Abstract
In 1989–90, the strategic geography of continental Europe lay open for change and free creation to a degree that was most unusual in the region’s history. In Central and Eastern Europe, the bonds of the Warsaw Pact and COMECON were dropping away, Soviet forces were gone or on their way out, and the level of strategic tension along what used to be the Central Front had fallen from one of the world’s highest to one of the lowest in human memory. For the new (or more properly, restored) democracies to the east of the old Iron Curtain, there was both internal motive and external opportunity to revel in national independence and explore the full uniqueness of national identity. Our familiarity, in hindsight, with the choices these states made should not blind us to the wider range of options which was theoretically available, and actually debated, at the time. Nor should it blur recognition of how remarkable, in some ways, their choices were.2
The opinions expressed in this chapter are the author’s own and should not be construed as representing official British policy. Parts of this material are adapted, by permission, from a lecture delivered at Leangkollen, Norway in March 1997 and published by the Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute.
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9. The Role of Subregional Cooperation in Post-Cold War Europe
On the range of security policy options open to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 see A. Cottey, East-Central Europe after the Cold War: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary in Search of Security, (Houndmills and London: Macmillan, 1995) chapter 2, pp. 13–26;
C. Gasteyger, ‘The Remaking of Eastern Europe’s Security’, Survival, XXXIII (1991) 111–24;
J. M. O. Sharp, ‘Security Options for Central Europe in the 1990s’, in B. Crawford, Ed., The Future of European Security, (University of California, Berkeley: Center for German and European Studies, 1992) pp. 54–78;
A. G. V. Hyde-Price, ‘After the Pact: East European Security in the 1990s’, Arms Control, 12 (September 1991) 279–302;
J. Orme, ‘Security in East Central Europe: Seven Futures’, The Washington Quarterly, 14 (Summer 1991) 91–105.
See A. J. K. Bailes, ‘Subregional Organizations: The Cinderellas of European Security’, NATO Review, 45 (2) (March 1997) 29.
On Finnish and Swedish debates on Baltic cooperation and their relations with the Baltic states and NATO, see R. D. Asmus and R. C. Nurick, ‘NATO Enlargement and the Baltic States’, Survival, 38 (2) 126–7 and 132–3.
In 1996, for example, Finland and Sweden submitted a joint proposal on the EU’s future military/peacekeeping role–see A. Bailes, ‘Europe’s Defense Challenge’, Foreign Affairs, 76 (1) (January/February 1997) 17–18.
On Kaliningrad see L. D. Fairlie, ‘Kaliningrad: NATO and EU Enlargement Issues Focus New Attention on Russia’s Border with Central Europe’, Boundary and Security Bulletin, 4 (Autumn 1996) 61–9.
On the various ‘bottom-up’ elements of subregional cooperation see E. Hansen, Ed., Cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region, the Barents Region and the Black Sea Region: A Documentation Report, Commissioned by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fafo-paper 1997: 4, (Oslo: Fafo Institute of Applied Social Science, 1997).
On the Transcarpathian Euroregion see M. F. Bukovetski, ‘Case Study of the Carpathian Euroregion’, in V. Hudak, Ed., Building a New Europe: Transfrontier Cooperation in Central Europe, (Prague: Institute for EastWest Studies, 1996) pp. 83–88.
When substantive BEAC cooperative activities began in 1996 the Norwegian government committed approximately ten million ECU to support them. See E. Hansen, ‘The Barents Region’ in Hansen, Ed., Cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region, the Barents Region and the Black Sea Region, p. 31.
V. Hudak, ‘Transfrontier Cooperation in Central Europe: Current Status and Future Challenges’, in Hudak, Ed., Building a New Europe, pp. 8–10.
Council of Europe, Explanatory Report on the European Outline Convention on Transfrontier Cooperation between Territorial Communities or Authorities, No. 106, (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1980).
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Bailes, A.J.K. (1999). The Role of Subregional Cooperation in Post-Cold War Europe: Integration, Security, Democracy. In: Cottey, A. (eds) Subregional Cooperation in the New Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27194-8_9
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