This pathbreaking study brings together international experts to consider security issues and the experience and potential for cooperation in the subregions of the former Soviet Union. Appendices to the volume provide maps, a guide to acronyms, profiles of existing subregional organizations, and a chronology of cooperative agreements signed in the region since 1991.

This pathbreaking study brings together international experts to consider security issues and the experience and potential for cooperation in the subregions of the former Soviet Union. Appendices to the volume provide maps, a guide to acronyms, profiles of existing subregional organizations, and a chronology of cooperative agreements signed in the region since 1991.

This book explores post-Soviet Eurasian regional security governance, as embedded in the military alliance of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). CSTO was established in 2002 and consists of six post-Soviet countries: Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Moving studies of regional security governance beyond the so-called Eurocentrism trend expressed, inter alia, via the focus on Western military alliance, such as NATO, this book examines CSTO as a new, post-Soviet form of regional security cooperation by looking at the reasons and drivers behind the establishment of the post-Soviet Eurasian security governance; the organization's institutional design; the military capabilities of its member states; the degree of the members' integration within the alliance; the cooperation pattern adopted by CSTO members; as well as the effect and effectiveness of this military alliance. Igor Davidzon is an independent researcher in international relations. He previously completed post-doctoral research in the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign and Security Policy at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Patterns of Conventional War fighting under the Nuclear Umbrella (2020).

General answers are hard to imagine for the many puzzling questions that are raised by Soviet relations with the world in the early years of the Cold War. Why was Moscow more frightened by the Marshall Plan than the Truman Doctrine? Why would the Soviet Union abandon its closest socialist ally, Yugoslavia, just when the Cold War was getting under way? How could Khrushchev's de-Stalinized domestic and foreign policies at first cause a warming of relations with China, and then lead to the loss of its most important strategic ally? What can explain Stalin's failure to ally with the leaders of the decolonizing world against imperialism and Khrushchev's enthusiastic embrace of these leaders as anti-imperialist at a time of the first detente of the Cold War? It would seem that only idiosyncratic explanations could be offered for these seemingly incoherent policy outcomes. Or, at best, they could be explained by the personalities of Stalin and Khrushchev as leaders. The latter, although plausible, is incorrect. In fact, the most Stalinist of Soviet leaders, the secret police chief and sociopath, Lavrentii Beria, was the most enthusiastic proponent of de-Stalinized foreign and domestic policies after Stalin's death in March 1953. Ted Hopf argues, instead, that it was Soviet identity that explains these anomalies. During Stalin's rule, a discourse of danger prevailed in Soviet society, where any deviations from the idealized version of the New Soviet Man, were understood as threatening the very survival of the Soviet project itself. But the discourse of danger did not go unchallenged. Even under the rule of Stalin, Soviet society understood a socialist Soviet Union as a more secure, diverse, and socially democratic place. This discourse of difference, with its broader conception of what the socialist project meant, and who could contribute to it, was empowered after Stalin's death, first by Beria, then by Malenkov, and then by Khrushchev, and the rest of the post-Stalin Soviet leadership. This discourse of difference allowed for the de-Stalinization of Eastern Europe, with the consequent revolts in Poland and Hungary, a rapprochement with Tito's Yugoslavia, and an initial warming of relations with China. But it also sowed the seeds of the split with China, as the latter moved in the very Stalinist direction at home just rejected by Moscow. And, contrary to conventional and scholarly wisdom, a moderation of authoritarianism at home, a product of the discourse of difference, did not lead to a moderation of Soviet foreign policy abroad. Instead, it led to the opening of an entirely new, and bloody, front in the decolonizing world. In sum, this book argues for paying attention to how societies understand themselves, even in the most repressive of regimes. Who knows, their ideas about national identity, might come to power sometime, as was the case in Iran in 1979, and throughout the Arab world today.

Regionalism has regained momentum in the post-Cold War era. New economic groupings continue to spring up across the globe, while older regional organizations have strengthened their institutional bases and broadened their scope. Explaining the reinvigoration of regionalism requires comparative analyses that not only highlight the commonalities that characterize various regional experiments but also account for the differential outcomes and divergent trajectories such projects exhibit. This collection of seminal articles on regionalism advances theoretical concepts that can stimulate useful comparisons, along with scholarly surveys of important instances of regionalism in the contemporary world. Besides classic studies of the European Union, the volume includes authoritative overviews and case studies of regionalist projects in East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Central Eurasia. An introductory essay situates these articles in the context of the five decade-long research program on regional integration theory.

Legal Aspects of the Regional Integration Processes in the Post-Soviet Area is the first ever comprehensive overview of regional integration processes in the territory of the former USSR introducing the core concepts of regional integration theory and presenting a solid foundation of factual information regarding all the regional integration agreements (RIAs) operating in the Eurasian landmass and consisting of the former Soviet republics. The book analyzes the legal nature and background of the regional integration in the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Russian-Belarusian Union, the Single Economic Space, the Eurasian Economic Community and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. It also deals with the RIAs created outside of the Russian control in the format of GUAM and among Central Asian countries. Finally, the book contains conclusive remarks attempting to assess the possibility of the creation of an Eurasian Union.

The editors have succeeded in bringing together an excellent mix of leading scholars and practitioners. No book on the WTO has had this wide a scope before or covered the legal framework, economic and political issues, current and would-be countries and a outlook to the future like these three volumes do. 3000 pages, 80 chapters in 3 volumes cover a very interdiscplinary field that touches upon law, economics and politics.