DOI: 10.7256/2454-0617.2015.1.13572

Аннотация: Ever since the Peace of Westphalia, Europe maintained the inner balance of powers by keeping its core section soft. Peripheral powers like England, France, Denmark, (Sweden and Poland being later replaced by) Prussia, the Ottomans, Habsburgs and Russia have pressed and preserved the center of continental Europe as their own playground. At the same time, they kept extending their possessions overseas or, like Russia and the Ottomans, over the land corridors deeper into Asian and MENA proper. Once Royal Italy and Imperial Germany had appeared, the geographic core ‘hardened’ and for the first time started to politico-militarily press onto peripheries, including the two European mega destructions, known as the two World Wars. Therefore, this new geopolitical reality caused a big security dilemma lasting from the 1814 Vienna congress up to Potsdam conference of 1945, being re-actualized again with the Berlin Wall destruction: How many Germanies and Italies should Europe have to preserve its inner balance and peace? At the time of Vienna Congress, there were nearly a dozen of Italophone states and over three dozens of Germanophone entities – 34 western German states + 4 free cities (Kleinstaaterei), Austria and Prussia. The post-WWII Potsdam conference concludes with only three Germanophone (+ Lichtenstein + Switzerland) and two Italophone states (+ Vatican). Than, 25 years ago, we concluded that one of Germanies was far too much to care to the future. Thus, it disappeared from the map overnight, and joined the NATO and EU – without any accession talks – instantly. West of Berlin, the usual line of narrative claims that the European 9/11 was an event of the bad socio-economic model being taken over by the superior one – just an epilogue of pure ideological reckoning. Consequently – the narrative goes on – the west (German) taxpayers have taken the burden. East of Berlin, people will remind you clearly that the German reunification was actually a unilateral takeover, an Anschluss, which has been paid by the bloody dissolutions affecting in several waves two of the three demolished multinational Slavic state communities. A process of brutal erosions that still goes on, as we see it in Ukraine today.

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0641.2014.3.10747

Аннотация: Some 20 years ago the genocide of worst kind was taking place just one hour flight from Brussels. That time, assassination of different kind from the one of 1914 has enveloped Sarajevo. While massive European ignorance turned Bosnia (and the Union of different peoples – Yugoslavia) into a years-long slaughterhouse, the Maastricht dream was unifying the Westphalian world of the Old continent. Today, two decades later, Atlantic Europe is a political powerhouse (with two of three European nuclear powers, and two of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, P-5), Central Europe is an economic powerhouse, Russophone Europe is an energy powerhouse, Scandinavian Europe is a bit of all that, and Eastern Europe is none of it. No wonder that as soon as serious external or inner security challenges emerge, the compounding parts of the true, historic Europe are resurfacing again. Formerly in Iraq (with the exception of France) and now with Libya, Sudan, Mali and Syria; Central Europe is hesitant to act, Atlantic Europe is eager, Scandinavian Europe is absent, Eastern Europe is bandwagoning, and Russophone Europe is opposing. Did Europe change (after its own 11/9), or it only became more itself?

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0641.2014.2.11313

Аннотация: There is a claim currently circulating the European Union (EU), both cynical and misleading: ‘multiculturalism is dead in Europe’. No wonder, as the conglomerate of nation-states/EU has silently handed over one of its most important debates – that of European identity – to the left and right wing parties, recently followed by several selective and contra-productive foreign policy actions. Europe’s domestic cohesion, its fundamental realignment, as well as the overall public standing and credibility within its strategic neighborhood, lies in the reinvigoration of its everything but institutions transformative powers – stipulated in the Barcelona process of the European Neighborhood Policy as well as in the Euro-Med partnership (OSCE). There is a claim currently circulating around the European Union (EU), both cynical and misleading: ‘multiculturalism is dead in Europe’. No wonder, as the conglomerate of nation-states/EU has silently handed over one of its most important debates – that of European identity – to the left and right wing parties, recently followed by the several selective and counter-productive foreign policy actions.

DOI: 10.7256/2306-4226.2013.4.9399

Аннотация: The EU of social welfare or of generational warfare, the continent of debt-bound economies or of knowledge-based community? Is the predatory generation in power? Why the only organized counter-narrative comes as a lukewarm Mouse Mickey – between Anonymous and Pirate party, from the Wiki-leaky to Snowden-picky. Europe’s redemption lies in the re-affirmation of the Lisbon Strategy of 2000 (and of Göteborg 2001), a ten-year development plan that focused on innovation, mobility and education, social, economic and environmental renewal. Otherwise a generational warfare will join class and ethnic conflicts as a major dividing line of the EU society in decline. Back in the good old days of the Lisbon Strategy (when the Union was proclaimed to be the most competitive, knowledge-based economy of the world), the Prodi and Barroso Commissions have been both repeatedly stressing that: “at present, some of our world trading partners compete with primary resources, which we in the EU/Europe do not have. Some compete with cheap labor, which we do not want. Some compete on the back of their environment, which we cannot accept…” What has happened in the meantime?