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: 10.7256/2454-0617.2014.1.13520

Аннотация: Speculations over the alleged bipolar world of tomorrow (the so-called G-2, China vs. the US), should not be an Asian dilemma. It is primarily a concern of the West that, after all, overheated China in the first place with its (outsourced business) investments. Hence, despite a distortive noise about the possible future G-2 world, the central security problem of Asia remains the same: an absence of any pan-continental multilateral setting on the world’s largest continent. The Korean peninsula like no other Asian theater pays a huge prize because of it. Why is it so? Asia’s success story? Well, it might be easier than it seems: Neither Europe nor Asia has any alternative. The difference is that Europe well knows there is no alternative – and therefore is multilateral. Asia thinks it has an alternative – and therefore is strikingly bilateral, while stubbornly residing enveloped in economic egoisms. No wonder that Europe is/will be able to manage its decline, while Asia is (still) unable to capitalize its successes. Asia – and particularly its economically most (but not yet politico-militarily) advanced region, East Asia – clearly does not accept any more the lead of the post-industrial and post-Christian Europe, but is not ready for the post-West world. How to draw the line between the recent and still unsettled EU/EURO crisis and By contrasting and comparing genesis of multilateral security structures in Europe with those currently existing in Asia, we can easily remark the following: Prevailing security structures in Asia are bilateral and mostly asymmetric, while Europe enjoys multilateral, balanced and symmetric setups (American and African continents too). These partial settings are more instruments of containment than of engagement. Containment will never result in the integration through cooperation. On contrary, it will trigger a confrontation which feeds the antagonisms and preserves alienation on the stage. Therefore, irrespective to the impressive economic growth, no Asian century will emerge with deeply entrenched divisions on the continent, where the socio-political currents of the Korean peninsula are powerful daily reminder that the creation of such a pan-Asian institution is an urgent must.