№ 3 - 2000
Tzygankov P.A.
Security: Cooperative or Corporative? (Critical Analysis of an International Politics Conception)

The author thoroughly examines two versions of cooperative security. One of them has been elaborated by the Brooking group (Washington), the other by authors who work in cooperation with the Marshall Center: R.Kennedy, M.Michalka and R.Kohen. Proceeding from his own comparative analysis, the author of the article relates the difference between the two versions to the fact that the first one reflects the ratoinalist trend within the liberal-idealistic paradigm, whereas the second reflects the revolutionaristic trend within it. The article points out essential defects of both versions. As for the version of the Marchall Center, its essential defects are: its exclusive character, its being confined mainly to the NATO, disregard of ethical and political consequences of unsanctioned resort to force. As for the Brooking group’s version, it underestimates threats of a non-military character and doesn’t pay due attention to internal conflicts. The author holds that these versions undermine the pax democratica theory underlying the cooperative security conception. He links possible achievement of really cooperative (and not corporative) security with, above all, respect of the existing international law and with the activity of international organizations, first of all the UN and OSCE, although they are, of course, in want of modernization. That will prove the right way to search after solution of the contradiction, ewer gaining in intensity, between the state sovereignty principle and the right of nations to self-determination