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Towards a Future European Peace Order? explores the prospects for an international peace process emerging in the aftermath of the Cold War. Inspired by the basically peaceful revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, fourteen contributors from both East and West present their views and visions for a continent undergoing rapid transformation on the eve of the twenty-first century. Their perspectives are based on analyses of the underlying political, historical, societal, psychological, strategic and economic preconditions for a European peace order

Peace by military deterrence based on pact systems should merely be understood as a 'gain in time' or as a 'respite' which must urgently be utilized in the search for political solutions and alternatives. The following thoughts may be seen as part of this inquiry. Their focus lies within the logical and consistent continuation of the basic idea of common security into the idea of a system of collective security as envisioned in the UN Charter and in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. The article discusses phases, individual steps and graded measures towards a realization of a regional 'European System of Collective Security', among others: defensive superiority, renunciation of destabilization, confidence-building measures, public support, unilateral disarmament, nuclear-weapon-free zones, relaxation of bloc-integration, neutralism, and finally institutionalization measures. A regional 'European system of Collective Security' is not only conceivable but also feasible in the sense of being 'realistic' because a number of the steps and measures necessary towards such a system can be put into effect immediately without dissolving the current pacts.

This study explores three generations of approaches to ending conflict and examines how, in the context of the failings of the Westphalian international system, their peacekeeping, mediation and negotiation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding approaches as well as UN peace operations, and asks via an empirical and theoretical analysis, what role such approaches have played and are playing in replicating an international system prone to intractable forms of conflict

This article examines the foreign policy of Prince Clemens Metternich of Austria, the chief architect of the Vienna Treaty of 1815, in the light of Enlightenment political thought. Metternich is commonly considered a reactionary and practitioner of callous balance-of-power diplomacy, and this article seeks to refute this conclusion. By examining Metternich's deeply held theoretical beliefs on the nature of the European state system, and above all his Kantian belief in progress and federalism, this essay concludes that Metternich pursued a reformist, and indeed idealistic, program in international politics which cannot be divorced from late Enlightenment philosophy. His Conference System, which was designed to regulate European politics in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, represented a novel experiment in European union which remains a pressing concern in the contemporary international system.