This work was supported by the Centre for European Security Studies, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands, within the framework of the European Fellowship Programme. Opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not imply the expression of any position on the part of the Programme.

What effect do the recent developments within the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) have on relations within the Baltic Sea region? No part of Europe has suffered from the old patterns of geo-politics more than the Baltic states. These countries lost their security, their independence and their prosperity. And no part of Europe will benefit more if European integration is successful in overcoming these old patterns and replacing them with new habits of sub-regional co-operation in the Baltic region. European integration has a rich history when it comes to military affairs, and hardly any history when it comes to sub-regional affairs.

The first integration successes in the military sector immediately followed the Second World War. In 1948, the Treaty of Brussels was signed, in 1949 the North Atlantic Organisation was founded, and the Western European Union was created in 1954. Also after the recent end of the Cold War - or someone could call it the First Cold World War - these organisations reacted assertively by inviting the former member states of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation to establish closer ties - to be on varying conditions. The North Atlantic Co-operation Council was initiated in 1991, and the Partnership for Peace agreements stem from 1994.

Many players in the regional affairs scene consider the Baltics to be a single union, a good ensemble, a trio, but this view also has its opponents, who claim the very opposite: the Baltic democracies are quite dissimilar and should in no case be considered as a whole.

To-day, these opposing points of view are strictly dependent upon what the current interest has to be focused on: those stressing the differences between the states proceed from both the situation of the social-economic reforms and the domestic perceptions of these reforms; those considering Baltic unity to be a predominant attribute are usually looking at it from the wings of security performance.

Comparative analysis of the dynamics and possible inter-penetration of the both models is a fast-changing field and is to be discussed step by step, period by period.

1989-91 was the preparatory stage for the reforms; the Soviet economic reform was launched in these years. The Baltic states were the area most active in the reforms, since they possessed a significant social readiness for change (and also a rather good knowledge of the rules of market economy). The economic reform grew rapidly into a social-political reform, and the Baltics set themselves the goal of restoring national independence.

The period 1992-94 saw the design and planning of the new economic system in the Baltic states. This was the period when the states involved became less necessary to each other. The Baltic states each had their own trading partners and it was consequently quite natural that the trade links between these countries became relatively less important.

Chief among the processes which the Baltic states were engaged in during the period 1995-97 were the infrastructural and institutional reforms. The basic rules of civil and commercial law were established, while the domestic financial systems developed. On the other hand, the Baltic states increasingly began to consider each other competitors in attracting trades and investments in their infrastructures across the Baltic rim (Kokk, 1997).

As an inevitable result, in November 1997, when the Lithuanian and Latvian premiers were lobbing hard in a bid to persuade their Nordic counterparts to support the simultaneous start of the EU entry talks with the Baltics, Mr Mart Siimann, declared that "one is better than none".

Differences between the states of the region will always exist. It is probably logical and infallible that the Baltics will only be able to conclude certain international actions jointly - they are only of interest to the forces shaping regional politics "together rather than apart". Of course, generally speaking, the shared wish of the EU and Euro-Atlantic Alliance memberships has been having a positive effect on the relations between the three Baltic states.

To avoid the dangers of a security vacuum, both Vilnius and Tallinn and Riga are seeking security guarantees from the West and building their own armed forces by using conscription. In order to show the outside world their readiness for memberships, co-operation between these states has increased considerably.

In the defence area - as a school for future integration - partnership has expanded, regular meetings are held and close contacts between the Baltic Defence Ministries and the defence staffs exist. Additionally, the Baltic Home Guards are improving their co-operation, and plans are being made for the naval Baltic co-operation. In 1997, the Balts welcomed the joint Norwegian-Danish initiative to co-ordinate military aid to the Baltic states as a valuable step towards better assessment and targeting of assistance.

The joint Baltic peace-keeping battalion, BaltBat, based in Latvia has been set-up with the help of the Nordic countries. (Within the constraints of her resources, Finland will participate in the planning and developing of a second Baltic peace-keeping battalion.)

In the next few years, several other joint initiatives should be up and running. BaltNet, the joint Lithuanian-Latvian-Estonian air-space surveillance system, located in the Lithuanian Republic, will be operational, as will BaltRon, the joint Baltic mine-sweeping squadron, to be based in Estonia, in which Germany plays the lead role. Plans are also being discussed for the creation of the Baltic Military Academy in Tartu. At the same time, both Tallinn and Riga strongly support the activities of the Lithuanian-Polish battalion, LitPolBat, which will be fully operational by the end of the 1998 autumn, as a vivid and splendid example of constructive sub-regional defence co-operation.

At the level of "Europe of the Regions", however, new dilemma - will the sub-regional groupings be able to fulfil a security role? - arose. None of the groupings was set-up expressly for defence security purposes, or was given a security competence in its basic "constitution". None of them has instituted regular meetings of Defence Ministers, leaders of the General Staff and defence officials. None of the groupings has even considered becoming a mutually guaranteed defence community.

