ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to conceptualize, map and explain the security challenges of small states today. Small states have traditionally played a marginal role in the construction and maintenance of international security orders. In the nineteenth century, the Congress of Vienna recognized the special role of the United Kingdom, Prussia, Austria, France and Russia, and for almost a century the great powers set the rules of the game by meeting 'in concert on a regular basis in order to discuss questions of concern, and to draw up agreements and treaties'. A transformed geopolitical environment after the Cold War, 9/11 and the Iraq war have fundamentally altered the security challenges of small states in Europe. Alan Chong begins by analysing general traditions of statehood in Asia and shows that, historically, merit and authority depended on factors quite unrelated to size. The Nordic and Baltic nations are all living with an asymmetric, historically threatening and still ambiguous neighbour, namely Russia.
