). These characteristics are associated with the perceived vulnerability of small states in global security discussions. Nevertheless, the most recent literature emphasises that these traditional perspectives are partial and tell only one side of the story: small states experience weakness but also innovation (Cooper & Shaw, 2009), vulnerability but also resilience (Payne, 2009). They can be seen as recipients of international aid, but they also make their contribution as capacity-building actors (Baldacchino, 2009), and they are able to propose their own security strategies (Prasad, 2009). These approaches focus on the ability of small states to express agency (Graham & Graham, 2019). Beyond the attempts to define smallness in the literature and establish its main characteristics, the heterogeneity of small states must be underlined, because smallness is a complex phenomenon (Payne, 2009) that cannot be reduced to a shared definition. It is above all, time- and space-dependent. For that reason, Baldacchino (2009, p. 22) proposes that we should develop a semiotics of small states, and Payne (2009) suggests rethinking smallness with a focus on the “power of the powerless” (p. 285). Conceptualising smallness with a more open mind allows us to evoke heterogeneity and its implication that smallness is context-relative and depends on political strategies: the agency of the ‘weak’. As Long (2017) points out, smallness is not about size but about relations and asymmetries. Smallness is context-relative because political, economic, and social domestic conditions as well as international relations are changing across time and space. Traditionally, small-state size has been considered from a colonialist viewpoint as a problem and liability for peace and political stability because of a perceived equivalence between size—defined as bigness—and constancy and reliability (Lewis, 2007). Smallness has also been equated with weakness due to geographical, social, and political factors, especially in the Global South (Graham & Graham, 2019). Nevertheless, Chong (2009, p. 65) maintains that contemporary small states provide clear examples of political stability. The Belizean case is interesting from this perspective because the country is embedded in three different contexts. It suggests that smallness is in reality contextrelative and that because asymmetries are entangled with historical concerns, international relations, regional politics, and integration processes. For that reason, Neumann and Gstöhl (2006, p. 6) evoke smallness as a comparative concept. Consequently, scholars must go beyond a simple juxtaposition of small and large states and begin analysing the changing international system, geographic

Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts 107 conditions, and domestic structures. Comparative behaviours depend on small states’ regional contexts and systems of relations (Lewis, 2007). To transition from a version of Small-State theory centred on vulnerability to a new comprehension focused on the resilience and agency of small states, Payne (2009) recommends stressing on “not what small states cannot do, but rather what they can do, and have done, to survive and chart a course in global affairs” (p. 280). Processes of inter- and non-state regionalisation, insertion in global networks of multilateral governance on specific issues, competence in international politics, association with big powers in diplomacy, and other international actors are strategies for converting vulnerability into strategy (Payne, 2009) and agency. The current literature on small states indicates that these countries have developed unconventional and effective development strategies using smallness to their advantage. Indeed, the recognition of vulnerability could serve, and be deployed, as a political tool (Prasad, 2009), as a form of resistance. Small states are developing diverse strategies to cope with their situation, and they can even score successes against larger states in international relations, singly and collectively (Baldacchino, 2023). As Prasad (2009) states: “small countries use their ‘smallness’ very effectively, especially by playing the game of the ‘importance of being unimportant’ or the ‘power of being powerless’” (p. 44). As a matter of fact, instead of being a drawback, smallness could be converted into an advantage when it is strategically used by states in appropriate circumstances. Thus, smallness is an issue of negotiation in each context, according to domestic and historical conditions, regional situations, and neighbouring as well as international and global challenges. Methodologically, the analysis of Belize’s smallness in the three proposed regional contexts refers to historical, political, and neighbouring dynamics that are completely different from each other. Consequently, it is necessary to focus on the diverse characteristics that define each context. In an attempt to understand the Central American region, the analysis in the following section will refer to the state. While the identity issue is key to understanding smallness in the Caribbean, smallness expressed as vulnerability is a central topic in the country’s neighbourhood with Mexico. Belize’s smallness in Central America: negotiating alterity in a context of integration and security challenges The first regional context for the study of Belize is Central America, where the national land territory—continental Belize—is located (Belize’s waters and islands are considered part of the Caribbean). The isthmus of Central America connects South America with North America and is politically divided into seven states. From south to north, they are Panamá, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Belize. Historical, cultural, and political events have marked a clear-cut differentiation of Belize from the other Central American states, because of its past as a British colony—its neighbours were all Spanish colonies—and its recent independence (gained in 1981), whereas the other states achieved their independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

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Table 6.1 Belize’s GDP (2020, billions of US Dollars) and GNI per capita in US Dollars in comparison to Central American states (2020) Country

GDP and Rank

Guatemala Costa Rica Panama El Salvador Honduras Nicaragua Belize

77.63 62.16 53.98 24.56 23.83 12.59 2.08

GNI and Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

4,490 11,530 12,240 3,630 2,180 1,850 4,110

3 2 1 5 6 7 4

Source: World Bank (2022).

In quantitative terms, Belize’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in US Dollars compared with that of its Central American neighbours reveals that it is the smallest economy on the isthmus. Like small states throughout the world, Belize was severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its annual GDP growth was negative (−14%) in 2020, indicating a vulnerability to economic shocks such as those caused by the consequences of the pandemic. This represents the second biggest decline in Central America after Panamá (17.9%), the economy of which is sustained by international trade exchanges. Belize’s smallness in Central America is also a question of the size of the national territory and population: with its 405,000 inhabitants in 2022, it is the least populous state on the isthmus, followed by Panamá, with more than ten times that number. Guatemala, the most populous country in Central America, and an immediate neighbour of Belize, has 16.8 million inhabitants, more than 42 times the population of Belize. These quantitative realities in the regional context indicate that smallness is not necessarily opposed to bigness; although some authors consider Central America a region of small states (Koff et al., 2020). For example, Long (2020, p. 242) argues that all Central American small states are what they are because “they are constrained by limited domestic size and capacities and are shaped by their role as weaker partners in asymmetrical international relationships”. Viewed in this way, Belize would be the smallest jurisdiction within a region of smallness. Nevertheless, other economic indicators suggest some contrasting realities regarding Belize’s smallness in Central America. Belize’s quantitative smallness in territory, population, and economy is counterbalanced when we note its Gross National Income (GNI) per capita and compare it to other Central American countries. Indeed, Belize’s GNI per capita occupies a mean position relative to the other six Central American countries; this contradicts the idea that Belize is the ‘smallest’ country in the region. GDP refers to the income generated by production in a country while GNI per capita measures the income generated by inhabitants, whether earned in the domestic territory or abroad (including remittances). Consequently, Belize is the smallest territorial economy in Central America, but it is not the smallest national human economy in the region.

Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts 109 Macroeconomic indicators are especially interesting when compared to other ‘measures’ of smallness used in scholarship on small states. According to traditional perspectives in international relations (Keohane, 1969) and more recent literature focusing on the UN systems (Braveboy-Wagner, 2009), smallness means limited influence and political dependence (Criekemans, 2020). The strategies for compensating the drawbacks of smallness are diverse, consisting in networks and alliances. Networking has been documented as a specific tool used by small states in different sectors, such as education export services (Bernal, 2018, p. 111) or development issues (Rodrigues Sanches & Seibert, 2020, p. 238). The case of Belize is interesting given its regional context. The literature on small states often focuses on how regional integration is utilised by these countries to offset their smallness in terms of political influence (Long, 2017). This is not the case with Belize. As part of Central America, Belize belongs to the Central America Integration System (SICA in the Spanish acronym), an undertaking of regional integration that was born in 1991 as the result of a dual political process. The first regards institutionalised regional integration in Central America beginning with the creation of the Organisation of Central American States (ODECA) in 1951 as one of the global and regional peace institutions formed after the Second World War. The second factor was the peace processes deriving from Central American conflicts that arose during the Cold War and that principally took place in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, provoking refugee movements to Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico. The major antecedents of SICA were the Esquipulas Peace Agreements of 1986 and 1987, which focused on a regional route for generalised peace in the isthmus. In 1991, SICA was created, and it now integrates the seven Central American States and the Dominican Republic. Nevertheless, at its inception, SICA included only the other six Central American states, with Belize joining in 2000 while the Dominican Republic joined in 2013. Today, SICA is organised around five major axes: democratic security; climate change and integrated risk management; social integration; economic integration; and institutional strengthening (SICA, 2022). Belize’s smallness in the Central American integration process became clear when we observed meetings during our fieldwork. It was the last Central American state to join the organisation, and in some issues, such as water management, its participation is limited or non-existent (Kauffer & Mejía, 2020; Kauffer & Maganda, 2022; Koff & Maganda, 2015). Smallness in this context entails limitations on the basis of the number of civil servants able to attend SICA meetings; the economic contributions (as Belize does not regularly pay its fees); and active participation as a leader of regional proposals or as head of specialised working groups (which Belize has avoided). Belize’s rare political integration into the Central American institutions is also the consequence of cultural and linguistic realities: the Central American countries and the Dominican Republic are Spanish-speaking areas and Belize uses English as an official language. Ethnic boundaries between Afro-descendants and Hispanic populations in Central America also run deep. The situation also reflects the weaknesses of SICA since the policies of such a regional organisation are often ignored

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by member states (Koff et al., 2020). For these reasons, Belizean leaders have not chosen to fully participate in Central American regional integration. This lack of commitment represents a policy choice, and Belize has embraced its ‘smallness’ in the region as a means of engaging in regional integration without fully committing to it. Unlike small states traditionally examined in the literature, such as those in the European Union, smallness is not a resource for magnifying influence in a region but is a choice that permits national leaders to decrease the influence of the region in domestic affairs. Belize’s security situation has historically contributed to such decision-making. Belize maintains a small military contingent of 1,300 active military personnel, 300 coast guards, a helicopter, and one aircraft . . . although the Military Attaché of the Mexican Embassy in Belize told us with a knowing smile during fieldwork in 2014–2015 that the aircraft was not ‘operational’. Normally, small states with limited security resources turn to regions for shelter. Not so in the case of Belize. When the country achieved independence in 1981, Guatemala claimed sovereignty over the whole territory; until the beginning of the 1990s, the tourist maps of Guatemala included Belize as a part of their national territory, even though the Belizean state was finally recognised by Guatemala in 1991. Furthermore, the Guatemalan claim was converted into a border and maritime dispute that was sent by both states to the International Court of Justice of The Hague in 2019 after consultation with their populations by referendum, and there the issue awaits settlement. There is no recognised border between Belize and Guatemala—only an ‘adjacency line’, according to official sources. To cope with such security vulnerabilities, small states tend to accede to multilateral alliances for security and sovereignty (Braveboy-Wagner, 2009). Regional protection is not an option for Belize: the country does not enjoy cultural or linguistic similarities with other SICA member states. Moreover, SICA’s limited ability to implement policies renders it less attractive for Belizean leaders as a protection mechanism. For these reasons, Belize has embraced its smallness and linked its security to the biggest security actor in the region: the United States. Each year at springtime, the US military organise expeditions in Belize as part of their security operations and have also helped to establish the Belizean coast guard (U.S. Department of State, 2022). This can be shelter-seeking decision-making and a performative act of independence. In June 2022, the US Southern Command carried out a massive multilateral exercise in Belize and in Mexico (US Southern Command, 2022) as part of a 22-country partnership to strengthen security in Belize called TRADEWINDS 22. This alliance does not include other Central American states. Belize also depends on the US government’s military assistance for training and humanitarian protection, courtesy of the US Security Assistance Program (US Embassy in Belize, 2022). Part of the literature that focused on small states in the Cold War era assumed that their sovereignty could be threatened by large powers when they are in close geographical proximity (Keohane, 1969). For example, Guatemala is not a large power in global terms and, in some cases, could be considered small. Nevertheless, the closeness hypothesis, combined with Belize’s recent independence in a regional

Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts 111 context of historically disputed borders, is key to understanding the country’s security situation. To confront the threat, Belize has established strategic bilateral alliances with the major hemispheric power and, more recently, via multilateral security coalitions, essentially embracing smallness to overcome the political conflict that characterises the Central American regional context (Koff et al., 2020). This position has been nuanced by the rise of new security threats such as climate change. Belize’s capacities for establishing regional cooperation and non-state alliances in environmental matters to cope with its disaster-related vulnerabilities (such as floods and droughts) and slowly integrate into Central American regionalisation processes provide evidence of adaptation and a creative way of negotiating smallness in the isthmus. Belize in the Caribbean world: smallness within a small-state community The second regional context within which Belize exists is the Caribbean community, not only as a member of different institutions and networks but also as part of the country’s cultural, historical, and linguistic heritage. Thirteen small states are part of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which also includes Haiti and Montserrat, a British autonomous territory: these are Antigua and Barbuda; the Bahamas; Barbados; Belize; Dominica; Grenada; Guyana; Jamaica; St Kitts and Nevis; St Lucia; St Vincent and the Grenadines; Suriname; and Trinidad and Tobago. Belize is the fifth most populous country, and its GDP is ranked seventh among the 13 Caribbean small states. Consequently, its economy is small only in relation to the largest six Caribbean state economies, as it is quite competitive compared to the rest. Table 6.2 Belize’s population and GDP (2020, thousands of US dollars) in comparison to Caribbean small states (2020) Country

Population and Rank

GDP and Rank

Jamaica Trinidad and Tobago *Guyana *Suriname *Belize The Bahamas Barbados St Lucia Grenada St Vincent and the Grenadines Antigua and Barbuda Dominica St Kitts and Nevis

2,973,462 1,403,374 790,329 591,798 404,915 396,914 287,708 184,401 113,015 111,229 98,728 72,172 53,546

13,812,425 21,588,038 5,471,257 2,484,248 1,636,281 9,907,500 4,418,000 1,616,773 1,042,101 807,474 1,370,281 504,215 980,741

Source: World Bank (2022). *coastal states

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

2 1 4 6 7 3 5 8 10 12 9 13 11

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The GNI per capita in US dollars for Caribbean small states in 2020 averaged US$8,944. Belize, with US$3,970, had the lowest, which is less than half the average of the whole region. This data indicates that although Belize has a mediumsized economy in comparison with the other Caribbean small states, its population is the poorest of the Caribbean world of small states. This situation was highlighted by the poverty rate in 2019, which was the highest among nine of the small Caribbean states (Latin American Economic Outlook, 2019). As a member of Caribbean institutions, Belize belongs to the community and the common market of CARICOM and is considered to be one of the eight less developed states of the Caribbean community. CARICOM was created in 1973, and CARICOM states changed from multilateral strategies to bilateral diplomacy during the 1980s (Braveboy-Wagner, 2009): the integration process has been difficult to strengthen (Rolfe, 2007). In the 1990s, as part of a wave of economic liberalisation, CARICOM promoted preferential trade agreements before accelerating diversification on a domestic scale and, as far as economic partnerships were concerned, in the 2000s. The 1990s were also a decade when regional integration was fostered globally, and the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) was launched to liberalise movements of goods, capital, and labour. CSME enabled CARICOM to sign preferential trade agreements with Canada, the United States, and Europe. September 11, 2001, changed the regional priorities around security (BraveboyWagner, 2009). Globalisation, intensified traffic, and transnational organised crime put an emphasis on security issues in the region. Integration has been challenged because of opposition by the CARICOM member states, including Belize (Rolfe, 2007). The Caribbean world has been innovative in promoting sustainable development in the face of climate change and environmental disasters, given the situation of small Caribbean states. In Belize, the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) has been key for the building of climate-change and water policies, albeit in a post-colonial context characterised by weak institutions. Despite the regional efforts, CARICOM has not strengthened economic integration although, as Cooper and Shaw (2009) state, it has evolved from vulnerability to a diversity of mechanisms for resilience. Some forms of small-state resilience in the Caribbean include unconventional behaviours and the promotion of sources of income such as gambling and flags of convenience in the case of Belize. Duffy (2000) invokes Belize’s building of an offshore banking system as a component of a “shadow state” (p. 550). Baldacchino (2009, p. 22) mentions a “power of powerlessness” that could manifest itself in informal economic activities as well as clear cultural expressions in music and other manifestations also characteristic in the Caribbean. Belize’s smallness in the Caribbean is situated within the context of a community which is a world of common elements: strong historical links; the British heritage; and political stability grounded on the Westminster model, sometimes critically analysed in terms of democracy (Duffy, 2000; Veenendaal & Corbett, 2020; Wainwright, 2020).

Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts 113 CARICOM is a regional community that has built a soft model of integration, without avoiding fragmentation especially for economic issues dominated by national interests and strategies in a context where economies are being liberalised. Nevertheless, sharing common challenges regarding environmental issues has opened opportunities to build new regional security alliances and to cope with Belize’s climate-change-related vulnerabilities. In this world of smallness, Belize appears to be an average Caribbean state, embracing its smallness as a shared condition that fosters bonds within the Caribbean region. Smallness does not promote regional integration through utilitarian decision-making. Instead, Belizean leaders embrace smallness to strengthen a sense of community with other small states in the Caribbean. Small Belize versus Big Mexico: negotiating with Gulliver The third regional context that characterises Belize refers to the country’s adjacency with Mexico. It encompasses a history of far-reaching political and economic asymmetries between Belize, the small state, and Mexico, the fifteenth biggest economy in the world. There is a sharp contrast between a small, sparsely populated state and one of the most densely populated Latin America countries whose very large territory is about 18 times the size of Belize. When dealing with Mexico, smallness is an assumed identity for Belize. During an academic conference in the city of Chetumal in the bordering state of Quintana Roo, in Mexico, Said Musa (2011), Belize’s former Prime Minister (1998–2008) and guest of honour, stated clearly: “Mexico is so big and Belize, so small” (own fieldwork, 2011). Such a declaration in another context, such as Central America, would be impossible because in the isthmus, asymmetries are a synonym for conflicts between states, as the most powerful countries tend to politically abuse and lord it over smaller ones for their own benefit. Nevertheless, this assumed smallness is precisely a form of negotiation and compensation of the existing asymmetries between Belize and Mexico. When researchers coming from Mexico enter Belize, the fieldwork surprisingly converts into a journey through Lilliput that vividly illustrates smallness: the capital city of Belmopan has 20,000 inhabitants, the equivalent of a small quiet Mexican town, with tiny wooden houses that are, in some cases, government offices. The biggest building in the capital is the US embassy. Belize and Mexico are totally opposite worlds: isolated versus crowded; reduced versus extended; and manifesting apparent quietude versus a space of constant movement (Wilk, 2017). The traditional international relations perspective contends that proximity with a big state is a danger for a small state (Keohane, 1969). Cooper and Shaw (2009, p. 3) write: “proximity to a larger state was close, economic dependence on a larger power merged into geopolitical vulnerability”. The relations between Belize and Mexico are more centred on what Baldacchino (2009, p. 23) describes as “seeking to infer and tease out the conditions that enable smaller ‘Lilliputian’ states (whether often or rarely) to beat their respective Gulliver”. Economic, political, and territorial asymmetries are not considered to be

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problems between Belize and Mexico, as the example of the transboundary Hondo River diagnostic study demonstrates: the study was completely financed by the Mexican government in 2010, and Belize provided only information (Kauffer & Mejía, 2020). Fieldwork completed in Belize about water policy issues highlights some interesting perspectives from Belizean officials and NGOs about smallness and the construction of a national water policy. Interviews with officials of both states revealed that there is a common and “prevailing issue, [in] Belize as a very small country” (interview, Belmopan, November 2014). The issue of smallness was perhaps mentioned with insistence because the team of researchers came from Mexico. And for Gulliver’s companions—the Mexican team—discovering Lilliput, the perspective of a material smallness, was a surprise. According to Belizean stakeholders, smallness signifies a shortage of capacities and people for water policy implementation, as the following comments illustrate: “no critical mass”; “inadequate capacities and research, [bad] management and planning”; “management by singular individuals” (Interview, Belmopan, November 2014). Water policy is a clear example of the weakness of Belizean institutions because the changes following the New Water Act (2010) based on the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) paradigm were supposed to integrate a new and coherent policy rooted in international parameters, but the poor administrative performance highlighted the deep institutional fragmentation that exists in the Belizean government (Kauffer & Mejía, 2020). Regarding the Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRWS), recently defined as a pillar of Central American water policies, Belize has been one of the least concerned by the implementation at national level (Kauffer & Maganda, 2022). Shortage of people is a crude reality of smallness in policy terms (BraveboyWagner, 2009). Thus, Belize must depend on “two or three individuals for the state’s water management” (interview, Belmopan, November 2014) and on only one person for transboundary water issues. Another example of this situation is the Mexico–Belize International Water and Boundaries Commission (IWBC), which is headed by an honorary commissioner from Belize but is a more structured institution in Mexico. Building a young state is a long process that explains the current weakness of institutions in Belize (Kauffer & Mejía, 2020) and the designation of the government by the international literature on Belize as a “shadow state” (Duffy, 2000, p. 550) which is “substantially authoritarian” (Wainwright, 2020, p. 5). Smallness also means clientelism and patronage (Veenendaal & Corbett, 2020; Koff & Maganda, 2015). Nevertheless, smallness also opens up opportunities of developing new forms of cooperation and shaping non-state actors’ alliances according to national needs and realities. As Browning (2006) puts it, “being ‘small’ is not a given objective, but a matter of negotiation” (p. 681). Belize is a country located in a tropical zone and 40% of its territory is covered by tropical forest. Due to historical issues, forest conservation is characterised by a strong presence of non-state stakeholders. Environmental and conservation policies are developed and administrated by international NGOs. Between 1986 and 2018, forest stocks declined by more than 28% in Belize. Recently, an NGO

Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts 115 coalition purchased 96,000 hectares to establish the Maya Forest corridor, creating a bridge between existing protected areas at national and international levels with Mexico and Guatemala (University of Belize and Global Wildlife Conservation, 2020). Contemporary water and conservation efforts are examples of Belize’s creative ways of strengthening key national sectors and objectives through international alliances with Mexico and other interested stakeholders trying to counterbalance slowed state institution-building. Alliances with big foreign actors like Mexico or international NGOs actually benefit the country. Smallness is a tool for negotiation and is a resource used to establish and deepen development cooperation for the country. Conclusion As an internationally recognised small state, Belize has been transitioning from colonial dependency to post-colonial conditions for over four decades. Smallness, youth, and institutional fragility are structural conditions that have accompanied Belize’s security context. While the general literature on small states portrays these characteristics as weaknesses, this chapter contends that this is not necessarily the case. In fact, the examination of Belize presented above has shown how smallness may be transformed into opportunity and agency through diverse ways of performing and negotiating in the different regional contexts discussed earlier. According to quantitative measures, Belize’s smallness is fundamentally contextrelative: In Central America, Belize is quite small; in the Caribbean context of small states, it comes across as an average state and when facing its big neighbour, Mexico, it could be seen as a tiny state tending towards micro-state status. Asymmetries derived from smallness are expressed differently according to specific contexts. Belize’s smallness in Central America provokes the state’s vulnerability and complex integration in a region characterised by tensions and political conflict. Within the Caribbean community, smallness is a shared condition in parallel with a common cultural and linguistic heritage, which promotes regional integration on environmental and diplomatic issues without achieving real economic cooperation. Furthermore, Belize’s smallness in its relationship with Mexico includes an assumed tininess that facilitates the negotiation of funding and bilateral cooperation with its powerful northern neighbour, which, in turn, can behave with condescension. Smallness eventually converts into an opportunity and a strategy that depends on performance and negotiation but also on national processes of adaptation (Cooper & Shaw, 2009) within regional contexts and the ever-shifting political, environmental, and economic international sphere. As such, adept governance can promote smallness as a resource to facilitate agency in shifting security frameworks. References NB: all internet pages accessed March–June 2022. Baldacchino, G. (2009). Thucydides or Kissinger? A critical review of smaller state diplomacy. In A. F. Cooper & T. M. Shaw (Eds.), The Diplomacies of Small States:

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Between Vulnerability and Resilience (pp. 21–40). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9780230246911_2. Baldacchino, G. (Ed.) (2023). The Success of Small States in International Relations: Mice that Roar? Routledge. Baldacchino, G. & Wivel, A. (2020). Small states: concepts and theories. In G. Baldacchino & A. Wivel (Eds.), Handbook on the Politics of Small States (pp. 2–19). Edward Elgar. Bernal, R. (2018). The export of higher education services from small island developing states: the Caribbean potential. In L. Briguglio (Ed.), Handbook of Small States Economic, Social and Environmental Issues (pp. 103–18). Routledge. Braveboy-Wagner, J. A. (2009). The diplomacy of Caribbean community states: searching for resilience. In A. F. Cooper & T. M. Shaw (Eds.), The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resilience (pp. 96–115). Palgrave Macmillan. Browning, C. S. (2006). Small, smart and salient? Rethinking identity in the small states literature. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19(4), 669–84. Chong, A. (2009). Singapore and the soft power experience. In A. F. Cooper & T. M. Shaw (Eds.), The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resilience (pp. 65–80). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246911_2. Cooper, A. F. & Shaw, T. M. (2009). The diplomacies of small states at the start of the twentyfirst century: how vulnerable? How resilient? In A. F. Cooper & T. M. Shaw (Eds.), The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resilience (pp. 1–18). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246911_1. Criekemans, D. (2020). Protodiplomacy: sub-state diplomacy and wannabe states. In G. Baldacchino & A. Wivel (Eds.), Handbook on the Politics of Small States (pp. 395–410). Edward Elgar. Duffy, R. (2000). Shadow players: ecotourism development, corruption and state politics in Belize. Third World Quarterly 21(3), 549–65. Graham, S. & Graham, V. (2019). Quality political participation and the SDGs in African small island developing states. Regions and Cohesion 9(2), 1–30. Kauffer, E. & Maganda, C. (2022). The adoption of global water norms in Central America: what separates normative coherence from normative hegemony? Development Policy Review 40(S1), e12626. Kauffer, E. & Mejía González, L. (2020). De la descolonización a la gestión integrada de recursos hídricos (GIRH): La política del agua de Belice a través del tiempo (1981–2015). Gestión y Política Pública 29(1), 37–66. Keohane, R. O. (1969). Lilliputians’ dilemmas: small states in international politics. International Organization 23(2), 291–310. Koff, H. & Maganda, C. (2015). Against the current: a cross-regional comparison of transboundary water management in small states. Water International 40(2), 231–50. Koff, H.; Maganda, C. & Kauffer, E. (2020). Transboundary water diplomacy amongst small states: a giant dilemma for Central American regionalism. Water International 45(4), 275–91. Latin American Economic Outlook (2019). Special Feature: The Caribbean Small States. OECD. www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/latin-american-economic-outlook2019_a564a0bd-en. Lewis, P. (2007). Bringing small states back in: the Caribbean and Pacific in a new world order. SES 56(1&2), 1–31. Long, T. (2017). It’s not the size, it’s the relationship: from ‘small states’ to asymmetry. International Politics 54(2), 144–60.

Negotiating smallness in three regional contexts 117 Long, T. (2020). Small states in Central America. In G. Baldacchino & A. Wivel (Eds.), Handbook on the Politics of Small States (pp. 242–57). Edward Elgar. Neumann, I. B. & Gstöhl, S. (2006). Introduction: Lilliputians in Gulliver’s world? In C. Ingebritsen, I. B. Neumann, S. Gstöhl & J. Beyer (Eds.), Small States in International Relations (pp. 3–36). University of Washington Press & University of Iceland Press. Payne, A. (2009). Afterword: vulnerability as a condition, resilience as a strategy. In A. F. Cooper & T. M. Shaw (Eds.), The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resilience (pp. 279–85). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246911_16. Prasad, N. (2009). Small but smart: small states in the global system. In A. F. Cooper & T. M. Shaw (Eds.), The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resilience (pp. 41–64). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230246911_3. Rodrigues Sanches, E. & Seibert, G. (2020). Politics and economy in small African island states: comparing Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. In G. Baldacchino & A. Wivel (Eds.), Handbook on the Politics of Small States (pp. 222–41). Edward Elgar. Rolfe, J. (2007). Many small states, two regions, different constructions. Social and Economic Studies 56(1/2), 96–134. Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA) (2022). Paz en Centroamerica: Acuerdos de Esqupulas I y II. www.sica.int/pacificacion. University of Belize and Global Wildlife Conservation (2020). The Maya Forest Corridor. Securing Belize’s National Protected Area System and the Last Link for the Selva Maya. https://globalconservation.org/projects/greater-belize-maya-forest/. U.S. Department of State (2022). U.S.-Belize Relations. www.state.gov/countries-areas/ belize/. U.S. Embassy in Belize (2022). Security Cooperation Office. https://bz.usembassy.gov/ embassy/belmopan/sections-offices/military-liaison-office/. U.S. Southern Command (2022). TRADEWINDS 2022 Builds Regional Security Partnerships in Belize. https://bz.usembassy.gov/tradewinds-2022-builds-regional-securitypartnerships-in-belize/. Veenendaal, W. & Corbett, J. (2020). Clientelism in small states: how smallness influences patron—client networks in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Democratization 27(1), 61–80. Wainwright, J. (2020). The colonial origins of the state in southern Belize. Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 46, 99–125. Wilk, R. (2017). Belize: a country but not a nation. In U. Hanner & A. Gingrich (Eds.), Small Countries. Structures and Sensibilities (pp. 236–49). University of Pennsylvania Press. World Bank (2022). Data: Belize. https://data.worldbank.org/country/belize?view=chart.

7

What is small-state security policy? ‘Transpolitical propagation’ in the case of Luxembourg, Singapore, and Lithuania Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet

Every political unit,1 whether large or small, will strive to stay as free as possible and gain as much advantage as it can, as long as it stays secure (or manages to reduce its vulnerability, see the introduction to this volume). Nevertheless, International Relations (IR) theories have traditionally focused on large polities at the conceptual expense of small states. The behaviour of small political units is, however, very important for larger powers. How will the latter unit resist the former by uniting with (or beside) a relatively more important one? Or, to draw on the vocabulary of IR theory, how will small states accept to enter into a process of balancing or bandwagoning? Whether small states will enter a coalition and, more importantly, stay in it, is something that a nation seeking hegemony, pre-eminence, or leadership should worry about. Whether they merely stay neutral and do not join forces can be decisive in certain circumstances. The issue is not new. Robert Keohane, in an early reflection on small states, already pointed out that “if Lilliputians can tie up Gulliver, or make him do their fighting for them, they must be studied as carefully as the giant” (Keohane, 1969, p. 310). But acting as a small power differs radically from acting as a big one. Consequently, what are the fundamentals of small-state strategy and diplomatic conduct? Can IR theory fully explain the behaviour of small polities struggling for their independence with its two basic strategic moves, ‘balancing’ and ‘bandwagoning’? (Waltz, 1979). Are there not any alternative options available to the leaders of comparatively weaker states? (Wu, 2017) These are the issues we will be examining in this chapter. In the first section, we present a specific form of ‘hedging’ as a political risk management strategy of small states as ‘transpolitical propagation’. This concept comprises the way a polity combines military strategy and diplomacy to achieve its goals vis-à-vis the transpolity (the outer political space in which war is always possible). In the second section, we present three case studies, of Singapore, Luxembourg, and Lithuania respectively, to see what ‘hedging’ behaviour may look like and what means of power it entails to be efficient. How to govern a small state?: strategic reasoning and transpolitical propagation of small states International Relations theories, and especially systemic approaches, traditionally distinguish between ‘players’ and ‘non-players’ (see, e.g., Vandenbosch, 1964; DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-10

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Keohane, 1969; Waltz, 1979; Aron, 1966; Wight, 1978; Baechler, 1985, 2005; Bischof, 2013), that is on the one hand, political units that can define the course of international interactions. On the other hand, there are ‘players’ that cannot set the agenda of global strategy and need external assistance, because they “cannot obtain security primarily by use of its own capabilities” (Rothstein, 1968, p. 29). From this perspective, one can ask what are the aims and objectives of a ‘non-player’ (if we follow the terminology of these IR theory classics)? And does this term even apply to small states as a relevant description of their influence on the global or regional stage? Preferences and decisions

In his review essay ‘Anarchy in International Theory’ (1994), Robert Powell states that a player’s interests reflect its preferred ranking of possible outcomes. According to these preferences about outcomes and his beliefs about what the other players are doing, a player can rank its potential actions from most to least preferred. In a two-person game, for example, the row player can rank its actions from best to worst given its pay-offs and its beliefs about what the column player is doing. This induced ranking defines a player’s preferences for actions. Each player, in this case each state, can estimate the outcome of an action and thus select the best move to be made on the international stage. International Theory long focused on the choices of ‘great’ powers, which are limited in their possibilities. Some alliances can be reversed, like the ‘diplomatic revolution’ of 1756, which occurred at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War (with Austria going from an alliance with Britain to an alliance with France, while Prussia became an ally of Britain), but such alliance reversals do not occur very often. It is exactly the opposite for small states, which are in a position where switching of alliances is frequent, whether it is forced or chosen. It is this phenomenon that international relations theory has long refused to classify as a fundamental type of behaviour because of the bias towards large-state behaviour. IR needs to integrate more small states behaviour because these polities are more frequently subject to switching and reversing alliances, due to their greater sensitivity to international context. This is a defining characteristic of small-state behaviour. As we have seen, fundamental choices of great powers do not often diverge. On the contrary, small states are caught in the midst of international brawls and may well in certain cases fear a loss of their autonomy or even their independence (in a strategic or political sense). Too much loyalty to the same side can quickly mean becoming part of a polity or losing the freedom of choice. Hence, it must be avoided. So beyond bandwagoning and balancing, a possible third position remains for small political units: alternating quickly between the two fundamental strategic moves and by doing so maximising their interests and liberty of movement. To understand this process better, another way of looking at the international stage could be employed: the concept of ‘transpolitical propagation’.

