National Security Dilemma Of Russia From A Perspective Of Security Complex

Throughout the history of international relations, European and the world political Landscape have suffered major conflicts several times which triggered by competitions of great powers in the Eastern Europe.Crisis in Eastern Europe has had led some issues which included World War I, World War II and the recently Cold War.Nowadays, Eastern Europe country, Ukraine, with a vital geopolitical location has been in a place with fierce competition between Russia and the US-led West.Some observers even fear a new Cold War has come to Europe.A close look indicates asurprisingphenomenon:the most powerful country of Eastern Europe, Russia, with extremely strong force is rarely attainable real security.Eastern Europeis "Defensive Shield" or "Buffer zone", when Russia is powerful. However, others may take Eastern Europe as springboard to attack Russia when it is weak.Objectively speaking, for the consideration of power and State security, Eastern European countries have been suffered aggression,repression and control of Russia in the history.However, imperialism-domination cannot last for long in any forms in the era of the concept of nation-state has firmly built. It had been proved by destruction and disintegration ofthe Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. For the sake of the state security, Russia has to manipulate Eastern European countries with cost of significant consumption of resources. Eventually, it leads a slowdown of development and harms their fundamental ability to protect national security. It is hardly to change, once the negative image become a historical symbol. Russia and Eastern European countries has been short of trust and reliability to each other, which brings negative impact to the regional security cooperation.For both of Russia and Eastern Europe, due to a huge gap between them in terms of strength of economy and military, the biggest security dilemma is that Eastern Europe is full of doubts and insecurities to Russia, and tends to attempt to exclude Russia from the regional security regime; however, blindly exclusion of Russia does not mean security is attainable to Eastern Europe.Butacceptance of Russia may lead regional imbalance of power, which may dominate even overlay the region. It is inevitable and indispensable to introduce an external power to balance Russia. The history has indicated that commitment made by Western Europe (France and Britain) is not reliable and they cannotcompete with Russia and German at the same time. So the United States, a non-European country, becomes a major aidto Eastern Europe.The US has more concentrated on involvement in European international politics from World War Ⅰ. Since World War Ⅱ, the US attempted to manipulate the Western Europe and dominatesecurity agenda of EU though NATO.Two powerful security complexes have been existed in Europe since the disintegration of the Soviet Union-the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States, organized by Russia) and the EU (OSCE, especially NATO has a significant effect on European security, however, in this article they are defined as securityregime rather than a security complex. Please refer to Chapter Three and conclusion for details). Even if there are divergences, an extensive Cooperation between Russia and the EU has been conducted (included Security field) since the end of Cold War. However, in the event of limitation of "hard" security provided by the EU, the US-led NATO leads security agenda of the EU in facts. There is an overlap of memberships of the EU and NATO as well. Russia originally welcomes and encourages to the expansion of the EU and to achieve the full integration of security between itself with the EU. The intervention of the US and NATO, however, makes the cooperation complicated and difficult.NATO expand with its objective needs indeed, but also with an intention of squeezing Russian strategic space. New conflicts of interests have been triggered, since contradictions which is previously suppressed highlight again after the Cold War. Ukraine Crisis reveals the inherent fragility of Eastern Europe as a result of hysteresis of nations’ development. Ukraine has a well industrial and agricultural base, during the Soviet Union, Ukraine is in the second after Russia in terms of aggregate national strength. Today, however, because of the civil war in Ukraine caused by internal political differences, it gradually slides into the so-called "weak state." Due to Ukrainian domestic unrest, it results a destabilizing in the region. But also it results the outside powers get involved in Eastern Europe and intensified the original security competition.Russia intends to join in the most effective security regime in Europe-NATO after the Cold War. Its intention is not to be trusted by West however, Russia is treated as "Other" to some extent and still with potential threats. Although the Partnership for Peace and NATO-Russia Permanent Council has been included in the institutional framework of the regime, but because Russia does not have a veto to essential decisions of NATO, in fact it is still excluded from the core process reconstructionof European security. NATO enlargement is at stake of Russian fundamental security interests, Russia has been repeatedly deceived, and thus tend to go beyond regimes when it is necessary, take tough unilateral measures. For examples, merger of Crimea and supporting of aggressive movements of separatism in Ukraine’s eastern.Because of the actions,especially in Crimea, relationship between Russia and the West has been seriously deteriorated. In the event of absence of effect of NATO, perhaps, it is conceivable that the CIS and the EU highly likely become a super complex which is able to cover Europe entirely. However, prospects of European security cooperation is much bleaker now. Even if Russia has some alternatives on strategies of security, but it may face difficulties when use them. Therefore, a constantchallenge of securityfrom Eastern Europe is expected to be faced by Russia.