Suchergebnisse

Nowadays, three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – form the most solid core in the camp of European Atlanticists with a strong emphasis on the U.S. as the main security guarantee. Due to their geographical location, they have always been particularly acutely aware of the tension between East and West. With the beginning of Russia's special military operation on the territory of Ukraine, the topic of a potential Russian threat has become predominant in their foreign policy discourse. The article is devoted to the analysis of the evolution of the Baltic countries' approaches to national and regional security and the main factors influencing the formation of these approaches, in particular, the relationship between Atlanticism and Europeanism. Particular attention is paid to the existing dichotomy of the Baltic countries in the field of European security, the catalyst of which was the European Union's course on strategic autonomy. From the very beginning, the idea of strategic autonomy of the European Union did not arouse much enthusiasm in these countries because of the fear of breaking the strategic link between Europe and the United States. The course of the EU leadership towards strategic autonomy has violated the established picture of the world in the Baltic States: NATO, under the strong leadership of the United States, should provide collective defense against a potential Russian threat, and the EU – economic well-being and prosperity. The European Union was assigned a subsidiary and far from the main role in the field of security. However, being part of the EU, the Baltic States could no longer completely ignore the integration projects of Brussels in the field of European defense. If until February 24, 2022, the security policy of the Baltic countries was distinguished by balancing between the United States/NATO and the European Union, then the Ukrainian conflict has once again tipped the scales in favor of the Atlantic choice as the main guarantor of security.

European security today faces new challenges that are not directly related to military force. Among them, first of all, is the threat of terrorism, which has both internal and external dimensions. The article is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of terrorism in the European Union on the example of Italy. The author analyses four types of this threat posed by terrorists according to their political motivation: separatism, left- and right-wing domestic political terrorism, and Islamist terrorism. Italian law distinguishes between the concepts of terrorism, radicalism and subversion. According to the 2015 law, terrorism is defined as conduct that, by its nature or context, may cause serious harm to a country or an international organization. It is aimed at intimidating the population or forcing the State or international organizations to commit or refuse to commit any action. The evolution of the phenomenon of terrorism in Italy is of particular interest because it reflects both general and specific features of the terrorist threat in Europe. From the late 1960s to the 1970s and until the beginning of the 1980s, Italian society had been facing the most brutal manifestations of terrorism. During this period, terrorism evolved from ideological far-right extremism to ultra-left revolutionary extremism, which turns to violence against the State and its servants, calling for a communist transformation of society. By the end of the 1980s, the terrorist threat in Italy had been significantly reduced. The decline in terrorist activity in the 1980s is explained, in addition to the increased effectiveness of the intelligence services and the police, by the decline in political activity in Italy after the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. The author draws attention to one of the paradoxes of Islamist terrorism in Italy. Despite the fact that Italy bears the main flow of migration waves that can carry the threat of terrorism to Europe, the country has so far been spared from the large-scale threat of such kind. The example of Italy is also important because today the country's leadership is the most effective in counterterrorism in comparison with other EU states.

The article analyzes the complex interface between the phenomenon of migration and the security of the European Union and its member-states. The migration crisis in Europe, which began with the Arab Spring in 2015 and continues to this day, is truly one of the most important existential challenges for the EU. This crisis is overlapped with other fundamental problems facing the European Union, contributing to the securitization of migration and asylum issues. In the absence of an effective EU strategy in this direction, there remains the danger of radicalization of European societies and, therefore, a threat to the entire integrationist project. The process of globalization has supplemented some of the traditional functions of the state, first of all, such as protection of its territory and political independence, with new functions that are associated with the obligation to ensure economic independence, cultural identity and social stability. Securitization of migration usually has several dimensions: socio-economic problems (unemployment, the growth of the black economy, the crisis of the welfare state and the deterioration of the urban environment); the growth of securitarism in the EU member-states (when migrants are viewed as a threat to the national identity and demographic equilibrium of the host society); and political challenges as a result of the nexus between external and internal security caused by the terrorist threat. In addition to traditional challenges, there emerged a fairly new phenomenon – instrumentalization of the migration problem, namely the use of migrants by the third countries as a means of pressure on the EU member states in order to achieve certain political or economic goals. The new Pact on Migration and Asylum introduces a number of undeniably positive provisions for the European Union. Nevertheless, the document has been criticized by the EU individual countries, as well as by public and human rights organizations. This situation can be explained by the fact that in modern Europe, security interests and values are in a moral conflict with each other, which presents the main challenge to the future of the European project.

History does not allow for subjunctive mood but politics do allow. As Russia‟s special military operation is underway in Ukraine growing into a major, deadly conflict with unpredictable consequences, it is worthwhile to ask a question: could this conflict be prevented if the Minsk agreements were implemented? The 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements were aimed at securing a ceasefire between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists in southeastern Ukraine (Donbass). The rebels from Donetsk and Lugansk drew their courage from the "Crimea precedent" – Moscow‟s incorporation of the Crimea "on the basis of voluntary self-determination and historical commonness". The Minsk agreements were a product of the Normandy format – a platform for senior diplomats from France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine, created in June 2014 with the aim of finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The agreements ended large-scale fighting, but not creeping violence that posed the main obstacle for the political settlement of the conflict. The article provides an analysis of the Minsk agreements, including their strengths and weaknesses. Special attention is paid to the EU‟s political goals and instruments for the peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian conflict. The article also seeks to explain why the Europeans have not been able to take on a more visible and effective role in the implementation of their proclaimed goals.