120 Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet Transpolitical propagation: a definition

The notion of ‘transpolitical’ was coined by Jean Baechler. It refers to his theory of international relations and designates the area within which war is still possible (Baechler, 2005). ‘Transpolitical’ is defined negatively, as the opposite of the area controlled by a ‘polity’, where peace is achieved by ‘political’ means and processes upon which members of the polity have previously agreed. It constitutes an alternative to ‘inter-national’ terminology, which is unfit to describe a wide range of situations where actors are not necessarily ‘nations’. ‘Propagation’, on the other hand, is defined as the act of spreading from one person to another: a progression or a diffusion into an environment. Defined in previous research (Dabila, 2013), this term aims to denote, in the most general sense, the way political units, or polities, seek to gain influence through cultural, diplomatic, and strategic means. A synonym for this term would be the expression “diplomatic-strategic conduct”, used by Raymond Aron in his masterpiece, Peace and War (1966, p. 308), but this concept only conflates the two adjectives and does not add any theoretical value. What are the advantages of this terminology? It is an alternative to Grand Strategy (see, e.g., Gaddis, 2018), which can be understood as a set of fundamental principles that guide a country’s foreign policy, studied to understand “why states strategize in an effort to provide security, for and against what they strategize, and the consequences of those choices” and how these principles “provide the guidelines for a state’s plans, the strategy it pursues in a specific case, and even its decisions and tactics in an individual episode” (Balzacq & Reich, 2019, p. 16). But Grand Strategy, even with this kind of definition, remains tied to its military aspect and our aim is to reset the objectives in non-military terms. Military strategy is, in our context, ancillary to a more general goal and not the contrary. In this sense, it also replaces the term “Integral Strategy”, coined by the French General Lucien Poirier (Poirier, 1999). Both terms are too centred on the military aspect of the problem. The word ‘strategy’ is derived from the Greek ‘stratos’ meaning ‘army’, and ‘stategia’ the act of commanding an army and leading it (into battle). From our perspective, transpolitical propagation is a more neutral way of stating that a polity will seek its advantage by any means—diplomatic, military, economic, or cultural. Transpolitical propagation encompasses all aspects of the external conduct of a polity: hard and soft power, coercion, and persuasion. What are the goals for the transpolitical propagation of small states?

With this new angle on the external policy of a political unit, what can we say about small-state behaviour in terms of security and strategy beyond strictly military goals? A wide set of objectives can be identified for small states, which are more specific to them and less common in bigger states. Some states have not waited for thermonuclear weapons to discover that they and their citizens could be erased from the political map if they lost only one single battle. In history, thousands of sovereign states have existed and disappeared, even in Europe. This can happen in different ways: as the result of a conquest, of course, but also by matrimonial

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alliance or diplomatic arrangement. Therefore, a small state must make its choice very carefully, knowing that it could disappear if its alliance falls apart. There are not only the ‘one-bomb states’ but also states that are one mistake away from disappearance. The most fundamental choices a small state has to make are then all tied to independence and autonomy, and three basic goals can be identified: • Exist (or remain active as an independent agent) • Set ‘non-intrusive’ alliances (i.e., an alliance with a greater power that sets the objectives for all its members) • Conserve independence and autonomy On the other hand, a set of negative goals that must be avoided can be defined. • • • •

Lose independence Be politically integrated by force Disappear as an autonomous centre of decision-making Lose the freedom to designate leaders

If small states are prone to lose independence or autonomy, their political propagation strategy must avoid the four outcomes linked with political disappearance. The strategy of small states consequently has to lie in between these two sets of objectives, the first positive and the second negative. However, a small polity can also seek a position where it enhances wealth, prestige, security, and ultimately power. But it cannot do so by being either too close to its allies or too loosely tied to them. It cannot be too aggressive towards its enemies, otherwise it may run the risk of being attacked by one of them and abruptly losing its autonomy or sovereignty. To thrive and gain influence, small states therefore need to find a way to define their relations to the ‘greater states’, defined as the ‘players’ in IR theory and to decide on their level of proximity, neutrality, and hostility to them. But for IR theory to detect such behaviours, it needs to stop considering them as ‘non-players’. Hedging, a substitute for balancing and bandwagoning?

A third possibility thus emerges as an alternative to Waltz’s two fundamental moves, balancing and bandwagoning. As defined by Kuik and Rozman (2015), hedging is envisioned “as a broad strategic orientation that consists of a bundle of policies, and not a single policy or strategy” (p. 9). It is “an act of insuring oneself against the risk of loss by making transactions on the opposite side so as to roughly compensate for possible loss on the first” (p. 2), by alternate balancing and bandwagoning behaviour towards rival great powers (a good example would be Tito’s strategy of distancing himself from Stalinism but never breaking away from general communist goals and narrative). According to Kei Koga (2017), hedging is essentially the “combination of ‘balancing’ and ‘bandwagoning’”. It establishes a “counteraction” that

122 Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet cancels out the risks of each action (and, to some extent, its benefits), thereby either gaining the benefit of buying time to determine whether the state should balance or bandwagon until the strategic landscape’s future direction is clarified or attaining a strategic benefit to maintain the state’s neutral position in a manner that maximizes autonomy. (p. 637) It also entails establishing a relationship to other great powers and maybe a common strategy for a group of small states (as ASEAN is doing for lesser powers of the Asia-Pacific region with respect to China and the United States). As a group of actors sharing a common objective, small-state actions sometimes need to be coordinated to halt or to curb the dangers of great-power conflicts. Neutrality or resistance is better defended if the action is coordinated. The decline of many ‘non-aligned’ states movements since the Conference of Bandung (1955) is there to remind us that neutrality is not synonymous with passivity but has to be strongly defended. It is precisely this kind of synchronised action that the League of Nations was, and the United Nations are, supposed to make easier for small political units, thus depriving greater states of the possibility to negotiate only with each other. Another good example would be the African Union, created in 2002, which was able to act as a coalition of small states in crises such as those in Somalia, Darfour, or more recently in Mali. Also, the OIF (the International Organisation of La Francophonie [French-speaking countries]), which was imposed on France in 1970 by active heads of government of former colonial states such as Tunisia, Senegal, or Cambodia, offered a way for ‘lesser’ French-speaking states to deal on an equal footing with France in matters pertaining to the governance of cultural and diplomatic policies. Hedging can even be elevated from frequent to systemic, a process for which Olli Pekka Suorsa (2017), coined the term “omnidirectional hedging” (ODH) a concept that is useful for describing the behaviour of lesser powers, particularly in the context of Southeast Asia. By definition, a small polity has a restricted ‘strategic space’, which Suorsa defines as “a state’s relative strategic autonomy or freedom of movement (i.e. diplomatic or strategic) within the given regional or international security environment” (p. 1). According to this concept, a state can sometimes “aim to maximise its (relative) strategic space” and bring into play strategies that refuse to choose between one of the greater powers to maximise its gain, but above all, to minimise its loss. ‘Two-dimensional’ hedging refers to the part played by hedging literature in the International Relations and Security Studies that understands a state’s hedging strategy to involve predominantly two great powers (i.e., the United States and China). “Multidimensionality”, then, refers to a state’s strategic balancing between multiple powers (Suorsa, 2017, p. 1). To escape dramatic choices between Beijing and Washington, one way out is to seek partnerships with other parts of the world which can come to your rescue in a sensitive political negotiation. Providing semiconductors to the whole world, Taiwan does not rely only on the United States to maintain its independence but also on states that are close to China when it comes to other issues.

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“States are generally unwilling to strictly align with one great power over another, in fear of bearing unproportioned long-term economic, diplomatic or strategic losses in the process”, as Suorsa (2017, p. 2) puts it. Small powers of Southeast Asia cannot choose one side in the competition, as European small powers did, far from any imminent danger of a Soviet invasion: States generally refuse to choose sides between the United States and China, cherishing the great economic opportunities offered by the continued rise of China, flooding the region with unsurmountable trade and investment opportunities, and with the technological sophistication or the security provided by the US military preponderance in the region. However, as the strategic competition between the United States and China is set to grow, some scholars argue that Southeast Asian states may have to choose whether to balance against or bandwagon with one or the other great power. (ibid., p. 2) Omnidirectional hedging revisited

Let us take a look at the mechanism for countries willing to use ODH techniques. Trapped between two or several great powers, small states also have fewer opportunities to freely enter into coalitions, which diminishes their ability to balance or bandwagon in certain circumstances. Indeed, for states like Taiwan or Singapore (the latter is dealt with in detail in the second part of this chapter) being too close to China is dangerous and would mean losing autonomy or even independence. But, on the other hand, being too close to the United States and its allies in the region would infuriate Beijing and could lead to aggressive actions. Therefore, the leadership of these two countries must juggle close relations with United States and China, and if possible, with Japan, India, Europe, and Australia too—all at the same time—as well of course as countries with similar geopolitical problematics in the region, to gain allies and leverage in crises that might arise. This is what Suorsa (2017) means by this kind of hedging: Omnidirectional hedging assists small states to prevent strategic entrapment by being drawn into the evolving Sino–US rivalry in the region, on one hand, and to avoid strategic abandonment by their stronger partners, on the other. At the systemic level, strategic diversification, a core element of the ODH logic, helps in reinforcing the common rhetoric in Southeast Asia and ASEAN, the one of refusing to choose sides between the United States and China, and, instead, stresses the importance of cultivating mutually beneficial relations with all actors in the region. (p. 12) We now see how hedging can help a small state’s foreign policy to gain more freedom of movement in its strategic and diplomatic space. We can then sum up its conceptual contribution to IR theory and its importance to understand how a small state decides on a foreign policy (see the “vulnerability–agency paradox”,

124 Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet raised in the introduction to this volume). To answer this question, one can ask a more precise one: what steps must a small power take to define behaviour on the transpolitical stage? We propose separating, conceptually, five different stages of transpolitical propagation for small states. Stages of transpolitical propagation

First, the side a small state stands on, its relationship to its greater ally or allies or foes and the small units it shares—a common uncomfortable situation with which it can align at times to reinforce the hedging. This entails knowing which one will fear, which one can be an ally, what ‘red lines’ in each direction should not be crossed in either direction. We propose naming it ‘transpolitical positioning’. Second, the level of cooperation and the alignment with its foreign policy goals, which set the level of hostility on the other side. On what subject can a state align with its allies? On what can it make a compromise with its enemy? What are the common threats that can unify the ‘non-players’ and establish them, at least temporarily, as collective players? This process of differentiating stakes and subjects can be called ‘sectorial diagnoses’. It is very important to know when and on what subject one must hedge in the other direction. Third, the level of implication in the common effort is important. This level is the first step in the operationalisation of the political goals of the global strategy achieved in the first two stages. It concerns positioning as well as diagnosis and can be summed up by the question: to what extent shall I support or combat my ally or my foe on any particular subject? ASEAN countries can be strong allies of the United States on every matter concerning China but will not be as tough on Russia or in their support of Israel to manage a putative support of Moscow or the Islamic world if they face a crisis with Beijing. In the same way, Israel has adopted every goal of American diplomacy in the Middle East but failed to maintain good relations with Russia and even stood by Azerbaijan during its war with Armenia. Suddenly, the maxim ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ or ‘the enemy of my ally is my enemy’ does not apply any more, foundering as it does on the complexity of international relations. Bandwagoning and balancing are not insufficient per se but also because they are always partial. Totally aligning oneself with another state’s policy means that one’s autonomy, which we saw as one of the positive goals transpolitical propagation must achieve, will be lost. Let us name this stage ‘strategical provisioning’. Fourth, a clear distinction should be made between the alliance’s objectives and strictly national objectives. A polity must be able to distinguish clearly between its goals and those of its coalition or alliance. In IR, even more in wars, the situation can change dramatically in a very short period of time. If the first three steps can be completely changed and the calculus of the cost–benefit ratio has to be rebooted, it is a permanent function that constitutes an obligation to pursue a policy. The risk is a total loss of control over the aims and means of the transpolitical behaviour and acts of the polity. It is a very difficult part of the construction of a diplomatic– strategic conduct, which all political units fail to achieve, at least in some respects. When to start an argument, a feud, or a war? When to end it? This problem is very

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hard to address, and history is not a very predictable science because heads of state may not be completely successful in this task, thus creating one situation after the other that nobody really wanted. This last step can be termed ‘transpolitical reassessment’. We thus have a four-step policy that should be put in place by all actors in order to complete their transpolitical propagation: transpolitical positioning, sectorial diagnosis, strategical provisioning, and transpolitical reassessment. Every state should engage in these processes, but we were only able to see them when considering the constraints of small states. They are, in a way, constituted only by a mix of balancing and bandwagoning (even ‘hedging’ is a mix of, or an alternation between, the two), but in a far more complex way than the systemic theory supposed. Once answers have been found to these questions, several processes must be set up to find them, internal and political processes that are not our concern in this chapter. Our focus is on how a small state deals with a comprehensive process of multiple diagnoses and assessments to decide on a transpolitical propagation. It is one of the most fundamental choices that a state must make. It is, as it were, the ‘strategisation’ of its transpolitical propagation. Who decides on the form of the transpolitical propagation we have just presented? The answer is of course quite different depending on whether we are talking about the Vatican, Monaco, Luxembourg, Singapore, or Lithuania. Several processes are necessary to be able to define transpolitical propagation sovereignty. States, small or great, need to put in place or maintain an autonomous capacity of appreciation of the divergences between national interests and alliance interests. It is also necessary to define and regulate the modalities of negotiation between the Great Ally, the greater powers of the alliance, and the other small states of the alliance. In other words, the correct diplomatic apparatus that fits with the objectives set for the transpolitical propagation is required. One final specification can be identified, even if not all states always use it: the capacity to influence the definition of the common objectives of the alliance or the coalition. It is what we could call the ability ‘to think on the level of the alliance’ and participate in the collective investigation and agenda-shaping. For instance, the capacity of Raymond Aron to participate in strategic reflection in Washington or the strategy of the closest ally of the United Kingdom (the other party to that special relationship) in the first part of the Cold War. Hence, if geography and strategic position mostly define possible responses, we still need concepts and data if we are to interpret and understand the remaining strategies and to ascertain what margin of freedom small states can achieve in their own positions. It is now time to reconsider the three examples of small-state external conduct that we have chosen in the light of this new set of concepts, derived from the idea of transpolitical propagation. Three empirical studies of transpolitical propagation: how to avoid a security dilemma Transpolitical propagation seems by its very nature to be adaptable to all states since the concept is constructed according to a neutral approach that does not take

126 Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet into account criteria of power as the sole and only measure of importance within international relations and does not focus solely only on military issues such as Grand Strategy. This concept is focused on the aspect of security, especially on the question of how a state can avoid security dilemmas by its own choice and its own strategic thinking. As a result, the ‘non-actors’ appear to be able to adopt a full-fledged strategic thinking and to develop a structured action even though they have to act with limited means. However, it is still necessary that the structure thus presented find a concrete echo and that the contemporary behaviour of the small powers is part of a concrete transpolitical propagation, without which the theory would only be a chimera. Therefore, in the context of this chapter, an in-depth study was conducted on three actors considered objectively on the grounds of their size and their small populations as small states: Luxembourg, Lithuania, and Singapore. As a followup to a thesis on the Grand Strategy of small powers, in which these three actors are the subject of case studies, the cases were selected for their representativeness due to their diverse security and international contexts. The aim was to identify the capacity of these states to carry out a transpolitical propagation and to determine the modalities concerned to deliver the materiality of the concept presented while refining its manifestations. Methodology

The strategic thinking of a state, even when reduced to its aspect of security and military policy (transpolitical propagation), is not created ex nihilo but derives from a political necessity. In fact, an actor thought of as a rational actor will only feel the need to anticipate and build its action over time, that is to act strategically, when faced with a problem that forces the actor in question to structure its action (Nash, 1951). Otherwise, the action of the state is adapted only to the circumstances, formed intuitively to face security dilemmas when they appear but without clear anticipation. This postulate being established, the necessity of a security and military policy is based on only real or supposed adversity, currently encountered or anticipated. This adversity is then constantly present, if only because of the imperative need of any state to ensure its survival and to protect itself from the risk of invasion, by its own action (armed forces) or by recourse to a protector (an alliance, an international organisation). Consequently, the study of transpolitical propagation applied to a state is not possible without a prior definition of the security threats and problems encountered by actors which require strategic responses. Consequently, this chapter refers to the notion of “security dilemmas” (Herz, 1952), understood as the uncertainty that characterises international relations which leads to the actions of some being perceived by others as potential threats, pushing actors to take measures to ensure their security. This in turn leads to a threat for the former, reinforcing via a vicious circle the insecurity and perceived threats. More precisely, the dilemma is created in accordance with the perspective of one actor on the behaviour of another in terms of “arms and fear” (Jervis, 1978, p. 168). This precision is fundamental in

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two respects: it specifies the security dilemma of each actor vis-à-vis each other and leaves the binary logic of the arms race to distinguish between friends (no perceived dilemma) and enemies (perceived security dilemma) and above all to state that the perception of the actor is more important than the acts (a dilemma can exist even if the threat is not tangible, as long as it is perceived by the actor). The study of small states appears to have a method at its disposal: the threats identified by the actor are defined and then, as a counterbalance, the strategic military policies implemented to overcome them or, failing that, to minimise them, thus characterising their vision of transpolitical propagation. As for the concrete treatment of the case studies by this methodology, the choice was made to focus on their contemporary strategic vision, thus including the definition of current and future threats, as well as the public policies envisaged to respond to them. The study of threats and their definition comes from an analysis of official speeches and public strategic documents from each country (white papers on defence and security, strategic-vision texts, speeches of heads of state) as well as on the strategic visions created to respond to them. Thus, from the presence of such documents and their comprehensiveness and conceptual dynamism emerges the reality of a transpolitical propagation for current and future threats. The vision of security and international action presented in the case studies is therefore predominantly forward-looking, with strategic documents responding to future threats in the 2030–2035 timeframe. For reasons of brevity, a detailed study of each actor’s documents is not carried out here, and only the final results per actor of this research work carried out over two consecutive years will be reported in this chapter to draw syncretic lessons. Luxembourg and the delegation of security

The case of Luxembourg is symptomatic of the security policy of a small state. The country must ensure its survival and independence while being surrounded by major powers. It cannot rely on its own military capacity to do so and has therefore, throughout its history, had to rely on the great powers, either by using neutrality and playing one off against the other so that invasion by one leads to war with the other (balance of power) or by externalising its defence by securing a protector (bandwagoning). The history of Luxembourg expresses this alternation, since the neutral logic of independence during the Second World War between France and Germany was replaced by insertion into the European and Atlantic alliances after 1945. However, beyond this diplomatic and strategic logic, Luxembourg has experienced a unique phenomenon, namely the reversal of threats, exerting a fundamental change in its contemporary security policy. Indeed, the fundamental threat to independence by the encirclement of great powers has been replaced by a fundamental protection by the proximity of great powers. Because of the European construction and the Atlantic Alliance, Luxembourg is protected by its very nature with a common and deeply developed security link with the Benelux states, Germany, and France (MAEE, 2011, pp. 8–9). This fundamental guarantee of security implies a particular transpolitical vision of propagation, as long as the country has not really faced existential threats,

128 Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet Luxembourg being only concerned with the maintenance of the guarantee of alliances and the stability of the liberal international system (MAEE, 2017). The security logic is thus not deduced from threats to the actor but from threats to the elements that provide security. Thus, although the security dilemma is of low intensity and hardly characterised a priori, it emerges in the imperative of maintaining effective security guarantees for future challenges, in particular to the efficiency of alliances and the maintenance of the cohesion necessary for members to implement collective security in the event of a threat to one of the members (MAEE, 2018). How to act in this case to reinforce a security that does not depend on itself, being by nature delegated to other structures? The path favoured by Luxembourg is to develop alliances, according to a conceptual triptych of usefulness, visibility, and efficiency (Chambre des députés du Luxembourg, 2003). Luxembourg’s action is to position itself in the capability gaps of the alliances, to complement the action of the great powers, and to guarantee the country’s position as an effective and active ally that other members—with an interest in maintaining security—need too (see Figure 7.1 for full concepts developed by Luxembourg). The transpolitical propagation thus presented is directly in line with a logic of security delegation thanks to the absence of direct threats and the material incapacity of the state to develop its own defensive means. The international action that is highlighted lies both in the reinforcement of the security guarantees thus obtained by the alliances (bandwagoning) with its own concepts developing the role of the small power in the alliances and at the same time in the development of autonomous power in other segments than the military (economy and finance, high technology, in particular space, etc.). The duality thus presented is a typical reflection of hedging behaviour as presented earlier, in the third stage of ‘strategic provisioning’ by alignment with an alliance. To sum up, despite a weak security dilemma and only a recent doctrine, Luxembourg does present the implementation of a transpolitical propagation, expressing at the same time a structured and palpable strategic idea. Lithuania, between security paradox and cumulative strategy

In contrast to the case of Luxembourg, Lithuania, in spite of its thousand-year-old history, offers a strategic continuity in the opposition to threats of very high intensity directly challenging its survival. It has thus always been a matter of successively preserving its independence in the face of the Teutonic Order, the Muscovite Rus, Sweden, Prussia, the Tsarist Empire, the Soviets, and today’s Russia (Eidintas et al., 2013). Lithuanian security logic is thus historically based on a two-pronged approach: the development of its national military capabilities to contain threats and, when this is not possible, the conclusion of a fundamental alliance to improve the balance of power. The rapprochement and then the merger with the Kingdom of Poland which lasted until the end of the eighteenth century has since 2004 been replaced by the Atlantic and European alliances, drawing lessons from the failure of the

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Concepts

International law

Diplomacy

Alliances/regional integration Development International Order Multilateral structures

Politique 3D

Alliances

Visibility

Concept of foreign policy

Utility

Finance

Efficiency

Defense

Economy High technology

Figure 7.1 Doctrine, means, and concept—the case of Luxembourg Source: Created by the author (Thibault Fouillet).

autonomous path of the interwar period leading to diplomatic isolation and absorption by the Soviet Union (Kasekamp, 2018). This permanence of a security paradox, the most important level of intensity of the security dilemma, as well as the historical custom of alliances as a source of power and security, produces a complete and structured strategic reflection with a certain conceptual dynamism. Consequently, the transpolitical propagation that is achieved is officially structured around two pillars that are the fundamental guarantee of strong military

130 Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet alliances (NATO, EU), and the development of an integral defence built around the concept of “total defense” (MOD, 2016). This concept involves mobilising all national resources for the defence of the nation in the event of an invasion, with resilience as the only watchword. Beyond the armed forces alone, the population must be mobilised to exercise passive disobedience and resistance to the invasion in order to make the Russian occupation untenable. This fundamental cumulative strategy, since it combines national and alliance resources, forms the basis of a coherent and complete strategic package, detailing the constituent elements of the two pillars (alliances, national capabilities) and the affiliated development modalities in the future (see Figure 7.2). As a result, Lithuania appears not only as a state consciously implementing a transpolitical propagation based on bandwagoning and maximisation of national military power or as defined earlier a ‘transpolitical reassessment’ strategy but above all presents the case of a small state pursuing such a logic throughout its history, making it a historical actor in international relations regardless of its level of power. Singapore: overcoming small-power status with the help of Grand Strategy

Our last case study is of Singapore, the state most likely to demonstrate the use by a small state of transpolitical propagation, because of the gain in power it has

Civil integration (passive disobedience)

Energetical independance

Other means of national power

Economic growth

Total defense

Cybersecurity

Modernisation

Security

Increase of national military power

Reborn of national conscription

Fundamental guarantees (OTAN/US/UE)

Integration of paramilitary forces

Cumulative strategy Regional integration (Nordic States, Baltics States)

Figure 7.2 The contemporary strategic and conceptual formation of Lithuania Source: Created by the author (Thibault Fouillet).

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accumulated and the status it has attained within the international system in the course of 60 years. Indeed, this micro-state with a comparatively short history (independence in 1965) and an initially unfavourable security context, with an environment marked by the presence of great powers (China, the American presence in Asia), nearby regional powers (Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines), and the threat of communist expansion in Southeast Asia, marked from its creation by a comprehensive strategic thinking and a rapid development. The founders of the state, and in particular Lee Kuan Yew, were instrumental in this development, with a political and strategic vision defined through publications and international positions even before independence. Recourse to foreign aid, particularly from Israel, also allowed for the refinement of concepts and the finding of concrete inspiration (Bitzinger, 2021). Faced with an initial strong threat to its independence and survival, and due to the absence of alliances or protectors (no possibility of conducting a bandwagoning policy), Singapore has had to develop its military capabilities and its power in strict autonomy (Lee, 2000). The result is an accomplished model of Grand Strategy, as a long-term vision of a state to overcome security dilemmas by mobilising all national means (diplomacy, defence, economy, etc.), based on ‘total defence’. This concept, then, is more global than that defined by Lithuania and is intended to apply to all the means of the state, so any national action must contribute to increase the power of Singapore and reinforce its security (see Figure 7.3). This extremely successful concept is centrally supported by four pillars: an economic development driven by focusing on high value-added sectors (the creation of a world port hub; a specialisation in finance); a strong education policy ensuring a highly qualified population able to conduct high-tech projects for economic and military superiority; the development of autonomous military capabilities made possible by a national industry that benefits from the trickle-down effect of the previous pillars to have the necessary know-how and financing; and finally, the conduct of a balance-of-power diplomacy based on regional integration and the mobilisation of small powers (a forum dedicated to the UN) as well as the multiplication of bilateral defence partnerships (Tan Keng Yam, 2000). The development of national resources thus progressively allows for military autonomy and the evolution of security capabilities as the armed forces develop, passing successively without ever replacing them from a logic of weaponising the city-state on the basis of powerful symbolic images (the ‘poisonous shrimp’), to action in a nearby foreign country making it possible to destabilise the adversary (‘the porcupine’), and finally to a pre-emptive offensive capacity disarming the adversary by units using integration and technological superiority (‘the dolphin’). The security logic is also reinforced by economic development, making Singapore a key player with a global reach (one of the world’s main stock markets, the second largest port hub in the world), as well as by diplomatic development allowing for a string of agreements and regional interests (ASEAN, military partnerships with France, the United States, the United Kingdom, etc.) and a status of valued neutrality.

132 Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet The transpolitical propagation of Singapore is thus beyond doubt, as the dynamism and development observed, based on a complete and permanent strategic vision since the creation of the state have allowed this city-state to overcome the initial threats. Moreover, and this is the singularity of this case study, the Grand Strategy mobilised was not limited to this stage and allowed a micro-state to go beyond its initial character of small power, to acquire a regional status. Thus, Singapore is currently the leading military force and economic power in Southeast Asia, no longer directly facing threats, and this is not, as in the case of Luxembourg, due to a delegation of security and a favourable context but rather to the development of its national capabilities which followed an ‘omnidirectional hedging’ as described earlier. In fine, Singapore offers the unique case of a small power whose initial transpolitical propagation, perfectly structured and multi-domain, has not only ensured security by overcoming the initial security dilemma but above all allowed a sustainable gain in power that enabled this small state to become a regional power and this exclusively through the development of national capabilities and a diplomatic strategy of balance of power, that is to say, in essence, through a strategic vision similar to that of the great powers. Conclusion: can small states define and implement their own transpolitical propagation? The guiding idea of this chapter is to propose a non-military concept, transpolitical propagation, for the analysis of security affairs in international relations. This concept aims to focus the study of all states, and therefore also of small states, on

Grand strategy of independance and power

Self-reliance

Total defense

Autonomous high technology defence

Comprehensive security approach

International economic hub

Regional stability thanks to balance of power

High technology and economic growth as a path to power

Figure 7.3 Singapore’s Grand Strategy Source: Created by the author (Thibault Fouillet).

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‘power’ seen as a way for each country to manage its interests in internal relations more as a simple competition for strength. The three case studies presented here demonstrate the agency of small states to cope with their individual security dilemmas. Indeed, despite their different security contexts and means, each of the states studied has put in place a formal strategic vision to face contemporary and future challenges and shows real action within the framework of international relations to maximise its interests by using all means at its disposal. More concretely, through this study, the notion of power appears not to determine the capacity of a state to ensure its security, since each one has rationally defined its means of ensuring it, whether through a full delegation to alliances, an autonomous development of capacities, or an intermediate position using a cumulative strategy. Consequently, through the prism of these case studies, it appears that any state, regardless of its size, can initiate a transpolitical propagation, validating the neutrality of the concept and thus its adaptation to all levels of power. Nevertheless, the modalities of this propagation (‘strategical provisioning’, ‘omnidirectional hedging’, ‘transpolitical reassessment’, etc.), that is, the capacity to produce power and to develop its security, seem to be influenced by two cumulative factors: First, the intensity of the threats, which forces a given state to conduct a more extensive strategic and security vision from the moment the survival imperative is more acute, thereby developing the scope of the conceptual field and the means mobilised. Second, the presence of fundamental external security alliances/guarantees, which more or less oblige the actor to develop autonomous resources to ensure security, the presence of a protector encouraging a delegation of security or a cumulative strategy while the absence of such guarantees obliges the actor to develop its own capacities. Those two factors offer on the basis of an empirical study the validation of the thematic presuppositions defined in this chapter to the effect that actors, regardless of their power, can act in the international system, because they are able to define a strategic thinking to avoid their security dilemmas. Moreover, depending on the intensity of threats and the presence or absence of alliances, small states are pushed towards hedging as an optimal means of producing security, adapting their commitments according to the geopolitical context and the evolution of the international system. Note 1 Or ‘polity’ as we might call them, following Jean Baechler’s dichotomy: polity/transpolity, or the opposition between spaces defined by internal peace processes and external processes that can potentially escalate into war, see Baechler (1985).

References Aron, R. (1966). Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday. Baechler, J. (1985). Démocraties. Calmann-Lévi. Baechler, J. (2005). Aspects de la mondialisation. Presses universitaires de France.

134 Antony Dabila and Thibault Fouillet Balzacq, T. & Reich, S. (2019). What Is Grand Strategy? Interview with Thierry Balzacq and Simon Reich, Sciences Po, CERI. www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/en/content/what-grandstrategy-interview-thierry-balzacq-and-simon-reich (accessed December 10, 2021). Bischof, G. (2013). Of Dwarfs and Giants. From Cold War mediator to bad boy of Europe: Austria and the U.S. in the transatlantic arena (1990–2013). In G. Bischof & F. Karlhofer (Eds.), Austria’s International Position After the End of the Cold War (pp. 13–52). New Orleans University Press. Bitzinger, R. A. (2021). Military-technological innovation in small states: the cases of Israel and Singapore. Journal of Strategic Studies 44, 873–900. Chambre des députés du Luxembourg (2003, February 11). Projet de loi n’°5094 portant réactivation du fonds d’équipement militaire. Luxembourg. https://legilux.public.lu/eli/ etat/leg/loi/2003/12/19/n16/jo (accessed December 10, 2021). Dabila, A. (2013). L’affrontement guerrier. Approche sociologique de l’engagement martial, Thèse de doctorat soutenue le 5 novembre 2013 à l’Université Paris-IV-Sorbonne. Eidintas, A.; Bumblauskas, A.; Kulakauskas, A. & Tomosàitis, M. (2013). History of Lithuania, Euguimas editions (funding by the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Lithuania). https://urm.lt/uploads/default/documents/Travel_Residence/history_of_lithuania_new.pdf. Gaddis, J. L. (2018). On Grand Strategy. Penguin Press. Herz, J. H. (1952). Realism and idealism in international politics. World Politics 5(1), 116–28. Jervis, R. (1978). Cooperation under the security dilemma. World Politics 30(2), 167–214. Kasekamp, A. (2018). A history of the Baltic States (2nd ed.). Macmillan. Keohane, R. (1969). Lilliputians’ dilemmas: small states in international politics. International Organization 23(2), 291–310. Koga, K. (2017). The concept of ‘hedging’ revisited: the case of Japan’s foreign policy strategy in East Asia’s power shift. International Studies Review 1, 1–28. Kuik, C. & Rozman, G. (2015). Introduction. In G. Rozman (Ed.), Light or Heavy Hedging: Positioning Between China and the United States (pp. 1–9). Joint U.S.—Korea Academic Studies, Vol. 26 (Washington, DC), Korea Economic Institute of America. Lee, K. Y. (2000). From Third World to First. The Singapore Story: 1965–2000, Memoirs. Times Publishing. MAEE (Ministère des affaires étrangères et européennes du Luxembourg) (2011). Note d’orientation pour une défense intégrée. Gouvernement du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg. MAEE (Ministère des affaires étrangères et européennes du Luxembourg) (2017). Lignes directrices de la défense luxembourgeoise à l’horizon 2025 et au-delà. Gouvernement du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg. MAEE (Ministère des affaires étrangères et européennes du Luxembourg) (2018). Rapport d’activité du Luxembourg. Gouvernement du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg. MOD (2016) Ministry of National Defence (Republic of Lithuania). The Military Strategy of the Republic of Lithuania. MOD/KAM. https://kam.lt/en/ (accessed December 20, 2022). Nash, J. (1951). Non-cooperative games. The Annals of Mathematics (Second Series) 54(2), 286–95. Poirier, L. (1999). Stratégie théorique. Economica. Powell, R. (1994). Anarchy in international relations theory: the neorealist-neoliberal debate. International Organization 48(2), 313–44. Rothstein, R. L. (1968). Alliances and Small Powers. Columbia University Press. Suorsa, O. (2017). Maintaining a Small State’s Strategic Space: “Omnidirectional Hedging”. International Studies Association. http://web.isanet.org/Web/Conferences/HKU2017-s/ Archive/f40db849-cb90-4826-9b7a-e449b602f398.pdf (accessed January 16, 2023).

