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This book analyses the evolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its policies from the Cold War until today. NATO's future cannot be fully understood without analysing its past: the origins of its structure and goals, and their transformation over time. By exploring NATO's geopolitical and military role at crucial points throughout history, this edited volume considers the challenges and threats which have faced the alliance, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. It covers highly-debated and unresolved issues such as budgetary burden-sharing and the military transatlantic gap, the enlargement process, and the role of Asia in influencing NATO's policies. Combining a historical approach with international perspectives, this book is an interdisciplinary read that will appeal to scholars of diplomatic history and international relations.Chapters 1 and 2 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

When the Cold War ended, permanent peace based on close interdependence and strong institutions appeared within reach in Europe. What had been achieved by the mid-1990s fell short of this internationalist vision. The question raised in this article is to what extent the realization of the vision was inhibited by nationalist concerns often ascribed to governments and peoples alike. The conclusion is that nationalist concerns not only hindered but also helped to promote change in the direction advocated by internationalists. `Nationalist internationalism' may be as significant as `deliberate internationalism' in world politics.

"Cold War history has emphasized the division of Europe into two warring camps with separate ideologies and little in common. This volume presents an alternative perspective by suggesting that there were transnational networks bridging the gap and connecting like-minded people on both sides of the divide. Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were institutions, organizations, and individuals who brought people from the East and the West together, joined by shared professions, ideas, and sometimes even through marriage. The volume aims at proving that the post-WWII histories of Western and Eastern Europe were entangled by looking at cases involving France, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and others"--Provided by publisher

This paper discusses security and development issues in Europe's recent history and immediate future. The issue is how the security system affects the pattern of economic development and, conversely, the long-run effects of development on security. To understand this relationship a longer historical perspective is needed. Too much attention has been given to the EC `1992 project' compared to the more unplanned `integration' or political homogenization of greater Europe. Three distinct phases in terms of security orders are distinguished: the Hundred Years' Peace (1815-1914), the Cold War security system (1949-89) and an emerging system called the New European Security Order. We are at present entering a turbulent transition period in which several paths are open. A number of risk factors are identified and analysed. The way the security order is established and immediate security crises managed will influence the possibilities of developing a stable peace order, defined as a structure free from major contradictions and low conflict propensity. A European Peace Order, as distinct from a European Security Order, would presuppose a global peace order, the crucial feature of which will be regionalization on various levels of the world system in accordance with the model of `benign mercantilism', including Europe itself, where subregionalism may emerge as a new form of balance of power politics as an alternative to Pax Germanica.

Constantine P. Danopoulos is professor of political science, San Jose State University. The author to thank Mary Ann Notton for her invaluable help.

As a peculiar bureaucracy whose actions and legislation influence European countries on a daily basis and in countless ways, the EU has gradually become a site within which the political and cultural content of Europe and its limits are constantly defined and reworked. In this chapter, we firstly discuss geopolitical dynamics in Europe with regard to the post-Cold War enlargement process of the EU in particular. Secondly, we focus on the explicit territorial construction of the EU itself in what we call the territory work of the EU. In order to authenticate this concept, the third section discusses the spatial imaginaries and practices of so-called European spatial planning. We introduce European spatial planning as disclosing the ways in which EU governance has gradually emerged as a set of spatial practices and strategies, and modes of spatial calculation that operate on something called EU territory. ; Peer reviewed