James H. Wyllie - European Security in the New Political Environment

First published 1997 by Addison Wesley Longman Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge

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Copyright 1997, Taylor & Francis.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-24403-0 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wyllie, James H.

European security in the new political environment: an analysis

of the relationships between national interests, international

institutions and the great powers in post cold war European security

arrangements/james H. Wyllie

p. cm

Includes bibliographical refemces and index.

ISBN 0-582-24402-1 (hardcover). ISBN 0-582-24403-X (pbk.)

1. National securityEurope. 2. EuropePolitics and

government1989- I. Title.

UA646.W9597 1997

355.03304dc20

96-35238

CIP

Set by 8 in 10/12 pt Times

The breaching of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War belong to a previous historical era. They now seem a long time ago, and there is some impatience and frustration that a new, stable security regime for Europe is not in place. The experience of the Cold War, at least in the West, has led to expectations of cohesive, coherent multilateral behaviour which will deliver a new set of stable security arrangements to replace the old. The perceptions of the Cold War created images of cooperative and quasi-integrative international institutions where common interests resided and where the concepts and practice of national security and national interest were relegated.

This book argues that the Cold War was an anomalous period in European history, and that many of the images and expectations created by the Cold War are misleading. The division of Europe into two roughly balanced political and military blocs was an accident of history and produced, for a generation, a crude strategic stability which was quite abnormal for the European condition. It is much more normal for European security conditions to be characterised by fluid regional balances of power, occasional power vacuums, untidy alliance blocs and competitive national interests. The pursuit of national interests, of which national security is the highest, never disappeared in Europe during the Cold War. But given the nature and scale of the Soviet threat, Western cooperation and quasi-integration in defence and economics was undertaken to a degree never before experienced. In the circumstances such policies were deemed the best way for most Western states to address national interests. Now that the Cold War threat is gone, a more distinctive view of national security is reasserting itself. To those imbued with the spirit of international integration and supranationalism this may be regrettable and even short-sighted, but it is the reality of what has happened since the end of the Cold War and it looks like continuing in the near future. Perhaps, in the longer term, global warming, over-population, world trade, and other globalisation issues ought to be the salient international security issues. But now, and at least for the first decade of the new century, governments faced by the real responsibility of safeguarding their peoples are addressing hard, traditional national security issues such as stable frontiers, nonthreatening neighbours, resource security, civil war spillover, balances of power and reasonable guarantees of security. It is not the West which is forcing NATO or WEU membership on the Baltic republics, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and many other aspirants. The governments of these countries have given clear notice that they wish membership of alliances which address traditional national security concerns. Following the logic of their geography and history, some European states are convinced that it is a national security necessity that they win membership of NATO. NATO does not seek the political and strategic problems and sensitivities in, for instance, the Polish clamour for membership but nor can NATO avoid them.