This has been a relatively rational choice, for objectively viewed, to-day's sub-regional groupings are both too small and too large to assume any of the classical security functions. They are too small in the sense that they cannot embrace the full range of states, including Western nuclear powers, needed for credible and balanced hard defence guarantees. They are too large for purposes of day-to-day, practical military co-operation (or real-time mediation). Joint military units, notably for peace-keeping, have been formed between various pairs and trios of their members, but not between all members of, for example, the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) (Bailes, 1998).

Additionally, the attention is to be paid to the EU's attitude towards the formation, development and to security role of all six sub-regional groupings were set-up between 1989 and 1993. Sub-regionalisation implies making use of the resources in the near-by environment to improve one's relative weight in the constellations of an integrated Europe (Jervell et al, 1992; Joenniemi and Waever, 1992).

(Except the Central European Free Trade Area and the Visegrad Group all sub-regional blocks have one or more EU members in their midst, EU members that do not belong to the centre of the EU at the moment. With the enlargement of the Union really taking place these sub-regional groupings are supposed to develop into one of the regions of "Europe of the Regions", increasing the relative weight of the EU member-states involved in these groupings.)

Brussels does not discourage the development of sub-regionalisation at all, on the contrary it supports sub-regional initiatives. Sub-regionalisation is the result of the coherent realisation that "together we are stronger than alone", and the EU considers it to be a perfect part of the stable pre-accession strategy. The Union expresses its keen interest by its full membership of the CBSS and the Council of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region (BEAR), and its observer status in the Central European Initiative and the Council of the Black Sea Economic Co-operation.

Coming back to the intra-Baltic relationships, it is clear that after nine years of social-economic reforms nobody could tell exactly what the future of the Baltic states' co-operation will be like. Someone could see "the emergence of conflicts between the states over the use of natural resources in border areas": the recently settled Estonian-Latvian disagreement on fishing areas in the Gulf of Riga and the on-going Lithuanian-Latvian dispute over the presumed undersea oil resources (Kokk, 1997).

In this light, it was not expected that the Baltic states would simultaneously join the EU, the Estonian Republic had the best chances on the eve of the assessment of the EC's recommendations on which countries will be invited to early membership talks. But with the acceptance of one of the Baltic states of this organisation it seems most likely that the others would follow in due course.

In the field of the defensive security collaboration, more attention was paid to the sub-regional co-operative efforts after it has become transparent to the Baltics that the path to Brussels and, especially, the long corridors of the Euro-Atlantic Alliance's head-quarters is still difficult and long to walk on. It is not so much considered to be an alternative to wider pan-European integration, but more as a means to reach their goals faster and, at the same time, increase security in the near-by environment. Does all this imply that the sub-regional groupings are not able to fulfil a security role?

No, certainly not. The sub-regional groupings have not tried to perform any harder functions of security yet, but they have proved their usefulness concerning the existential, soft, and explicit security functions, according to A.J.K. Bailes's classification (1998):

• existential: this is the contribution any sub-regional group makes by its very existence, through providing a forum for dialogue, the deepening of a sense of mutual understanding, and the establishment of channels for emergency contact;
• soft security: this arises from activities like economic and functional co-operation and cultural and educational contacts; the common interests and stability these create can provide a basis for the better handling of disputes among members, mediation, emergency management, and multi-dimensional problem solving;
• explicit: this implies discussion in the grouping of security questions, including such themes as peace-keeping (that often means democracy-keeping), crisis management, and qualitative arms control; also the formulation of common positions on security issues (and co-ordination) combating terrorism, drugs, organised crime, and nuclear smuggling can be considered as an explicit security;
• hard security: this would include mutual military assistance, quantitative arms control measures, military co-ordination, and the establishment and monitoring of de-nuclearised - de-militarised zones (no existing group has yet seen fit to tackle these issues at sub-regional level).

In the Barents, the Council of the BEAR has two working groups, on Economic Co-operation, and on the Northern Sea Route, plus a Task Force on Environmental Protection.

In the CBSS, there are currently three permanent working groups under the auspices of the Committee of Senior Officials, namely on Assistance to Democratic Institutions, on Nuclear and Radiation Safety, and on Economic Co-operation. With the establishment of a Task Force on Organised Crime last year, the Baltic Sea region has started to take upon it also an explicit security role.

Within the EU area, the military have lost their traditional role in inter-state relations, their legitimacy and social foundation once the threat perceptions on which defensive security blocks and organisations are founded disappear, when de-securitisation has occurred.

At present, the security development in the Baltic Sea region and, with some reservations, in the countries of Northern Europe is dependent on choices made internally, but they are being made as a reaction to the factors that are external in regard to state and society. External is used here as opposite to domestic, or local, being a conceptual phenomenon, it emerges and comes from outside the society which is being analysed.

The Cold War was based on a dangerous military balance. In the late 1980s, the political development in Europe caused a crumbling of this military-based security order. Political co-operation and social-economic integration became the corner-stones on which to build defensive security. With the ending of Europe's division, new opportunities for partnership in the field of sub-regional security have opened-up. Both international and inter-regional institutions and relations between them have become a central field in the sub-regional security policy, one in which also disputes and vying for prestige manifest themselves along-side a tendency to co-operate. The 54 member-states (plus the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have set themselves the goal of a common security space without any of the new or former dividing lines. Co-operation has to cover all risks, dangers and threats to security. The security concerns of member-states must be given consideration on a basis of equitableness.

