Kavaliūnaitė, Sigita

Presented paper suggests an instrumental approach to soft security and aims to reveal capacity of soft security instruments in terms of contribution to both security and sustainable development in the region which is addressed by Eastern Dimension of European Neighbourhood Policy and which includes Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Russian Federation (which is neither part of EaP nor among 16 EU partners addressed by the European Neighbourhood Policy) is also included in the overview as an important factor of influence in respect of regional security and relations between EaP states and EU. Referring to the main ideas of researchers and policy makers using different approaches to soft security as a phenomenon, the authors of the paper define soft security instruments as purposely organised social practices which rely mainly on sharing, congruence and development of values and competences of initiators and participants of security governance. Focus on the effectiveness of sharing, congruence and development of values and competences of initiators and participants of the EU policies and related joint projects as well as relevant combinations of soft instruments with economic and normative hard means is seen as a possibility to gradually increase level of regional security and transfer elements leading to sustainable development in this region.

This article deals with EU challenge of designing with soft security policy that effectively achieves political and economic goals in an environment of increasing complexity and interoperability. Outlining economic aspects of soft security policy intervention designed to influence behaviour within scope of international relations is supposed to contribute to the analytical background for policy makers. The research outlines three economic evaluations affecting motivation and choices of policy makers: (1) costs of anticipated damage of possible disruption, (2) differential costs related to alternative security policy instruments and (3) differential costs related to security and economic policies combinations. A context sensitive approach to soft security policy instruments application is recommended, in which they are evaluated with specific regard to the interactional system in which they will be applied.

The aim of an article is to reveal opinions of politicians representing European Union (EU) member states concerning the concepts of “soft security” and “soft power” as well as underlying assumptions and principles in respect of the relationship between those notions and EU policy and management instruments used for increasing international influence and strengthening stability. The research, based on discourse analysis, has shown large variety of descriptions of social realities “captured” by those concepts as well as terminology in national languages used for translation of those terms that have been “imported” from Anglo-Saxon cultural-linguistic tradition. There is an overall shared understanding that the concepts of “soft security” and “soft power” reflect certain forms and patterns of social practices which exclude military dimension. In majority cases notions of “soft security” and “soft power” refer to two different sets of social realities with one of those sets being considered as generator of harmful effects and the second being presented as combination of instruments supposed to countervail, diminish or eliminate those harmful effects. “Soft power” and “soft security” related instruments are actively promoted and expanded by EU programmes and projects outside its borders. The scope and content of those social practises is very broad, while evaluation of their significance and role as policy and management tools reflects dualistic approach.