ABSTRACT
The previous chapter specifically focused upon security threats that emerge from within the region, making the intra-regional focus an essential aspect of the custodianship role. Security threats need not only emanate from within the region though. The focus on the salience of the regional system does not imply that RSCs are somehow bracketed off from the global system level. In fact, security concerns will enter the RSC from contiguous regions, through the penetration of great and superpowers and through the increasing depth of interdependence that is associated with the process of globalization. Thus, there is a role to be played by particularly influential regional players in addressing such external security threats. This is the essence of the protection role. The designation of regional protector implies that a regional power assumes the burden of defending and managing the relationship between the security order and external actors and processes. Such a defensive role can include such activities as deflecting a power or problematic issue from the region in an active capacity or through traditional preventative deterrence. It can also involve the provision of an intermediary function through which the regional system interacts with and/or filters the inflow of external threats. As with the other two regional roles, protection implies a unique responsibility that the regional power may adopt. It also offers the regional power a number of individual benefits, including increased influence, deflection of regional concerns away from the regional power itself and burden sharing for an issue or actor that the regional power has already individually securitized.