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Tan Keng Yam, T. (2000). Defending Singapore in the 21st Century. Singapore Ministry of Defence. Vandenbosch, A. (1964). The small states in international politics and organization. The Journal of Politics 26(May/2), 293–312. Waltz, K. (1979). Theory of International Politics. Waveland Press. Wight, M. (1978). Power Politics. Leicester University Press and The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Wu, Y.-S. (2017). Pivot, hedger, or partner: strategies of lesser powers caught between hegemons. In L. Dittmer (Ed.), Taiwan and China: Fitful Embrace (pp. 197–220). University of California Press.

Part III

Security Defining and engaging threats

Security Studies engage with military conflicts, organised violence, and national and international security as a particular species of international relations: threat and safety; risk and protection; precaution and confidence; deterrence and alliance are familiar conceptual pairings in the discussion. However, security understood as ‘freedom from danger’ has always been an issue beyond the potential use of brute (para)military force. The more recent global awareness of threats such as climate change, food provision, or environmental hazards and even migration has considerably widened the topic range of classical Security Studies. While the commonsecurity perspective aims to pre-emptively heighten the condition of being secure (‘preventism’), vulnerability focuses more on the occurrence of risks and threats— in other words, when (expected) harm has already been done. In military affairs, it is all about ‘survivability’, defined as the ability to remain alive, to continue to exist, to keep infrastructure intact during and after the fight. Vulnerability is a component of climate risk, the assessment of the consequences and responses to climate change. Naturally, the weak resilience of small states puts them on the top of the list for risk areas because small states are usually associated with fewer capabilities to recover quickly from difficulties. This is particularly relevant for island states. Charles Hawksley and Nichole Georgeou argue throughout their contribution on small Pacific states that these countries use their sovereignty to influence globalsecurity agendas, particularly via international association and ‘region-building’. Salā George Carter and Jack Corbett explain similar trends in the Pacific region in terms of ‘securitisation’—the emphasising of the non-military aspects of security. Raising the awareness of a global ‘audience’ for regional threats upgrades the agency of these states at the same time: they are becoming ‘moral’ normentrepreneurs in their own right. Odair Barros-Varela analyses how a small peripheral island state makes itself a valuable geostrategic partner for the leading military alliance of our day. Alexander Graef’s continental study points to another strategy, namely how an annual conference—a ‘natural habitat’ for Security-Studies scholars, pundits, journalists, politicians, and intellectuals—became the hub for an informal elite network.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-11

8

Small states in the Pacific Sovereignty, vulnerability, and regionalism Charles Hawksley and Nichole Georgeou

Pacific Islands Countries and Territories (PICTs) are a valuable area for small-state analysis as they exhibit layers of diversity with respect to sovereignty, development, dependency, political activity, and regional interaction that can contribute to our understanding of the role and influence of small states in international politics. This chapter introduces the small states of the Pacific to readers unfamiliar with the region’s history, economy, and development and is divided into three sections. It first focuses on what constitutes a ‘small state’ in the Pacific Islands context, an important matter given international assumptions about state sovereignty and the diverse political arrangements in the Pacific. We explore factors linked to the geography, land and sea areas, and populations of Pacific Islands polities, as well as the ongoing process of decolonisation, noting that this does not always result in independence. We also set aside the traditional ‘independent/dependent’ distinction of state sovereignty in favour of a more nuanced explanation that allows for a range of activities in international relations for both independent and dependent PICTs. Second, we explore how the ongoing decolonisation of the Pacific has led to small states with limited resource bases using their sovereignty in various ways to guard against vulnerability. Third, we examine how regional organisation has presented opportunities for small states to meet some common challenges, including food systems and food security, in an era of global integration in trade and development, as well as urbanisation and climate change. We argue throughout this chapter that PICTs use their sovereignty, both individually and collectively, to influence larger global agendas, and that such actions create opportunities for both independent and dependent PICTs to engage in subregional, regional, and international actions to advance their specific ‘national’ interests. Small-state sovereignty in the Pacific The Pacific Ocean region of ‘Oceania’ includes Australia, New Zealand, and a variety of independent states and dependent territories known collectively as the Pacific Islands Countries and Territories (PICTs). Due to their land mass, size and type of economy,1 population, and level of engagement in world affairs, both Australia and New Zealand can be understood as ‘middle powers’ (Hawksley, 2009) and are not considered ‘small states’. We also exclude from small-state analysis DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-12 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

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Papua New Guinea (PNG), which is both larger and more populous than New Zealand (Hawksley & Ward, 2019), and which among other Pacific Islands states is considered something of a giant, with a population almost ten times that of the next most populous PICT, Fiji, and an economy valued at over US$24.6 billion in 2020, over five times that of Fiji ($4.49 billion) (Countryeconomy.com, 2022).2 This discussion of small states in the Pacific thus focuses on the smaller remaining PICTs of Oceania, within which there are three artificially created and imposed (Georgeou et al., 2022), yet useful, subregional groupings: Melanesia (‘black islands’) in the southwest Pacific; Micronesia (‘small islands’) in the North and Central Pacific; and Polynesia (‘many islands’) in the Southeast Pacific (see Figure 8.1). The combined land area of all 22 PICTs is 551,483 square kilometres, an area roughly equal to that of France; however, PNG (460,842 km2) makes up 83.5% of this area. The smallest Melanesian state (Vanuatu) is still a relative regional giant, with a larger land area than all the Polynesian and Micronesian PICTs combined (Georgeou et al., 2022). Table 8.1 shows the enormous disparity in land area between Pacific states, with many having less than 1,000 square kilometres of territory. While small in land area, the size of the Pacific states’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) magnifies their importance. The total EEZ of all the PICTs is

Figure 8.1 Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia Source: CartoGIS Services, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University © The Australian National University (2021) CC BY SA 4.0. https://asiapacific-archive.anu.edu.au/mapsonline/base-maps/micronesia-melanesia-polynesia (accessed March 2023)

Small states in the Pacific 141 Table 8.1 Data on select PICTs (Pacific Islands Countries and Territories) PICT

Population (in 2021)

Papua New Guinea (PNG) Fiji Solomon Islands New Caledonia Vanuatu Samoa Kiribati Federated States of Micronesia Tonga Marshall Islands Palau Cook Islands Tuvalu Nauru Niue Tokelau

8,934,475

2020 GDP/Per Capita (in US$)

Land Area (in km2)

EEZ Area (in km2)

2,854

462,840

2,402,290

898,402 728,041 273,015 301,295 199,853 120,740 105,754

6,152 2,295 37,448 3,223 4,284 1,636 3,830

18,333 28,230 18,576 12,281 2,934 811 701

1,282,980 1,553,440 1,422,540 663,251 127,950 3,441,810 2,996,420

99,532 54,516 17,957 15,342 10,679 11,832 1,549 1,506

5,081 4,337 15,673 24,913 4,223 11,666 18,757 6,882

749 181 444 237 26 21 259 12

659,558 1,990,530 603,978 1,830,000 749,790 308,480 450,000 319,031

Source: Created by authors using SPC (2021). www.spc.int/our-members/

30,273,426 square kilometres, some three times the land area of Canada and almost twice the land area of the world’s largest state, Russia. Under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the EEZ regime gives Pacific small states access to revenue from fishing rights and other possible future income streams (such as undersea mining); however, their low-lying environments also make Pacific islands states uniquely vulnerable. Again excluding PNG from the PICTs, around 90% of the remaining Pacific Islands population live within 10 kilometres of the ocean (Andrew et al., 2019), so there is clear vulnerability for small Pacific states from rising sea levels, higher temperatures, shifts in rainfall patterns, and changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme climate events (CSIRO, 2021; RCCAP, 2021) such as cyclones (e.g., 2015’s Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu). Frequent earthquakes and tsunamis add to the complexity of that vulnerability.3 Another common feature of small states in the Pacific is that they have small populations. Apart from Papua New Guinea, all other PICTs have populations of under one million, with the largest populations being in Melanesia. While the demographic dominance of Melanesian states and their settlement patterns make the PICTs on average rural (77% rural in mid-2018), there is heavy-to-extreme localised urbanisation in both Micronesia (75.5%) and Polynesia (49.3%) (Georgeou et al., 2022).

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As with other parts of the world, the colonial background and decolonisation experiences of Pacific states have led to a wide array of political systems—unicameral and bicameral, presidential and parliamentary. National ideology and political parties, however, normally count for little in the PICTs (Fraenkel, 2013), so the phrase ‘all politics is local’ applies across the Pacific. Elections are usually characterised by fiercely fought contests between local independents, with parties as vehicles to access national power and ministries so that elected members can return wealth to their communities. Decolonisation, self-determination, sovereignty, and independence of the region The Pacific region progressively came under the control of foreign powers during the last half of the nineteenth century with France claiming New Caledonia in 1853. The first independent Pacific state was Samoa in 1962, and the last to date have been Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and Palau (both 1994) (Hawksley & Ward, 2019). While it might be tempting to define small states as ‘independent states’, the situation in the Pacific with respect to statehood is not always clear, and some interrelated terms require explanation: decolonisation, self-determination, sovereignty, and independence. Broadly speaking, decolonisation is the same movement that delivered independent statehood to colonial peoples across the world after the Second World War. In the Pacific, however, decolonisation is an ongoing process with several movements for self-determination—understood as communities making decisions about self-government that can range from greater self-rule or autonomy to complete independence (though separate statehood). Movements for self-determination can occur in populations controlled by states both outside the Pacific and within PICTs.4 We understand sovereignty to mean the claims made by states concerning their competence in domestic governance and in exerting their control over their territory. Such claims constitute the minimum expectation of state behaviour in the international community. The processes of mutual recognition and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations are a confirmation that the claimant state is regarded as independent by others. While UN membership can certainly help in a state’s quest for international legal recognition (see, e.g., Krasner, 1999; Philpott, 2001), in the Pacific neither Cook Islands nor Niue, both of which are independent, are members of the United Nations. We see sovereignty in the Pacific Islands very much in the “basket theory” tradition (Philpott, 2001, p. 313) where state sovereignty involves different attributes. Following Krasner (1999, pp. 9–25) “domestic sovereignty” involves legal authority over the territory and population; “interdependence sovereignty” is the capacity of a state to police its borders to prevent entry or exit of people or goods; “Westphalian sovereignty” is the notion of non-intervention by other states in a state’s internal affairs; and “international legal sovereignty” is recognition by other states of a state’s claim to be a state. For the PICTs, this ‘basket’ of sovereignty approaches is arguably a more useful typology than the monolithic ‘chunk’ theory,

Small states in the Pacific 143 where sovereignty exists or does not exist by virtue of being a state. In the PICTs, sovereignty arguably involves the traditional attributes of statehood—territory, permanent population, recognised government, international recognition—but in many PICTs, levels of centralised state control are often weak and the presence of the state minimal, so they exist as legal entities without much capacity for enforcement. In the less than fully independent PICTs, the compliance costs and complexities of living up to international expectations of statehood mean independence is only one possible result of a process of decolonisation. A process of self-determination may allow a population to decide that full independence is not the most appropriate option, and for small island territories, the costs of independence may outweigh the apparent benefits. Indeed, in 2017, Prinsen and Blaise (2017) argued that as no non-self-governing island had acquired political independence since 1983, this ‘Islandian sovereignty’ might be more pragmatic than nationalistic. Until 2019, this observation held for the Pacific as Tokelau (population 1,506) had twice rejected offers of independence from New Zealand (in 2006 and 2007). The principle has also held so far for New Caledonia, where under the 1998 Nouméa Accord there have been three votes on independence from France, in 2018, 2020, and 2021. The first two of these New Caledonian votes saw an increase in the independence (the ‘Oui’) vote (from 43% to 47%), however in the final December 12, 2021, referendum there was an overwhelming (96.49%) vote in favour of staying with France. This result is explained by the indigenous Kanak boycott of the vote, a protest at France’s actions in holding the poll without sufficient consultation, specifically not allowing the vote to be delayed until after the traditional 12-month mourning period for those who had died from COVID-19 (Manuel & Seselja, 2021). With less than half of eligible voters casting votes, the third referendum has been described as a “hollow victory” for France (Robie, 2021). The ‘Islandian sovereignty’ trend has, however, been upset by the November 2019 vote on the island of Bougainville (population 300,000), which decisively (by 97.7%) opted for full independence, rejecting an offer of even greater autonomy within PNG (Lyons, 2019). Bougainville was the location of an armed conflict from 1988 to 2001 that arose due to mining at the Panguna copper, gold, and silver mine, inequitable profit-sharing between the province and the PNG state, and environmental pollution of villages downstream from the mine (Wolfers, 2014a). Following the conflict, the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) was created as part of a peace process, and the ABG has numerous powers relating to independent action in foreign affairs, some held in conjunction with PNG and others alone (Wolfers, 2014a). Bougainvilleans await ratification of their vote by the PNG parliament to ensure full secession and independent statehood. As with many small states, there are questions around economic viability—discussion on how to raise revenue for an independent Bougainville has led to debate on the merits of reopening the Panguna mine, the source of the original conflict—to gain much-needed revenue. Then there are also PICT populations that live in dependent territories. Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)

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are all largely self-governing US-dependent territories. American Samoa is an ‘unincorporated territory’ of the United States; Guam is an ‘organised unincorporated territory’ of the United States Commonwealth; and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)—which contains islands that continue to be important for US geopolitical defence in Kwajelin and Johnston Atoll—is an unincorporated territory of the United States and part of the US Commonwealth. Both France and Britain continue to maintain island territories in the Pacific. The main French Pacific territories5 —New Caledonia (population 273,015), French Polynesia (population 278,909 population), and Wallis and Futuna (population 11,441) (SPC, 2021)—are represented in the French Parliament in Paris, enjoy different levels of autonomy within France, and also exhibit some attributes of independence in foreign policy. New Caledonia has the highest level of autonomy of all the French overseas territories, and its unique ‘sui generis’ classification within the French state means the New Caledonian territorial congress has powers over most matters of local governance, as well as some input into decision-making over its own foreign policy. Under Article 3.2.1 of the 1998 Nouméa Accord, New Caledonia is permitted by France to exercise some autonomy in foreign policy when this applies to regional matters in the Pacific (UN, 1998). Britain has the overseas Territory of Pitcairn Island (population 50), which has a governor (the British High Commissioner to New Zealand based in Wellington) and a legal adviser, neither of whom require the consent of the Pitcairn Islands Council to make laws (Pitcairn Constitution Order, 2010). Since 2004, French Polynesia has been a French overseas collectivity and has the status of a ‘pays d’outre-mer’ (‘overseas country’), which is unique in the French state. It has a president and an assembly with a high level of autonomy (DFAT, 2022a) and, like New Caledonia, joined the region’s major political association, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), as a full member in 2016. Both are members of other regional organisations, such as the Pacific Community (SPC). Wallis and Futuna is one of five ‘collectivités d’outre-mer’ (‘overseas collectivities’) in the French state and is less politically independent than the larger French Pacific territories. It has a territorial assembly along with a French High Administrator, yet in 2018, Wallis and Futuna became an Associate Member of the PIF (DFAT, 2022b). All three territories are members of the South Pacific Regional Environmental Program (SPREP, 2022). Finally, independent states may opt to retain linkages with other powers, even former colonial rulers. The concept of ‘free association’ whereby a fully sovereign independent state enters into a voluntary compact of free association with another power demonstrates this complexity. Cook Islands and Niue became independent from New Zealand in 1968 and 1974 respectively, and both then chose to remain in free association with New Zealand, which delivers services in health, education, and defence. While neither Cook Islands nor Niue is a UN member, both have widespread diplomatic recognition throughout East Asia and the Pacific, as well as in Latin America. According to the UN Secretariat-General (UN, 1994, p. 10), because Cook Islands had already joined international organisations without restriction—the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1984, the Food and Agriculture

Small states in the Pacific 145 Organisation (FAO) in 1985, the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1985, and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in 1986—it was recognised in 1992 as having “full treaty making capacity”, a recognition of its independent state status. Niue joined UNESCO in 1993 and the WHO in 1994 and was similarly recognised by the UN Secretariat in 1994 (UN, 1994, p. 10). In 2011, Japan—which had long withheld recognition of Cook Islands and Niue on the basis of their free association with New Zealand—established full diplomatic relations with Cook Islands and, in 2015, with Niue. While Tokelau remains a dependent territory of New Zealand, and thus part of the New Zealand ‘realm’, it has held Associate Member status at the PIF since 2014. Pacific small-state vulnerability and global engagement Notions of security in the Pacific are also changing from outside concerns of geopolitical control or even domestic state control and stability (Hawksley & Georgeou, 2015) towards a human-security model that considers a range of factors including access to education, disability inclusion, food security, combatting gender-based violence, and support for climate action. The combination of limited land, small economies, small and often growing populations, and low-value exports also means a high level of vulnerability in terms of economic security. Whether territories were independent or not, by the 1970s and 1980s, several trends were generally observable across the PICTs: rising populations, increased urbanisation, limited employment (except in the government sector), migration, remittances, and rising debt, all of which added to vulnerability. Urbanisation is perhaps of greatest concern in Micronesia and Polynesia rather than in Melanesia where states have more land area. More recently, climate change has created tensions for food security as low-lying PICTs are generally reliant on coastal fisheries, and marine resources shape livelihoods, food cultures, and economies (Islam & Kieu, 2021, p. 102). Connections to the global economy can also display vulnerabilities, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic when shipping services were reduced. The first six months of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading across the globe and states were locking down, saw widespread declines in both imports and exports in the Pacific: Fiji’s exports were down 20.5% and its imports 24.8%; Samoa’s exports fell 18% and its imports 20.9%; Tonga’s exports fell 28.3% and its imports 24.8%; and Tuvalu’s exports declined by a massive 71%, however, its imports were unchanged (Pacific Community, 2020). As Harlan Koff and Thomas Kolnberger argue in the introduction to this volume, the lack of access of Pacific small island developing states to transnational economic networks acts as a constraint on sustainable economic development. Declining balance-of-payments figures can mean increased reliance on aid or remittances, and while some Pacific states have very small resident populations, there is a significant Pasifika diaspora across the world, especially in New Zealand (Anae, 2014) that makes for transnational linkages in culture, migration, labour, and remittances. This combination of factors gave rise to the notion of Pacific states as “Migration, Remittances, Aid and Bureaucracy” (MIRAB) economies,

146 Charles Hawksley and Nichole Georgeou even though, as Crocombe (2001, p. 396) has observed, some 90% of Pacific Islanders lived in economies where these were not dominant factors. None the less, the MIRAB perception shaped notions of ‘wasteful’ government spending in the Pacific, and fuelled concerns over governance and corruption which contributed to major regional aid donors like Australia imagining that the way to reduce aid reliance was to integrate more closely with global market mechanisms that would purchase Pacific agricultural exports, create wealth, and reduce poverty (Hawksley, 2009, p. 18). This trend has continued in the twenty-first century. Australia continues to promote the idea of reducing poverty through economic development and engagement with the agricultural export economy as a means of wealth generation. Arguably, this aid focus is to the detriment of market gardening for domestic consumption, which in Melanesia at least may assist domestic income creation and improve gender equity and food security (Georgeou & Hawksley, 2017; Georgeou et al., 2019, 2022). The effects of global neoliberal trade agendas have been felt in the Pacific with global economic integration leading to labour migration, resource extraction, decreased traditional state security, and decreased human security (Firth, 2007). One of the main issues with PICTs is that trade was heavily weighted towards former or current governing powers (e.g., France and New Caledonia); there is, however, increased interest from China in the region. Over the past two decades, China has become a most valuable trade partner for most PICTs, a fact that helps to explain the switch of diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic in 2019 by both Solomon Islands and Kiribati (Hawksley & Georgeou, 2019). China has sought to expand its Belt and Road Initiative into the Pacific, and across the Pacific region China has been offering concessional loans to PICTs, although there does not appear to be sufficient evidence that this is a monolithic policy position rather than the result of internal rivalry within the Chinese aid bureaucracy (O’Keefe, 2020). Pacific leaders are, however, cautious about taking on debt, either from China or from Australia (Rajah et al., 2019). In an attempt to sell their commodities, Pacific states joined the Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP) organisation and through the Cotonou Agreement have sought markets in Europe for their goods, principally palm and palm-kernel oils, coffee, tea, sugar, and tropical fruit. In 2009, the European Union, Fiji, and PNG signed an Economic Partnership agreement, and the European Commission (EC) webpage notes 14 Pacific members in the APC (EC, 2022). Apart from PNG, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) bypasses the Pacific Islands; however, Australia has been pushing Pacific states to become more engaged in global trade through the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus treaty, which entered into force in October 2020 after Cook Islands joined and after over a decade of negotiations (DFAT, 2022c). PACER Plus is seen as advantageous for Australia and New Zealand as it reduces tariffs and controls over investment in Pacific states, but it does not appear to address Pacific states’ concerns, especially over climate change and compliance costs (APH, 2021). It is perhaps no surprise that the larger Pacific economies PNG and Fiji have not signed on.

Small states in the Pacific 147 Geostrategic importance While marginal in terms of population and economics, the geostrategic importance of the Pacific region is bound up with the Western strategic denial of the Pacific to China, with Australia, New Zealand, France, and the United States attempting to keep China out.6 In terms of diplomatic footprint, Australia is the best represented with extensive official diplomatic posts in the Pacific, including Consulates General in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. China has, however, added to its longer-term relationships in the Pacific to now include Niue (2007), Kiribati (2019), and Solomon Islands (2019), the latter two only recently prised from the Taiwanese diplomatic orbit (Hawksley & Georgeou, 2019; MOFA PRC, 2021). Such switches form part of a much longer-term global diplomatic game involving Chinese attempts to extinguish recognition of Taiwan that date back well over a decade (Hawksley, 2009). China’s links with Fiji (the headquarters of the Pacific Islands Forum) are of particular concern to Australia and New Zealand, both of which imposed supposedly ‘smart sanctions’ on Fiji in 2007 to convince the Fijian military regime to return power to the democratically elected government. These sanctions backfired in a spectacular manner as China strengthened its relations with Fiji (O’Keefe, 2021). In 2018, Australian media was reporting that China was seeking to establish a military base in Vanuatu, which is a member of the non-aligned movement (O’Keefe, 2020), and while these reports were false, in 2007 China did build a new headquarters for the subregional Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in Port Vila, Vanuatu (Hegarty, 2015). Increased Chinese engagement in the Pacific has presented an opportunity for some Pacific states and has caused diplomatic panic in Australia. In 2018, Australia managed to get Solomon Islands to cancel a deal with Chinese telecommunications company Huawei to build a fibre-optic link from Australia to Honiara but only after Australia agreed to pay the cost of installing an undersea telecommunications cable from Brisbane to Solomon Islands (Agence France Press, 2018). A year later Solomon Islands switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China amidst reports of MPs each being offered between SBD$2 million to $5 million (US$246,000–US$615,000) to vote in favour of recognising Beijing (Cavanough, 2019).7 For Solomon Islands the switch made sense as China had been its largest trading partner since 2007 (Hawksley & Georgeou, 2019). In September 2020, Solomon Islands named Huawei—a company banned by the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia from their domestic markets due to concerns over possible spying (Bowler, 2020)—as preferred partner in the construction of around 200 communications towers for its new mobile phone system (Kekea, 2020). In March 2022, the Australian government—which had spent over AUD$2.8 billion between 2003 and 2017 on the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (SBS, 2017)—was caught unawares and embarrassed when Solomon Islands and China drafted an agreement allowing Chinese police, troops, and naval vessels access to Solomon Islands as part of an attempt by Solomon Islands to expand its development relationships (Sora, 2022).

148 Charles Hawksley and Nichole Georgeou Historically, Australia has been the largest aid donor to the Pacific, with New Zealand, Japan, the United States, and the European Union also contributing; however, in the past 15 years China’s aid contribution to the Pacific has increased. In 2015, China’s aid spending (US$274 million) exceeded that of New Zealand (US$204 million) for the first time. In 2017, China pledged US$4.8 billion to the Pacific, far more than Australia’s US$1 billion; however, by 2021 little of this had been spent (Lowy, 2021).8 As the case of Solomon Islands demonstrates, Pacific states are able to exercise their sovereign powers to act independently in the geopolitical tussle over the Pacific region. Small states can leverage donors and former allies to secure their own national interests, which are not necessarily the same as the interests of outside donors. Once independence is obtained, the concept of state sovereignty supposedly implies non-interference, so in theory Pacific states should be able to take decisions concerning their political and economic futures, free from external influences. There are, however, limits to this sovereign action. Some Pacific states have engaged in entrepreneurial activities to raise state funds, some of which have been quickly quashed by outside powers concerned about the possibility of criminal activity. Under Nauru’s colonial rulers, phosphate was mined extensively on the island by the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, leading to long-term environmental damage. An independent Nauru had few other resources, so it continued mining, creating a national provident fund with the phosphate royalties. Poor investment decisions and real estate purchases resulted in substantial decreases in the value of Nauru’s investments, and other revenue-raising options were then entertained. In the late 1990s, Nauru developed an offshore banking industry and before long had some 400 offshore banks registered. In 1998, Nauru was estimated to be laundering around US$70 billion/UK£49 billion Russian organised-crime money, over 700 times the state’s annual GDP. Nauru received US$35,000 per registered bank (Henley, 2001), plus transaction fees, but as Nauru at the time had no anti-money laundering legislation, it soon found itself on the Group of Eight’s (G8) Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) list of Non-Compliant Countries and Territories (NCCT) and subject to financial sanctions. Improved compliance with international banking regulations meant Nauru’s offshore banking industry had to be abandoned, but it was then ‘de-listed’ by the FATF in 2005 and restored to the international banking community in 2006 (FATF, 2007). Nauru has also provided space to Australia to create detention camps to hold asylum seekers (Hawksley, 2009) for an initial fee of US$20 million per year (Hawksley & Georgeou, 2013, 2014). Another revenue-raising scheme has involved a flexible use of state sovereignty. In early 2022, Palau announced its ‘e-residency card’ which allows individuals across the world to register companies and trade cryptocurrency in Palau but not to visit or claim physical residency. Fees are low at US$240 per e-registration (available both as a physical document and now as a Non-Fungible Token ‘NFT’), with a US$100 annual renewal fee. By early March 2022, the programme had netted Palau just US$71,000. While there was concern about the possible abuse of the scheme, there was also confidence it could quickly expand to raise more revenue (Kesolei, 2022).

Small states in the Pacific 149 Like Nauru, Tuvalu also has a small population and no obvious resources apart from fishing rights, but when internet domain names were decided in the early 1990s it was allocated ‘.tv’—a handy suffix (top-level domain) for broadcasting companies and now for online entertainment streaming services. Tuvalu rents its ‘.tv’ domain name to US media company Verisign for US$5 million per year, which is around 8.5% of its domestic revenue (Lee, 2019) and after 2021 intended to renegotiate on the back of the success of gaming and streaming platform Twitch. tv. Vanuatu has a more direct method of revenue-raising. Wealthy people in search of a new passport can simply become a citizen of Vanuatu, which sells citizenship for US$150,000 to boost revenue (Trainor & Nunis, 2019). Thus, state sovereignty allows for some creative thinking in the policy space to avoid vulnerability. Small-state regionalism and international association Despite their small size, Pacific states exhibit political and diplomatic behaviours that can affect specific global agendas concerning the environment and can leverage aid donors to achieve specific objectives. Pacific states have small economies, limited employment, limited income, little disposable income, and high transport and labour costs that discourage both interisland trade and even domestic markets (Hutchens, 2011, p. 302), resulting in economies only partly integrated into the global economy. One response to perceived underdevelopment has been to act collectively to an extent through a wide range of regional and subregional associations. Regionalism takes a variety of forms in the Pacific Islands, with Crocombe (2001, pp. 591–626) identifying numerous reasons for association: religious, colonial, intercolonial, metropolitan/islands, Oceania, Islands, culture area, common interest, small island states, Pacific Basin, marine resources, Asia-Pacific, transport, higher education, and voluntary. Despite the hundreds of Pacific regional organisations, regionalism has not moved towards the level of centralisation that is characteristic of the European Union (Wolfers, 2014b). Rather, Pacific regionalism is perhaps even less integrated than the small states of the Caribbean, where there have been past attempts at a Caribbean Federation (1958–61). Like the modern-day Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and its (as yet unrealised) CARICOM economic driver of a Caribbean Single Market Economy (CSME) (Hawksley, 2004, pp. 253–4), the PICTs have so far avoided such arrangements. The first post-war regional organisation in the Pacific, the South Pacific Commission (SPC), was created by colonial powers in 1947, but from 1965, the SPC has admitted independent Pacific states. In 1983, all countries and territories in the SPC were deemed equal members, and the organisation was renamed the ‘Pacific Community’ in 1997, retaining the ‘SPC’ acronym. Based in Nouméa, New Caledonia, it has the widest Pacific Islands membership of all regional organisations and includes all 22 PICTS, plus Australia, New Zealand, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, which rejoined the SPC in December 2021 after quitting 17 years earlier (Radio NZ, 2021). Cooperation in the Pacific community is technical, focusing on science, knowledge, and innovation (SPC, 2022), so the SPC is non-political.

150 Charles Hawksley and Nichole Georgeou The main political regional organisation in the Pacific is the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), which commenced life in 1971 as the South Pacific Forum (SPF) as a body for newly decolonised independent states to have dialogue with major regional powers Australia and New Zealand. In 2000, the South Pacific Forum changed its name to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and in 2016, it dropped its rules about members being fully independent, and expanded, granting full membership to the French Pacific territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia. One example of effective cooperation through the PIF is the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), an organisation that dates from 1979 and which is supported financially by Australia, New Zealand, and Japan (FFA, 2022). The FFA involves 17 PIF members or associate members and acts as a coordinating mechanism to manage the lucrative and highly migratory tuna and other fish stocks that travel across the South Pacific Ocean, especially through the EEZs of small Pacific states that are their feeding grounds (Jollands & Fisher, 2017). The FFA implements licencing agreements over the combined FFA EEZ and allocates the sale of fishing quotas to distant water fishing nations (DWFNs) such as Russia, China, Taiwan, and South Korea while attempting to ensure the viability of fish stocks for Pacific Islands food security. Based in Honiara, Solomon Islands, the FFA focuses on fisheries management, development, operations, and corporate services and has helped to progress regional cooperation between states on sustainable resource management (Azmi & Hanich, 2021). Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia also engage in subregionalism to advance specific interests. One of the more important subregional associations is the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), with a membership of PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, and the New Caledonian independence movement FLNKS (Front de libération nationale kanak et socialiste or ‘Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front’). MSG has a free-trade agreement that dates from 1993, and it often discusses the issue of the fellow-Melanesian people of West Papua, especially their occupation by Indonesia (Georgeou & Hawksley, 2014). The Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG), which includes Hawaii, Rapa Nui, New Zealand, and American Samoa, allows leaders to discuss issues of mutual concern, such as climate change, transport, health, information technology, and human rights (Samoa News, 2021). Founded in 2010, the PLG has a secretariat but as yet no permanent home. Micronesian organisations include the Micronesian Presidents’ Summit (from 2001) and the Micronesian Chief Executive Summit (from 2003) (Gallen, 2015). Globally, Pacific Islands states, acting through the Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) group, were some of the most vocal proponents of a climate-change mitigation agreement at COP21, the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris in 2015 (Islam & Kieu, 2021, p. 99). Fiji has been very active recently in the SIDS group at the United Nations, which intersects with regional organisations such as CARICOM, the PIF, and the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) to push for the adoption of the SAMOA pathway (2014), which supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals towards a just transition with climate mitigation, protection of biodiversity, and improved health and social outcomes through partnerships for development (UN, 2022).

