The Baltic Sea Region: practising security at the overlap of the European and the post-Soviet society of states

Abstract

The chapter ‘The Baltic Sea Region: Practicing Security at the Overlap of the European and the Post-Soviet Society of States’ puts forward an interpretative framework for understanding the political dynamics currently on display in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). It does so from the perspective of the English School of International Relations, approaching the BSR as a particular sub-set of relations, a borderland, in the wider interplay between the European and the post-Soviet regional international society. Given Russia’s presence as the ‘Other within’, events occurring in the wider constellation, such as the conflict in Ukraine, affect also Baltic Sea regionalism and the security constellation in the area. With ambiguity over Russia’s normative outlook resolved, the patterns of regional differentiation cutting across the BSR become manifest. Cooperative frameworks in the area have come under strain and patterns of securitisation increasingly diverge along the regional divide. Drawing on the conceptual apparatus of the English School, the chapter suggests understanding security practice in the BSR before the background of the interplay of two regional international societies, the European and the post-Soviet regional international society.