State-of-the-art research on security has alerted us that simplistic notions of security are insufficient in dealing with the multifaceted threats and vulnerabilities of our societies. That is, security is not a single-issue matter. Therefore, we should be ready to embrace the complexity of it, something that relational approaches to security can provide. For instance, subscribing to relational approaches makes it evident that the security of one region, or one actor or context cannot be approached in isolation.

The newly formed Central and Eastern European Security Hub (CEEShub) at Tallinn University fully subscribes to this position. Furthermore, the newly minted Hub challenges the status quo of security debates, which for the most part have been dominated by policymaking elites and experts in the West. The researchers at the Hub see a clear need to diversify and pluralize how we think and know security.

Firstly, this means that the experience and knowledge of small states in the periphery needs to be acknowledged and considered. Following the postcolonial moment in security analysis, it is evident that diverse perspectives need to be listened to, or otherwise we have powerful actors re-iterating only their experience and points of view on security. Thus, this is not a proposition unique to the CEE region but really anywhere outside the Western core.

Secondly, and very critically, within these small states, we cannot default to the outdated position of seeing security as confined to the military or protection of state's borders. We do not have the luxury to just prioritize state security, there are many security threats to people, societies and our environments and many other living creatures that are all so intimately connected that not being able to see this severely hampers our security analysis and our deeply relational lives. To offer sustainable responses to these simultaneous threats and vulnerabilities we need to rely on plural knowledge and experience. Very often grassroots actors –often on the frontline of shouldering different vulnerabilities – carry an in-depth understanding of these issues.

Lastly, diverse security issues need to be seen as interconnected. For example, the environmental aspects cannot be divorced from the physical security aspect of people and states, nor can we forget how we govern security. When we are invested in upholding a human rights-based international order in one region and context but at the same time dismissing it in another, then we are actually undermining the overall peace and security architecture of global politics that will potentially make us more insecure in the long term.

Listening to small states

The Hub aims to amplify the voices of small states in Central and Eastern Europe, especially regarding their security. As stated above, debates on security are often dominated by Western leaders from North America and Western Europe. However, their acontextual and realpolitik-focused analysis has proven deadly for Ukrainians. For example, we have seen how the warnings of CEE actors about Russia's true intentions have been ignored for decades and even stamped as paranoid.

This has changed after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This has created an opening for CEE voices to be heard on matters of security. This is a crucial moment that needs to be capitalised on to amplify the security concerns of small states even further. Small states' participation in security debates would democratise how we imagine a security architecture, as their needs and the needs of other similarly marginalized states would be rendered valuable. This is also stressed by Anders Wivel, professor for international relations at the University of Copenhagen and expert for small state studies:

"Too often the European security order is viewed only from 'above,' from the perspective of the great powers. The CEE Security Hub challenges this perspective by viewing the security order from 'below,' from the perspectives of the smaller states, in particular in Central and Eastern Europe and their civil societies."

Crucially, this is not just an important development for the CEE region but all small states outside the Western core. The need to highlight local expertise and experience in its diversity and take it seriously is something that needs to be embraced everywhere.

Valuing diverse security expertise

Linked to the point above, we also need to challenge who gets to contribute to security discourses and who gets to speak about security. The core goal of the Hub is to connect the question of who can speak security to questions about whose security matters and, as a direct result of this connection, think meaningfully about how we navigate local-global realities of who can speak security and whose security matters in global politics.

The need for this is also echoed by Maria Mälksoo, professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen:

"Who can speak about security, who gets heard and listened to are crucial questions politically and normatively. What we consider as attention-worthy or authoritative voices, what we hear and tune in to, matters to how we perceive and respond to the world. CEE Security Hub brings critical security perspectives to Estonia and disrupts the ingrained international knowledge generation patterns from various Central and East European margins."

In other words, it is important to make sure that not only policymaking elites are heard but also civil society actors, academics and people who are directly affected by different threats and insecurities. This diverse lens complicates what local and regional stand for and whose expertise is labelled as valuable.

Aware of the deep inequalities of how our security agendas get crafted and whose security needs and perspectives are taken seriously, it is our responsibility to take seriously diverse expertise and realize the ways in which our security is dependent on others' security.

Security as a radically relational notion

This point also has direct implications for foreign policy. If Estonia, for example, is truly interested in building a world where international law and a human rights-based world order matter, it needs to uphold these standards everywhere. It can also not default to a position where it lets the might of a handful of actors decide the fate of the many.

In this context, the CEEShub research team emphasizes the importance of linking one violent conflict with others and treating them similarly. For instance, prioritizing Ukraine's security in our context is understandable, but at the same time, not prioritizing or understanding how Ukraine's security is connected to  similarly vulnerable contexts will devalue security there, which eventually will devalue security in the context of Ukraine.

Similarly, we need to seriously reflect on why the current global peace governance approaches the insecurities of diverse places differently. For instance, it is clear that Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine and Sudan have not received similar attention from the global peace architecture compared to Ukraine. The present security order is failing many people and without this recognition, we continue to offer security to a select few and leave large swathes of the world in the realm of perpetual insecurity.

This is also highlighted by Élise Féron, senior researcher at Tampere Peace Research Institute:

"As the world is experiencing multiple devastating wars, it is more than ever necessary to challenge conventional understandings of security that fail to offer sustainable solutions to the challenges and difficulties the concerned populations face. By centering relational, critical, feminist and decolonial approaches to security, the CEE Security Hub is taking a major step in that direction".

Conclusion

The success of our security analysis depends on how well we manage to include all three of these aspects in our analysis. In this sense, to tackle the present polycrisis in the world, we need to be ready to do a critical relational analysis of security as described above. This type of analysis will lead to a more uncomfortable, but necessary complexity that lays bare the ineffectiveness of single-issue interventions. Seeing the world in relational terms, this approach allows us to better understand our security crises and diverse vulnerabilities because: we are able to hold multiple aspects of security together, understand the connections between these multiple aspects and issues, and this way we are better equipped to envision a more peaceful world.

CEEShub (Central and Eastern European Security Hub) is a research center at Tallinn University, with the aim to increase the capacity for evidence-informed policymaking in the field of security by taking advantage of the perspectives of Central and Eastern European countries. The hub is financed by the EU Horizon fund and, under the leadership of Tallinn University (with the help of Tampere University and University of Copenhagen), will organize events involving researchers, practitioners and representatives of non-governmental organizations.

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