Small states in the Pacific 151 Climate change and security Climate change is one policy area that demonstrates Pacific Islands’ engagement with, and shaping of, international norms. The COP26 meeting in Glasgow in late 2021 was attended by leaders of three Pacific states (Palau, Fiji, and Tuvalu), who were part of some 200 organisations that signed a new Climate Charter aimed at addressing the climate crisis. Differences and tensions between Pacific states do exist around climate change, especially around not being able to ‘speak with one voice’ (Denton, 2017; Islam & Kieu, 2020); however, climate activism by Pacific states is not a new concern. Back in 2001, Tuvalu attempted to secure agreement from Australia for the possible transfer of its entire population as climate refugees, an entreaty that was quickly rejected (Hawksley, 2009, p. 129). The issue of climate change is critical and existential for Pacific states as several PICTs, including Fiji, are already experiencing the displacement of populations and the loss of agricultural land (Georgeou et al., 2022). Both Fiji and Vanuatu have developed models to deal with communities affected by global warming. In November 2020, Fiji moved seven households of the Narikoso community on the island of Ono to a new village on higher ground, constructed with EU funding. Fiji has identified over 800 other communities at risk and to meet the potential costs created the Climate Relocation and Displaced Peoples Trust fund in 2019. Vanuatu in contrast has been advancing a so far less popular model of having the largest polluters pay reparations for climate damage (Moore, 2022). The example of climate change in the Pacific and the policy responses of small states appears to confirm the trend identified by Harlan Koff and Thomas Kolnberger in the introduction to this volume that the traditional concerns of Small-State Studies need to be re-orientated to address the changing notions of security and agency. As the Pacific is not fully integrated into the global economy some PICTs have a higher level of self-reliance in terms of food security; however, recent work on the impact of COVID-19 on Pacific Islands’ food systems has shown that the pandemic reduced agricultural production, food, and incomes, at the same time as it improved household production of root vegetables and fruits. Yet, even though traditional food systems were reinvigorated, overall dietary diversity declined (Iese et al., 2021). Other threats to food security include the historical effects of urbanisation, population growth, export-crop plantations, global market volatility, remoteness from global supply chains, resource extraction, land degradation, and declining land productivity, erosion of crop genetic diversity, coastal and coral degradation, and declining productivity of fisheries due to distant water nations’ overfishing, a growing dependence on imported foods, and changing consumption patterns, as well as breakdowns in traditional social safety nets (Connell, 2014; Georgeou et al., 2019; Islam & Kieu, 2021). Pacific exports include agricultural products, timber, fish, and minerals, but the islands are being mined out, the forests depleted, and oceans overfished. The strains being placed on the land/water/development nexus have been recognised in an ambitious regional response through the PIF, the Blue Pacific Continent 2050, which has been under development since 2017 (addressed more fully elsewhere

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in this volume). Based on a traditional Pacific consensus model, it is claimed that “the 2050 Strategy sets out our long-term approach to working together as a region, and as countries and territories, communities, and people of the Pacific” (PIFS, 2022, p. 3) to manage change. The strategy employs a ‘Drivers of Change’ model to examine events and decisions that may disrupt the future. With a focus on social development, the strategy is based on evidence of trends such as climate change, or emerging issues, such as new technologies. The strategy is owned and developed by the PIF members and involves wide consultation with “all stakeholders, including CROP [Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific] and other regional agencies; the private sector; civil society; media; academia; community, cultural and faith-based organisations; development partners; and other equally valuable constituencies” (PIFS, 2022, p. 3). So far there is little in terms of concrete action to show for the discussion around the Blue Pacific Continent; however, there is a growing awareness that shared problems such as climate change, overfishing, and urbanisation might drive future collective subregional, regional, and international action by small Pacific states to protect their futures. Conclusions In this chapter, we have argued that rather than being shaped by geopolitics, PICTs are advancing their own agendas in regional and international discussions. The leading role PICTs are playing in the ongoing climate discussions indicates that small land areas and populations are no barrier to active engagement and involvement in world politics. Rather, PICTs demonstrate an influence in international affairs that belies their physical or economic size. They are also able to leverage an evolving geostrategic contest in the Pacific to shake up traditional aid-donor relations and extract greater development benefit for themselves. Problems such as economic fragility, balance of payments, debt, climate change, and food security cannot, however, be easily remedied. Small states in the Pacific will remain vulnerable to internationally imposed agendas such as free trade and development and to climate-change mitigation, even as they seek to influence the direction of these discussions. While small, Pacific states exhibit a wide and fascinating range of political arrangements concerning their levels of independence, autonomy, or selfgovernment and demonstrate that sovereignty in the Pacific Islands is adaptable, fluid, and more variable than is often understood in international politics. Notes 1 In 2020, Australia’s economy was valued at US$1,359 billion and that of New Zealand at US$209 billion (countryeconomy.com 2022). 2 Statistics in the Pacific Islands are often guestimates, even for those sources claiming to be exact. We have attempted to use the most accurate guestimates available. 3 The December 2021 undersea volcano eruption created a tsunami for Tonga, and a 2007 earthquake created a tsunami for Gizo in Solomon Islands. 4 Due to space restrictions, movements for self-determination or independence on other Pacific Islands, such as Okinawa (Japan), Rapa Nui (Chile), and Norfolk Island (Australia, see Gonschor, 2017), are not considered in this chapter. There have also been occasional

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5 6

7 8

calls from Malaita Province for independence from Solomon Islands, most recently at the time of writing (mid-2022). Clipperton Island (1,080 km south-west of Mexico) is an uninhabited French overseas territory and French state private property. It was granted to France after a legal dispute with Mexico was settled in 1931. This strategic denial is based on cooperation between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, with Britain and France assisting, and dates back to the Radford-Collins agreement between Australia and the United States in 1951 (see Hawksley, 2009). In November 2021, a deal for Australia to purchase AUD$90 billion worth of French dieselpowered submarines was cancelled by the Australian government, cooling relations between the two states. The local currency in Solomon Islands is the Solomon Island Dollar (SBD). At the time of writing (mid-2022), US$1 bought around SBD$8.2. For further updates see: https://pacificaidmap.lowyinstitute.org/dashboard comparing China and NZ/AUS in specific years.

References NB: all internet pages accessed June 2022 (except indicated otherwise). Agence France Press (2018). Solomon Islands Drops Chinese Tech Giant Huawei for Billion-Dollar Undersea Cable, Signs Australia. www.scmp.com/news/asia/diplomacy/ article/2150616/solomon-islands-drops-chinese-tech-giant-huawei-billion-dollar. Anae, M. (2014). The Samoan diaspora in New Zealand: migration, religion and activism. In C. Hawksley & N. Georgeou (Eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: Case Studies From Australia, New Zealand & the Asia Pacific (pp. 115–17). Oxford University Press. Andrew, N. L.; Bright, P.; de la Rua, L.; Teoh, S. J. & Vickers, M. (2019). Coastal proximity of populations in 22 Pacific island countries and territories. PLoS ONE 14(9), e0223249. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223249. PMID: 31568527. Australian Parliament House (APH) (2021). 4. Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER Plus). www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/For eign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade/TradewithPacific/Report/section?id=committees%2Fr eportjnt%2F024515%2F73912. Azmi, K. & Hanich, Q. (2021). Mapping interests in the tuna fisheries of the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. Ocean & Coastal Management 212(105779). https://doi. org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2021.105779. Bowler, T. (2020). Huawei: Why Is It Being Banned From the UK’s 5G Network? www.bbc. com/news/newsbeat-47041341. Cavanough, E. (2019). When China Came Calling: Inside the Solomon Islands Switch. www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/08/when-china-came-calling-inside-the-solo mon-islands-switch. Connell, J. (2014). Food security in the island Pacific: is Micronesia as far away as ever? Regional Environmental Change 15(7), 1299–311. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10113-014-0696-7. Countryeconomy.com (2022). PIF Pacific Islands Forum. https://countryeconomy.com/ countries/groups/pacific-islands-forum. Crocombe, R. (2001). The South Pacific. Institute of Pacific Studies (Suva), University of the South Pacific. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1590-8658(01)80067-0. PMID: 11346140. CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) (2021). Climate Change Information for the Pacific. www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/ climate-change/pacific-climate-change-info.

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Denton, A. (2017). Voices for environmental action? Analyzing narrative in environmental governance networks in the Pacific Islands. Global Environmental Change 43, 62–71. DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia) (2022a). French Polynesia. www.dfat.gov.au/geo/french-polynesia/french-polynesia-country-brief. DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia) (2022b). Wallis and Futuna. www.dfat.gov.au/geo/wallis-futuna/Pages/wallis-and-futuna. DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia) (2022c). PACER + News. www. dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/in-force/pacer/news/pacer-news. EC (European Commission) (2022). African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries. https:// eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=LEGISSUM:african_caribbean_ and_pacific_group_of_states&rid=1. FATF (Financial Action Taskforce) (2007). Annual Review of Non-Cooperative Countries and Territories 2006–2007. www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/reports/2006%20 2007%20NCCT%20ENG.pdf. FFA (Forum Fisheries Agency) (2022). Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency. https://ffa. int/. Firth, S. (2007). Pacific Islands trade, labor, and security in an era of globalization. The Contemporary Pacific 19(1), 111–35. Fraenkel, J. (2013). Post-colonial political institutions in the South Pacific Islands: a survey. In D. Hegarty & D. Tryon (Eds.), Politics, Development and Security in Oceania (pp. 29– 50). ANU Press. https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p223711/pdf/book.pdf. Gallen, S. L. (2015). Micronesian sub-regional diplomacy. In G. Fry & S. Tarte (Eds.), The New Pacific Diplomacy (pp. 175–88). ANU Press. https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p328371/pdf/ch15.pdf. Georgeou, N. & Hawksley, C. (2014). West Papua and Indonesia: a forgotten conflict? In C. Hawksley & N. Georgeou (Eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: Case Studies From Australia, New Zealand & the Asia Pacific (pp. 121–4). Oxford University Press. Georgeou, N. & Hawksley, C. (2017). Challenges for sustainable communities in Solomon Islands: food production, market sale and livelihoods on Savo Island. PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 14(2), 67–86. http://doi.org/10.5130/portal.v14i2.5411. Georgeou, N.; Hawksley, C.; Monks, J. & Ki’I, M. (2019). Food security and asset creation in Solomon Islands: gender and the political economy of agricultural production for Honiara central market. PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 16(1/2), 101–18. https://doi.org/10.5130/pjmis.v16i1-2.6542. Georgeou, N.; Hawksley, C.; Wali, N.; Lountain, S.; Rowe, E.; West, C. et al. (2022). Food security and small holder farming in Pacific Island countries and territories: a scoping review, PLOS: Sustainability and Transformation 1(4), e0000009. https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pstr.0000009 [Online April 5, 2022] (accessed June 23, 2022). Gonschor, L. (2017). Norfolk Island. The Contemporary Pacific 29(1), 154–65. https://doi. org/10.1353/cp.2017.0011. Hawksley, C. (2004). The 2007 cricket world cup in the Caribbean: a straight drive to regional integration? Kunapipi 26(1), 25. Hawksley, C. (2009). Australia’s aid diplomacy and the Pacific Islands: change and continuity in middle power foreign policy. Global Change, Peace & Security 21(1), 115–30. Hawksley, C. & Georgeou, N. (2013). Issues in Australian foreign policy July to December 2012. Australian Journal of Politics & History 59(2), 260–75. Hawksley, C. & Georgeou, N. (2014). The Pacific solution mark II. In C. Hawksley & N. Georgeou (Eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: Case Studies From Australia, New Zealand & the Asia Pacific (pp. 115–17). Oxford University Press.

Small states in the Pacific 155 Hawksley, C. & Georgeou, N. (2015). Transitional justice as police-building in Solomon Islands: tensions of state building and implications for gender. In Natalia Szablewska & Sascha-Dominik Bachmann (Eds.), Current Issues in Transitional Justice: Towards a More Holistic Approach (Vol. 4, pp. 133–160). Springer Series in Transitional Justice. Hawksley, C. & Georgeou, N. (2019). Sogovare shakes up Solomon Islands’ development strategy. East Asia Forum. www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/08/09/sogavare-shakes-upsolomon-islands-development-strategy/#more-198028. Hawksley, C. & Ward, R. (2019). Ripples of decolonisation in the Asia-Pacific. PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 16(1/2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5130/ pjmis.v16i1-2.6824 Hegarty, D. (2015). A changing Oceania. In D. Hegarty & D. Tryon (Eds.), Politics, Development and Security in Oceania (pp. 1–25). ANU Press. https://press-files.anu.edu.au/ downloads/press/p223711/pdf/book.pdf. Henley, J. (2001). Pacific Atoll Paradise for Mafia Loot. www.theguardian.com/world/2001/ jun/23/jonhenley (accessed March 14, 2022). Hutchens, A. (2011). We’re 15 years behind Africa, Asia and Latin America!: fair trade meets the Pacific. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 52(3), 299–315. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8373. 2011.01460.x. Iese, V.; Wairiu, M.; Hickey, G. M.; Ugalde, D.; Salili, D. H. et al. (2021). Impacts of COVID-19 on agriculture and food systems in Pacific Island countries (PICs): evidence from communities in Fiji and Solomon Islands. Agricultural Systems 190(103099), 1–11. Islam, M. S. & Kieu, E. (2020). Tackling regional climate change impacts and food security issues: a critical analysis across ASEAN, PIF, and SAARC. Sustainability 12(3), 883. Islam, M. S. & Kieu, E. (2021). Climate change and food security in PIF. In M. S. Islam & E. Kieu (Eds.), Climate Change and Food Security in Asia Pacific (pp. 99–126). Palgrave Macmillan & Cham. Jollands, V. & Fisher, K. (2017). Don’t forget the fish! Transnational collaboration in governing tuna fisheries in the Pacific. In M. C. Dawson, C. Rosin & N. Wald (Eds.), Global Resource Scarcity: Catalyst for Conflict or Cooperation? (pp. 184–202). Routledge. Kekea, G. (2020). Huawei in Talks With Government to Build 200 Telecommunication Towers. www.solomontimes.com/news/huawei-in-talks-with-government-to-build-200-telecom munication-towers/10231. Kesolei, O. K. (2022). ‘Trojan Horse’: Palau’s Bid to Become Global Crypto Hub Could Turn It Into Scammers Paradise, Critics Warn. www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/ trojan-horse-palaus-bid-to-become-global-crypto-hub-could-turn-it-into-scammers-paradise-critics-warn. Krasner, S. D. (1999). Sovereignty. Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton University Press. Lee, A. (2019). Tuvalu Is a Tiny Island Nation of 11,000 People. It’s Cashing in Thanks to Twitch. www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2019/12/23/tuvalu-is-tiny-island-nationpeople-its-cashing-thanks-twitch/ (accessed December 23, 2019). Lowy Institute (2021). Pacific Aid Map. https://pacificaidmap.lowyinstitute.org/. Lyons, K. (2019). Bougainville Referendum: Region Votes Overwhelmingly for Independence From Papua New Guinea. www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/11/bougainvillereferendum-region-votes-overwhelmingly-for-independence-from-papua-new-guinea. Manuel, C. & Seselja, E. (2021). New Caledonia’s Pro-Independence Groups Say They’ll Contest Today’s Referendum Results with Plans to Abstain in Protest’. www.abc.net. au/news/2021-12-12/new-caledonia-pro-independence-kanaks-abstain-from-referendum/100679008.

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MOFA PRC (Ministry of Foreign Affaires/People’s Rep. of China) (2021). Joint Statement of China-Pacific Island Countries Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, October 21. www.fmprc. gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/202110/t20211021_9604831.html. Moore, L. (2022). Putting principles into practice: lessons from Fiji on planned relocations. Forced Migration Review Online 69, 51–3. www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/climate-crisis/magazine.pdf. O’Keefe, M. (2020). The militarisation of China in the Pacific: stepping up to a New Cold War? Security Challenges 16(1), 94–112. www.jstor.org/stable/26908770?seq=1. O’Keefe, M. (2021). The implications of Australia’s ‘smart sanctions’ against Fiji 2006 to 2014 for geopolitical contest in the South Pacific. East Asia 39, 1–18. https://doi. org/10.1007/s12140-021-09368-9. Pacific Community (2020). New Data Shows Significant Declines in International Trade in Four Pacific Island Countries. www.spc.int/updates/blog/2020/10/new-data-showssignificant-declines-in-international-trade-in-four-pacific. Philpott, D. (2001). Usurping the sovereignty of sovereignty? World Politics 53(2), 297–324. PIFS (Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat) (2022). 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent/Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. Suva, Fiji. www.forumsec.org/2050strategy/ (accessed July 20, 2022). Pitcairn Constitution Order (2010). The Pitcairn Constitution Order 2010. www.govern ment.pn/Pitcairn%20Islands%20Constitution%20Order%202010.pdf. Prinsen, G. & Blaise, S. (2017). An emerging ‘Islandian’ sovereignty of non-self-governing islands. International Journal 72(1), 56–78. https://doi. org/10.1177/0020702017693260. Radio NZ (2021). Britain Rejoins Major Pacific Body. www.rnz.co.nz/international/ pacific-news/457062/britain-rejoins-major-pacific-body. Rajah, R.; Dayant, A. & Pryke, J. (2019). Ocean of Debt? Belt and Road and Debt Diplomacy in the Pacific, Lowy Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/11540/11389. RCCAP (Regional Climate Consortium for Asia and the Pacific) (2021). Climate Change Update for the Pacific. www.rccap.org/climate-change-update-for-the-pacific/. Robie, D. (2021). New Caledonia Votes to Stay With France, But It’s a Hollow Victory That Will Only Ratchet up Tensions. https://theconversation.com/new-caledonia-votes-to-staywith-france-but-its-a-hollow-victory-that-will-only-ratchet-up-tensions-173646. Samoa News (2021). American Samoa Completes the First Virtual Polynesian Leaders Group Meeting. www.samoanews.com/polynesian-leaders-group. SBS News (2017). Solomons Mission Cost $2.8bn. www.sbs.com.au/news/article/solomonsmission-cost-2-8-billion/hu2bmh6dr. Sora, M. (2022). A Security Agreement Between China and Solomon Islands Could Impact Stability in the Whole Pacific. www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/26/a-security-agreement-between-china-and-solomon-islands-could-impact-stability-in-the-whole-pacific. South Pacific Regional Environmental Program (SPREP) (2022). Brochure. www.sprep.org/ attachments/Publications/Brochures/SPREP_brochure.pdf. SPC (Pacific Community) (2021). SPC Members. www.spc.int/our-members. SPC (Pacific Community) (2022). About. www.spc.int/about-us. Trainor, S. & Nunis, M. (2019). How Selling Citizenship Is Now Big Business. www.bbc. com/news/business-49958628 (accessed October 10, 2019). UN (United Nations) (1994) Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs Supplement No. 8. http://legal.un.org/repertory/art102/english/rep_supp8_vol6-art102_e_advance.pdf. UN (United Nations) (1998) Special Committee on the Situation With Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and

Small states in the Pacific 157 Peoples: New Caledonia (A/AC.109/2114). https://unterm.un.org/unterm/Display/record/ UNHQ/Noumea_Accord/9BCA7682FD6EEF7985257A85006D4AEB. UN (United Nations) (2022) Small Islands Developing States. www.un.org/ohrlls/content/ about-small-island-developing-states. Wolfers, E. (2014a). Papua New Guinea and Bougainville. In C. Hawksley & N. Georgeou (Eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: Case Studies From Australia, New Zealand & the Asia Pacific (pp. 118–20). Oxford University Press. Wolfers, E. (2014b). Pacific Regionalism. In C. Hawksley & N. Georgeou (Eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: Case Studies From Australia, New Zealand & the Asia Pacific (pp. 92–5). Oxford University Press.

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Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands From great-power competition to climate change and back again Salā George Carter and Jack Corbett

This chapter uses securitisation theory to explain trends in the Pacific region. The securitisation concept is famously associated with the Copenhagen School and its claim that the designation of a security threat is subjective and politicised rather than neutral or objective (see, e.g., Buzan et al., 1998). This approach draws our attention to questions about who the key actors are and what they are saying in order to construct ‘existential threats’. The assumption is that the security field is made up of divergent views and interests that shape the direction of policy. Specifically, the claim is that the securitisation of an issue will attract attention and resources. We argue that this can help us explain why, for example, the Pacific region is currently generating renewed attention from great powers and their allies, but also how the world’s very smallest states have attracted resources from multilateral agencies and international NGOs interested in climate change adaptation. Following the core subjectivist assumptions of securitisation theory, we argue that we can explain who is acting and why, by reference to two distinct narratives that dominate regional policy. The first primarily sees the region, despite its cultural and environmental diversity, as a geographical “object” over which great powers compete (for discussion see, e.g., Fry, 2019, chapter 3). This framing is a legacy of the colonial period and the Second World War in particular, when small island communities were first acquired by European powers and then embroiled in a conflict that was not of their own making. Anxiety about great-power rivalry persisted during the Cold War and has been reprised during the twenty-first century as tensions between the United States and China continue to escalate. One consequence is that Pacific states are now generating significantly more attention, and have the potential to extract more resources, from larger states. But the dilemma is that while this attention can bring resources, the increased possibility of regional conflict also poses a considerable threat to livelihoods (Petersen, 1998). The second framing has been substantially driven by Pacific islanders themselves, often working in collaboration with Small Island Developing States (SIDS) from other regions, academics, and international NGOs, and is concerned with the existential threat that climate change poses to Pacific states (Fry & Tarte, 2015). The sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022) shows that climate change will be catastrophic for SIDS. Low-lying DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-13

Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands 159 atoll states are especially vulnerable to the effects of sea-level rise and face the prospect of ‘drowning under’ within decades (Vaha, 2015). Higher islands will bear considerable impacts on coastal livelihoods and tourism and from more frequent and intense cyclones. This prospect has led to significant activism by Pacific states under the banner of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). The SIDS agenda has been especially prominent at the United Nations and at the annual UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings and was especially crucial in the negotiation of the Paris Agreement (Carter, 2020a). Over recent years, these two framings have begun to intertwine as Pacific SIDS have used the renewed geopolitical interest from great powers to push their climatesecurity agenda. For example, Fiji’s Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, has been vocal in his view that if countries such as the United States and China, as well as regional powers such as Australia and New Zealand, want to engage with Pacific Island states on traditional security issues, they must first sign up to more ambitious climate action. 14 cyclones have struck Fiji since 2016. More than 40 of our communities are at risk of being erased by the rising seas. The banks of our 45 rivers are breaking on a near-monthly basis under the strain of persistently record-breaking rains. [C]limate war [is] upon us. The climate war will not be won with guns, ammo, and artillery. It will be won with seawalls, resilient infrastructure, and cutting-edge technology. It will be won with knowledge—knowledge of building practices, disaster management, and mitigative measures we can take to cushion the blow of storms and other severe weather. (Bainimarama, 2022, n.p.) The key point, in keeping with the core tenants of securitisation theory, is that understanding competition over how existential threats are framed can help to explain the behaviour of different actors, large and small. In doing so we add to debates about the agency and influence of small states outlined in the introduction to this volume. To substantiate these arguments, the chapter is structured as follows. First, we outline the traditional security-framing of the region as an “arena” in which greatpower competition takes place. We argue that while the threat or potential of greatpower conflict waxes and wanes, the framing has been an ever-present feature of regional policy since the colonial period. The next section discusses the more recent securitisation of climate change. We argue that this has seen a marked shift in the way that Pacific leaders have engaged in security-related discourse. The penultimate section outlines how these two narratives have become intertwined and the potential implications. The conclusion considers how future research can shed new light on these emerging trends. Great-power competition in the Pacific The consensus among archaeologists and historians is that the islands in the Pacific Ocean were settled from Asia, with the first migration occurring around 50,000

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years ago, to modern-day New Guinea. The Austronesian migration, which led to the settlement of much of the rest of the region, is estimated to have begun around 4,000 years ago from contemporary Taiwan. This wave ended with the settlement of New Zealand roughly 1,000 years ago. The common view is that this migration involved small numbers of people moving from island to island. These navigational feats across the planet’s largest ocean remain much celebrated (D’Arcy, 2006; Spriggs, 2009). Inter- and intra-island conflict was a feature of Pacific societies long before Europeans arrived. But much of it is considered ‘pre-history’ and thus has rarely been the subject of investigation by Security Studies or International Relations (IR) scholars. There is an ongoing, recent attempt to document indigenous diplomacy and war, including how past relationships inform modern practices (Carter et al., 2021; Nanau, 2021; Naupa, 2022). But the more common framing sees the islands as ‘objects’ of great-power competition and the region as an ‘arena’ where these tensions play out. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the Pacific, claiming Guam in 1565 as a waypoint for galleons travelling to their colonies in the Philippines and Mexico. Most colonisation occurred much later, however. Indeed, the remoteness of the region, combined with the limited resources of interest to colonial powers, is typically cited as an explanation for why the islands were among the last territories on earth to be colonised. Niue, for example, was brought under the control of New Zealand only in 1901. Security was a key factor in colonial expansion, with European states seeking strategic denial over rivals. Deposits of phosphate, prized as a fertiliser, and copra production, which produces coconut oil, generated the main economic imperatives, but for geological reasons not all islands could participate. Another consideration was the need to police the activities of citizens from European countries, especially whalers and beachcombers. But in many cases, and especially that of the smallest and remotest islands, geopolitical imperatives were central. Thus, Britain acquired Tuvalu and Kiribati, for example, out of fear that the Germans would do so instead (Munro & Firth, 1986). The upshot is that by the early twentieth century the region had become a patchwork of colonies variously governed by Germany, Britain, the United States, France, and New Zealand. After the First World War, Germany’s territories were divided among the victorious powers with Japan and Australia becoming colonial powers in their place. This post-First World War realignment set the stage for the Second World War, in which the Pacific was a key battleground, where colonial powers fought for advantage. Tarawa (Kiribati), Kwajalein (Marshall Islands), Peleliu (Palau), Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands), the Kokoda Trail (Papua New Guinea), and Guam are best known beyond the region because they were key sites in this conflict. This underscores the prevailing view that security is something that happens to Pacific peoples—they are “objects” of great-power competition—rather than their being active participants. This framing has always been somewhat overdrawn. Fijian leaders ceded their territory to Britain in 1874. Tonga was never colonised and instead became a protectorate of Britain. And Hawaiian leaders sought to resist US colonisation by adopting the trappings of modern statehood (Gonschor, 2019).

Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands 161 Some Pacific Islanders were combatants in the First and Second World Wars, and islands and islanders often formed integral parts of logistical supply chains that criss-crossed the region. The perception of islander agency increased as the ‘winds of change’ gathered momentum, although the region was among the last to decolonise. A key reason for the delay was concern that many of the islands were unviable as modern states due to the limited economic resources available to them and their inability to defend themselves from foreign attack (McIntyre, 2014). The concern then, as now, is that independence would leave islander communities vulnerable to influence by foreign powers and transnational criminal networks. Russian influence was the primary concern of US, British, Australian, and New Zealand leaders during the Cold War. But aside from occasional flashpoints—Kiribati signed a treaty allowing Russian fishing fleets access to its waters in the 1980s, for example—the main impact of the Cold War on the region was the use of islands by great powers for nuclear testing. Britain, France, and the United States all tested nuclear weapons in the region, with the campaign to compensate victims of these atrocities ongoing (Firth, 1987; Maclellan, 2005). The end of the Cold War saw a marked decrease in security discourse in the region, and there was a view that this would be to the detriment of Pacific economies as it would reduce the amount of foreign aid they could leverage from regional powers such as Australia and New Zealand (for discussion, see, Van Fossen, 2005). Instead, ‘ethnic’ tensions across Melanesia were seen as constituting an ‘arc of instability’ (see, Wallis, 2015; Dobell, 2007). Concern that failed states could become safe havens for transnational criminal activities and terrorists was a feature of regional security policy in the 2000s (Fry & Kabutaulaka, 2008), with the original Biketawa Declaration providing a framework for coordinated responses. Here again, the region was an “object” that could be exploited by outsiders. Echoing this, only a few governments in the Pacific have national security strategies. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and, to a lesser extent, Tonga have standing armies. Elsewhere, the main security concern of Pacific states is illegal fishing, the main solution to which has been the acquisition of maritime patrol vessels from regional donors. The last decade has seen a marked shift in this discussion as escalating tensions between China and the United States have revived age-old concerns about the region becoming an “arena” in which great-power competition takes place (Herr, 2019). Long-standing concern about ‘Asianisation’ has foregrounded ethical concerns about corruption in particular (see, e.g., Crocombe, 2007), including in countries, such as Solomon Islands, where natural resource extraction is common (e.g., logging, fishing, and mining). More recently, the increase in Chinese development aid has generated anxiety, especially among policymakers in Australia and New Zealand, about the potential for Pacific states to become heavily indebted to foreign powers for projects that deliver few benefits. In 2018, Australian Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells voiced concerns—ridiculed by many—about Chinese aid producing “roads to nowhere” (see, McGarry, 2018, n.p.). This discussion is often framed as a tension between sovereign independence and dependence, with Chinese money designed to ensure the latter.

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Such debates have long been a feature of politics in the North Pacific (Puas, 2021). After the Second World War, the United States retained much of Micronesia as a ‘strategic’ Trust Territory under a UN mandate. A key factor in subsequent geopolitics is the reluctance of the US military to relinquish control of the islands despite the global move towards decolonisation. Guam remains part of the United States. The rest of the Mariana Islands have a ‘commonwealth’ relationship analogous to Puerto Rico. The remainder of the US Trust Territory, including countries such as Palau of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and Marshall Islands, negotiated a unique free-association formula in which they became independent states—all are UN members and have autonomy over domestic affairs—but have entered into agreements known as ‘compacts’ in which they received significant revenue and other benefits, such as freedom of movement for their citizens, in return for providing the US military exclusive access to their territory. These compacts of free association were due to expire in 2023 but are being renegotiated for a third time due to increasing US wariness of China. An increasing concern of US and Australian policymakers in particular is that the Chinese are attempting to acquire access to territory. In 2018, Marshall Islands began considering the idea of establishing Rongelap, which was evacuated due to US nuclear testing, as a special economic zone at the behest of Chinese investors. Some believe that Chinese business interests are behind the Chuukese secessionist movement, which seeks independence for the largest state of the FSM. More recently, Solomon Islands entered into a security agreement with China, which led to considerable angst in Australia in particular about the potential for a Chinese naval base to be built there. A rushed Chinese move to negotiate a similar agreement with other Pacific states has so far come to little, but the sums offered to secure these deals means that astute island leaders will always listen to the offer, if for no other reason than to get a better arrangement out of their traditional donors. In sum, since the arrival of Europeans, security has largely been framed as something that happens to Pacific peoples and places as a consequence of greatpower competition. The region is variously described as a vast, near-empty, and essentially lawless place, vulnerable to the nefarious influence of actors from elsewhere, be they whalers and beachcombers, criminal networks, terrorists, empires, or nation-states. When it does exist, security cooperation is seen as a patchwork of multiple bilateral, multilateral formal, and informal arrangements (Wallis et al., 2022). This framing has never been entirely accurate—Pacific peoples have always sought to shape the tides of history to their advantage (Banivanua Mar, 2016)—but it does point to the perennial dilemma for island leaders: while increased attention from great powers can generate the resources required by communities to pursue modernist development, it also brings with it increased threats, with the destruction caused by the Second World War and nuclear testing during the Cold War evidence of the potential price they might pay if, for example, tensions between the United States and China continue to escalate.

Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands 163 Climate security in the Pacific The main alternative to this framing has arisen because of climate change and the threat it poses to Pacific Island peoples and their livelihoods. A key difference is that Pacific states and leaders have been key champions of this discourse, often in the face of sustained opposition from larger powers. Indeed, while the threat that climate change poses is now globally recognised, the linking of climate change and security remains contentious and has generated considerable opposition from larger states, including the large geopolitical actors discussed earlier. One consequence of this has been that the leaders of Pacific states, confronted as they are by offers from great powers to secure their allegiance, demand climate action in return. Pacific island states, working together with other SIDS from other ocean regions, have been advocating for greater action on climate change for more than three decades. This call for action is made on the basis that they are ‘frontline states’ or ‘canaries in the coalmine’ that will suffer the disproportionate effects of global warming despite bearing negligible responsibility for its creation (Campbell & Barnett, 2010). The main way they have pursued this agenda is via the United Nations and its Framework Convention on Climate Change (Carter, 2020a, 2020b). SIDS won key concessions at the 1992 Rio Conference that saw their unique condition recognised (Ashe et al., 1999). This led to the first UN SIDS conference in Barbados in 1994 (repeated in Mauritius 2004 and Samoa 2014). SIDS have advocated for urgent action on climate change in the Conference of the Parties (Carter, 2020a, 2020b; Corbett et al., 2019). For Pacific states, examples include Tuvalu’s advocacy on Loss and Damage COP21 in Paris and the role of Marshall Islands in establishing the ‘High Ambition Coalition’ which was pivotal in the formation of the 2015 Paris Agreement (Carter, 2020a, 2020b). In 2017, Fiji co-chaired with Germany COP23 or the ‘island COP’ that raised specific issues and concerns of small island states like loss and damage and ocean (Carter, 2017). In all cases, Pacific SIDS are seen as key proponents of radical action on mitigation and adaptation. The prominence of Pacific SIDS on this issue in international forums has been achieved due to substantial cooperation, both within the region and among SIDS from other parts of the world. The main vehicle for cooperation with SIDS from other regions has been AOSIS, which was formed in 1990 to coordinate and elevate small-island-states issues in environment and sustainable development forums. Brought together by their shared island identity and vulnerability to impacts of climate change, the coalition of 44-plus nations has strategically collaborated with non-state partners to pressure great powers and greenhouse gas polluters to cut emissions and increase climate finance (Carter, 2020b). While AOSIS has had considerable successes (Betzold, 2010), including those outlined earlier, their influence has been circumscribed on key issues such as climate justice and security. A lengthy climate-justice discussion is beyond the scope of this chapter but essentially involves seeking acknowledgement of the responsibility of major polluters for causing climate change and advocating for SIDS to receive ‘loss and damage’ compensation as a result. Advocacy efforts are ongoing

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via movements such as the Pacific Climate Warriors and Pacific Islands Students Fighting for Climate Change (Greenpeace, 2021; Adelman, 2016), but SIDS are yet to get the commitments they seek. Similarly, SIDS activism has seen the security implications of climate change discussed internationally. But the link between the two concepts has been contested by larger states due to concerns that it will undermine their sovereignty. The climate-security framing essentially contends that while climate-change impacts do not cause violent conflict directly, they interact with other social, political, and economic factors in ways that negatively shape the maintenance of peace. The pathways through which these risks manifest are highly contextual and determined by the interaction between climatic hazards, exposure, and, most importantly, the vulnerability and coping capacity of states and societies. Thus, the linking of climate impacts to security involves viewing the former as ‘threat multipliers’ that exacerbate existing challenges, with the potential to destabilise regional and national systems (Huntjens & Nachbar, 2015; Barnett & Adger, 2007; McDonald, 2013; Oels, 2012; Scheffran et al., 2012). Examples might include increased drought, floods, or hurricanes leading to increased migration, which in turn generates conflict between different cultural groups over scarce resources. The securitisation of climate change is underscored in the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Boe Declaration of 2018 where “climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific” (PIF, 2018, n.p.). Leaders of the PIF have mandated the Council of Regional Organisations of the Pacific (CROP) to explore and find policy solutions on the impact and implications of climate change on political and security systems in the Pacific. There is some diversity in the ways actors have linked the two concepts—some emphasise long-term risks to livelihoods while others focus on traditional concerns about sovereignty and territorial integrity. But the core point remains that climate change represents an existential threat that has the potential to catalyse conflict. The diversity of ways in which climate has been securitised can be seen in how countries from the Pacific report their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement all countries must have NDCs that outline their efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Within these national statements, Pacific countries have linked climate-change impacts to their national security. The most cited references in order of frequency are theme 3: conflict as an obstacle to climate action; theme 1: climate change as a security/national security issue; and theme 2: climate change exacerbating extant conflicts and insecurity, with respectively more than a dozen references per theme. Around half as many references are made to theme 4: co-benefits of adaptation and mitigation for preventing conflict and sustaining peace; theme 5: measures to address climate and security; and theme 6: subregional/regional cross-border impacts. These differences also imply varying responses (UNDP, 2020). Putting these nuances to one side, the second important point is that Pacific SIDS have had considerable success in generating international attention for this cause. The United Nations Security Council, which has the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, first discussed climate change in an

Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands 165 open debate in 2007 (UNSC, 2007). This was an agenda pioneered and promoted by Pacific countries, and through a new grouping at the United Nations—the Pacific Islands Development States (P-SIDS)—to raise climate change as a security issue (UNSC, 2007; Manoa, 2021). The P-SIDS group further raised the issue in the United Nations General Assembly for the UN Secretary-General to produce a report on climate change and its possible implications on security (UNGA, 2009b). On September 11, 2009, the United Nations Secretary-General recognised climate change as a “threat multiplier” in a report titled ‘Climate change and its possible security implications’. The report identified five mechanisms through which climate change can affect security, including (1) vulnerability: threats to food security and human health and increased exposure to extreme events; and (2) development: slowing down or reversal. These international forums would set forth an agenda to understand “climate-related security risks” or the adverse impacts of climate change on human security—that is “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want”—but also to investigate how such impacts relate to the security of the state and the maintenance of international peace and security under the United Nations Charter (UNGA, 2009a). Four other such debates have followed in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017, along with statements by the President of the UN Security Council at ‘Arria-formula’ meetings on climate change. Consecutively in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, the Council recommended high-level open debates ranging from the impact of climate-related disasters on security, the need for a Special Representative on Climate and Security, climate change as a foreign and security policy issue, and the creation of an Informal Expert Group (Climate Security Expert Network, 2021). Outside the UN Security Council, the international climate-change regime through the international scientific body of the IPCC has recognised the linkage and reality of security and climate change. The Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC in 2014 agreed that in the coming years, human security will be progressively threatened as the climate changes (Adger et al., 2014). The key point is that although the UNFCCC has yet to incorporate security in its agenda, SIDS advocacy on issues such as adaptation and loss and damage are in line with the international impetus. In sum, SIDS generally and Pacific SIDS specifically have increasingly sought to securitise climate change by emphasising that it constitutes a ‘threat multiplier’ that will lead to conflict. The securitisation of the issue at the regional and international level reflects their desire to increase pressure on mitigation efforts while also attracting finance for adaptation. They have had some success—the climate-security nexus is reflected in numerous international discussions. But it has met resistance, especially from larger states concerned that it might lead to the United Nations despatching ‘green helmets’, who might impinge on their sovereignty. But despite this resistance, the successes of the Pacific SIDS in advocating for their agenda have seen them increasingly demand climate action as a condition of more conventional or traditional security agreements. Thus, over recent years the two security framings, which have thus far been distinct, have begun to merge.

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The great-power climate-security nexus As we have seen, Pacific states have embraced and prioritised the challenge of climate change since the 1980s. The region has embedded and mainstreamed policies of climate resilience, including mitigation, adaptation, finance, and disaster risk reduction. More recently, the increased geopolitical and geostrategic manoeuvring in the region has led to Pacific states demanding climate action as a condition of their participation in more traditional security agreements. This trend adds further evidence to the claim that the region is more than an ‘arena’ or ‘object’ of greatpower politics; Pacific states are active participants in promulgating securitisation discourse. In 2017, Leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) agreed a vision for the ‘Blue’ Pacific. “A new narrative for Pacific Regionalism and how the Forum engages with the world [f]or inspired leadership and long-term commitment to the benefits of acting together as one Blue Continent” (Malielegaoi, 2017, n.p.). They argued that Pacific states are Large Ocean States, and they have asserted an alternative narrative of their place in the world (Morgan, 2022). At the heart of the Blue Pacific idea is a call for member states to embrace their role at the centre of contemporary geopolitics. The opportunity “to define a Blue Pacific economy ensures a sustainable, secure, resilient, and peaceful Blue Pacific as well as strengthening Blue Pacific Diplomacy to protect the value of our Ocean and peoples” (Malielegaoi, 2017, n.p.). This vision for regional security and foreign policy is reflected in the 2018 Boe Declaration, which highlighted four shared regional security priorities: human (including humanitarian assistance, rights, and health); environmental and resource; transnational; and cybersecurity. However, the Leaders’ declaration pinpointed climate change as the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, well-being, and security of the people in the region, calling for action on stronger and cohesive security corporation and coordination at the regional level (Pacific Islands Forum, 2018). What ensued was a reconfiguration of regional security architecture and governance systems, with a broadened security agenda that was not limited to traditional military security. The Declaration also encouraged member states to actively design and implement their security and foreign policy to fit this vision. However, the Boe Declaration and its subsequent Subcommittee on Security that carried out the Boe Action Plan is only one instrument involved in this task. Both the PIF and the Pacific Islands Development Forum in their respective 2019 Kanaiki II and Nadi declarations affirmed the narrative of a climate crisis in the Pacific region. Furthermore, the governments of Marshall Islands in 2019 and Vanuatu in 2022 have passed legislation and declared their nations to be under National Climate Emergency. These regional and national actions underscore the countless statements by Pacific leaders in the global forums and activism by local non-governmental organisations. In this shared, expanded vision of security, Pacific leaders have emphasised the need to uphold the values of inclusivity, respect, consensus, and cultural norms. The latter represent the need to understand context in the Pacific—that cultural

Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands 167 diversity is understood and incorporated into solutions—rather than a one-sizefits-all approach. From this starting point, leaders have argued that the inclusion of women, children, and those with disabilities needs particular attention. In doing so, they have further emphasised that current debates and discussion around climate change and security in the Pacific are not just state-centric and military-centric; rather they are about human development, livelihoods, and the well-being of peoples, communities, and states. These trends are also evident in recently developed national security policies in the region. Papua New Guinea refers to climate change as inclusive of the nexus between security and development: “security enhances development, development entails comprehensive security” (PNG Defence White Paper, p. 4). Climate Change is also prioritised as a “Level One Threat to the stability of the state”. Likewise, Vanuatu’s National Security Strategy (Government of Vanuatu, 2019) seeks to anticipate threats, protect the nation, and build resilience that shapes the environment in Vanuatu’s interests. It acknowledges that the overall security of Vanuatu is intimately linked to economic stability, resource efficiency, good governance, and social cohesion. Vanuatu has identified ten ‘Pillars’, covering security challenges and capabilities, which capture the work of the country to meet its national-security objectives. Climate change is the fourth of these pillars. It seeks to strengthen capacity for natural-disaster preparedness, response and recovery, and climate-change adaptation; to strengthen collaboration with local and international partners on climate-change resilience and natural-disaster management; to pursue funding from international sources for climate-change adaptation and mitigation; and to advocate regionally and globally on climate change. The country has identified the need to develop a framework for the support of people displaced by natural disasters and measures to deal with major man-made disasters, particularly involving ocean vessels and aircraft, as well as oil spills. Beyond National Security strategies or policies, countries in the region have identified the link and prioritised climate change as a national-security threat in their NDCs. A 2020 UNDP and UNFCCC report examined submitted NDCs. It found one or more references to ‘conflict’, ‘peace’, ‘security’, ‘stability’, and/or ‘war’. Some contributing states contributions, including Marshall Islands, Nauru, and Tuvalu, acknowledge climate change as a security/national security issue (UNDP, 2020). They articulate the effects of coastal erosion not only in terms of economic development and infrastructure investments but also as having the potential to “severely undermine national security” (UNDP, 2020). In terms of specific threats to national security, rising sea levels are a key recurrent theme. Kiribati notes that sea-level rise, apart from causing inundation and salinisation of groundwater resources, could also result in an “increase in conflict and stress due to loss of property and land, and forced migration” (UNDP, 2020, p. 10). Closely related to this is the existential threat posed by climate change articulated by Nauru and Tonga. Solomon Islands also states that “climate change threatens the very existence of the people and the nation” and that “adaptation is not an option—but rather a matter of survival” (UNDP, 2020, p. 10). While national security is the most commonly mentioned issue, it is not the only security

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narrative observed. Tuvalu likewise stresses the link between cultural and socioeconomic vulnerabilities and national security, and Niue emphasises the threat of climate change to social stability and Niue culture. Broader references to energy as well as food and water security have also been noted. In recent years the broader regional security architecture, including the larger states of the Pacific Rim, has attempted to respond to these challenges. Both the South Pacific Defence Ministers Meeting and the Joint Heads of Pacific Security Meetings have initiated a dialogue not only around defence but also with police and customs and their role in dealing with climate-related disaster responses. This agenda-setting is in line with recent announcements that climate change will be a key priority of security forces of Australia, New Zealand, France, and the United States. In 2022, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States established the Partners in the Blue Pacific to coordinate and deepen cooperation with Pacific states including on the climate crisis (The White House, 2022). China is also increasing its climate aid in the Pacific (Zhang, 2020). In response to recent volcanic eruptions and tsunamis in Tonga, for example, the Chinese navy delivered humanitarian aid to the Kingdom (Greene, 2022). The point is that great powers are increasingly aware that if they want to work with the region to pursue their own security goals, they are going to have to do more to ensure the climate security of Pacific states. In sum, Pacific states are increasingly seeking to ensure that renewed geopolitical interest in the region results in increased recognition of the climate-security nexus. As policymakers in Canberra, Washington, Auckland, and Beijing seek to increase their focus on the region and its needs, Pacific leaders have emphasised the existential threat that climate change presents to their way of life. Under the Blue Pacific vision, Pacific leaders and states are pursuing their definition of security— one that is deeper and broader, to use the securitisation-theory framing—which includes both traditional and human security. In this broad definition of security, the impacts of climate change are not only prioritised, but they also diffuse into other policy areas, including geopolitics. Conclusion In this chapter, we have used securitisation theory to examine the way existential threats have been framed over more than half a century. We have juxtaposed two discourses: a conventional geopolitical narrative with a more recent climatesecurity narrative. The former has been a feature of political life in the region since the colonial period. The potential for the region to become embroiled in greatpower conflict waxes and wanes, but the idea that the islands are an ‘arena’ or ‘object’ in or upon which competition occurs has been a consistent feature of these discussions for decades. By contrast, islanders have been prominent advocates of the more recent climate-security narrative, both regionally and on the world stage. Their advocacy has led to debate about the climate-security nexus becoming a feature of international institutions and processes. They have met some resistance, including from larger states who fear the implications of linking the two for their sovereignty. But in a context where the geopolitical significance of the region is

Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands 169 rising due to escalating tensions between China and the US, this has also presented the Pacific with an opportunity to make action on climate change a condition of any security cooperation with larger states. The upshot is that the two narratives have become increasingly intertwined. Further research is required to parse this out. We need to know more about how small states from the Pacific region have succeeded in securitising climate change and elevating the climate-security nexus at all levels—from international, regional, and national. We also need to know why this form of collective action has succeeded when many others have failed. Likewise, more research is needed to understand these processes, and the responses or resistance of larger states, especially at the international and regional levels. But for now, we take the more modest yet still fundamental step of clearing the conceptual ground by distinguishing between these framings and narrating some of their history. In doing so, we hope to encourage other scholars to take up the call to consider the way Pacific and other SIDS advocacy are shaping the global security environment. References Adelman, S. (2016). Climate justice, loss and damage and compensation for small island developing states. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 7(1), 32–53. Adger, W. N.; Pulhin, J. M.; Barnett, J.; Dabelko, G. D.; Hovelsrud, G. K.; Levy, M.; . . . & Vogel, C. H. (2014). Human Security. Cambridge University Press. Ashe, J. W.; Van Lierop, R. & Cherian, A. (1999). The role of the alliance of small island states (AOSIS) in the negotiation of the United Nations framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC). Natural Resources Forum 23(3, August), 209–20. Bainimarama, F. (2022). Prime Minister of Fiji Speech at Opening of. www.fiji.gov.fj/Media-Centre/Speeches/English/PRIME-MINISTER-HON-VOREQE-BAINIMARAMAS-SPEEC-(26) the Black Rock Peacekeeping Camp, March 14, 2002, Nadi (accessed July 2, 2022). Barnett, J. & Adger, W. N. (2007). Climate change, human security and violent conflict. Political Geography 26(6), 639–55. Betzold, C. (2010). ‘Borrowing’ power to influence international negotiations: AOSIS in the climate change regime, 1990–1997. Politics 30(3), 131–48. Buzan, B.; Wæver, O.; Wæver, O. & De Wilde, J. (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Campbell, J. & Barnett, J. (2010). Climate Change and Small Island States: Power, Knowledge and the South Pacific. Routledge. Carter, G. (2017). The Island COP: Changing the Negotiation Climate With a ‘Bula Spirit’. https://devpolicy.org/the-island-cop-changing-the-negotiation-climate-20171109/ (accessed June 22, 2022). Carter, G. (2020a). Pacific island states and 30 years of global climate change negotiations. In C. Klöck, P. Castro, F. Weiler & L. Øfjord Blaxekjær (Eds.), Coalitions in the Climate Change Negotiations (pp. 73–90). Routledge. Carter, G. (2020b). Small islands states’ diplomatic strategic partnerships in climate negotiations. New Zealand International Review 45(4), 21–5. Carter, G.; Fry, G. & Nanau, G. L. (2021). Oceanic Diplomacy: An Introduction—In Brief Series 2021/23. Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National University.

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Security and securitisation in the Pacific Islands 171 McGarry, D (2018, April 11). Baseless rumours: why talk of a Chinese military installation in Vanuatu misses the point. The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/11/ baseless-rumours-why-talk-of-a-chinese-military-installation-in-vanuatu-misses-thepoint (accessed June 22, 2022). McIntyre, W. D. (2014). Winding Up the British Empire in the Pacific Islands. Oxford University Press. Morgan, W. (2022). Large ocean states: pacific regionalism and climate security in a new era of geostrategic competition. East Asia 39, 45–62. Munro, D. & Firth, S. (1986). Towards colonial protectorates: the case of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. Australian Journal of Politics & History 32(1), 63–71. Nanau, G. L. (2021). Oceanic Diplomacy: Popo and Supu Diplomacy in the Modern State of Solomon Islands—In Brief 2021/28. Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. Naupa, A. (2022). Sealed With Kava and Betel Nut: Lessons in Oceanic Diplomacy From the Mota Lava Treaty—In Brief 2022/11. Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. Oels, A. (2012). From ‘securitization’ of climate change to ‘climatization’ of the security field: comparing three theoretical perspectives. In J. Scheffran, M. Brzoska, H. G. Brauch, P. M. Link & J. Schilling (Eds.), Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict (pp. 185–205). Springer Science & Business Media. Petersen, G. (1998). Strategic location and sovereignty: modern Micronesia in the historical context of American expansionism. Space and Polity 2(2), 179–205. PIF (2018). Pacific Islands Forum Communique 49th Leaders Meeting Yaren, Nauru, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. PIF. Puas, G. (2021). The Federated States of Micronesia’s Engagement With the Outside World: Control, Self-Preservation and Continuity. Australian National University Press. Scheffran, J.; Brzoska, M.; Brauch, H. G.; Link, P. M. & Schilling, J. (Eds.) (2012). Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict: Challenges for Societal Stability (Vol. 8). Springer Science & Business Media. Spriggs, M. (2009). Oceanic connections in deep time. Pacific Currents 1(1), 7–27. UNDP (2020). Policy Brief—Climate Security: A Typology and Analysis of Climate-Related Security Risks in the First Round of Nationally Determined Contributions. UNDP. United Nations. UNGA (2009a). Climate Change and Its Possible Security Implications, Report of the Secretary-General. United Nations. UNGA (2009b). Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 3 June 2009, A/RES/63/281. Climate Change and Its Possible Security Implications. United Nations. UNSC (2007). 5663rd Meeting United Nations Security Council. United Nations. Vaha, M. E. (2015). Drowning under: small island states and the right to exist. Journal of International Political Theory 11(2), 206–23. Van Fossen, A. B. (2005). South Pacific Futures: Oceania Toward 2050. Foundation for Development Cooperation. Wallis, J. (2015). The South Pacific: ‘arc of instability’ or ‘arc of opportunity’? Global Change, Peace & Security 27(1), 39–53. Wallis, J.; McNeill, H.; Batley, J. & Powles, A. (2022). Security Cooperation in the Pacific Islands: Architecture, Complex, Community, or Something Else?, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Icac005, published 16 June 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/irap/lcac005 (accessed June 20, 2022).

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10 Cape Verde and the defence and security challenges in the Atlantic corridor The case of the approach to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)* Odair Barros-Varela In June 2006, Cape Verde hosted the NATO military exercises called ‘Steadfast Jaguar’. In recent years, independently of the government, the country has been trying to get closer to that international security organisation with the argument that the reinforcement of the security of its geographical space depends on the strategic cooperation that it initiates with actors such as NATO. Historically, since achieving independence in 1975, and during the Cold War, the small archipelago of Cape Verde has adopted the role of “privileged interlocutor in the mid-Atlantic” (Caldeira, 2006), thanks to a pragmatic and performative foreign policy, with relatively positive results. What, however, deserves an in-depth analysis is the question of knowing whether, with the end of the Cold War and due to the political changes that took place in the archipelago, the terms of this policy have been altered or adjusted to the changes that have taken place in the world system. These military exercises are an appropriate topical subject for a debate in this regard. Based on what has been observed and referred to, it seems paradoxical that Cape Verde accepted to host NATO military exercises in its territory and publicly assumed the intention to approach this organisation when it had been guiding its external relations by a strict non-alignment in relation to international agreements of a military nature including cooperation with, and integration in, international organisations of defence and security. This is evidenced by the fact that the Small Island Developing State (SIDS) of Cape Verde has not integrated into the ECOMOG (Group of Military Observers) of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) despite being a full member of this organisation. What can be seen immediately, then, is that this act by the Cape Verdean State sent a strong signal that the era of non-alignment and the conducting of its international relations in accordance with the principle of multilateralism with regard to issues of international peace and security, in the light of the UN Charter, was coming to an end, given that NATO, in the current strategic concept it presents, can simply act anywhere on the planet without the consent of the Security Council of the United Nations. The main objective of this chapter, therefore, is to analyse the possible political–military rapprochement between Cape Verde and NATO which, DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-14

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presumably, can officially lead to partnership and cooperation or integration into the latter. This objective is in line with one of the traditional questions of SmallState Studies and which is analysed in this collective work: “Are small states truly vulnerable to security threats given the expansion of multilateralism and regionalism around the world?” Cape Verde: the option for a culture of peace and/or strategic non-alignment A careful observation of current analyses, not only academic but also journalistic, of the role played by Cape Verde in the context of the Cold War allows us to see that there is a common denominator, which is the idea that it should now be the purpose of the Cape Verdean state to recover the role of privileged interlocutor in the mid-Atlantic, supposedly lost together with the end of that ideological conflict (Caldeira, 2006). Before moving on to a brief discussion and analysis of the impact that the NATO military exercises, named ‘Steadfast Jaguar 2006’, held in June of that year in Cape Verde, had then, has now, and may have on the future of that country and its foreign relations, it is necessary, from my point of view, to historically contextualise the external positioning of Cape Verde since its independence in 1975, and this easily allows us to conclude that it was not the intention of the Cape Verdean state, during the Cold War, to play the role of privileged interlocutor in the mid-Atlantic but rather that this positioning was the result of a pragmatic and perfunctory foreign policy, with relatively positive results. After independence, coinciding with the Cold War, Cape Verde chose, in my view, a clear option for a ‘culture of peace’, or, in the words of the former Secretary of State for Public Administration, Renato Cardoso, “option for a peace policy” (Cardoso, 1986).1 This option involved, in the first place, rejecting the common assertion that adopting a peace policy is the true vocation of small states. Cardoso considered this to be completely erroneous insofar as the term ‘vocation’, in its original sense of ‘calling’, ‘appeal’, ‘invitation’, or ‘destiny’, “suggests and underlines the importance of factors bearing inevitability and predetermination”. In the context of the Cold War, Renato Cardoso believes that the use of this term “profoundly distorts the political conditions in which small and poor countries, especially if they are islands, are obliged to move in international politics”, in view of the fact that there is nothing in their nature that intrinsically leads them to opt for peace. On the contrary, he claims that experience “proves that it is easier to find powerful partners interested in using the small ones for their own strategy of power and confrontation” (Cardoso, 1986, p. 15). Cardoso’s position was, in my view, correct to the extent that, in the context of both yesterday’s bipolar confrontation and today’s global situation, “the use that has been made of strategically located islands recommends less the acceptance of the idea of a vocation for peace” than the opposite. With a very lucid and profound vision, Cardoso shows us that the degree of vulnerability of small states, particularly island states, depends more on the prevailing structure of the international system than on their allegedly vocational, natural, or physical characteristics.

Cape Verde and the defence challenges in the Atlantic corridor 175 In 2017, 31 years after the publication of Cardoso’s book, Matthias Maass refocused the discourse on vulnerability, providing an original long-term perspective on small-state survival. His fundamental argument is that “variations and shifts in the state system’s main characteristics create significant changes in the system’s hospitality toward the small state—and the friendlier the systemic environment, the better the chances for small-state survival and proliferation” (Maass, 2017). The essential reasons that led the Cape Verdean state, after independence, to opt for the cultivation of a ‘culture of peace’ or a ‘peace policy’ are as follows: (1) The fact that, in the context of the Cold War, peace had become such a fleeting concept and its principles so illusory, made the Cape Verdean rulers aware that for the country to have real and lasting peace, “tenacity and sacrifices” were needed, which is a real option in that direction (Cardoso, 1986, p. 13). (2) Being part of a marginalised continent in the context of global politics, Cape Verde “proposes a policy of dialogue and peace, first and foremost for its own survival”. In the midst of the Cold War, “the policy of peace became an active element of national defence, independence” and international nonalignment, making it a unique case in Africa. Having become independent at a time when the bipolar confrontation was at its climax, Cape Verde was the only one of the so-called PALOP (Portuguese-Speaking African Countries) that did not position itself in favour of the USSR but adopted a neutral stance instead. This is evidenced by the fact that, after a trip to that country in June 1975, José Luís Fernandes, one of those who had accompanied the Prime Minister, Pedro Pires, stated that they would only help us in exchange for something; we understood that, if we accepted it, we would enter the Cold War. They wanted to turn Cape Verde into a base and we said we would not accept. The visit disappointed us. (Lopes, 2002, p. 475) Even before Cape Verde became independent, the Western bloc also showed interest in the strategic geographical situation of the archipelago when General Spínola, President of the Portuguese Republic, tried to convince his American counterpart, Richard Nixon, at a meeting on June 19, 1974, of the strategic importance of Cape Verde for NATO, expecting, in return, help in his attempt to prevent the independence of that country. Having the most independent foreign policy among the PALOP countries led Cape Verde to diverge many times from them, both within the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations and within the non-aligned movement. Abílio Duarte, former President of the People’s Assembly of Cape Verde, even stated that “we would have taken Cape Verde to collapse if we were to make the same mistakes that Angola and Mozambique did. They had the background to do what they did. We did not” (Pereira, 2002, p. 271). An example of this is the Cape Verdean state’s refusal to join the group of countries that imposed economic sanctions on the Pretoria regime in 1986, insofar as they demanded that Cape Verde should no longer allow aircraft from South Africa to stop over at the international airport on the island of Sal, which, at the time,

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would have cost the country around 47% of the revenue of the state company ASA (Airports and Air Safety) and 41% of the revenue of the state airline, TACV (Cape Verde Airlines), seriously jeopardising the state’s financial balance (Lopes, 2002, p. 478). (3) This policy, apart from being “the only one capable of successfully mobilising, through social consensus, the scarce resources and the newly independent people in a vast programme of economic and social development at home”, also seemed to be the only one capable of promoting good neighbourliness and cooperation abroad. That is evidenced by Cape Verde’s integration of its individual positions with African positions and its promotion of the defence of regional interests, whereby the country has lent a particularly valuable dimension to its foreign policy. In this regard, this option “constituted a condition for progress” (Cardoso, 1986, p. 14). (4) In pursuit of the ambition of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which always maintained that “the struggle for independence also aimed at contributing effectively to the construction of a better world”, Cardoso considered that “this option is a testimony to coherence, because it is the fulfilment of a promise that was part of the very ideology of the liberation struggle and helped to legitimise it before the world” (Cardoso, 1986, p. 14). The fulfilment of this promise became visible via an intense political and diplomatic exchange that has led Cape Verde to emerge from anonymity to become a reliable and stable country, capable of analysing and resolving its own problems, a defender of peace and dialogue between nations, a useful partner and recognised interlocutor for the international community. This active participation in international bodies has led, for example, to the realisation of 91% of the investments projected in the first Cape Verde National Development Plan, demonstrating the confidence of international partners. It can then be stated that “the policy of peace and dialogue constitutes the distinctive character of Cape Verde’s existence as an independent country, a real option” (Cardoso, 1986, p. 14). The relative success of Cape Verde in implementing its ‘peace policy’, despite the difficulties initially encountered in a context of bipolar confrontation, allowed Cape Verde to gain both respect from contending blocs and influence in the African regional context, particularly in conducting the foreign policy of the other PALOP (“países africanos de língua oficial portuguesa”) countries. Despite being a poor country that had only recently become independent, the fact that it has an impressively diversified foreign policy has enabled it to play an important role in the resolution of differences on the African continent, particularly in the peace process in Southern Africa (Cardoso, 1986). Between 1982 and 1987, the archipelago hosted several important meetings between the political leaders of various countries with the aim of achieving peace in that region: negotiations between Angola, Mozambique, and SWAPO (the South West African People’s Organisation—officially known as the Swapo Party of

Cape Verde and the defence challenges in the Atlantic corridor 177 Namibia) with South Africa. In 1983, the President of the Republic of Cape Verde, Aristides Pereira, had been designated coordinator of political and diplomatic action for the five countries of Southern Africa by the Heads of State attending the Fourth PALOP Conference, which was held in Guinea Bissau. In my view, it was during this period that the role of privileged interlocutor in the mid-Atlantic, thanks to a pragmatic and performative foreign policy, in the context of the Cold War reached its highest level. In this context, we can state that Cape Verde is an example of a small island state that had the ability “to counter power with superior commitment, to rely on tightly knit domestic institutions with a shared ‘ideology of social partnership’, and to set agendas as ‘norm entrepreneurs’”, and “defy expectations of realist approaches to the study of power” (Ingebritsen et al., 2006, blurb). For the present author, the most evident sign of the political option for a ‘culture of peace’ was the manner in which the Cape Verdean state opened its regime to a multi-party system in 1990, without any significant conflicts or social problems, contrary to what occurred in other African countries and elsewhere. In my view, this is due to the fact that Cape Verde, in the words of the well-known English historian Basil Davidson (1988, pp. 227–32), became “a country at peace with itself”. The ‘Steadfast Jaguar 2006’ military exercises and the NATO approach: the beginning of the end of the non-alignment era? The process of holding military exercises by NATO in Cape Verde was officially launched in April 2005 with the announcement, by the NATO operational command, that the exercises, initially titled ‘Livex 2006’ and later renamed ‘Steadfast Jaguar 2006’, which were to take place between June 15 and 28, 2006, would be carried out on the islands of the African archipelago in an event that had never before occurred on the African continent. The main objective of the exercises was to test and validate the new NATO unit, a rapid reaction force, named NRF (NATO Response Force), prior to a decision on its full operational capability in October of the same year. The NRF was created as proposed by the United States at the 2002 NATO member-states’ summit, held in Prague. The NRF, which has about 25,000 troops, has as its fundamental missions the fight against terrorism; aid or humanitarian operations to evacuate civilians via peace-support operations and maritime interdiction; special operations in cases of threat in the chemical, biological, and radiological fields; and acting as an interposition force between belligerents and combatting trafficking, especially of arms, drugs, and people. Given that this force is designed for action anywhere on the planet, the choice of Cape Verde for the exercise is justified by the fact that, according to NATO, the archipelago has relative political and military stability and a suitable scenario for verifying the operationality of the new military structure (Agência Lusa, 2006). ‘Steadfast Jaguar 2006’ was a combined air, naval, and land exercise, which had as the main staging-posts of its manoeuvres the islands of São Vicente, Santo Antão, and Fogo. It involved the participation of 7,000 personnel, including around

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400 Cape Verdean military, with infantry, military police, and marines units, as well as its recently created Rapid Reaction Unit. The air force was essentially concentrated on the island of Sal, where the archipelago’s main airport is located; the naval resources remained offshore between the three islands and in the Port of São Vicente; and the land and human resources were essentially concentrated in Santo Antão and São Vicente. On these two islands, military tests took place, with an emphasis on the interweaving of air, naval, and land resources, with the deployment of infantry groups and special operations on the ground. Specifically, in addition to a contingent of 1,200 men, NATO had its logistics base in São Vicente, where all units that supported the exercises were stationed, namely, among other things, transport equipment, medical services, and water purification equipment, that is “everything necessary to support the troops” (A Semana Online, 2005–06). On the island of Fogo, NATO conducted an exercise called ‘Volcano 2006’, from June 24 to 26, in partnership with the Cape Verdean national civil protection service, whose objective was the validation of an emergency plan in case of a volcanic eruption on the island, with the fictional evacuation of the population. However, what is worth highlighting is the process of rapprochement between the Cape Verdean state and NATO, which became visible mainly after the announcement of the exercises, with the necessary officially scheduled contacts between the Cape Verdean Armed Forces (FA) and NATO for the preparation of the military exercises as a starting point. The latter prepared in detail for Cape Verde’s participation in these exercises, as evidenced by the visits or ‘reconnaissance missions’ carried out in Cape Verde and the contacts that high-ranking NATO officials maintained with the Cape Verdean authorities and FA officers, who had also taken part in “all the conferences held in Europe”. That was the case, for example, at the main preparatory conference for operation “Steadfast Jaguar 2006” held in the Netherlands on November 29, and December 1, 2005 (A Semana Online, 2005–06). By all accounts, this approach by NATO was enthusiastically received by the Cape Verdean authorities at the time, and their official positions did not include a position of prudence or critical analytical reflection on the possible impact of the exercises on the configuration of the country’s foreign relations, taking into consideration the aforementioned policy of non-alignment with regard to international defence and security bodies and the fact that Cape Verde belongs to the ECOWAS region, which includes states that are traditionally suspicious of NATO due to the support it provided to its former colonisers (namely France, England, and Portugal) mainly during the Cold War. This enthusiasm was evident, for example, in the way the country’s military leaders emphasised the influence of the announcement of the exercises on the new dynamics within the Cape Verde Armed Forces with the simultaneous approval of the general regime of the Cape Verde Armed Forces, relegating the analysis of the possible geostrategic implications for the Middle and South Atlantic in which Cape Verde is positioned in a secondary place. These issues, and others that have already been addressed here, also seemed to have been of little importance to the Ministry of Defence of the Cape Verdean government, as they attributed more significance to the fact that Cape Verde was

