Abstract
Since the late 1980s, a belt of new subregional groups has emerged in Europe, stretching from the Barents area in the far north to the Black Sea in the south. The Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC), the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS), the Visegrad group, the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), the Central European Initiative (CEI) and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) — though diverse in membership and character — are an important, new dimension of Europe’s post-Cold War international relations. Compared to the larger European security organizations — the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Western European Union (WEU) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) — however, these subregional groups have received relatively little attention and are often perceived as weak. They lack the economic power of the EU, the military power of NATO or the normative, standard-setting role of the pan-European OSCE. The diversity of their members, their largely consensus based decision-making and their sometimes limited agendas constrain the areas in which they can act.
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1. Introduction
Charter of the United Nations, Chapter VIII Regional Arrangements, Appendix B, in A. Roberts and B. Kingsbury, Eds., United Nations, Divided World: The UN’s Roles in International Relations, 2nd ed., (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) p. 514.
Other analysts have used the term subregional to describe similar groups outside Europe, such as the Association of South-East Asian Nations, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Organization of East Caribbean States, the Southern African Development Community and the South Pacific Forum. See W. T. Tow, Subregional Security Cooperation in the Third World, (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990)
G. Cawthra, ‘Subregional Security: The Southern African Development Community’, Security Dialogue, 28 (2) (1997) 207–18.
The UN also seems to have accepted this logic. When UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali convened a meeting with the heads of regional organizations in 1994, the European organizations invited included the CSCE, the EU, NATO and the WEU, but none of what are referred to in this book as subregional groups. See A. K. Henrikson, ‘The United Nations and Regional Organizations: “King Links” of a “Global Chain”’, Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, 7 (1) (1996) 61.
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© 1999 Andrew Cottey
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Cottey, A. (1999). Introduction. In: Cottey, A. (eds) Subregional Cooperation in the New Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27194-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27194-8_1
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