Enlarging The Past

This paper focuses on the expansion of NATO through Russian membership. Many dismiss Russian membership as a political nonstarter due the perceived high economic and political costs. This paper argues that the US should advocate Russian membership into NATO as a means to counter internal threats to Russian democratization, construct an effective security architecture for post-Cold War Europe, and address emerging challenges to Asia-Pacific security, notably, China's rise as a regional "peer competitor", and its burgeoning relationship with Russia. US support for Russian NATO membership would combat the threats to Russian democratization. These threats include the steady expansion of organized crime, the popular nationalist-authoritarian political elite, and an increasingly discontented military. Russian membership would also provide an "air of security" in which the fledgling democracy can take flight. If the US truly intends to go beyond the Cold War barriers it entrenched, it must lead Europe in the construction of a genuine pan- continental security structure that includes Russia as a full member.

This volume focuses attention on key environmental and institutional changes associated with eastern expansion of the European Union, assessing and challenging prevailing views about the outcomes and processes of this historic development. Looking at four central themes -- capacity changes and limitations, the EU's mixed messages and conflicting priorities, non-state actor roles and developments, and the exchange of ideas and information - the volume shows that enlargement will change the EU, not just make it bigger, and that EU officials and programs are improving aspects of environmental policy in CEE countries even as they are making others less sustainable. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Environmental Politics.

The National Politics of EU Enlargement in the Western Balkans examines the way in which a number of European Union member states, including Germany and France, formulate their policies towards enlargement in the Western Balkans. The six countries of the Western Balkans – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – are on course to become the next members of the European Union. While there has been a lot of work on the ways in which these countries are preparing for accession, and how the EU as a whole approaches the question of expansion, very little attention has been paid to how individual EU member states regard enlargement into a region that presents a number of serious challenges, including the legacies of the conflicts of the 1990s, economic underdevelopment and poor governance. Focusing on key states, such as Germany, France and Italy, the neighbouring countries of Central and South East Europe, and Britain, once a leading advocate of enlargement that is now in the process of leaving the European Union, this volume casts important new empirical and conceptual light on the diverse motivations that underpin member state attitudes towards EU enlargement. The National Politics of EU Enlargement in the Western Balkans will be of great interest to scholars of the European Union, European politics, and the politics of the Western Balkans. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.