Cape Verde and the defence challenges in the Atlantic corridor 179 the first country in Africa to receive ‘such a distinction’ or ‘privilege’, highlighting this as the greatest benefit that Cape Verde was going to receive from these exercises. They also referred to other supposed benefits such as the prestige and international recognition of the geostrategic position of this state in relation to the various prevailing interests in various regions of the world, especially in terms of defence and national and global security, the stability of the country, its organisation, the consolidation of its democracy, and good governance. Another benefit, it was said, would be that the Armed Forces and the Civil Defence Services, two of the actors that guarantee Cape Verde’s internal security, would be better prepared for any eventuality that might arise in the future, given their participation, albeit at a reduced level, in the military exercises and the fact that some military and civilian equipment remained in the country after the NATO operation ended (A Semana Online, 2005–06). If these really were the main motivations for allowing the ‘Steadfast Jaguar 2006’ exercises to take place in Cape Verde, it is possible, in my view, to state that, effectively, the ‘price’ paid by NATO was very low or even non-existent insofar as this organisation did not add anything that Cape Verde had not already gained at international level, except for the military equipment and know-how—mere ‘alms’—which, as we know, the Cape Verdean state can acquire by other means without having to accept an operation of this type. As far as NATO’s motivations are concerned, it has been shown that officially, and militarily, ‘Steadfast Jaguar 2006’ aimed to test the NRF. However, in political terms, the type of relationship that NATO intends to have with Cape Verde is still formally unknown and a source of vigorous intellectual discussion. NATO itself recognised at the time that this is an issue of paramount importance and that the organisation would soon have to study and discuss a new form of relationship with Cape Verde after the NRF exercises (Agência Lusa, 2006; A Semana Online, 2005–06). Steps towards political rapprochement were taken, including during the exercise period. The presence of the then-Secretary-General of the Alliance Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, on June 22, 2006, the day that was dedicated to military and political leaders watching the display of troops and equipment on the ground in São Vicente, testifies to that. De Hoop Scheffer met that same day with the Prime Minister of Cape Verde to analyse the cooperation between Cape Verde and NATO and to envisage future partnerships of this country with the various countries that made up that international organisation (Agência Lusa, 2006). In view of these developments, the idea emerging in the Cape Verdean media and in the general public was that the choice and acceptance of Cape Verde for military exercises should have resulted in a close partnership between this country and NATO, which might come to play an important role in the control and surveillance of Cape Verde’s maritime space (Voz di Povo Online, 2006). However, from the author’s point of view, NATO has other objectives that have not yet been achieved or are still not being openly voiced, playing on Cape Verde’s potentials and vulnerabilities. Historically, over the centuries, this country has been a strategic archipelago. That was, for example, the case during the so-called age

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of navigation, since the arrival of the navigators such as Vasco da Gama in India or Pedro Álvares Cabral in Brazil would not have been possible if the Cape Verde islands had not been a convenient halfway house on the way there. These islands were of strategic importance for the triangular trade on one of the main slavery routes in the Atlantic, from the sixteenth century onwards; they were equally crucial to the whaling cycle and the arrival of the North Americans on the Pacific coast and, no less importantly, during the steamship cycle, when English industrialism needed to feed the South American and Southern African markets. Last century too, Cape Verde’s role in the expansion of aeronautics was evident, as an axis of the north–south rotation, and the Cape Verde Corridor in the 1970s was the advanced base for the (Portuguese) Colonial War and, after independence, for the (re)configuration of conflicts in southern Africa. The Cubans, South Africans, Angolans, North Americans, and Russians can bear witness to this (Voz di Povo Online, 2006; Barros-Varela, 2006). In the middle of the first decade of the second millennium, in view of the relative development of the country, which earned it the status of a middle-income country (MIC) accorded by the United Nations in 2008, dozens of international private investors began to seek out the islands, mainly in the tourism sector, and operators, especially real estate operators, were also looking at the islands (after the earlier prominence of the Portuguese and Italians, English and Irish businessmen appeared) with greater economic and environmental sustainability. Countries such as Brazil, Spain, Angola, and South Africa also began to look with interest and prospective initiatives at the Cape Verdean ‘Corridor’, although the emphasis still lay on the large investment of the United States in the country through the Millennium Challenge Account packages, and of several European countries through budgetsupport packages, and the World Bank itself has come to consider Cape Verde “the best managed country in Africa” (Paralelo 14—Jornal Digital, 2006, n.p.). Despite the relative merits of the Cape Verdeans, who have historically kept the country indisputably ‘in fashion’ from a geostrategic point of view and not only because of world trade cycles as is usually thought, this country continues to suffer from some serious vulnerabilities. Today, the Cape Verde Corridor in the mid-Atlantic has also been used for the international trafficking of drugs, arms, and human beings, and, on the other hand, for initiatives to prevent and combat these problems that affect regional and world security and stability.2 Almost daily, in Cape Verdean lands and waters, traffickers and smugglers of such illicit products are detected, in the busy north–south and south–north flow, which shows that organised crime routes have grown exponentially in ‘Macaronesia’ (commonly known as the Azores, Cape Verde, Canaries, and Madeira), considering it a privileged revolving platform of the America–Africa–Europe triangle. As is obvious, it is not possible for Cape Verde to combat organised crime, whether drug trafficking or human trafficking, in the ‘Corridor’ single-handedly, coupled with the fact that due to lack of resources, it does not have sufficient capacity to ensure an effective surveillance of maritime, land, or air borders or the defence and security of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) which at 734 square kilometres is the largest of the entire West African sub-region.

Cape Verde and the defence challenges in the Atlantic corridor 181 It is in this context that the Cape Verde state is approaching NATO, as recognised by the then Cape Verde Minister of Foreign Affairs, Victor Borges, when considering that “[t]he threats in the Atlantic are difficult to control” and considering that this approach is a political objective of the government in matters of security (Paralelo 14–Jornal Digital, 2006, n.p.). Other authors have a similar position considering that “a rapprochement to NATO or even a full integration in this organisation presents itself as one of the most consistent answers to this myriad of issues” of security and defence that Cape Verde faces (Paralelo 14–Jornal Digital, 2006, n.p.). With these arguments as a basis, NATO also justifies its approach to this small island state in West Africa, which, besides challenging the established Afropessimism, could become for the West a strategic pole of power projection, in particular of its leading power, the United States, and the European Union, in the Middle Atlantic and African continent.3 Given the new world economic atlas and the surge of interest in Africa in the early 2000s, due to the widespread crisis in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, military and security concerns began to develop in new directions. NATO intended to take advantage of this fact to continue its organisational reformulation, strengthening its recent trend of reinforcement, by approaching a country like Cape Verde, which could effectively allow the opening of a door to the African continent, as already mentioned, by nature hostile to that organisation for well-known historical reasons, namely for being home to some of the former colonial powers in Africa and, as a result, due to its direct or indirect participation in some civil wars that occurred in that continent during the Cold War. Although these reasons weighed heavily in NATO’s choice to hold the ‘Steadfast Jaguar 2006’ exercises in Cape Verde, effectively marking its intention to intervene globally in the world, and aiming to attest the operationality of its NRF in this sense, NATO’s most important purpose, from my point of view and not yet recognised by it, was to position itself strategically close to Mauritania’s oil platforms, to the Islamised countries of the African sub-region, and to the markets of essential raw materials such as diamonds, bauxite, uranium, and oil and also to position itself as the great ‘peacemaker’ of the region. In this context, the archipelago country ‘geostrategises’ itself beyond the areas of defence and international security but also from the perspective of economy and foreign investment. The Cape Verdean government itself recognised at the time the existence of the so-called oil dossier and the awakening of the appetite of some international actors for its territorial sea and EEZ (Paralelo 14—Jornal Digital, 2006, n.p.). Current developments and final comments In recent UN rankings, particularly in the World Economic Situation and Prospects 2022 (WESP, 2022, p. 158), Cape Verde is placed in Table H, in the group of 38 countries that are called Small Island Developing States (SIDS). According to the organisation, the criteria for designation as a small island state are that they have a population of less than 1.5 million inhabitants, autonomy or political sovereignty, and a territorial area of less than 5,000 square kilometres.

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Normally, these states also suffer some constraints such as isolation, exposure to extreme weather events, scarcity of natural resources, excessive dependence on international trade, lack of economy of scale, and high costs of transport and administrative infrastructure. Among these states, some are considered by the World Bank Group (WBG) as facing, along with others, “high levels of institutional and social fragility”: Comoros, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia Federated States, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, and Tuvalu.4 Despite not being part of this group, Cape Verde’s classification has varied over the years, being catalogued in various ways (as Least Developed Country, Middle Income Country, Developing Country, Fragile Country, etc.) by various international organisations that have as a common feature the fact that they are dominated by Western states that have been leading the world system since the beginning of European colonialism in the fifteenth century (Bernal, 1987, 1991, 2006). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in the aforementioned cataloguing of African states have triggered criticism from several quarters as well as various proposals for new approaches in the analysis of African statehood (Barros-Varela, 2006, 2018). As mentioned before, taking into consideration the influence that the configuration or structure of the international system has on the performance of small states, they have to try to compensate for their weaknesses to survive and thrive. They are “unable to overcome their structural weaknesses, such as having fewer inhabitants, smaller domestic markets (and GDP), smaller territory and limited military capacity as compared to larger states” (Thorhallsson, 2019, p. 379). In the field of defence and security, the Cape Verdean state since the early 2000s has left behind the posture of non-alignment and privileged interlocutor of the Atlantic that made it notable during the 1980s of the twentieth century to position itself increasingly as an ally of the winner of the Cold War, the United States. In addition to the 2006 NATO exercises under analysis here, another event that reinforces this positioning was the ratification on September 19, 2018, of the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) between the two states that had been signed on September 25, 2017, and that prompted an intense political–constitutional discussion and dispute in the country (Barros-Varela, 2022). At the end of these brief reflections, which are obviously not exhaustive, it is worth stating that, at its core, what I am defending is that the so-called pragmatism of the Cape Verdean state, more specifically its Cape Verdean foreign policy—which is one of the most diversified in the world—needs, in the current international and world scenario, not only to ally itself, depending on the desired modality—partnership, cooperation, or integration—with international players such as NATO, and others, to ensure the defence and security mainly of its EEZ. It must also ensure, at the time of the possible formalisation of the alliance, its respect for the UN Charter on the issue of international peace and security, via an explicit refusal to participate in any kind of initiative or action that contradicts it and that also goes against the spirit of regional integration in which Cape Verde is inserted into West Africa through ECOWAS and the African Union itself, which includes countries that, as already mentioned, are traditionally ‘distrustful’ of NATO.5

Cape Verde and the defence challenges in the Atlantic corridor 183 This posture of care and prudence is fundamental in that this African sub-region is not only one of the main import markets for the country’s so-called informal commerce but also, in the medium and long terms, can meet the conditions to become an increasingly larger export market for the Cape Verdean economy, especially in the services sector, at the level, for example, of maritime and air transport, higher education, health, and tourism. Indeed, the very interest of major international players, such as India, China, Brazil, and the European Union itself, in investing in the area, confirms this. Moreover, and more fundamentally, by adopting the aforementioned stance, Cape Verde avoids the possibility of appearing, paradoxically, as an accomplice or even an intervener or invader in its own regional community and to be seen as a “traitor” by its neighbouring and African peers, in an eventual scenario of interference or military intervention by NATO in any ECOWAS or African Union state, without the consent of the UN Security Council. A contrary position, of alignment with unilateral initiatives outside the UN and ECOWAS framework, could lead to problems of unpredictable consequences, and could force Cape Verde to make a hard and terrible choice of “sides” in the face of this implosion scenario, perhaps unlikely but not impossible. Notes Note: All passages quoted from the original Portuguese have been translated by the author of this chapter. * Part of the original version of this chapter was published in the magazine Direito e Cidadania, Year VII, no. 25/26, 2007, under the title “The Crossroads of Defense and Security in the Middle Atlantic: Cape Verde between NATO’s ‘Sword’ and Africa’s ‘Wall’?” 1 On this theme, see also Barros-Varela (2006, pp. 71–88). 2 For an insight into contemporary developments in Cape Verde’s foreign relations, see Barros-Varela et al. (2014). 3 In the case of the European Union, the idea that its security depends on the security of its ‘peripheral’ regions, such as the Canary Islands, the Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde, is becoming more and more accepted. On the basis of this logic, the European Union ends up having the same interest as these peripheral regions in the creation of a ring of protection against transnational crime and all kinds of trafficking. 4 The classification of Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations (FCS) is released annually by the WBG. The list is available at: www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/brief/harmonized-list-of-fragile-situations. (Accessed September 14, 2006). 5 In this context, two examples of multilateral initiatives that show this diversification of foreign relations and respect for the UN Charter by Cape Verde, and which seem to have gone unnoticed or whose importance was ignored, should be strengthened and publicised and serve as an example for other future initiatives. These examples relate to the involvement of Cape Verde’s FA in the preparation of two military exercises in addition to those of NATO: the first, which was scheduled for September 2006 in Dakar (Senegal), was the kick-off conference for ‘Recamp 2006’. ‘Recamp’ is an initiative of the French government and aims at “strengthening African peacekeeping capabilities”. Also in September, more precisely on the 12th and 13th of that month, the Final Conference that was going to prepare the exercises of the CPLP Armed Forces Command Posts called ‘Felino 2006’ was scheduled in the city of Praia (Cape Verde). The venue for this

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conference was the National Library in Praia. The ‘Felino of the CPLP’ exercises aim at preparing a “possible joint action of the Armed Forces of the CPLP countries in peacekeeping missions, always under the aegis of the United Nations”. These exercises took place between October 6 and 16, 2006, in the state of Pernambuco in Brazil, and Cape Verde participated with a delegation of 20 soldiers (A Semana Online, 2005–06, n.p.).

References Agência Lusa (2006). www.lusa.pt/ (accessed June 22, 2006). Barros-Varela, O. (2006). Cabo Verde: Um Desafio Teórico-Paradigmático ou um Caso Singular? Revista de Estudos Caboverdeanos 2, 71–88 (University of Cape Verde). Barros-Varela, O. (2018). Crítica da Razão Estatal: O Estado Moderno em África nas Relações Internacionais e Ciência Política. O Caso de Cabo Verde. Pedro Cardoso (Praia). Barros-Varela, O. (2022). Os Reflexos das Ambivalências Político-Identitárias na Política Externa Cabo-verdiana. Entre a Retórica de Djan Branku Dja e o Pragmatismo de Undi Da Ki Panha. Tecendo Redes Antirracistas 3 (in press). Barros-Varela, O.; Costa, S. & Delgado, J. (Eds.) (2014). As Relações Externas de Cabo Verde. (Re)leituras Contemporâneas. Edições ISCJS (Praia). Bernal, M. (1987). Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785–1985. Rutgers University Press. Bernal, M. (1991). Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume II: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence. Rutgers University Press. Bernal, M. (2006). Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume III: The Linguistic Evidence. Rutgers University Press. Caldeira, C. (2006). Cabo Verde, a NATO e CEDEAO no atlântico. Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais e Segurança (IPRIS, Lisboa). Cardoso, R. (1986). Cabo Verde: Opção Para Uma Política de Paz. In ICL (Ed.), Colecção Estudos e Ensaios (pp. 11–78). Instituto Caboverdeano do Livro (ICL, Praia). Davidson, B. (1988). As Ilhas Afortunadas. Instituto Caboverdeano do Livro (ICL, Praia). Ingebritsen, C.; Neumann, I. B.; Gstöhl, S. & Beyer, J. L. (2006). Small States in International Relations. University of Washington Press and University of Iceland Press. Lopes, J. V. (2002). Os Bastidores da Independência. Spleen Edições (Praia). Maass, M. (2017). Small States in World Politics. The Story of Small State Survival, 1648– 2016. Manchester University Press. Paralelo 14—Jornal Digital (2006, April 18). Cabo Verde—Um ‘Player’ Importante no Atlântico Médio. Paralelo 14—Jornal Digital. www.paralelo14.com/p14 (accessed September 14, 2006). Pereira, A. (2002). Guiné-Bissau e Cabo Verde: Uma Luta, Um Partido, Dois Países. Editorial Notícias (Lisboa). A Semana Online (2005–06). www.asemana.publ.cv/ (accessed August 24, 2005; September 2, 2005; October 7, 2005; March 28, 2006). Thorhallsson, B. (2019). Small states and the changing global order: what small state theory can offer New Zealand foreign policymaking. In A. Brady (Ed.), Small States and the Changing Global Order. New Zealand Faces the Future (pp. 379–95). Springer. Voz Di Povo-Online (2006). http://vozdipovo-online.com (accessed June 29, 2006). WESP (2022). World Economic Situation and Prospects 2022. United Nations (New York).

11 “Let’s forget that Slovakia is small” GLOBSEC, status-seeking, and agency in informal elite networks* Alexander Graef

At the fourteenth edition of the Bratislava Global Security Forum (GLOBSEC) in 2019, the conference welcomed more than 750 guests from 64 countries at the 5-star Grand Hotel River Park that overlooks the Danube. Besides dozens of panel discussions with 143 speakers in total (GLOBSEC, 2019a), including acting ministers, prime ministers, and presidents, the event also facilitated numerous informal encounters between international participants on the sidelines, representing think tanks, ministries, media outlets, and academic institutions. As then Slovak President Andrej Kiska proudly declared in his opening remarks of the conference, the world had come together in Bratislava, “to discuss the most pressing issues we all face” (GLOBSEC, 2019b). This chapter explores the institutional evolution of the forum in the context of small-state status-seeking. I argue that GLOBSEC and other, similar, policy conferences in Central and Eastern Europe represent nodal points of informal networks of transnational elites. They play a decisive role in practices of socialisation and the management of status hierarchies within the Euro-Atlantic security community. As such, they allow small states in the region with limited material resources to participate in the evolution and formulation of Western policies by building and promoting “interpersonal and inter-organizational relationships” (Cooley & Nexon, 2016, p. 78). GLOBSEC represents a deliberate attempt to raise Slovakia’s status within the Atlantic security community after the state had joined both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In what follows, I first briefly look at the political socialisation of Slovakia within the Euro-Atlantic security community as a continuous status-seeking process. I argue that in this process, gaining access to (Western) strategic policy debates and moving to the centre of informal elite networks have been of crucial importance. In the second section, I suggest that policy conferences have historically played an important role in the management of status hierarchies by forging informal personal ties between national elites. In this context, GLOBSEC initially emerged as a student-led initiative with the aim to “put Bratislava and Central Europe on the map of transatlantic thinking and to move the region from the periphery to the centre of international debate” (GLOBSEC, 2015, p. 4). In the third and final section, I discuss GLOBSEC and its function for Slovak status-seeking in more detail. Based on interviews with several GLOBSEC employees, my analysis points to three interrelated aspects that help to illuminate the meaning DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-15 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

186 Alexander Graef and consequences of smallness. The process of status-seeking is linked to the establishment of social networks with transnational elites, whose presence confers symbolic values on the venue. In consequence, GLOBSEC has come to provide distinct functions for Slovak foreign policymaking by serving as an informal platform to promote the official policy agenda. At times, it has even allowed the Slovak state to ‘punch above its weight’ in international politics by contributing to global crisis diplomacy. Nevertheless, the evolution of GLOBSEC also illustrates how gaps in social status between states within the Euro-Atlantic security community endure over time. After socialisation—status-seeking in Slovakia and beyond With the end of the Cold War, most states in Central and Eastern Europe set out to leave their socialist past behind. The widespread talk of ‘returning to’ or ‘reintegrating with’ Europe expressed the political desire to be recognised as part of the Euro-Atlantic security community. In this context, political elites in Central and Eastern Europe were willing to accept pre-existing Western norms and rules and adapt their practices and civilian–military relations to “reap the benefits of international legitimacy” (Schimmelfennig, 2000, p. 110). In the case of Slovakia, however, the challenge of state-building significantly complicated socio-economic reform and democratisation processes.1 In contrast to its nominal peers within the so-called Visegrád Group,2 including Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, the country in the 1990s faced creeping authoritarianism under Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar. In consequence, Slovakia missed the first enlargement round of NATO. Likewise, the EU did not extend its 1997 enlargement offer to Slovakia. These developments, among others, led to the mobilisation of pro-democratic Slovak NGOs, which in early 1998 set up the ‘Civic Campaign’ (OK’98) to ensure free and fair parliamentary elections with the support of international donors (Bútora, 2007). The electoral defeat of Mečiar in October of the same year eventually enabled the country to catch up on domestic reforms in the areas of rule of law, human rights, and the protection of minorities. The change in government also marked an important watershed moment for Slovak civic activism. In April 1999, NATO offered its membership action plan to Slovakia. The European Union’s Helsinki Summit in December 1999 opened accession negotiations. In spring 2004, Slovakia finally joined both organisations. The successful transition and membership in Western institutions resulted in the country’s improved social position on a global scale. Slovak Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan openly acknowledged these status effects at the time by arguing that even today we are not perceived abroad only as Slovakia but as Slovakia—a country accessing the European Union and NATO. Slovakia by its entry into these groupings gains a share of the enormous reputation these two groupings enjoy in today’s world. (Kukan, 2004, p. 21, my emphasis)

“Let’s forget that Slovakia is small” 187 Indeed, the finalisation of the accession process to Western institutions in spring 2004 opened a new chapter in Slovak political history. In particular, it had effects on the state’s foreign policy goals and its strategies for attaining them. Prior to joining the European Union and NATO, most states in Central and Eastern Europe stood ready to adopt and internalise the prevalent norms of the hegemonic, Euro-Atlantic security community to which they wanted to gain access. By contrast, once they became members, they set out to receive recognition and raise their status through in-group differentiation (Bátora, 2013, p. 389). In this context, some scholars have focused on analysing the provision of development aid as a form of status-seeking by Central and Eastern European states. Specialising in aid to particular regions has enabled these states to differentiate themselves from other Western donors (Profant, 2018, p. 380) and to speak on behalf of countries with similar (post-communist) backgrounds seeking EU and NATO membership. In doing so, they have also tried to increase their own relevance. By contributing to the creation of yet another peripheral status group outside of the Euro-Atlantic security community, they buttress their own (new) identity as part of the in-group. Estonia, for example, has directed most of its aid to Georgia and Moldova (Crandall & Varov, 2016) while Lithuania has set out to position itself as a “centre of regional gravity” (Park & Jakstaite-Confortola, 2021, p. 1285) through continuous engagement with Ukraine and Georgia within the context of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP). Slovakia, in turn, has provided much development assistance to the Western Balkans, particularly Serbia (Najšlová, 2011). Although these studies highlight the changing practices of ‘reclaiming subjectivity’ after membership in Western institutions, they tend to prioritise the interstate level and focus on outcomes rather than processes. By contrast, informal relations between national elites and their respective social networks have been largely omitted from the analysis of status-seeking behaviour. This comes as a surprise, since after the end of the Cold War societal elites and policy-makers from Central and Eastern European states faced the challenge to “carve out a place on the mental map of European and American policy-makers” (Van Ham, 1999, p. 224, cited in Kuus, 2004, p. 194). To this end, they sought to establish and use informal transnational networks to emulate Western norms and to shape dominant Western security discourses. Adopting a notion originally developed by Ó Tuathail and Agnew in the context of critical geopolitics (Tuathail & Agnew, 1992, p. 193), Kuus describes the individuals involved in such networks as “intellectuals of statecraft” (Kuus, 2004, pp. 192 ff.) that act “at the interface of the inside and the outside of the state” (ibid., p. 192). In her words, the members of this loose group are deeply involved in academic research, policymaking, and policy monitoring; they are not separate from but a part of the state apparatus. They are also highly mobile: they circulate in high government positions . . ., and thereby possess extensive experience working with international organizations and foreign governments. (ibid., p. 201)

188 Alexander Graef With respect to Estonia, Kuus alludes to the existence of “close informal networks” (Kuus, 2004, p. 202) built, for example, by former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who has acted as a ‘transactor’ of knowledge about Estonia in transatlantic elite circles on the basis of his upbringing in the United States (p. 195). During the accession process to the Euro-Atlantic security community, these informal transnational networks buttressed attempts of Central and Eastern European states to gain specific knowledge about liberal security practices (Ejdus, 2018).3 After they had formally joined this community as members of the European Union and NATO, however, the same transnational networks also became useful in generating agency within the hierarchy of states despite asymmetric power relations. Managing status hierarchies: informal networks and policy conferences Informal networks have historically played an outsized role in both the process of European integration (Heard-Laureote, 2005; Kaiser, 2007, 2009; Middlemas, 1995) and the evolution of the Euro-Atlantic security community since 1945 (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2014; Gijswijt, 2007, 2018). They have provided the foundation for the establishment of formal institutions (Grossmann, 2014) and, after their establishment, contributed to the creation of lasting “social trust in the form of normative-emotional bonds” (Kaiser, 2009, p. 21) between transnational elites. Among the most prominent networks of this kind has been the Bilderberg Group, which emerged in 1952 on a European initiative with the aim to “prevent anti-Americanism in Western Europe, and an isolationist reaction in the United States” (Aubourg, 2003, p. 92). During the Cold War the network provided the United States “with an effective instrument to legitimize its leadership position”, but it also allowed “European members . . . to better understand and influence the US policy making process” (Gijswijt, 2007, pp. 60–1). For West Germany, in particular, the Bilderberg meetings facilitated the policy of Westbindung (‘Allegiance to the West’) and contributed to the “acceptance of the Atlantic alliance by the German Social Democrats in the late 1950s” (ibid., p. 52). At the same time, however, German elites purposefully used Bilderberg to change their status and secure political influence by “initiating and facilitating state-private networks” with the United States on a bilateral basis (Zetsche, 2021, p. 4). The resulting “web of interactions created by participation in the hegemonic system” (Ikenberry & Kupchan, 1990, p. 291) would ensure opportunities to raise the status of Germany within the hierarchy of the Euro-Atlantic security community after the ‘rupture of civilisation’ by the Nazi dictatorship. From Munich to Bratislava The Munich Security Conference (MSC) is a case in point. It offers an interesting historical parallel to the rise of policy conferences in Central and Eastern Europe, most of which have been directly inspired by the event in Bavaria. Established in 1963 under the name ‘Wehrkundetagung’ (‘Meeting on Military Science’),

“Let’s forget that Slovakia is small” 189 the original focus of the conference had been on forging interpersonal links between (West) German and US decision-makers. It aimed at integrating German elites more firmly into the Euro-Atlantic security community. More specifically, the founder, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, wanted “to make the country’s political leaders, pundits, and opinion makers aware of the ‘ideas, knowledge, and theories behind the American projects (policies) and decisions’ before they became NATO policy” (Hughes & Sandwith, 2014, p. 53). As a result, in the first decades, the conference constituted, as former conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger puts it, “first of all a venue where German participants met their counterparts from their most important ally, the United States, but also from other NATO member states” (Ischinger, 2014, p. 32). The idea, pursued by von Kleist, was to enable “greater German participation in the evolution and formulation of policy” (Hughes & Sandwith, 2014, p. 55) on transatlantic security issues. Ischinger contends that the annual meetings have created “lasting ties across the Atlantic” and “in many cases personal friendships” (Ischinger, 2014, p. 30). Similarly, former US Senator John McCain noted that “one of the enduring values of the Munich Security Conference is the solidarity it creates and recreates each year through dynamic debate” (McCain, 2014, p. 47). By the 1980s, the German strategic community had succeeded in becoming a “critical part of NATO’s deliberations over nuclear policy” and “deterrence strategy”, as NATO’s 1979 double track decision on deploying and (possibly) limiting intermediate-range ballistic missiles and its aftermath exemplifies (Hughes & Sandwith, 2014, p. 61). Today, organisers and participants alike perceive the event as a “transatlantic family meeting” (Bunde, 2014, p. 3) and the “Oscars for security policy wonks” (Daalder, 2012) that has come to contribute to Western agendasetting and even represents the West on German soil. A similar trajectory can be observed in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War. As former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has argued, “East Europeans are doing little more than replicating the transatlanticism of Western Europe in an earlier era” (Ilves, 2005, p. 193). It is in this context that policy conferences have become a ubiquitous phenomenon in the region over the past two decades. They now constitute “must have symbols of prestige and relevance” (Ejdus, 2018, p. 117). Between 2004 and 2021, most states in Central and (South-) Eastern Europe set up (trans-)national policy conferences with a focus on integrating with(in) the Euro-Atlantic security community, some of which have been emulating GLOBSEC.4 Most of them share similar institutional backgrounds and aims. First, these conferences are the result of joint efforts by civil society actors and policy entrepreneurs in national ministries with financial and ideational support, from both Western European and US-based donors or (inter-)national businesses, including arms manufacturers in search of new markets. Second, they enable political elites in these states to manage and shape existing status hierarchies by gaining access to informal elite networks within the Euro-Atlantic security community. The history of GLOBSEC illustrates this process.

