European security: Which Europe should be more secure?

Abstract

Abstract The paper discusses three different issues in European security. The first deals with the inter‐relationship between the geopolitical and the sociopolitical identity of Europe. European security may have very different interpretations depending on how we define Europe. It is argued that European security might imply the security of the whole of Europe, although Europe defined as EEC will have quite different security implications than Europe from the Atlantic to the Polish‐Soviet border. The second issue is the threats against European security. Different threats are intimately tied to different concepts of Europe. A range of threats are discussed, and each of them have different security implications. The third issue is the prospects for demilitarization and civilization of the East—West conflict in Europe. Although European security is inseparably embedded in global East‐West security, it is argued that Europe is able to reduce and minimize the European‐based source of the conflict by its own e...