Redefining European Security: (Contemporary Issues in European Politics)

Redefining European Security is a collection of essays concerned with changing perspectives on peace and political stability in Europe since the end of the Cold War, in both the hard security terms of military capacity and readiness and in the realm of soft security concerns of economic stability and democratic reform. European governments, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are dealing with the fundamental problem of determining the very parameters of Europe, politically, economically, and institutionally. This book defines security as the efforts undertaken by national governments and multilateral institutions, beginning with the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, to continue to protect European populations from acts of war and politically-motivated violence in light of the dissolution of the imminent political threat posed to Western Europe by the Soviet Union, 1945-1991 Together these essays assess the progress made in Europe toward preventing conflict, as well as in ending conflict when it occurs, after the abrupt passing of a situation in which the source and nature of a conflict were highly predictable and the emergence of new circumstances in which potential security threats are multiple, variable, and difficult to measure. Contemporary Europe is a mixture of old and new, of arrested and accelerated history. Europe's governments and institutions have been only partly successful in meeting new security challenges, to a high degree because of failing unity and political will. Yesterday, Europe only just avoided perishing from imperial follies and frenzied ideologies, wrote the late Raymond Aron in 1976, she could perish tomorrow through historical abdication.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Crucial Problems of Security in Europe PART 1: THE OLD AND THE NEW CHAPTER 1 European Security Between the “Logic of Anarchy” and the “Logic of Community” CHAPTER 2The Revival of Geopolitics in Europe CHAPTER 3 The Economic Elements of the European Security Order CHAPTER 4 A Separate Peace? Economic Stabilization and Development and the New Fault Line of European Security CHAPTER 5 Transnational Threats and European Security PART 2: PRINCIPAL PLAYERS CHAPTER 6 France’s Security Policy since the End of the Cold War REDEFINING EUROPEAN SECURITY CHAPTER 7 France and the Organization of Security in Post–Cold War Europe CHAPTER 8 Redefining European Security: The Role of German Foreign Policy CHAPTER 9 Germany: Is Sound Diplomacy the Better Part of Security? CHAPTER 10 Russia and European Security CHAPTER 11 The Future of American Atlanticism PART 3: THE MULTILATERAL DIMENSION, HARD AND SOFT CHAAPTER 12 The Military Aspects of European Security CHAPTER 13 Between Ambition and Paralysis: The European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and the War in the Former Yugoslavia CHAPTER 14 The OSCE: Nonmilitary Dimensions of Cooperative Security in Europe Conclusion: Where Is Europe?