190 Alexander Graef “Slovakia can play an influential role in international relations” In 1999, a group of students at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica (among others, Ladislav Babčan, Bruno Hromý, Tomáš Kozák, Patrik Križanský, and the first president of the Centre, Mário Nicolini) founded the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Euro-Atlantic Centre to raise “public awareness of international affairs and security issues by fostering qualified debate and research related to Slovakia’s role within the Euro-Atlantic environment” (Bútora & Gyárfášova, 2008, p. 25). With the initial support of several Western embassies and in cooperation with the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations the Centre began to organise seminars, lectures, round tables, and conferences by bringing together political practitioners and scholars. After graduating from university between 2001 and 2003, most of the founding members started to pursue careers in Slovak foreign policy and international politics. Babčan and Kozák joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs while Hromý became an advisor to the government on economic issues. The President of the Centre, Nicolini, would go on to become an advisor to the Slovak state secretary at the Ministry of Defence. His direct successor as President, Róbert Vass, had different plans for his personal future, however. Shortly before the end of his final year at university, in mid-2005, Vass, together with his colleagues at the Centre—among others, Ján Cingel, Ján Gallo, and Milan Šuplata5—approached State Secretary Ivan Korčok (who would later become Ambassador to the United States and has been Slovak Foreign Minister from April 2020 to September 2022) with the idea of organising “an international conference that would focus on security issues from the perspective of Slovak foreign policy” (Butler, 2019; cf. Demeš, 2015, p. 10) Initially, the Ministry was rather sceptical, particularly in relation to the scope of the project. After all, Slovakia was, as one GLOBSEC employee remarks when remembering this time, “the smallest country here in the region. . . . Why would anybody . . . come to Bratislava, if you have bigger and more influential states, with nicer capitals all around?” The seasoned Slovak diplomats were unconvinced, as they perceived the whole idea as being a “naïve, idealistic thing” (anon[ymous], p[ersonal] c[ommunication], May 28, 2022). Nevertheless, the Ministry eventually agreed to provide modest support. It offered a small budget and the conference hall in the Ministry as a venue. To the surprise of many in the Ministry, the first GLOBSEC conference, which took place across two days in October 2005 under the auspices of Slovak Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan, became a major success. Around 100 guests followed the invitation, most of them from Slovakia and the wider region, to participate in four round tables (GLOBSEC, 2005). Vass and his team, however, also succeeded in bringing a small group of highlevel state representatives and international bureaucrats to Bratislava. These included, among others, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Martin Erdmann and the Director of Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit at the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU, German diplomat Christoph Heusgen (who since February 2022 has headed the Munich Security Conference). The event also gained support from the Slovak Atlantic Commission (thereafter,

“Let’s forget that Slovakia is small” 191 Commission), which, together with the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Vienna, joined the Atlantic Centre as a co-organiser (Gallo, 2005). The Commission itself had already been set up in 1993 by young Slovak diplomats supportive of the integration of Slovakia into NATO and the European Union, because they “felt a need to supplement efficient diplomacy with [a] kind of civic pressure and [a] civic element” (SAC Slovakia, 2013). Its establishment also responded to the perceived lack of political experience among members of the Slovak political elites at the time, many of whom had been students or civil activists before 1989 (Szayna & Steinberg, 1992, p. 1). Given the excessive level of (military) secrecy in the socialist era, the level of civilian knowledge about foreign policy and, more particularly, defence policy issues was particularly limited (Joó, 1996). As one of the founders of the Commission, Rastislav Káčer, who served as Slovakia’s Foreign Minister from September 2022 to May 2023, puts it, “we were in diapers as a country and even all of us, we were, in professional life, in diapers. We were starting in diplomacy”. In his words, “there was a group of enthusiasts, who felt very, very strongly that we should do everything to bring Slovakia back into the Atlantic family of nations” (SAC Slovakia, 2013). Over the 1990s, however, the Commission increasingly ceased its activities. Many of its members remained dispersed across the globe without being able to engage in the development of the organisation. Káčer, for example, had spent almost five years from 1994 to 1998 as a liaison diplomat at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels6 while colleagues with similar pro-Atlanticist views, like Igor Slobodník and Miroslav Lajčák (who has been Slovak foreign minister from 2012 to 2020) were serving as ambassadors across Europe and Asia. Upon learning of the poor state of the Commission, Vass approached the Foreign Ministry for support. He was subsequently entrusted with arranging elections, amending the statute, and obtaining a grant for paying the membership fee to the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA), from which the Commission had come close to being expelled (Butler, 2019). While Vass initially saw his role as ‘short term’, in late 2005, Martin Bútora, a leading civilian activist in the Velvet Revolution, who had just returned from his tenure as Slovak Ambassador to the United States (1999–2003), encouraged him to join the Commission himself and to become its president as a representative of the young generation. This new personal union between the Commission and GLOBSEC created a win-win situation. On the one hand, the student-led GLOBSEC was able to benefit from the institutionalised elite networks available through the Commission in and beyond Bratislava. On the other hand, the Commission would thrive and build upon the engagement and enthusiasm of a new, younger generation interested in both international affairs and Slovakia ‘having a voice’ as well as ‘being an active part of decision-making’ (Vass, 2014). GLOBSEC rising: from student to spokesman Despite the strategic alliance between GLOBSEC and the Commission, the process of gaining recognition turned out to be ‘an uphill battle’, because GLOBSEC,

192 Alexander Graef as Vass puts it, emerged after all “from a small country, a small city, which normally has not been on the radar” (Butler, 2019). Consequently, the organisers from the start focused on attracting an international audience with the goal of promoting Slovak interests, and eventually, the positions of the entire Visegrád Group in transatlantic decision-making centres located in the United States and Western Europe. After the first successful iteration of the conference in 2005, the Slovak Foreign Ministry started to cooperate more directly with the organisers by providing, among other things, symbolic capital in the form of commonly issued invitations, which was not just about sending letters but involved direct encounters and word-of-mouth recommendations. As one GLOBSEC employee emphasises, “the foreign minister, when he went to Brussels or abroad always actively mentioned the conference, and invited the partners” (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022). Another GLOBSEC employee notes the value of this practice for the conference: [W]hen the invitation is signed by the head of GLOBSEC and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia it is a very different story compared to when it is just handed over by the strategic director of the forum and sent to the cabinet of a minister. (anon., p.c., May 3, 2022) This way GLOBSEC profited from the symbolic power of the state. On the other hand, GLOBSEC early on also provided the foreign ministry with considerable public diplomacy leverage, for which Slovakia as a small state would otherwise not have had the capacity or resources. In this context, the close contacts Káčer and Bútora but also Pavol Demeš (who in the early 1990s had been Minister of International Affairs and later headed the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Slovakia) continue to enjoy with the Foreign Ministry have functioned as a transmission belt to ensure bureaucratic engagement. These linkages were strengthened further when Káčer took over the presidency of the Commission from Vass in July 2008 after his return from the United States (where he had served as Slovak Ambassador since 2003). GLOBSEC’s international visibility, however, especially in the early years, was largely due to US-based contacts. Some of these contacts were the result of long-term interpersonal networks that had been established between American and Slovak civil societies since the late 1980s (cf. Bútora & Gyárfášova, 2008; Demeš, 2012). Others sprang from the circle of personal American friends of the (former) Slovak ambassadors, which “helped to kick start the whole conference and the organization” (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022). At the beginning, the group of Americans included, among others, Damon Wilson, Kurt Volker, and Ian Brzezinski, the son of strategist and former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, all of whom had served in various positions in the George W. Bush administration. Over time, these and other high-ranking (former) officials would form GLOBSEC’s international advisory council, at first as an informal body. Today, the group

“Let’s forget that Slovakia is small” 193 plays an important role in the organisation’s strategic planning. This interpersonal network, which grew gradually, was “absolutely key” to the success of the conference, as Vass argues (Butler, 2019). It helped to attract other, potentially highranking guests who would trust the opinion of former colleagues and friends. In the words of another GLOBSEC employee, when Damon Wilson [former Director for Central, Eastern and Northern European Affairs at the US National Security Council, among other positions] was telling someone else, “GLOBSEC is a great event I come to every year, come with me”—it helped, it helped a lot. (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022) A decisive moment for establishing this linkage between GLOBSEC and the Euro-Atlantic policy-making community came to fruition in October 2009, when NATO’s defence ministers met informally in Bratislava (NATO, 2009b). In parallel to the NATO meeting, the Commission, together with the Slovak Foreign and Defence Ministries, organised a side conference focusing on security and defence issues, titled “New Challenges—New Capabilities” (NATO, 2009a) that attracted international security experts. Both events eventually turned GLOBSEC, which took place just a month later, into a truly international event. After the meetings had been successful and proven to be of high quality, “it was much easier to get [the ministers] back to the Bratislava forum, even when there was no ministerial meeting” (anon., p.c., May 3, 2022). Indeed, in the following three years from 2009 to 2011, GLOBSEC grew substantially as an organisation. During this time, the number of speakers and participating media outlets reporting about the event increased threefold (Demeš, 2015, p. 12). Meanwhile, the entire conference first moved from the Foreign Ministry to the National Council of the Slovak Republic and, finally, to the 5-star Kempinski Hotel River Park Bratislava (now the Grand Hotel River Park), where it has taken place every year since 2011. Simultaneously, GLOBSEC began to expand beyond the annual forum. In 2009, the organisers for the first time set up the Château Béla (Central European Strategic) Forum as an off-the-record meeting and foresight exercise to discuss pressing topics and the future programmatic work of GLOBSEC within an exclusive group of now up to 60 high-level individuals, including acting foreign and defence ministers. Furthermore, in the wake of the global financial crisis, GLOBSEC established the Tatra Summit in 2011, which serves as a venue to discuss economic and financial issues as well as technological innovation in Central and Eastern Europe. In parallel with the multiplication of activities, GLOBSEC has also widened the thematic scope of the conference itself. In the first years of GLOBSEC, “NATO and hard security were its bread and butter, while broad European security and the EU itself were on the periphery” (anon., p.c., February 11, 2022). By contrast, since 2011 work streams have multiplied and now, besides defence and security, also include technological and economic issues and the future of Europe and

194 Alexander Graef sustainability. This thematic change also speaks to the willingness on the part of the organisers to put Slovak perspectives on the transatlantic agenda rather than being on the receiving end of debates. Punching above its weight—GLOBSEC and Slovak foreign policy While establishing national and international contacts has provided GLOBSEC with necessary political support, the forum itself has also helped Slovakia to ‘punch above its own weight’ by making up for the lack of other resources. As one GLOBSEC employee puts it, “because we are small, we understand that if we do everything as Slovaks we will not be able to get there” (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022). In short, breaking out from peripheral status required attracting international stakeholders within other centres of power by operating as a representative of Central and Eastern Europe. The opening of a GLOBSEC office in Brussels in January 2020 reflects this approach, as it aims to “bring Central Europe closer to the debates on the future of Europe” and to enable GLOBSEC to “be part of the core of these debates” (GLOBSEC, 2019c). For GLOBSEC it was particularly important, as one employee emphasises, to bring the Western Europeans and the transatlantic community into understanding the region [Central and Eastern Europe], so that it [was] not just playing a marginal role in shaping policy or just agreeing with the discussions that are already shaped by or decisions that are already taken by other actors. (anon., p.c., May 3, 2022) As an informal meeting platform for such discussions, GLOBSEC creates distinct advantages for the Slovak Foreign Ministry in terms of promoting the official agenda. As one conference employee suggests, the Foreign Ministry always thinks how they could use that conference for the policy priorities of Slovakia, so they organize many meetings—bilateral, multilateral, informal meetings—on the sidelines. The Foreign Minister knows which colleague he would like to meet, what they would like to talk about and GLOBSEC is bringing them all together during one, two or three days. (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022) GLOBSEC has thus also become an extension of Slovak foreign policymaking that, as Rastislav Káčer puts it, allows for “corridor diplomacy”, whose “informal nature . . . simplifies the communication between actors” and provides a “very effective and efficient way of shaping the foreign policy” (GLOBSEC, 2012).

“Let’s forget that Slovakia is small” 195 For example, in October 2020, the Greek and Turkish foreign ministers met for informal talks at GLOBSEC after weeks of tensions—a meeting which according to one observer took place in a “cordial, almost jovial atmosphere” (Becatoros, 2020). In the summer that preceded the Forum, warships of both states had faced each other off on high alert across the Eastern Mediterranean. At the informal meeting in Bratislava, the two sides reached an agreement to set a date for a new round of negotiations (Mitra, 2020). As one GLOBSEC employee remembers, “we did not publish this at the time, because we were asked not to do that, but they [the two ministers] actually agreed to have a regular phone call once a month. This did reduce tensions” (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022). Similarly, in June 2019, GLOBSEC served as a meeting spot for Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and his counterpart from Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi. At that point, the official dialogue between both states had already been on hold for more than six months due to disputes about a possible land swap, Serbian attempts to block Kosovo from joining international organisations, and a Kosovan import tax on Serbian goods. Even though the meeting in Bratislava did not directly resolve these controversies, it would eventually contribute to the renewal of dialogue, after Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák (2012–2020) had become EU Special Representative for the Belgrade—Pristina Dialogue and other Western Balkan regional issues. At the same time, the success of GLOBSEC has also left a direct imprint on regional civil society in the Western Balkans. The founders of the Belgrade Security Forum, which emerged in 2011, for example, took GLOBSEC as a distinct model. In 2016, Sonja Licht, the President of one of the three NGOs responsible for setting up the event, argued that “the Forum was inspired by GLOBSEC Bratislava Slovakia, the most important event dedicated to foreign and security policy in Central Europe” (Licht, 2016). The yearbook of Slovak foreign policy in 2011 even praised the first iteration of the Belgrade Security Forum as “one of the most successful Slovak-Serbian cooperation projects” (Lőrincz, 2012, p. 80). By highlighting the presence of Slovak State Secretary Milan Ježovica, it placed the event and the role of GLOBSEC in the context of official, bilateral relations. Finally, GLOBSEC has also become the partner of choice for NATO in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2019, the Forum became part of the consortium of ‘NATO Engages’, a major public diplomacy effort of the alliance within the context of celebrating its 70th anniversary in London. As the only organisation from the region, it joined forces with the Atlantic Council, King’s College London, the MSC, and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) to organise the final conference on the eve of the leaders’ meeting in December. The GLOBSEC organisers themselves took this participation “as a sign . . . that they do at least recognise the forum, because they did join forces with us and not with others” (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022). Subsequently, NATO tasked GLOBSEC with contributing to the NATO 2030 reflection process by organising six virtual conferences on how to improve dialogue with the private sector on critical infrastructure, defence innovation, and emerging technologies (GLOBSEC, 2021).

196 Alexander Graef Enduring hierarchies: “Too big for the region, too small for the world” As the position of Central and Eastern Europe within the hierarchy of the EuroAtlantic security community continues to evolve, however, this success story has had specific ramifications. Western acknowledgement of GLOBSEC as “the go-to spot for NATO partners in order to communicate with Central and Eastern Europe” (anon., p.c., February 11, 2022), assigns symbolic value to the organisation, but it also reifies an asymmetric relationship and the persisting gap in social status between Slovakia and other states in the Euro-Atlantic security community. Within NATO’s pecking order, as Vincent Pouliot’s empirical analysis suggests, Slovakia continues to occupy a peripheral position as a lower-tier power comparable to Hungary and the Czech Republic but behind Norway, Denmark, and Belgium (Pouliot, 2016, p. 219). GLOBSEC itself faces enormous competition in Europe. Even the Brussels office mentioned earlier, which aims to “to bring a constructive voice of Central Europe to Brussels” (GLOBSEC, 2019c), speaks to this position. For GLOBSEC, the establishment of the office was built on the idea that “we were too big for the region, yet too small for the world” (anon., p.c., May 3, 2022), but with just two permanent positions, it remains quite small. In Brussels, the organisation competes with several dozen US and Western European institutions and think tanks, whose local branches operate on annual budgets of several million Euro and, in some instances, have been active for decades in EU politics (Gilroy, 2019, pp. 171–5). Overall, the leadership position and representative function that GLOBSEC has come to play for Central and Eastern Europe coincide with distinct limits that play out on the European and global level. As one GLOBSEC employee argues with respect to this distinction, [I]f you are not in the EU, in its immediate neighbourhood, or in the US, you do not really know where Slovakia is on the map. So that became also an attractive point for many people to travel [to GLOBSEC]. . . . Many policy makers, foreign ministers, defence ministers, started to connect the dots for the region. . . . It became a kind of a bridge to Europe for ‘bigger’ travellers, especially for ministers and above. (anon., p.c., May 3, 2022, my emphasis) The tension between regional pre-eminence and Western recognition on the one hand and international subordination on the other is further reinforced by the views of yet another GLOBSEC employee, who comments on the position the forum occupies within the global hierarchy (of conferences): I do not want to compare the GLOBSEC forum to the Munich Security Conference. It is not possible. Munich is the model of conferences; it is more than fifty years old. It is great, huge and everybody goes there. But when it

“Let’s forget that Slovakia is small” 197 comes to Central and Eastern Europe, I think, GLOBSEC is recognized by the Western part of Europe and also the United States. (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022 my emphasis) In short, for GLOBSEC, major Western network events that, besides the Munich Security Conferences, include the Brussels Forum and the World Economic Forum in Davos continue to provide major models and examples to follow. As one GLOBSEC employee emphasises, “when we look for inspiration we look at Munich” (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022). For example, GLOBSEC has adopted the format of night-owl sessions, that is, panel discussions and debates late at night, after experiencing them in Western Europe. Another GLOBSEC employee acknowledges that “Bratislava is not Rome, Paris, not even Berlin. We need to accept this and make the best of it. We are not pretending to be someone else” (anon., p.c., February 11, 2022). GLOBSEC’s financial and organisational model speaks to this, at times, difficult and volatile position that the organisation finds itself in. To date, almost all of GLOBSEC’s activities remain project-based. The strategic partnerships GLOBSEC enjoys with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence as well as with the Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatisation combined provide less than one-third of the total conference budget (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022). The situation is similar in the case of the two other main events, the Château Béla Forum and the Tatra Summit (GLOBSEC, 2019a), as well as the overall annual budget of the entire organisation, which, on average, amounts to about six million Euro (anon., p.c., May 28, 2022).7 Despite this budget, however, GLOBSEC continues to depend on short-term contracts and student volunteers to run the organisation, since public sponsorship cannot finance permanent positions. On the other hand, GLOBSEC continues to provide an attractive platform for young people from across Europe to gain experience in international politics and to network with like-minded professionals from abroad, because of the “vacuum that exists in the region [Central and Eastern Europe] with regards to such opportunities” (anon., p.c., May 3, 2022). Young people from Central and Eastern Europe are interested in coming to GLOBSEC, because they identify with the region since “you go back . . . where you come from in order to support the region in promoting its interests abroad” (anon., p.c., May 3, 2022). Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that informal, transnational elite networks contribute to status-seeking behaviour by small states in Central and Eastern Europe. They play a decisive role in practices of socialisation and in the management of status hierarchies within the Euro-Atlantic security community. Taking GLOBSEC as an example, I have illustrated how policy conferences allow small states in the region with limited material resources to participate in the evolution of Western strategic debate and to contribute to international diplomacy.

198 Alexander Graef Over the past decade, GLOBSEC has come to represent Central and Eastern Europe within the Euro-Atlantic security policymaking and policy-debating community. It has evolved from an idea among students at a regional Slovak university to one of the largest and most prestigious events of its kind in Europe and has become a model for others. The role GLOBSEC plays for Slovak foreign policy illustrates how smallness remains context-sensitive as it depends, among other things, on the establishment and maintenance of informal cross-border networks between national elites. GLOBSEC’s success story, however, has come with specific ramifications. While the organisation occupies the leadership position in Central and Eastern Europe, it continues to face considerable competition, particularly from institutions located in Western Europe. Future research could reveal how these networks interact in more detail and investigate the interpersonal and discursive linkages between them. Studying attendance and the topics discussed at policy conferences over time would allow further examination of transnational elite networks as they shape the distribution of power within the Euro-Atlantic security community and help to define the meaning of smallness therein. Notes * Note: for the citation in the title, see Vass (2014). 1 On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic. In contrast to the latter, Slovakia lacks a sustained, historical experience of independent statehood. 2 The term ‘Visegrád Group’ denotes the alliance between these four states. It emerged from a summit meeting of the leaders of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland held in the Hungarian town of Visegrád on February 15, 1991. 3 NATO’s Partnership for Peace Consortium (PfPC) of defence academies and civilian institutes of security studies, for example, has contributed to “bringing people together and facilitating the development of a strategic community in the area of security-related research and education” (Shalamanov, 2008, p. 62) between NATO members, candidate states, and partners. 4 These include the Yalta European Strategy Conference (2004, Ukraine); the Bled Strategic Forum (2005, Slovenia); the Riga Conference (2006, Latvia); the Kyiv Security Forum (2007, Ukraine); the Lennart Meri Conference (2007, Estonia); the Wrocław Global Forum (2010, Poland); the Belgrade Security Forum (2011, Serbia); Germia Hill (2011, Kosovo); the Sofia Security Forum (2012, Bulgaria); the Warsaw Security Forum (2014, Poland); the Atlantic–Black Sea Security Forum (2018, Romania); the Minsk Dialogue Forum (2018, Belarus); the Sofia Forum/Plovdiv Economic Forum (2018, Bulgaria); and the Prespa Forum Dialogue (2021, North Macedonia). 5 After 2005, both Gallo and Šuplata joined the Commission and continued to work for GLOBSEC in various capacities. In 2016, Šuplata joined the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since February 2022, he has been working at the Office of the Foreign Minister. 6 In February 2001, Káčer was appointed Secretary of State in the Ministry of Defence responsible for negotiating the accession process of Slovakia to NATO. He subsequently served as Slovak Ambassador to the United States (2003–2008), to Hungary (2013– 2018), and to the Czech Republic (2020–2022). 7 The size is comparable to the Munich Security Conference, but it depends on and requires continuous fundraising with international donors and includes all overhead expenses. From 2014 to 2019, the overall revenues of the Munich Security Conference

“Let’s forget that Slovakia is small” 199 increased from 2.7 million to 9.5 million euros. In the fiscal year 2020/2021, the revenues decreased to 6.7 million euros (Munich Security Conference, 2014, p. 21, 2019, 2021). In contrast to GLOBSEC, which relies dominantly on funding from international organisations and the Slovak state, the private sector provides more than two-thirds of the MSC budget.

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Part IV

Governance Interactions between domestic and international norms, rules, and action When Small-State Studies re-emerged after the Second World War, most of the scholarship focused on the behaviour of small states in the context of international relations. This body of work examined small states within the framework of vulnerability in global affairs, and as a consequence, it discussed the propensity of small states to join regional and international alliances. It became clear, however, that small states have not only joined such alliances but have also actually thrived in a multilateral world. Small-State Studies began questioning the reasons for this undue influence in global affairs and success in political economy, and ‘small-state governance’ emerged as a paradigm which not only examined governance in small states but also highlighted the governance of small states as a source of supranational influence. Scholars working in this field have noted that small states are characterised by pragmatic (as opposed to dogmatic) political systems, consensusbuilding, and mediation. In short, domestic political propensities have been linked to successes in the international arena. This book engages with that approach within Small-State Studies and questions whether all characteristics of small states can be regarded as positive. The first contribution in the section by André Linden examines how liberal democracy emerged in Luxembourg in association with regional integration. Wouter Veenendaal then focuses on the interaction between formal and informal decision-making practices in small states and their impacts on political systems. Finally, Suzanne E. Graham and Marcel F. Nagar discuss norm definition in, and diffusion from, African small island states and how they promote ‘good international citizenship’.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-16

12 The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s Second World War government in exile Agency and leadership at a critical juncture of Luxembourg’s small-state foreign policy André Linden The Second World War became a critical juncture in Luxembourg’s history: “critical junctures [are] relatively short periods of time during which there is a substantially heightened probability that agents’ choices will affect the outcome of interest”. They are “rare events”, where “relatively long periods of path-dependent institutional stability and reproduction [are] punctuated by brief phases of institutional flux during which more dramatic change is possible” (Cappoccia & Kelemen, 2007, pp. 348, 341, their emphases). The second German invasion of neighbouring Luxembourg, a de facto annexation by contrast with the First World War occupation, was such a crossroads in Luxembourg’s international relations and self-awareness. This chapter encompasses a very short time frame from 1940 to 1945 and investigates that period as an interpretive and theory-confirming case study based on Arend Lijphart (1971). It focuses on the agency of Luxembourg’s politicians, understood as the capacity to fulfil the interests of their very small state at this critical juncture with the meagre resources of a government in exile (GtEx). This calls for a detailed presentation of the events and of the actions, taken by a very small inner circle of government refugees around their figurehead, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, as selfempowered representatives of the state. Retrospectively, we know of the change of tides in favour of small states that were to come with the end of the war (and during the Cold War period). Globally speaking, the decolonisation of small, even minuscule territories with precarious status and marginal capabilities, for which Robert H. Jackson (1990) coined the term “quasi-states”, was a very specific act of granting sovereignty: “Quasi-states are . . . disclosed by a new positive international society which fostered the independence of such states and caters for their survival and development” (p. 25). The case of Luxembourg was, however, different because the Grand Duchy had a long history of self-standing structure (see Kolnberger, this volume). Therefore, the key concept for Luxembourg’s new independence and re-integration as a sovereign state after the Second World War was distinctive—not only freedom but also democracy and the end of neutrality after 75 years. DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-17

206 André Linden Luxembourg and the Second World War On January 20, 1944, still within the turmoil of the world war, André Wolff (1903– 1972), Commissioner of Information in the United States of Luxembourg’s GtEx, gave a talk on the topic of “Small nations—Do they have a right to live? Exemplified by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg” (Archives nationales de Luxembourg, ANLux, AE-AW-0117). The speaker developed themes akin to the issues of security and governance, especially in relation to the right to existence of small states like Luxembourg at the end of the Second World War. Wolff insisted on the capacity of small states to comply with responsibilities connected to independent statehood: I believe that it is wrong to assume that a future international order, with greater safety from aggression, is to be based on the destruction of the little states. The right of a country to independent existence should not depend on its size or the number of its inhabitants. If I may repeat myself—a country should have a right to independence if it is capable of fulfilling, and does fulfil, the duties imposed by independence. A small country can fulfil their international and national obligations just as well as a large one. As I hope to have indicated in my preceding remarks, Luxembourg gave conclusive proof of this. (p. 12) On December 9, 1944, the 14-page typescript was sent to Luxembourg’s Ambassador to the United States, Hugues Le Gallais (1896–1964), to “serve as a basis for a speech at the Worcester Rotary Club”, together with the reminder that changes would be needed, “now that the country is liberated”. This routine transfer among secretaries highlights the fact that by the end of the Second World War, Luxembourg’s GtEx could rely on a stock of proven arguments when it came to preparing their numerous talks and interviews and that among these the topic of ‘small states’ was pivotal. However, in the United States, public relations, or ‘propaganda’ in favour of Luxembourg had a hard start. In a phrase reminiscent of President Roosevelt’s invitation to Grand Duchess Charlotte (1896–1985) to “put Luxembourg on the map” (Goetzinger, 2010), Wolff later candidly confessed that by the end of August 1940, we had to start with the basics, that is we had first to tell our hosts that there existed somewhere in Europe, between France, Belgium, and Germany a tiny independent and democratic state, and that this state was not an operetta state. (1950, p. 122, translation AL) In Europe, the Grand Duchy’s problems went far beyond being unknown or not taken seriously. On May 10, 1940, when Luxembourg, Belgium, and Holland were invaded by German troops, Grand Duchess Charlotte and four Ministers fled the

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 207 country, together with a few members of staff and family. The Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Pierre Dupong (1885–1953), and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Bech (1887–1975), adhered to the conservative ‘Party of the Right’ (“Rechtspartei”), whereas Pierre Krier (1885–1947), Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, and Victor Bodson (1902–1984), Minister of Justice, were militants of the left-wing ‘Workers’ Party’ (“Arbeiterpartei”). Due to the failed escape of a third conservative member of government, the GtEx was politically balanced. The subsistence of the state depended on the fate of a truncated executive branch, composed of four democratically elected ministers from rival parties and a royal Head of State. Shelter-seeking and reputation management for state survival: “Neutrality [is] dead, well dead” After the peace settlement between the Third Reich and the Vichy Regime on June 21, 1940, the Luxembourg fugitives were summoned to leave France, their first address for shelter. Relocated in Cascais near the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, Luxembourg’s GtEx faced severe challenges from the domestic parliament and population (Linden, 2021a). On July 12, 1940, a telegram pleaded for the Grand Duchess to return and the ministers to step down, “in order to restore the constitutional government and executive authority”. A letter from the highly regarded American diplomat Platt Waller, who was still in office in Luxembourg, left no doubt as to the legitimacy of the request: “The President of the Luxemburg [sic]1 Chamber of Deputies is commissioned by a Parliamentary Committee, in which all groups in the Chamber are represented” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 41). Impressed with the military victories of Nazi Germany, parliamentary elites in Luxembourg had started to look for ways of accommodation with the seemingly inevitable new regime. Unsurprisingly, this created considerable turmoil among the high-profile fugitives in Lisbon, culminating in the attempt of the royal Head of State to return to her occupied homeland. The tensions resolved with the installation on August 6, 1940, of a Nazi Civil Administration, which claimed that Luxembourg was German and had always been so. A campaign for the abolition of the institutions and the incorporation of territory and population into the Reich made it clear that a survival as a somewhat autonomous unit within Nazi Germany was out of the question. This triggered an unequivocal rapprochement of Luxembourg’s GtEx with the upcoming Anglo-Saxon alliance. After a brief visit to London by Head of State Charlotte and Foreign Minister Bech in late August and early September 1940, notably during the first German air raids on the British capital, the little party of state refugees spread out from Portugal to England and to Canada. London and Montreal became the two exile homes of an intercontinentally split GtEx, which for almost three years operated mostly as a micro-network, whose members were continuously struggling to keep in touch with each other and to sustain connections with their Allies. In stark contrast, an iconic propaganda photograph, presumably from December 1943, pictured the Grand Duchess and the four ministers at a government council around the fireside of the Luxembourg Legation

208 André Linden in London. It was published in the so-called Liberation Number from September 1, 1944, of the London edition of the Luxembourg Bulletin (LB), together with a take of Prince Félix with British Field Marshal Montgomery (see Figure 12.1). The page was designed to give visual proof that the fugitive ministers and the members of the royal family were working hard for the Liberation (Linden, 2021b, forum). Neutrality was the anchor point of the Grand Duchy’s initial shelter-seeking strategy. The London Treaties of 1839 and 1867 had given birth to an independent Luxembourg within its current territorial borders. France, Prussia (after 1871 Germany), and Great Britain were the first guarantee powers for the neutral and disarmed state. However, neutrality had already been broken in the Great War with the invasion of German troops. For six weeks, the Kaiser’s headquarters had been in Luxembourg. His encounters with Grand Duchess Marie Adelheid compromised the reputation of the Head of State (Weber, 2019). Luxembourg, a member of the German Customs Union, remained under German occupation until 1918. Though its survival was at stake, the Grand Duchy was not admitted to the negotiation table in Versailles. The resignation of Marie Adelheid and a referendum in 1919 allowed for a fresh start under the reign of her sister Charlotte. Economically, the country entered into a new alliance with Belgium. Politically, it joined the League of Nations as a neutral member in 1925. On May 10, 1940, Antoine Funck, Ambassador in Paris, delivered a letter to Paul Reynaud, the French Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, which had been prepared before the invasion. It accused Germany of having “violated the Grand-Duchy’s neutrality” and asked France for support to re-establish the independence of the country. In a radio address from Paris, Funck informed the Luxembourg population of the missive. With a characteristic compensatory move, he used the antithetical rhetorical trope “small, but . . .”, to contrast Luxembourg’s small size—“one of Europe’s smallest countries”—with the attribution of high moral value, praising it as “a country deeply fond of its secular liberties and endowed with a deep sense of justice”. However, Funck did not limit shelter-seeking to France. His phrase “disapproval in all the free countries, and also beyond the seas [sic]” called for help from Great Britain across the Channel and from the United States across the Atlantic (as cited in Haag & Krier, 1987, p. 163, translation AL). The qualification of Luxembourg as defenceless and feeble overtly referred to the demilitarised status of the Grand Duchy. On a more subliminal level, it anticipated a major argumentative image of small nations in the Second World War. Mindful of the ‘vulnerability—agency paradox’ (Koff & Kolnberger, this volume) it pleaded for the rule of law in international relations along the lines of a quest for ‘right over might’. The existential condition of being small ought to entitle a political unit to the right not to be exposed to aggression and to receive protection from more sizeable actors. A note of protest (Heisbourg, 1986, pp. 185–6) released in Washington on September 4, 1940, by Ambassador Le Gallais also accused Germany of a violation of neutrality. In addition, it explained the departure of the state leaders with the desire to defend the interests of their homeland in the international arena. Moreover, the memorandum referred to an accusatory list of measures by the Nazi administration,

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 209

Figure 12.1 Men and woman on the spot Source: Luxembourg Bulletin (London), no 20/21, Liberation Number (01.09.1944), p. 159; digitised by the National Library of Luxembourg. https://persist.lu/ark:70795/6r3c32t2g/pages/7/articles/DTL222 [See the figure at this link as well.]

