ABSTRACT
Security communities are basically inward-looking constructs. The concept of security community describes the absence or the peaceful management of conflict among a group of states. It does not tell us how such a community may relate to external pressures, such as shifts in balances of power or changes affecting the norm of sovereignty, at the global level. States within a security community rule out war against each other, but they may not do so with respect to states outside of the grouping. As noted in Chapter 2, security communities may develop collective security and collective defence provisions. These provisions may be construed as important indicators of the identity-building process in security communities, but those in a nascent stage need not have such features. Similarly, the norms through which members of a security community relate to each other may not be the same as those which govern their relationships with non-members. For example, if we regard the EU as a security community, it does not mean that the EU has abandoned war as an instrument vis-à-vis nonEU members. Similarly, while ASEAN members had come to view the use of force against each other as a remote possibility by the 1980s, they had not developed such expectations vis-à-vis other countries in Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam.
