The grant has enabled participation in the Joint International Conference “Security Challenges in an Evolving World,” co-organized by the International Studies Association (ISA) and International Peace Science Society on June 27-29, 2013, in Budapest, Hungary. Dr. Molchanov presented a paper “The changing balance of traditional and non-traditional security risks in the postcommunist region,” which he co-authored together with Professor Andrei Korobkov of Middle Tennessee State University, USA.

The paper addressed the transnational and global challenges to the traditional understanding of security and the new patterns of the state-society articulation that emerge in response to these challenges. It analyzed new security risks, which emerge both beneath and beyond the realm traditionally reserved for the national security and foreign policies. The changing balance of traditional and non-traditional security risks most heavily impacts societies that still recover from the shocks of the postcommunist transition. These states’ inadequate capacities to counter new risks make hybrid regimes move further away from democracy. The paper begins with an expose that compares traditional security risks of geopolitical, military and economic nature to the new ones, including the uncontrollable migration, human trafficking, the emergence of non-state and quasi-state actors in foreign policy and security, the privatization of war and law enforcement functions, terrorism, weapons’ and drug trafficking. Ex-totalitarian states’ attempts to deal with new risks often result in failures. This drives the regionalization and the “banding” of several look-alike regimes in Eurasia. In the second section, we address the question of collective security provision on the basis of regional integration organizations (RIOs) before moving further to address specific policy failures, such as the lack of strategy, poor tasks prioritization and slow adaptation to changing environment. We use Russia as a principal case study, but also note similar developments elsewhere. The last section of the paper examines how securitization influences postcommunist societies. We note the diminishing role of the NGOs, the rise of nationalism and xenophobia and the radicalization of the mainstream political parties. In conclusion, we argue that it is necessary to reverse these trends. New security risks can only be addressed on the basis of a pluralistic society and a viable, functioning democracy. The alternatives are bleak, and no amount of infatuation with the so-called Beijing consensus of a securitized state may substitute for the neglect of the societal factors that crucially determine both the input and the output sides of the new security balance.