210 André Linden which had been designed to dismantle Luxembourg’s state and to eradicate any traces of French language and culture in Luxembourg public life, including the official designation as Grand Duchy. Although the memorandum blamed the policy of Germanisation for cancelling the identity of the Luxembourg state and its people, ‘democracy’ as a potentially defining feature of the Grand Duchy was not part of the list. Likewise, the first radio address by Grand Duchess Charlotte on September 5, 1940, from BBC London to the Luxembourg people did not contain any explicit reference to ‘democracy’. Nor was ‘democracy’ mentioned on the arrival of the Head of State in New York on October 4, where she delivered a speech at the airport and held a press conference the next day. But on August 23, 1940, the Nazi occupiers had launched a poster campaign in Luxembourg, which announced “the end of the age of democracy and the fall of parliamentarism” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 39, translation AL). Archive material proves that ‘democracy’ had already at that time been considered a potential feature of Luxembourg identity in official communications of the GtEx. The comparison between relevant passages of the speech as presumably delivered and the draft version of a press release in the national Luxembourg archives (ANLux) for the same event suggests that the draft had been rephrased in a distinctly neutral tone. Whereas the draft insisted that “the democratic constitution of Luxembourg has been abrogated”, the actual speech mentioned only “the abolition of the Constitution”. While the draft unequivocally talked of “Nazis” and of a “German Nazi Gauleiter”, the actual speech labelled the occupier as “the Germans” and the Head of the Civil Administration as a “Gauleiter”. Whereas in the actual speech the Grand Duchess lamented the fate of her homeland as “this small Luxembourg, innocent victim of German violence”, the draft version emphatically proclaimed her people and herself to be “intent upon saving the democratic institutions of the World. . . . together with other royal leaders of states victims of the Nazi aggression, [l]ike Queen Wilhelmina of Holland and King Haakon” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, pp. 108–9). Overall, the adoption of ‘democracy’ as a defining feature of Luxembourg identity in official communications of the GtEx ran parallel with the self-assertion as a committed member of a fighting alliance. The weaker the claim to neutrality, the more ‘democracy’ came to the forefront. A consultation at the Foreign Office in London on November 6, 1940, was a major turning point. On this occasion, Lord Halifax invited Foreign Minister Bech to the first Inter-Allied Meeting scheduled for a near future. In a note from November 22, 1940, British authorities confirmed that the invitation “[was] conferring a definite recognition of Luxembourg as an Ally of the United Kingdom” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 111). Bech saw in this recognition a golden opportunity to clear the Grand Duchy of any reputational stains from the First World War. The apprehension of being once more accused by the international community of collaboration with German invaders had indeed been the central reason for the ministers and the Grand Duchess to flee. Most remarkably, the issues of small size and military irrelevance had been openly discussed between Bech and Halifax during their review of the draft

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 211 resolution. In his report on November 16, 1940, Bech reassured Grand Duchess Charlotte that the Foreign Office had highlighted moral support as the most essential contribution of any, even the tiniest, partner. Bech therefore pleaded with utmost emphasis that small-state Luxembourg must urgently abandon any idea of neutrality and that it had to join the alliance of countries that were supportive of the Inter-Allied conference “totally and without any restriction”. Most importantly, he assured the Head of State that this would avoid any future “bargaining” of the leading nations on the fate of Luxembourg unlike after the First World War (Haag & Krier, 1987, p. 278). Unsurprisingly, in a letter on January 5–8, 1941, from London to Prime Minister Dupong in Montreal, Bech summarised his view by bluntly stating that “neutrality [is] dead, well dead” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 191). Towards ownership of the legislative powers, with a ‘democratic’ identity Research on the genealogy of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s GtEx suggests that the first public endorsement occurred in London during the address by Prime Minister Pierre Dupong to the first Inter-Allied Meeting, which finally took place on June 12, 1941, at London’s St. James’s Palace (Linden, 2021a). Involving a total of 28 high-ranking officials, the final resolution listed five governments from the British Empire and nine political units from states under Nazi occupation (Linden, 2021a, p. 111). Prime Minister Dupong und Foreign Minister Bech participated on behalf of the Grand Duchy, which was by far the smallest state in terms of size and population. After the opening speech by Prime Minister Churchill, the foreign invitees delivered short statements on the prearranged draft resolution. Dupong and Bech had jointly written the first ever address of the Luxembourg GtEx to such a high-level audience. In their introductory wording, they pertinently characterised the three-point resolution as a “pact of solidarity during the war and collaboration in time of peace”. As representatives of a country that at the time numbered no more than 300,000 inhabitants, their concerns about size and power came as no surprise. In the familiar antithetical rhetoric, they praised Luxembourg’s high value and moral resistance, despite its limited material and military capacities: “If our material and military contribution to the common victory is necessarily limited, I can say, not without pride, that the moral resistance of our people to the implacable German oppressor is complete” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 117). No other speaker presented their nation as ‘small’ or ‘weak’. At most, the Czech Foreign Minister’s declaration that he was “proud to co-operate humbly with the Governments of all our friends and allies” might have been taken as a hint in that direction. Though isolationism still prevailed in the United States, President Roosevelt was an outstanding source of hope. In his opening address, Churchill announced military support from the United States. His audience might have remembered the “Arsenal of Democracy” speech of December 19, 1940, in which Roosevelt had promised such assistance. The Polish Prime Minister, General Sikorski, hailed the “fighting democracies” while evoking Roosevelt’s famous Address to the Nation

212 André Linden on January 6, 1941, in which the President announced his programmatic “Four Freedoms”. The Inter-Allied meeting opened a unique window of opportunity. On June 23, 1940, Prime Minister Dupong wrote to Funck that Luxembourg’s participation “on equal footing with England’s other Allies had an importance for the future of our homeland that cannot be overestimated” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 354, translation AL). However, Dupong and Bech associated the Grand Duchy only indirectly with ‘democracy’, when they generically contrasted the “democratic” and “free regimes” present at the Inter-Allied meeting with “regimes of oppression”: Economic and social security is, and will be, the foundation and rampart of those liberties which are the very essence and justification of democratic regimes.—The affirmation that this is our common aim after the war shows clearly the line dividing the free regimes represented by the Governments united here today and the regimes of oppression. (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 118) A major reason for this stance was related to vital strategic ambitions of the Luxembourg GtEx, which was somewhat at odds with ‘democracy’. An essay by Léon Schaus (1905–1982) in the periodical Belgium on the question “Who at present holds the legislative powers over the Grand Duchy and its population?” was published at the same time as the Inter-Allied meeting (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 120). With the almost academic demonstration of its Secretary-General, the Luxembourg GtEx launched a full-scale offensive. It aimed to build on the new reputation of the GtEx as an ally, to extend its recognition as the legitimate holder of the legislative powers. Since 1915, Luxembourg laws had allowed for the possibility of legislation by Grand Ducal decrees. Under the looming threats of Hitler’s Germany, these laws had been renewed in 1938 and 1939. Schaus insisted that the GtEx was the only legitimate authority to vote such decrees and that legislation by decrees was born under ‘democratic’ rule: “The legislative power in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, as in every democracy, was vested in the assembly of the elected representatives of the people, the Chamber of Deputies”. He claimed that, on the return of the GtEx to their homeland, Parliament would approve any law decreed during the ongoing war. Moreover, Schaus asserted that Luxembourg’s ‘democratic’ stance had been reinforced by its international recognition as an Ally, especially by the United States: “the Luxembourg Government’s position is . . . legally unimpeachable. And morally it stands just as strong” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 120). However, the case of the Grand Ducal decrees is also relevant for the debate on small states in general. Governance by decrees may indeed be viewed as typical of small states rather than just representing a borderline case of ‘democratic’ procedures. On this view, decrees represent a variant of ‘short paths’, which match the finding that in small states “formal institutions are recurrently ignored or

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 213 circumvented” (see Veenendaal, this volume). The difference in the case of Luxembourg concerned only the fact that the circumvention had been backed up legally and by formal processes. An argument advanced by Schaus on the “slowness” of procedures under democratic rule was framed as a claim about the modern need for efficiency in general, but it hardly seems to be transferable to the case of greater democratic powers: We are living in such swiftly moving times, . . . that this one drawback [of slowness] might well become fatal. The Luxembourg nation, whose loyalty to democratic principles is absolute, was so aware of this danger that it did not hesitate to adapt principles to present-day requirements. For a number of years, the Luxembourg government has been empowered by the Chamber to apply new legislation by Grand-Ducal decree if and when circumstances did not permit the normal procedure. (ANLux, AE-GtEx-523f; Linden, 2021a, p. 26) Schaus’s insistence on compliance with ‘democratic principles’ indicates a sideeffect of shelter-seeking. Of course, Luxembourg was a parliamentary democracy and had been a constitutional monarchy at least since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1919. Also, the battle cry of ‘democracy’ had resounded in many domestic disputes, most prominently in 1937, around the passing in April of a conservative legislation bill by the government under Bech, which was hotly contested on the grounds of ‘antidemocratic’ tendencies. The political struggle led to a referendum in June and to a new government of national unity under Pierre Dupong in November 1937. For the first time in Luxembourg history, two politicians of the Worker’s Party entered the government, first and foremost the renowned trade-unionist Pierre Krier. Under the looming Hitlerian threat, state authorities, presumably guided by Léon Schaus, had even inspired an American newspaper to hail Luxembourg as a “model democracy” in its coverage of the ongoing Centenary festivities of 1939 (Linden, 2021a, pp. 148–9). Still the invitation to the Inter-Allied Conference of June 1942, which marked the admission into the international alliance, appeared to have induced a learning process as far as reputation management—specifically, the small-state predicament—was concerned. Recognition as an Ally triggered a possibly embarrassing awareness of non-compliance about ‘democratic’ governance, palpable in the repeated reassurances by Schaus. The GtEx recognised the need, even as a small state, to display explicit adherence to the international norm of ‘democracy’, which had become a prominent guiding value under the leadership of President Roosevelt. There was also a long-term outcome of the process. On May 21, 1948, still in the aftermath of the world war, the notion of “parliamentary democracy” was integrated into the official self-definition of the Grand Duchy, in a reform of the Constitution, whose Article 51 now stated that Luxembourg followed parliamentary democratic rule.

214 André Linden Campaigning for ‘Europe’s smallest democracy’ The second Inter-Allied meeting in London took place on September 24, 1941, with the additional participation of the Soviet Union, after Hitler’s attack on June 22, 1941. The resolution expressed the support of the participants for the brandnew ‘Atlantic Charter’ of Roosevelt and Churchill. The Czech representative mentioned the small size of his country and demanded that “small nations like Czechoslovakia . . . must be given an opportunity as equal among equals in close co-operation with their neighbours”. Luxembourg’s Minister for Foreign Affairs took a bolder stance, whereby he marked the shift of the GtEx from a ‘shelterseeking’ to a ‘status-seeking’ strategy (Koff and Kolnberger, this volume). Bech demanded respect for “the historic rights of Europe’s smallest democracy” and mentioned Luxembourg in the same breath as “the great English-speaking democracies under the guidance of the two illustrious leaders of democracy, the Prime Minister, Mr. Winston Churchill, and President Roosevelt”. At the same time, Bech reiterated the familiar dichotomy of Luxembourg’s “material weakness” versus its “moral strength” and restated the principle of “right over might” (the above as cited in Linden, 2021a, pp. 140–1). After the Inter-Allied meetings in London, Luxembourg’s GtEx consolidated its newly acquired status as an ally by becoming one of the 26 signatories of the Charter of the United Nations on January 1, 1942, in New York. The Declaration confirmed the universalistic turn of the Atlantic Charter and the seminal Four Freedoms Address of Roosevelt. The American historian Allan M. Winkler (1979) explains how these claims, which, as in Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series of seven propaganda films (1942–1945), were frequently accompanied by the battle cry of ‘democracy’, would have reflected the inner convictions, values, and norms of the actors at a turning point in the war: The early participants in the American propaganda campaign . . . saw the war as a real war of liberation. For them, it was a battle between the forces of fascism and the forces of democracy . . . . They took the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter seriously and used their slogans to shape their messages about the war. (p. 6) With varying degrees, this would also have been the mindset of Luxembourg’s leaders. Since their transfer to Great Britain and North America in October 1940, the GtEx sustained a relentless effort in public relations. From May 1942 onwards, a ‘Luxembourg Bulletin’ (LB) was launched in two editions, one in London and the other in Montreal and New York, on a bimonthly scheme. Targeting an Englishspeaking audience, the LB published essays and speeches, besides a mix of news and information about the situation in Luxembourg and the activities of the GtEx. In the process, ‘democracy’ became a defining feature of Luxembourg’s identity. Under the title ‘Luxembourg and the German Invasion Before and After’, the so-called Luxembourg Grey Book cherished the pre-war Grand-Duchy as “one of

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 215 the most free and democratic countries of Europe”. It also praised the benefits of a compulsory and non-discriminative school system, where “rich and poor alike attend the same elementary schools”, and which was defined as the source of “a true democratic spirit, which is noticeable in all the public and administrative life of the Grand Duchy” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 146). In the first London edition of the LB from May 1942, Prime Minister Dupong lauded Luxembourgers as “peaceful, law-abiding people, loyal to their free and democratic institutions, as well as to their much beloved and highly considered leader, Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg”. He also underlined the excellent reputation of the pre-war Grand Duchy, claiming that “people abroad liked to call Luxembourg ‘the little European paradise’ . . . [whereas] now the Nazis have trampled down the flourishing life and strife of the Luxembourg democracy” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 143). The Prime Minister’s confidence about the ‘democratic’ identity of his homeland had been boosted by an encounter in the White House in January 1942. Roosevelt was looking for support for the United States’s entry into the war. According to a letter from Le Gallais to Grand Duchess Charlotte on January 14, the President advocated an active role for the Luxembourg Head of State as a propagandist and influencer, suggesting that she should start to tour his country to plead the cause of the small nations and her homeland. Notably, Le Gallais used the English phrase “in the democratic way” in his French text, presumably to mark a presidential quote (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 155). Charlotte’s ensuing ‘goodwill tours’ with a small party of high-ranking officials may be viewed as a balanced exchange among unequals. It is also a further illustration of the ‘vulnerability–agency paradox’ (Koff and Kolnberger, this volume), insofar as the Head of State of a very small state could offer a political service to the head of an incommensurably more powerful nation. On March 28, 1943, the US newspaper Oregon Journal even reported an ingeniously indirect allusion to ‘democracy’ by the monarch herself, since it occurred through the presentation of an open page of the LB, which displayed on its right side an article titled ‘Luxembourg—A true democracy’, and on its left, a picture titled ‘The R.A.F. visits LUXEMBOURG’. The reporter marvelled how the copy, which was handed over to him on demand of Charlotte, should “strangely enough” just have been opened on that specific page. In a North American setting, the image of a British aircraft dropping leaflets with a declaration of the British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden over the city of Luxembourg may well have looked stunning. Particularly, when it was displayed in the Montreal edition of a government bulletin handed over to an American journalist by the secretary of the Luxembourg Head of State. Even more so since it presented the photo of the Grand Duchess side by side with a headline emphasising that her country was A true democracy (see Figure 12.2). Sure enough, this propagandistic staging emphasises how much endorsements of ‘democracy’ mattered for a Luxembourg GtEx in March 1943, as a defining feature of selfidentity and as a bridge to British and American allies (Linden, 2020). In September 1944, with the end of the war in sight, endorsements of ‘democracy’ by Luxembourg’s GtEx reached their climax. Defence of democracy now

216 André Linden

Figure 12.2 Luxembourg—a true democracy Source: Luxembourg Bulletin (Montreal), 1943, nº 5 (01.01.1943), pp. 12 and 5; digitised by the National Library of Luxembourg. https://persist.lu/ark:70795/6w1zjmx4v/pages/5/articles/DTL93 (See the figure at this link as well.)

ranked highly in Luxembourg’s war performance record. Footage, which may not have been published, shows rehearsals of speeches by Grand Duchess Charlotte, who emphasised that “Luxembourgers had paid with many human lives for their belief and their faith in the democratic principles”. An LB editorial by Prime Minister Dupong advocated the “reconstruction of all that has proved its value, to restore the cherished institutions of our democracy, for which the population accepted so much suffering” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, pp. 167–8). Finally, on March 14, 1945, after the return of the GtEx to Luxembourg, Dupong challenged extra-parliamentary opponents during his first speech in a still provisional parliamentary Assembly, to engage openly in democratic elections rather than indulging in anonymous nocturnal poster campaigns: “It is the only way allowed for by our democratic regime. For this regime, we have been fighting four years against Nazi-tyranny in our homeland and abroad” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 174). Individual visions for the future of Europe and ‘democracy’ The personal sympathy between Roosevelt and Charlotte is also a reminder of ‘personalisation’ and ‘individual leadership’ in small states, which have been investigated in connection with domestic policies (Corbett & Veenendaal, 2017)

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 217 and foreign policy (Kok & Verbeek, 2018). The leaders of Luxembourg’s GtEx emerged as ‘prominent actors’ (Koff and Kolnberger, this volume), who relied on their charisma and their rhetorical talents to address multiple audiences of an international political elite as “norm entrepreneurs” (Wunderlich, 2020). In defence of their homeland and of small states in general, Luxembourg’s GtEx advocated international cooperation under the aegis of democracy and the rule of law. On March 11, 1942, at a lunch organised in London by the National Defence Public Interest Committee in honour of Grand Duchess Charlotte (Heisbourg, 1989, pp. 382–6, entire speech) and in an interview with the Sunday Times, which was later republished as “Rights of Small Nations. Lessons for the Future from Luxemburg’s Experience” (Bech & Heywood, 1946), the Minister of Foreign Affairs countered campaigns against small states that were prominently fuelled by E. H. Carr, who was to become the leading spokesperson of the ‘realist’ school of International Relations (Grosbois, 1994; Heisbourg, 1989; Dunne et al., 2021). Bech introduced ‘realist’ issues as “questions [that] are more and more frequently discussed in English and American reviews and newspapers”, and which claim that “the price to be paid for stabilised peace in a new Europe is the disappearance of the small nations” (Heisbourg, 1989, p. 382). Bech emphasised instead the relativity of size and strength, by describing Poland and France as “nations, which believed themselves strong and sufficiently armed [but] were unable to resist the surprise attack of an aggressor”. Luxembourg’s Minister of Foreign Affairs not only pleaded the cause of a European federation on economic grounds: [The] idea of economic federation and the co-operation of free democratic nations is spreading, He also elevated Luxembourg to the status of an ideal model for small states: The fact that such a small country surrounded by strong neighbours has been able to conserve its own individuality, is certainly an encouragement to other small peoples who might fear for their individuality when part of a European organization. (pp. 385–6) Similar pleas for cross-border integration were advanced by Prime Minister Pierre Dupong, albeit with a distinct focus on transatlantic cooperation. In a speech at the Metropolitan Opera Guild in New York on February 20, 1943, the Prime Minister, like Bech, came close to hailing his country’s foreign politics as exemplary for small states, by presenting an openly normative “international creed . . . shared by all Luxembourgers”: There should be a community of nations, large and small, which pledge themselves to put the principles of the Atlantic Charter into practice. The member

218 André Linden States would vest the community with the necessary authority to organise and to maintain, even by force if it need be, the new international order. (ANLux, AE-AW-0725; all emphases AL) Dupong’s hint at the potential use of force in a transatlantic setting suggests a military cooperation which may well be taken to anticipate NATO. Pierre Krier, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs on behalf of the Workers’ Party, equally proposed idealised visions with a normative spin, which were in his case akin to Socialist Internationalism. His article ‘The road to the future’ for the London LB of March/April 1944, pleaded for an integrated Luxembourg in a greater community far beyond national self-concern, and identified a “European mission” for Luxembourg’s mineral wealth, with features that were anticipatory of CECA (European Coal and Steel Community), EEC (European Economic Community) and EU. Krier therefore diagnosed the need to integrate three levels of “international democracy”, with Luxembourg in the lead: Again, Luxembourg has a key-position in this task. It is a task for democracy which should in future not only be a form of political organisation, but also be extended into the economic and social sphere. It is towards shaping the future form of international democracy that we must direct our most ardent efforts. (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 163) Like Bech, Krier participated in extensive international networks, even if they were of a different political stance. And like Bech, Krier became therefore acutely aware of the need for an attentive reputation management for Luxembourg as a small state. Most remarkably, he expressed as early as November 1941 concerns regarding the role of Luxembourg in international finance, due to its 1929 holding legislation. Quoting American trade-unionists, Krier reported “very unpleasant remarks on Luxembourg, as a centre of holding companies”. Krier held this to be “not compatible with national honour”: We must try for the future to carefully avoid anything that could cause us similar damage. In the new Europe, especially as a small democratic country, we will have to safeguard our honour and our good reputation. (Fayot, [n.d.], p. 30, translation AL) ‘Democracy’ and infighting among Luxembourg’s state fugitives Luxembourg’s GtEx suffered from an extreme shortage of staff, far beyond what is recognised to be the norm in ‘face-to-face’ societies of small states under peace conditions. Overall, the GtEx was a concrete example of successful cooperation in times of extreme crisis. However, numerous incidents generated “explosive and sharp” personal conflicts between rivalling actors, confirming that “relations

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 219 within the political elites of small states are often very antagonistic and polarised”. Balancing “between formal and informal democracy” proved a major challenge in the hyper-personalised setting of Luxembourg’s GtEx (the above as cited in Veenendaal, this volume). Unleashed by the centrifugal forces of war and exile, differences of temperament and ideological rivalries fuelled tensions within the political micro-system of the GtEx (Linden, 2021a).2 ‘Democracy’ emerged as a leading principle in these internal struggles too. On July 26, 1942, Dupong warned Krier against communist propaganda. In view of the “restoration of our Luxembourgian democracy”, the Prime Minister urged his Minister of Labour and Social Affairs that together, they “must defend our democratic ideal of liberty against dangers . . ., also emanating from [people] that might feel inspired by the antidemocratic ideal of Moscow”. Krier in turn brought the fights of mid-1930s domestic politics in Luxembourg into the international arena. In a combative address in London on June 15, 1943, to the “comrades” of the congress of the British Labour Party, he hailed his party’s “untiring struggle to secure the widening of Democracy and the improvement of the social conditions of the Luxembourg people” (the above as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 169 [translation AL], and p. 170). Early in 1944, the International Transport workers’ [sic] Federation (I.T.F.) published a propagandistic booklet on “Luxemburg [sic]. The small country which the Nazis could not break”, with a preface signed “J.H. Oldenbroek, Acting General Secretary of the I.T.F., London, December 1943” (ITF, 1944, p. 2). It declared that it “owe[d] its origins to a series of talks with Peter [sic] Krier, the Minister of Labour in the Luxemburg Government” (p. 3). The pamphlet claimed that Krier’s Labour Party had liberated the Luxembourg people from oppression: “Luxemburg . . . demonstrates that, even in the smallest state, it is the class-conscious workers who are the backbone of its liberty” (p. 4). It highlighted the intense protest before the First World War against the conservative politics of Grand Duchess Marie Adelheid: “the war against clericalism, which kept the people in mental chains, was being waged with fanatic enthusiasm, a struggle for a better, more democratic education for the people, freed from religious control” (p. 12). In a letter to Krier, Prime Minister Dupong predictably criticised the publication for being “too ‘one-sided’ [sic] and unjust against the non-socialist part of the population” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 171, translation AL). However, Dupong did not have problems only with the political Left. Worries also arose about Hugues le Gallais, a former steel manager with close ties to the Grand Ducal family, who had been operating in Washington since October 21, 1940 as an ambassador and “plenipotentiary minister”. Le Gallais was renowned for a “profound knowledge of the use and customs of the Anglo-Saxon World” and a “sense for the American psychology”. He favoured a marketing-style approach to diplomacy, with the declared aim to achieve maximum visibility, by remaining “constantly in the spotlight”. The government ministers soon gave signs of finding this conduct unsettling. In a letter from London to the Grand Duchess in Montreal, Foreign Minister Bech put the title of ‘Minister’ for Le Gallais between inverted

220 André Linden commas. Bodson wrote from North America to Krier in Europe, that Le Gallais was quite successfully performing his role as a “fifth minister”. The controversy sparked directions for best practice in the foreign policy of small states. Bech warned the Prime Minister that Le Gallais appeared to be “tempted by the stage that top-level politics may offer a diplomat. . . . a stage that can easily become a slippery slope”. In August 1941, Bech sent explicit warnings to Le Gallais, pointing out that “self-important grandstanding by representatives of small, let alone very small, countries” usually fails to impress. On this occasion, Bech “summarised our traditional view”, by pointing to “two equally dangerous pitfalls to avoid: to be forgotten because of our modesty, and to be held inadequate for operating too much in the foreground” (the above as cited in Linden, 2021a, pp. 68–70, translation AL). Two examples illustrate how the activities of Le Gallais fuelled conflicts between ‘formal’ power, represented in this context by the democratically elected ministers, and ‘informal’ power, incorporated by Le Gallais as an actor close to the Grand Ducal entourage. In a letter to Bech, Le Gallais reported a critical episode on February 16, 1941, in Chicago, in which Bodson opposed his participation in the governmental council, Prince Félix backing up Le Gallais and Head of State Grand Duchess Charlotte resolving the tensions. According to Le Gallais, it was only Charlotte’s intervention that made people sit down, after Prince Félix had labelled Bodson’s protest “a strange form of collaboration” and threatened to leave (as cited in Linden, 2021a, pp. 70–1). In March 1942, Le Gallais urgently warned Prime Minister Dupong in a “secret and confidential” letter that the arrival of former Labour Minister René Blum and his wife in New York was threatening the GtEx with a new “source for socialist propaganda”. During a heated exchange of written notes, Dupong warned Le Gallais that he had to comply with the government and not with the Grand Duchess, and that respect was due to the two socialist ministers, “who represent a third of public opinion in our country” (as cited in Linden, 2021a, p. 72). Most remarkably, the reference to ‘democracy’ was even used by the Prime Minister to put discreet pressure on the monarch. In a letter of June 18, 1942, six days after the St. James’s Palace conference, when the GtEx had for the first time publicly endorsed ‘democracy’, Dupong expressed his and Bech’s concern regarding the Grand Ducal family’s surprise decision to move from Canada to the United States, by underlining the need for the “solidity of our position within the group of democratic [sic] countries” (as cited in Schmit, 2021, p. 192). Conclusion A received view among scholars reasonably considers Luxembourg’s GtEx as foundational for the integration of the Grand Duchy after the second of the two world wars. With the GtEx, Luxembourg moved away from neutrality towards an explicit self-representation as a democracy thriving for cooperation on the international stage. The result was

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 221 uncontested legitimacy of the participation of the Grand Duchy—as a founding member—of the UN in 1945, of Benelux in 1946, of NATO in 1949 and, at the beginning of the European construction, notably via the creation of CECA in 1950. (as cited in Grosbois, 2022, p. 178; translation AL) Democracy facilitated contact, interaction, and admission to an Anglo-Saxon Alliance, which was committed to respecting the rule of law. In line with the German public relations adage, not only to do good but also to tell everyone that you’re doing it, Luxembourg’s GtEx not only complied with democracy but also expressly upheld it. This endorsement enhanced their status as worthy of shelter within a community of values and created common ground for cooperative action. In the process, recognition as a legal entity, even in the total absence of military capacity, was pivotal. The uplifting experience of moral entitlement stimulated the representatives of the small state to work towards increased agency and leadership. The communicative skills of charismatic individuals favoured their interventions as influencers and norm entrepreneurs, who ably used the soft powers of the spoken word and written communication to develop visions for a post-war future, beyond self-idealisation and propagandistic nation-branding. The explicit endorsement of democracy by Luxembourg’s GtEx generated a virtuous cycle leading towards a new path of commitment on the international stage and in domestic affairs. By mastering the critical juncture of the Second World War, Luxembourg contributed in its own way to the inauguration of the post-war order, which the historian Martin Conway has labelled “Western Europe’s democratic age” (Conway, 2020). Notes 1 Special thanks go to the editors for inviting me to contribute to this volume and in particular to Thomas Kolnberger and also to Karl Hampel, for their valuable advice and guidance. During occupation and exile in the Second World War, the spelling “Luxemburg” of the Grand Duchy’s name (versus “Luxembourg” for city, canton or province) was progressively abandoned in favour of the unified Latin spelling “Luxembourg”. 2 In a unique personal copy of his book The League of London, handwritten dedications from the members of Luxembourg’s GtEx for the author Hans Roger Madol alias Gerhard Salomon (Pollak, 2003) offer an additional glimpse at their differences in style and temper. Charlotte simply states the motto of her royal house, “Je maintiendrai” (also for her husband Félix and their son Jean). Three ministers write in Luxembourgish. Bech relies on an identarian line from a patriotic song. Dupong quotes the religious opening of the national anthem. Krier signs with a plea for freedom of thought and fight against slavery. Bodson is the only minister to use English, hoping “For a better international understanding”. In this context, no member of GtEx refers to the idea of a “small state”, see: www.chinese-heritage.com/index.php/天際畫舫-2/item/241-leavesof-historiettes-album-signed-by-allied-personages-of-wwii.html (Accessed September 20, 2022).

222 André Linden References Bech, J. & Heywood, V. (1946). Rights of small nations: lessons for the future from Luxemburg’s [sic] experience. In Rebuilding Europe: The Views of Allied Statesmen as Recorded in a Series of Interviews in the Sunday Times by Valentine Heywood, London (pp. 38–42). Cassel and Company Ltd. Cappoccia, G. & Kelemen, R. D. (2007). The study of critical junctures: theory, narrative, and counterfactuals in historical institutionalism. World Politics 59(3), 341–69. Conway, M. (2020). Western Europe’s Democratic Age 1945–1968. Princeton University Press. Corbett, J. & Veenendaal, W. (2017). The personalisation of democratic leadership? Evidence from small states. Social Alternatives 36(3), 31–6. Dunne, T.; Kurki, M. & Smith, S. (Eds.) (2021). International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (5th ed.). Oxford University Press. Fayot, B. (n.d.). Sozialismus in Luxemburg Band 2. Von 1940 bis zu Beginn der achtziger Jahre. Éditpress s.à.r.l. Goetzinger, G. (2010). ‘You have to put Luxembourg on the map’ (F. D. Roosevelt). Das Politische Wirken einer Landesfürstin im Exil. In H. Häntzschel & I. Hansen-Schaberg (Eds.), Politik—Parteiarbeit—Pazifismus in der Emigration: Frauen handeln (pp. 233– 49). Edition Text und Kritik. Grosbois, T. (1994). L’Idée européenne en temps de guerre dans le Benelux (1940–1944), Collection Pedasup N. 28. Academia-Erasme. Grosbois, T. (2022). Le gouvernement luxembourgeois en exil 1940–1944, Die luxemburgische Exilregierung 1940–1944. In Musée national de la Résistance et des Droits Humains (Ed.), Le Luxembourg et le Troisième Reich. Luxemburg und das Dritte Reich. Un état des lieux—Eine Bestandsaufnahme (pp. 164–82). Op der Lay. Haag, É. & Krier, É. (1987). La Grande-Duchesse et son gouvernement pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale. 1940. L’Année du dilemme. RTL Édition. Heisbourg, G. (1986, 1987, 1989, 1991). Le Gouvernement luxembourgeois en exil, 4 volumes: I 1940; II 1941; III 1942–1943; IV 1943–1944. Editions de l’Imprimerie Saint-Paul. International Transportworkers’ Federation ITF (Ed.) (1944). Luxemburg [sic]: The Small Country Which the Nazis Could Not Break. Rogers G. Porter. Jackson, H. R. (1990). Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge Studies in International Relations 12. Cambridge University Press. Kok, N. & Verbeek, B. (2018). Individual leadership and effective small state foreign policy: Luxembourg and the seat of the European institutions. Acta Politica 55, 67–85. Lijphart, A. (1971). Comparative politics and the comparative method. The American Political Science Review 65(3), 682–93. Linden, A. (2020). Democracy in superlatives. Propagandistic storytelling by Luxembourg’s government in exile. The London Moment. https://exilegov.hypotheses.org/2286 (accessed June 22, 2022). Linden, A. (2021a). Luxemburgs Exilregierung und die Entdeckung des Demokratiebegriffs. Capybarabooks & Ed. Forum. Linden, A. (2021b). Stationen einer Heimkehr. Zur “Visual History” der luxemburgischen Exilregierung anhand dreier professioneller Fotografien. Forum 418(Juni), 60–4. Pollak, O. B. (2003). The biography of a biographer: Hans Roger Madol (1903–1956). The Germanic Review 78(1), 74–85. Schmit, P. (2021). An Outstanding Luxembourg Diplomat: Hugues Le Gallais in the Turmoil of the Second World War. Editions Schortgen.

The rise of ‘democracy’ in Luxembourg’s government in exile 223 Weber, J. (2019). Großherzogin Marie Adelheid von Luxemburg: Eine politische Biographie (1912–1919). Éd. Guy Binsfeld. Winkler, A. M. (1979). The Politics of Propaganda. The Office of War Information 1942– 1945. Yale University Press. Wolff, A. (1950). Memories. A Mission in the United States of America, Luxemburg 1950. Privately printed for the author by Imprimerie Saint-Paul. Wunderlich, C. (2020). Dedicated to the good: norm entrepreneurs in international relations (Chapter 2). In Rogue States as Norm Entrepreneurs. Black Sheep or Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing? (pp. 15–56). Springer & Cham.

13 Between formal and informal democracy How the domestic politics of small states influence their security policies Wouter Veenendaal Small states face an overwhelming security dilemma. While scholars have claimed that the post-Cold War liberal world order works to the advantage of small states, Thucydides’s ancient adage that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must” clearly remains extremely pertinent in contemporary world politics. For a great variety of small states located in different world regions, among them Bahrain, Belize, Djibouti, Estonia, Moldova, and Timor-Leste, security concerns remain the central political priority. At the same time, since the Second World War virtually all small states have survived as independent entities, and their numbers have even significantly increased: since the start of the twentieth century the average size of states has seen a continuous decline (Lake & O’Mahony, 2004). At present, the average population of states is around five million, but more than 40 states have populations below one million and more than 20 states have populations below 250,000. In short, there are a lot of extremely small states, all of which face the acute question of how to guarantee their survival in an increasingly uncertain and unstable world. Aside from classic military threats, many of these states are also subject to new threats, among which are climate change, international crime, disruptive migration flows, or cyber-attacks (Koff & Kolnberger, 2024). Most studies of small-state security have concentrated on the international level (Keohane, 1969; Inbar & Sheffer, 1997; Archer et al., 2014; Baldersheim & Keating, 2015). Publications have for example focused on the military–security strategies of small states (Vaicekauskaite, 2017), various power-projection strategies (Long, 2017), or norm entrepreneurship as practised by small states (Ingebritsen, 2002). Although these analyses have unquestionably generated valuable insights, they do not pay much attention to the close connection between domestic politics and the development of security policies in small states. Although this nexus is arguably important in any given state, it is particularly salient in small states, where there is a close overlap—and constant interaction—between domestic political actors and those responsible for crafting foreign and security policies. The connection between domestic and foreign policies has been noted in some classic studies of small states (East, 1973; Elman, 1995) but has since then often remained underexplored. Studies focusing specifically on the nexus between domestic politics and security policies are almost completely absent. DOI: 10.4324/9781003356011-18

Between formal and informal democracy 225 Addressing this gap, I seek in the present chapter to understand how the domestic political characteristics and dynamics of small states influence their security policies. Statistics reveal that small states are more likely to be democracies than larger states, which already has a number of implications for security policies. However, as this chapter will underscore, the formal institutions of small states tell only part of the story. As a result of greater social homogeneity and the close connections between citizens and politicians in small communities, the politics of small states are decidedly informal in nature. Most of the politics occurs on the personal, face-to-face level, which means that formal institutional structures are often ignored or circumvented. While most small states are formally democratic, these dynamics mean that they are also plagued by personalistic politics and patron– client linkages, as well as a tendency towards power concentration and oligarchic politics at the level of political elites. The final section of this chapter will discuss how these domestic political dynamics feed into the security policies of small states. Democracy in small states Statistically speaking, small states are significantly more likely to have a democratic political regime than large states. This finding has been confirmed by various studies (Diamond & Tsalik, 1999; Ott, 2000; Srebrnik, 2004; Corbett & Veenendaal, 2018), even though some scholars have argued that the correlation can be explained by a confounding variable, such as the fact that many small states are also islands. While the overlap between smallness and islandness may indeed frustrate attempts to identify the key causal variable, statistics do clearly demonstrate that a smaller state-size correlates with a more democratic political regime. Table 13.1 classifies countries belonging to different population-size categories on the basis of their political regime, as determined by Freedom House (2021). If we take a first look Table 13.1 Population of states and regime types Not Free All countries

N 193 80

N 48 11