Abstract
This chapter highlights the two-fold problematic that drives this research project. The first aspect is the mixed record of Russian-European security interaction. On the one hand, Russia and Europe have displayed numerous examples of successful collaborative efforts in dealing with conflicts in the Balkans and the Black Sea region. On the other, in the current conflicts, despite initially favourable conditions and the dense web of formal institutions, they have failed to create a sustainable pattern of cooperative interaction, at least in these two regions. Given this situation,I argue that we have to study Russian-European interaction taking into account the mutual perceptions of the two actors. The chapter, thus, will outline how “Russia’s” great power identity and the idea of Europe will be analysed and how the spatial dimension of identity will be taken into account in this book.
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Notes
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Samokhvalov, V. (2017). Russian-European Relations: An “Unexpected” Crisis. In: Russian-European Relations in the Balkans and Black Sea Region. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52078-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52078-0_1
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