Abstract
If measured by the broadest military criteria, the postwar bipolar order has not dramatically altered, and the dismantling of the two military alliances does not seem imminent in the early 1990s. Yet even a significant decrease in the level of military confrontation cannot be ruled out as a consequence of ongoing efforts in the medium term. Conventional arms reductions and troop withdrawals in particular may have a significant influence on both the strategic landscape and European stability. In any case, without arms reductions and troop withdrawals the European security situation cannot be markedly improved; such immobility would produce a permanent source of tension.1
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Endnotes
This book does not address arms control issues in detail but tries to draw certain conclusions from the ongoing negotiations. For background discussions see, for example, Joachim Krause, Prospects for Conventional Arms Control in Europe, IEWSS Occasional Paper Series, no. 8 (New York, 1988)
Ian M. Cuthbertson & David Robertson, Enhancing European Security (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
Conference on “Democratization and Institution-building in Eastern Europe” in Warsaw, March 1–3, 1990 by the Institute for East-West Security Studies. See Meeting Report by Mary Albon. The building of market economies was started in Central Europe with only marginal results. Poland, for instance, introduced the convertibility of its currency on January 1, 1990. See Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton, “Poland’s Economic Reform,” Foreign Affairs 69, no. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 47–66. The economic reform of Central Europe and the Soviet Union goes beyond the scope of this study. As part of the phenomena of the system change it has been dealt with in Chapter 3.
In 1948 Finland signed the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance (FCMA) with the Soviet Union. It reflected a historical appraisal of the situation prevailing at the time of its signing. The president of Finland, Dr. Mauno Koivisto, stated in the protocol of the Council of State on September 21, 1990 that such a situation no longer existed. The reference to Germany in the FCMA treaty had become especially obsolete. Koivisto confirmed, however, that the essential purpose of the treaty remains unchanged, i.e., Finland will not allow her territory to be used for an attack against the Soviet Union. The treaty continues to serve Finnish security interests. See Press Releases by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, no, 277 and 278, September 21, 1990. For a theoretical analysis of Finnish foreign policy, especially in a European setting, see Raimo Vayrynen, “Stability and Change in Finnish Foreign Policy,” Research Reports, Series A, no. 60 (1982), Department of Political Science, University of Helsinki. See also Alpo Rusi, “Finnish Foreign Policy on the Threshold of the 1990s,” Ministry for Foreign Affairs, October 1989. Since the early 1990s Finland has stressed her neutrality in the military field as an important aspect of her foreign policy in general. For the role of the military component of Finnish security policy, see a timely and challenging analysis by Thomas Ries, The Cold Will (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1988).
Geoffrey Parker, in The Geopolitics of Domination (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 71–74, stated that the USSR was in geopolitical decline, which was why the years of Soviet domination were likely to be coming to an end. Parker elaborated a geopolitical interpretation of Gorbachev’s new thinking which, if applied in Eastern Europe, would result in a new relationship among the member-states of the WTO.
Charles Gati, “Gorbachev and Eastern Europe,” Foreign Affairs 65, no. 5 (Summer 1987), pp. 958–975.
Gordon Craig, “After the Reich,” The New York Review of Book, October 9, 1987, from Richard von Weizsäcker, A Voice from Germany, trans. Karin von Abrams (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987). Regarding the progress of inner-German trade and general ties, see Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, pp. 478–479. During the 1980s the GDR experienced economic setbacks in spite of its wide interaction with the FRG economy. As a consequence, this trend pushed the GDR closer to its Western neighbor. Trade between the German states was called “inner-German” trade, which allowed East German products duty-free entry into the FRG.
See Peter Bender, Das Ende des Ideologischen Zeitalters: Die Europae-isierung Europas (Berlin: Severin und Siedler, 1981), p. 229.
For a brief background history of the emergence of the EC, see, for example, Hans A. Schmitt, European Union: From Hitler to de Gaulle. For a timely and comprehensive analysis concerning the history and the future of European political cooperation, see Panagiotis Isestos, European Political Cooperation (Avebury: Gower Publishing, 1987).
Regarding the details of the “Single European Act” used here, see Lutz G. Stavenhagen, “Political Priorities of the German EC Presidency,” Aussenpolitik 39, no. 1 (1988), pp. 13–23. The role of West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher was decisive in starting the drafting of the “Single European Act” in the early 1980s, which, of course, reflects the special interest of the FRG in European integration.
Joseph C. Rallo, Defending Europe in the 1990s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), pp. 109–127.
