This chapter explains the dynamics of a special relationship and its transformation into a pluralistic security community. The first section of this chapter reveals the double-edged effects of a special relationship. A special relationship produces substantial cooperation and substantial conflicts between the two states involved. This section explains that the intertwined three sources of conflict in a special relationship — power competition between the two states involved; their drives to assert the superiority of their respective national identity over that of their culturally similar counterpart; and the mismatch of expectation between them — breed and enhance the negative identifications between the two states involved, which lead them to understand each other in egoistic terms. In other words, the two states share conflictual intersubjective understandings, despite having special ties with each other.

The second section of this chapter explains that a special relationship constitutes a security regime. A security regime refers to the war avoidance norms around which expectations of the states involved converge. Each of the states observes the norms in the belief that others will reciprocate. This section reveals that the war avoidance norms in a special relationship that come with the emergence of the relationship are produced by the two sources of closeness of the two states involved — common identities and shared strategic interests. As both states in a special relationship observe their shared war avoidance norms, the substantial conflicts between them, therefore, will not easily turn into violent ones. Finally, this section points out that a special relationship — as a security regime — serves as the foundation for the two states to transform into a pluralistic security community. Yet, one element needs to be in place, without which the transformation could not take place.

The chapter's final section reveals that the presence of power imbalance in a special relationship is necessary if it is to transform into a pluralistic security community. It points out that two states in a special relationship start to share an understanding of collective-self, namely, they constitute a pluralistic security community, when one of them has become overwhelmingly powerful.

THE DOUBLE-EDGED EFFECTS OF A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

As explained in Chapter 2, two states’ common identities give birth to their similar strategic understandings.