Geopolitics of a Divided Europe

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 531-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell A. Orenstein
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Russian President ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Two Sides

Europe is again a divided continent. When it comes to governance, political economy, or values, two contrasting poles have emerged: one Western, liberal, and democratic, another Eastern, statist, and autocratic. The dividing line between them has become ever sharper, threatening to separate Europe into two distinct worlds. This new divide in Europe arises from a clash between two geopolitical concepts for the continent: One is the Western project of a “Europe whole and free,” an enlarging zone of economic cooperation, political interdependency, and democratic values. The other is the Russian project of a “Eurasian Union” to rival the European Union. This article shows how these two sides of Europe have grown further apart in their conceptions of the European space, their values, governance, and economic models. It explores the reasons for the belated Western responses to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s program to divide Europe. The Russo-Georgian war was a turning point, but the West took a long time to recognize the full implications of Putin’s policy. The current confrontation between Russia and the West is not exactly like the Cold War. Russia’s position is weaker. And the battle will be fought out primarily with economic instruments. However, it is clear that this conflict places Central and Eastern Europe back on the front lines of a divided Europe, raising any number of demons from the past.

The Soviet Economic Challenge

Worldview ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
James Greene
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Capita Rate ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War

The speed with which economics has sped to the front of the Cold War over the past four years has caught the West-used to diplomatic maneuvering and “little wars”-off guard. We have, as yet, no adequate answer to what may well prove to be Communism's most devastating weapon-a Soviet economy producing at a greater per capita rate than the United States. No nation of free men ever rallied round a column of statistics, and yet, clearly, that is where the current battle between East and West has moved.The change, it now seems, was inevitable. When they continue for any period of time, “total” wars, both hot and cold, slip more and more from the grasp of those charged with diplomacy and come to rest upon the impersonal powers of clashing armies, armies either on the battlefields or in the factories.

1989

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Middell
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
German Unification ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Subsequent Integration

The essay argues that the story of 1989 can be told either as a narrow or a wide story. The narrow story focuses on the end of communism, the unification of Germany, and the subsequent integration of former communist states into the European Union. It works especially well for Central and Eastern Europe, although it also has implications for regimes in Africa that relied on Soviet support. However, it also requires considerable qualification, given the survival of communist regimes in China, Vietnam, Cuba, and elsewhere. In the second, wide version of the story, 1989 brings to visibility processes that had been at work for several decades, undermining the power blocs of the Cold War era and the territorially defined polities on which the system of international relations rested. In this story 1989 is of as much relevance to the West as to the former Eastern Bloc. The essay looks at both stories in relation to Gorbachev and perestroika, the US role in the end of the Cold War, German unification, the singing revolution in the Baltic, and 1989 in China and Cuba.

The Development of NATO's Nuclear Strategy

1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Heuser
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War

With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have come to a turning point, perhaps the most important turning point, in the short but complex history of nuclear strategy. The Cold War is now history, albeit the sort of history that we will be living with for a long time yet. It is therefore time to review the policies and strategies of the Cold War in a historical perspective. In this essay, it is NATO's nuclear strategy during the Cold War that will be the subject of such a review.2

scholarly journals Yalta Decisions: Was There an Alternative for the West?

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-83
Author(s):  
Vladimir PECHATNOV
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
The Real ◽  
Common Enemy ◽  
The Cold War

The concluding results of the anti-Hitler coalition meeting in Yalta have long been criticized in the United States by the antagonists of Franklin Roosevelt’s policy. In recent decades, they have raised renewed criticism in Central and Eastern Europe and across the West. Though, the decisions of Yalta Conference were fully determined by the balance of power and the real military situation on the war theatre by spring 1945. Each of the Allies pursued their own interests, but they appeared able to achieve a mutually acceptable compromise of these interests for the sake of final victory over common enemy. The Yalta Conference manifested the last upsurge of the Allied cooperation and in no way it served a prologue to the Cold War as it is now being asserted.

The history of a lesson: Versailles, Munich and the social construction of the past

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
First World

The article investigates the concept of lessons in IR. By means of a constructivist critique of the ‘lessons literature’, the article analyses one of the most important of IR lessons: that of Munich. Examining how the Munich lesson came about, the article shows the praxeological nature of lessons and emphasises the need to study the history of lessons rather than the lessons of history. This approach shows that Munich is the end point of a constitutive history that begins in the failure of the Versailles treaty to create a durable European order following the First World War. The Munich lesson is thus one element of the lesson of Versailles, which is a praxeology that defines how the West is to make peace, and against whom peace must be defended. The lesson of Versailles has been, at least in part, constitutive of the outbreak of the Cold War, and it continues to define the Western conception of what defines peace and security even in the ‘war against terrorism’.

scholarly journals The Sanctuary and the Glacis: France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Nuclear Weapons in the 1980s (Part 1)

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-179
Author(s):  
Frédéric Bozo
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
The West ◽  
International Standing ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Two Sides

This article explores efforts at bridging the nuclear gap between France and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) during the last decade of the Cold War. It does so by examining the various manifestations of this gap: the two sides’ relative international standing in light of France's possession of nuclear weapons and the FRG's decision to forswear them; the two countries’ different commitments to the military components of NATO; their shared but differing aspirations for a more autonomous Western Europe; and their differing outlooks on conventional and tactical nuclear military options, an issue on which they found it particularly hard to reconcile their views. Ultimately, they were not able to overcome the dilemmas of nuclear sharing, but progress was made during that crucial period in narrowing the differences between these two important countries whose bilateral relationship was essential for the West at large.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

Islam and the West: Coexistence or Clash?

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 363-374
Author(s):  
Noor Mohammad Osmani ◽  
Tawfique Al-Mubarak
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
The West ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Islamic Civilization ◽  
The Cold War

Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) claimed that there would be seven eight civilizations ruling over the world in the coming centuries, thus resulting a possible clash among them. The West faces the greatest challenge from the Islamic civilization, as he claimed. Beginning from the Cold-War, the Western civilization became dominant in reality over other cultures creating an invisible division between the West and the rest. The main purpose of this research is to examine the perceived clash between the Western and Islamic Civilization and the criteria that lead a civilization to precede others. The research would conduct a comprehensive review of available literatures from both Islamic and Western perspectives, analyze historical facts and data and provide a critical evaluation. This paper argues that there is no such a strong reason that should lead to any clash between the West and Islam; rather, there are many good reasons that may lead to a peaceful coexistence and cultural tolerance among civilizations

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