New security challenges in postcommunist Europe. Securing Europe’s east

Book abstract:

Following the collapse of the communist order in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991, the nature of security issues in the region fundamentally changed from the threat of nuclear war to new challenges such as border disputes, ethnic conflicts, mass migration and transnational organised crime. This book is based on a conference entitled 'Ten years after 1989: the changing nature of security relations in Central and Eastern Europe' held at the University of Birmingham in November 1999 that explored the nature of the new security challenges facing postcommunist Europe at the dawn of the 21st Century.

The book opens by examining the nature of security in postcommunist Europe, analysing the changes to security challenges and in particular, the ethnic conflicts that broke out in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The second paper moves on to see how the military organisation that played a huge role in international intervention in the Yugoslav conflicts - NATO - is responding to the possibility of several new members from the former Communist bloc and questions the balance of power in Europe in the future. This is followed by a discussion on the effects that NATO enlargement will have on the countries in Eastern Europe that are not set to join with the suggestion that this will create new forms of exclusion and effectively shift the old Iron Curtain frontier eastwards. The following three papers are al national in their focus: the first examines German security policy towards Eastern Europe, the second examines the position of the Ukraine ''between the two poles of power' and the third looks at Russia's defence diplomacy in Europe. The final papers of the book examine some of the new types of security challenges in postcommunist Europe such as 'soft security' issues like crime and corruption and economic security as well as Europe's role in conflict management and the promotion of democracy. The concluding paper brings together many of the issues addressed earlier in the book, identifying the key questions facing the contemporary European security order.

Derek Averre is a research fellow at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. Andrew Cottey holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European Political Integration at University College, Cork and is a lecturer in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford.