Coping With Conflicts In The Central And Southern Balkans

While European integration advances, many of the countries along Europe's eastern and southern periphery have fallen prey to chronic conflict punctuated by a series of small wars. Exacerbating the situation has been the lack of effective organizational means for mediating local conflicts, facilitating regional development and structuring cooperation with larger regional and international institutions. What are the prospects for enhancing security in the most volatile subregions of post-communist Europe? This text examines the external and internal factors that impede or foster subregional cooperation in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe and the Caucasus. It includes chapters situating these borderlands in the context of a wider Europe with an evolving security architecture.

This report, the first in a series on conflict prevention by the Center for Preventative Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations, presents recommendations to avert the spread of the ex-Yugoslav conflict into the South Balkans and to create a more enduring framework for peace and security in the region.

What is the interplay between EU enlargement and a fluctuating transatlantic security partnership? Will the accession of new EU members reinforce this partnership, or instead increase the EU's assertiveness as an independent foreign policy actor? The authors of EU Enlargement and Transatlantic Security find answers in an examination of broader EU security strategies, the foreign and security policies of the newer and potential EU members, and changing US priorities. Their perceptive analysis offers a sharp lens through which to understand the current and future state of transatlantic security.

The agenda of direct neighborhoods for Central and Eastern Europe as well as the agenda of stabilization for Southeastern Europe are dealt with through empirical analysis and the formulation of policy recommendations in this collection of essays.