International Studies Reivew Vol. 13 No.1 June 2012

Pages: 43-65

Since its establishment in 2001, The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) has gradually increased its influence and
importance while becoming an independent venue for the
Central Asian states to manage regional and national security.
The SCO focuses on a new type of (non-traditional) security,
and its diverse membership differentiates it from other security
institutions. In particular, and uniquely, the SCO has impacted
the national security identities of its members. The processes
examined in this paper are not easily reconciled with traditional
state-centric security paradigms or the dominant strategic
discourse. Thus, recourse must be had to analytical tools provided
by social constructivism and, to a lesser extent, English
School rationalism. The paper proposes a revised model of
socialization with acculturation as a central mechanism and
applies it to the security identity formulation of four Central
Asian Republics in order to explain the shifts in the security
discourses at both the national and regional levels.