George Will, “The Opiate of Arms Control,” Newsweek, April 27, 1987. For a timely analysis of European nuclear security, see Europe in Transition. Politics and Nuclear Security, ed. Vilho Harle and Pekka Sivonen (London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1989). With respect to the need to reappraise the role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era, especially in light of the Gulf crisis of 1990, see, for example, Pierre Lellouche, “So What are the Nuclear Armories for Now?”, International Herald Tribune, September 27, 1990. Lellouche asks what kind of strategy and weapons will be needed to effectively deter nuclear threats from the South. He prefers to stick to a “realistic view” of the role of accurate, nuclear or non-nuclear, weapons to meet this challenge. One could say that the Gulf crisis may bring the “nukes” back to the core of the debate about European security identity. To further elaborate this question would go beyond the scope of this book.
See Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance, pp. 183, 214. Quoted from Stanley Hoffman’s review in Political Science Quarterly 103, no. 3 (1988), pp. 547–548.
Regarding the economic decline of the EC, see Joel Kotkin and Yoriko Kishimoto, The Third Century (New York: Crown Publishers, 1988), pp. 75–83.
For an ambiguous vision regarding the EC and the year 1992, see Albert Bressand, “Beyond Interdependence: 1992 as a Global Challenge,” International Affairs 66, no. 1 (1990), pp. 47–65.
Pierre Hassner, “Europe Beyond Partition and Unity: Disintegration or Reconstitution?” International Affairs 66, no. 3 (1990), pp. 461–475.
Pedersen, “Problems of Enlargement: Political Integration in a Pan-European EC.” See also Werner Ungerer, “Die Entwicklung der EG und ihr Verhältnis zu Mittel- und Osteuropa,” Aussenpolitik 3 (1990), pp. 225–235.
To further elaborate this issue would go beyond the goal of this book. It would be wrong to claim that each of the Euroneutrals would pursue exactly the same kind of security policy. The similarity addresses itself, however, most visibly within the framework of the postwar East-West conflict. Also, the differences between the concepts of neutrality, neutralism and nonalignment should be stressed. One of the main differences between nonalignment and neutrality lies in the attitude toward the Western values of democracy and fundamental freedoms. Since its foundation in the mid-1950s, the nonaligned movement has been characteristically “anti-Western.” For timely and comprehensive analyses see, for example, Nils Orvik, The Decline of Neutrality, 1914–1941, 2nd ed. (London: Frank Cass and Company, 1971), pp. 279–304
(Appendix) as well as S. Victor Papacosma and Mark R. Rubin, eds., Europe’s Neutral and Nonaligned States (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1989). Altogether ten European countries (Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Malta, San Marino, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia) have either legally instituted permanent neutrality or conduct a de facto policy of neutrality. However, the most prominent representatives of the so-called armed neutrality are the four Euroneutrals.
For this analysis, see Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, “Armed Neutrality: Its Application and Future,” in Securing Europe’s Future, ed. Stephen J. Flanagan and Fen Osler Hampson (Dover, MA: Auburn House Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 242–279. Neutrality has also been dealt with within the tradition of small-state research, which often equates small states with weak states. Hans Vogel has elaborated a policy model for small states, in which he describes a path of a self-increasing deficit of autonomy: 1) structural scarcity, 2) external economic dependence, 3) external sensitivity, and 4) probability of foreign penetration.
See Hans Vogel, “Small States’ Efforts in International Relations: Enlarging the Scope,” in Small States in Europe and Dependence, ed. Otmar Hoell (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1983), pp. 54–58. This study is built on a more historical view of the premises of a policy of neutrality in Europe, which emphasizes differences of neutrality vis-à-vis small-nation policies in general.
The Marstrand Study Group, “Neutrality in Need of Conceptual Revision.” See Harto Hakovirta, “Neutral States in East-West Economic Cooperation,” Co-Existence 8 (1981), pp. 95–119.
For a timely and comprehensive compilation of the most recent studies on questions of the economic and political integration in Europe from the neutral point of view, see Kari Mottola and Heikki Patomaki, eds., Facing the Change in Europe (Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 1989). See, in this connection in particular, the chapters by Esko Antola, “The Finnish Integration Strategy: Adaptation with Restrictions,” pp. 55–70; and Geoffrey Edwards, “European Political Cooperation, EFTA Countries and Integration,” pp. 79–89.
See Hans Thalberg, “The European Neutrals and Regional Stability,” in The European Neutrals in International Affairs, ed. Hanspeter Neuhold and Hans Thalberg (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989), pp. 125–131.
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© 1991 Institute for East-West Security Studies
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Rusi, A.M. (1991). The Changing Geostrategic Landscape of Europe. In: After the Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21350-4_6
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