Articles
European Affairs
| 04 July 2010
During the last months, a strengthening in European public dialogue, an intense cultivation of views and recommendations in reference to the future of security in Europe and East Mediterranean have emerged. In most European countries this pubic dialogue is in progress something of course that does not occur in Greece and Cyprus all though– due to Turkish threat – it should be just the opposite. : Athens and Nicosia had to have undertaken initiatives, both diplomatic and political, to their active participation in associated matters with the new framework under formation (or, new architecture as called otherwise) for common European security in the world of tomorrow.
The US, Britain and countries of Eastern Europe integrated in NATO, also form a first block expressing old, Atlantic order and trend, as to collective security. Although President OBAMA attempts a certain review of American security strategy, calling all nuclear forces of the planet to common management of nuclear arsenals, despite the fact that the US seem to accept, even slowly, that the world walks to more multipolarity, their understanding for European collective security seems to remain static and paternalistic. This was shown in many crises: in Georgia (2008); in the last land operation of Israel in Gaza, which, the government of Prague back then, characterized as “defensive” in its EU presidency statements (that is on account of the all other European partners).
| 23 June 2010
The Common Base and Northern Cooperation
Already during the Cold War the Nordic states formed a security community, but high politics was avoided on the common agenda and crystallized in the concept ‘Nordic balance’. It softened the East-West confrontation in Europe, but together with the sense of community gave also a good start to develop European security architecture. In the north the eastern border was quickly transcended by non-military security. Some of first institutional expressions were the Barents Euro-Arctic Region and the Council of the Baltic Sea States, both of which involved also Russia. The security community expanded to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Finland and Sweden joined the European Union in 1995 while the Baltic States joined both the EU and NATO in 2004. Also, new institutions preceded the inauguration of the policy of Northern Dimension in the European Union.