Regional Integration as a System of Conflict Resolution: The European Experience

Abstract

A gainst the background of profound global politic l, economic, and s cial change since the end of the cold war, the European con tinent-itself an arena of profound transforma tions-has been preserved as a remarkable instance of continuity. Europe remains the meet ing place of cooperation, competition, and con flict as well as a leading example of regional interdependence. European integration has developed into a model of regionalism for the international system. Since the 1950s, through successive rounds of enlargement, the majority of European countries have become or aspired to become members of its institutional structure, the European Union (EU).1 EU integration has been a factor contributing to the sustainability of the post-World War II order in Europe by pre senting a working alternative and an extension to regional conflict resolution. During the early stages of its evolution, inte gration unfolded as a peace-building process by re-creating regional interdependences, expand ing across issue areas, and increasing the num ber of participating countries. It made conflict in Western Europe unthinkable. After the end of the cold war, it developed as a proxy for the his toric reunification of the European continent by extending its integrative dynamic to Eastern Europe. Although interstate conflict in Europe's core is practically nonexistent, conflict patterns in the European periphery have persisted. Thus armed conflicts remain a nontrivial category for the region-mostly at the level of ethnic com munities and national groups. During the early 1990s, Europe became the theater of war as the conflicts of disintegration of the former Yugoslavia could not be prevented by diplomat ic means. Sustained peacekeeping and nation building in the western Balkans (and elsewhere in the European periphery) emerged as a long term task and commitment of the EU. Contem