Received 12.02.2021. The article is devoted to the analysis of the fundamental reasons that led to the crisis in relations between the Russian Federation and the European Union as well as relations between Russia and the West at large. The main attention is paid to both objective changes in international relations and subjective factors in the policies of Russia and the EU, that which predetermined the vector of evolution of their interaction. The article proposes a layer-by-layer analysis of these reasons, leading from a superficial perception of problems in depth to the origins of the current crisis. This method of analysis can be called the "matryoshka method", when the main problem lies in the very depths of the phenomenon under study. In other words, the article proposes a "countdown" from the current crisis to the postbipolar start of cooperation between Russia and the European Union. Why did it all go wrong when it all started so well? And, finally, who is to blame for the failed partnership, and is it possible to get out of this deadlock? These and other questions are at the center of this article. The Ukraine conflict is widely perceived by the European Union and the West as whole as a turning point in their relations with the Russian Federation and the main reason of the deepest divide between them. However, this conflict is not so much the reason but rather the consequence of more profound contradictions between Russia and the West. These contradictions are revolving around the mutual misperceptions about the acceptable foundation of the post-bipolar European security and rivalry in the CIS space. The EU and NATO enlargement strategies presented by both institutions as two complementary processes raised Russia's concerns about their intentions in the CIS region. But these contradictions did not appear from "the middle of nowhere". They resulted from the uneven end of the bipolarity and mistakes made by the West and its institutions as well as miscalculations of the new Russian leadership. In the very centre of this "matryoshka doll" one can find the arguments explaining Russia's historic convolutions on its way to Europe. Acknowledgements. The article was prepared within the project "Post-Crisis World Order: Challenges and Technologies, Competition and Cooperation" supported by the grant from Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation program for research projects in priority areas of scientific and technological development (Agreement № 075-15-2020-783).

The Euro-Atlantic relations after the end of the Cold war have been strongly influenced by the impact of three interrelated crises: the existential crisis of NATO, the world economic and financial crisis, and the crisis in the Russia-West relations. The end of bipolarity has changed the threat environment and revealed how different alliance members formulate their threat perception and foreign policy interests. Europe stopped to be the US foreign policy priority. The US pivot to Asia has raised European concerns about American commitments to collective defense. The removal of the threat of a global conflict resulted in the EU initiatives aimed at promoting integration in the field of common security and defense policy (CSDP). Even though the US has officially welcomed a stronger European pillar in NATO, it has become concerned about new approaches that could divide transatlantic partnership and take resources away from military cooperation. At the same time the unilateralist preferences of the Bush administration generated deep political divisions between the United States and the European Union. The world economic and financial crisis contributed to a dangerous gulf between American and European defense spending. The US has complained about the tendency of the alliance's European members to skimp on defense spending and take advantage of America's security shield to free ride. In the absence of a clear external threat NATO tried to draft new missions, which were found in NATO's expansion to the post-Communist space and Alliance's out of area operations. But these new missions could not answer the main question about NATO's post-bipolar identity. Moreover, the Kosovo operation of NATO in 1999 fueled Russia's concerns about NATO's intentions in the post-Soviet space. The creeping crisis in the Russia-West relations resulted in the Caucasus and Ukrainian conflicts that provided kind of glue to transatlantic relations but did not return them to the old pattern. There can be several representing possible futures lying ahead. But under any scenario EU will be faced with a necessity to shoulder more of the burden of their own security.

The article analyses post-crisis methods and models of European integration that are at the center of political debate in the EU leading member-states. The current debate about the future of European integration is often portrayed as a choice between the federalist and intergovernmental approaches. The reality is far more complex, since European integration at its late stage is a combination of all integration methods. Nowadays it is more expedient to speak about flexible integration, or "variable geometry" that constitutes the most realistic approach to the post-crisis EU. The euro crisis led to a massive transfer of power to the EU level, and made political union a genuine possibility. However, although pro-Europeans now agree that political union is necessary to save the euro, they often have in mind very different things. Three models – asymmetric integration, full-fledged federation and two-speed Europe – are being discussed by the EU analysts and policy-makers. Whatever the future model, it is clear that it will require finding a balance between the greater flexibility and the rules that would allow EU to claim legitimacy for its actions.

The focal point of the article is the future of the European Union that has been challenged by the deepest systemic crisis in its history. The world economic and financial crisis became merely a catalyst for those problems that had existed earlier and had not been addressed properly by the EU leadership. The author argues that the EU crisis can be overcome only by new common efforts of its member-states and new integrationist projects.

In the article, the evolution of Europeanism and Atlanticism in Italy's foreign policy is examined. While assessing the formation of the European focus area in Italy's foreign policy after the collapse of bipolarity, it must be acknowledged that this process which had a distinct framework that no Italian government had gone beyond, was yet under a firm pressure of two approaches. In particular, the struggle between the adherents of the European idea, or a strong united Europe, and the Eurosceptics who strived to strengthen Italy's international positions by means of straddling not only between the EU and the U.S., but also between the EU, the U.S and Russia, determined the essence of the country's foreign policy in particular temporal rounds.