11. Security Threats and Risks in South Caucasus: Perceptions From the Western Black Sea
- Author:
- Plamen Pantev
- Publication Date:
- 06-2005
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
- Abstract:
- Perception1 of security threats is a dynamic process determined by the outside world and the perceiver’s culture, attitudes, expectations, needs, experience and other attributes. Each interpreter, depending on her or his respective analytic point of view, subjectively defines the facts in the security realm. Values, beliefs and cognitions constitute the bulk of any perception, including about security issues. A value is a preference for one state of reality over another. A belief is a conviction that a description of reality is true, proven or known. And cognition is information derived from the environment that can be substantiated through physical evidence or perceptual observation. Cognitions are key elements in establishing perceptual systems and in changing those systems. The threat perceptual systems of the Western Black Sea countries – Bulgaria and Romania, are strongly influenced by their values, beliefs and cognitions as sovereign nations with specific geopolitical positions and interests. They are also shaped in the context of their membership in NATO, as future EU members and as US allies on whose territories would be stationed American military bases.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Geopolitics, and Risk
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Eurasia, South Caucasus, and Black Sea