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Pacification Without Collective Identification: Russia and the Transatlantic Security Community in the Post-Cold War Era

Department of Political Science, McGill University, vincent.pouliot{at}mcgill.ca

Does the emergence of a security community require a collective identity? This constitutive relationship has been hypothesized by prominent scholars from Deutsch to Adler & Barnett. Yet the Russian—Atlantic case shows that collective identification is not a necessary condition for a nascent security community to emerge. In less than two decades, the relationship between Russia and the transatlantic community has quickly transformed from a deep-seated rivalry structured by the specter of mutual assured destruction to a partnership in which the possibility of military confrontation has undeniably receded. Although bones of contention and power struggles continue to abound, empirical indicators attest to the emergence of a nascent Russian—Atlantic security community. But survey data also show that Russian and Western peoples do not meaningfully identify with one another. While the lack of we-ness certainly helps explain the striking instability of the post-Cold War rapprochement between Russia and the transatlantic community, it also recalls the need for constructivists to pay attention to other variables than mutual representations in the study of international peace. As a way forward, the article advocates a practice turn in the study of security communities: peace exists as a social fact when diplomacy becomes the self-evident practice among security elites to solve interstate disputes.

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