At the same time, the Russian attitude with regard to the decision-making processes concerning progressive issues of regional security in Europe still seems to be conditioned by two interdependent factors: a disinclination to pursue a course of action on the basis of principles that do not reflect, in the Kremlin's view, the new European security order, a desire to avoid an excessively intrusive involvement of the OSCE - through its missions in a number of countries emerged from the dis-integration of the ex-Soviet Union - in matters regarded by Russia as primarily of its own concern.

In the Baltics, the missions are now underway in Latvia and Estonia. While, the Russian attitude towards these missions in its immediate vicinity has evolved, and OSCE efforts have often been welcomed as an useful political - and sometimes also financial - contribution by the international community to help to resolve difficult issues, especially in the human dimension.

In Moscow's point of view, the traditional norm-setting function of the OSCE should be up-dated and then this would allow for an up-dating of the basic principles contained in the Helsinki Final Act and could offer the possibility for monitoring their implementation not only by individual states, but also by other institutions, through the co-ordinating framework that would be set in place.

This co-ordinating framework would be represented by the so-called Platform for European Security, a concept initially developed by the countries of the EU: its implementation would impose upon other organisations the obligation to consider at all times whether their programmes and activities are consistent with the OSCE principle of indivisible security.

In December 1996, the Lisbon Summit confirmed the OSCE's central role in defining the common principles that guide the internal and external behaviour of states and the actions of the international institutions and organisations to which they belong. Those principles include, above all:

• that the right of states to choose their own security arrangements is the starting point for common security;
• the OSCE principles aspire to prevent the emergence of spheres of interest;
• security arrangements must take the legitimate security interests of other states into account.

While the Summit only resulted in a generic decision on continuing work on the Security Model, the Copenhagen Ministerial Council of December 1997 produced agreement on a set of guidelines for a politically binding OSCE Document-Charter for European Security, to be adopted at the next Summit of Heads of State and Government.

The development of the OSCE is taking place under a pressure that is being added to by both the question of the second wave of NATO enlargement, with its attendant competition for influence, and a variety of regional crises and security problems. The tasks of the Organisation are primarily conflict prevention, soft crisis management, and rehabilitation operations. The OSCE has created strict norms and instruments of quiet diplomacy to protect minority rights and prevent conflicts.

Practical forms for co-operation between security institutions are being sought in the post-Lisbon work concerning the creation of a common security model for Europe. The comprehensiveness of its membership makes the OSCE a particularly well-equipped forum for promoting co-operation between organisations.

The European security structure is being developed in a way that makes organisations mutually complementary and reinforcing. Indeed, none may have competence over the others. In this light, the sub-regional initiatives help to (re-)establish a sense of community in a region. A growth of the number of intra- and inter-regional initiatives focusing on the Baltic Sea region could and should lead to an augmentation of the extent people identify themselves with that region. The work area of all these organisations could be divided into three specific areas, namely:

• security and confidence-building measures;
• economic, scientific, and technological co-operation and environmental security; and
• human rights, culture, ethno-cultural dialogue, education, societal security, and free flow of people and of information.

If during the Cold War a majority of the existed sub-regional undertakings concentrated on environmental impact assessment and protection of the Baltic Sea environment, then the term Baltic Sea Region itself was created with the establishment of the CBSS, making it the first alliance in Northern Europe after the break-down of communism.

The impulse to sub-regional institutionalisation was in large part an integrative one, and the Western founders of the Council were interested in consolidating the sovereignty of the Baltic states, stabilising relations with the new Russia, and providing a co-operative setting for the development of the Kaliningrad Oblast.

(The current geographical entity of Kaliningrad was defined at the Potsdam Summit Conference following the unconditional surrender of Germany in World War II. The break-up of the Soviet Union has not challenged this outcome of a Communiqué of the Conference dated August 2, 1945, and Kaliningrad has not become back Koenigsberg in 1991. The new independence of Belarus and the Lithuanian Republic turned the Kaliningrad Oblast into an isolated administrative exclave of the Russian Federation located between Lithuania and Poland, and bordering on the Baltic Sea. Additionally, as both theoretical and empirical dilemmas, a comparison between the traditional special status of the local autonomy of the Aaland Islands of Finland and the Kaliningrad Oblast separated geographically from the large land-mass of the Federation has to be mentioned here.)

As far as I mentioned above, the CBSS that seems to be the perfect framework for mutual responsiveness does not include hard security issues and is not expected to include those in the near-by future.

In the near-by future, hard security guarantees as a high policy theme could not figure on the agenda of the Council, although it is more than evident that many of the low-policy activities are security relevant.

The CBSS is "a typical post-modern delineation of political space in the sense that it is not conducive to issues such as security guarantees, threat perceptions or border incidents" (Joenniemi, 1995).