Waever: Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community

Waever, O., 1998. Insecurity, security and asecurity in the West European non-war community. In Security Communities. Cambridge University Press.

“Western Europe is a security community. In contrast to the expectations of most contemporary theorists of security communities, this has not been achieved by erecting common security structures or institutions, but primarily through a process of ‘desecuritization’, a progressive marginalization of mutual security concerns in favor of other issues” (69).

Waever claims that Europe went through a period of unsecurity to over security to desecuritization and then a potential situation in the 90s of resecuritization. Security communities, a concept that stems from Deutsch, are non-war communities. Thus, there can be security tensions that do not escalate to the level of war, but the community will not be tempted to militarize disputes. Waever also posits that other issues have become painted as security issues (economic, environmental, etc.), and that this has the possibility to raise tensions, but that these will not result in war, but may be discussed in terms of security.

Waever explores the Scandinavian security community, one that he claims would not be contested by many scholars as being a security community (Europe is likely to be contested, and the US-Canada relationship is likely not to be contested, though it is substantively different). He finds that this community has not always been, and has resulted from a long and bloody history between groups. However, this community emerged over 100 years ago and this can be identified by the peaceful resolution of tensions that would have been previously only solved militarily.

Waever then explores the emergence of the European security community from WWII to the late 90s.