post-Cold War Europe Research Articles

Introduction: New Geographies of Scandinavian Studies. Moving maps, reciprocal images, emerging communities

This article provides an introduction to the Research Network “New Geographies of Scandinavian Studies” while at the same time discussing some of its main concerns and questions: the position of the Nordic countries and the role of Scandinavian Studies in the changing geopolitical landscape of post-Cold War Europe. The collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989–1991 led to a reconfiguration of the European political map. This situation also entailed new possibilities for international and cross-disciplinary research: A new understanding of Nordic and Baltic studies was institutionalized and new regional concepts were developed as alternatives to Cold War geopolitics. The network “New Geographies of Scandinavian Studies” is rooted in this ongoing reorientation of the field. The article discusses some of the potentials and challenges of this new agenda of Scandinavian Studies in the context of the new geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the West after Russia’s military attack on Ukraine in February 2022.

Espionage by Europeans: treason and counterintelligence in post-Cold War Europe

ABSTRACT As War rages in Ukraine, counterintelligence has again taken centre stage for European intelligence agencies. In spite of the long-ascendant espionage threat, to date little is known about who is recruited, what motivated them and how they were caught. This article presents an analysis of espionage against European NATO and/or EU members, based on court convictions in 2010–2021. This provides a first overview of contemporary espionage in Europe, and complements previous research, which is dominated by single-case studies, mainly of Anglo-Saxon cases. Replicating large-N studies of American espionage, the study identifies transatlantic commonalities, including perpetrators being overwhelmingly male, middle-aged, and a mainly working outside of defence or intelligence agencies. But also differences, with Russia being by far the main instigator of espionage in Europe, a strong concentration of cases in Northern Europe, and a diversity of legislation coinciding with equally variable outcomes in court. Generally, the similarities speak to the nature of contemporary espionage, whereas the differences are chiefly attributable to geopolitical differences between the US and Europe.

The Perils of Democratism

The article examines an aspect of the meta-theoretical context of the renewed confrontation between the political West and Russia. A distinction is drawn between democratism, the purposive instrumentalization of democracy agendas in great power conflict, and democracy as a responsive, reflexive and participatory mechanism of popular control over government. In the post-Cold War era this gave rise to inter-democracy, the combination of NATO and the European Union as the basis for the continued predominance of Atlanticism in the political West. This served to exclude alternative security arrangements in post-Cold War Europe, notably pan-continental variants. At the same time, the political West, a constellation of power that was created during and shaped by the Cold War, advanced transdemocracy, the view that democracy was the foundation for the creation of a genuine security community. Drawing on democratic peace theory, this approach substituted democratic internationalism for the sovereign internationalism at the heart of the UN-based Charter international system established in 1945. This gave rise to a distinctive style of international politics, described as democratism in this paper. Rather than overcoming conflict, democratism serves to sharpen antagonisms and thus helped to regenerate Cold War practices and undermined the credibility of liberal internationalism itself. The blowback effects, however, should be distinguished from the continuing struggle for democracy and a style of international politics that remains true to Charter principles.

Thoughts on Mearsheimer's "Offensive Realism"

Mearsheimer, a representative of offensive realism, argues that "security competition will re-emerge in post-Cold War Europe and Asia, and that international institutions cannot maintain peace." This is a hypothesis about the relationship between systemic polarity and world peace, which, in contrast to reality, has some problems with the internal logic of the theory. After analysis, Mearsheimer's assumptions about the position of the state, the choice of the state's target behavior, and the prediction of China's rise and behavior are unconvincing, both in terms of inherent problems of theoretical logical conformity and external inconsistencies with the facts; the problems of Mearsheimer's theory can provide us with insights: focus on thinking about theoretical doctrines, and better look at international relations with a critical eye different theoretical schools.

Eastbound and down: The United States, NATO enlargement, and suppressing the Soviet and Western European alternatives, 1990–1992

ABSTRACT When and why did the United States first contemplate NATO’s enlargement into Eastern Europe? Existing research generally portrays U.S. backing for NATO enlargement as a product of the policy debates and particular beliefs inside the William Clinton administration (1993–2001) starting in the mid-1990s. New evidence, however, shows that U.S. backing for enlargement began earlier, under the preceding George H.W. Bush administration (1989–1993). Moreover, the Bush administration favored enlargement for fundamentally realpolitik reasons, viewing it as a way of sustaining U.S. preeminence and suppressing challengers in post-Cold War Europe. The results carry implications for historiography, foreign policy, and international relations theory.

Symmetries, asymmetries and cross-border cooperation on the German–Polish border. Towards a new model of (de)bordering

La frontera entre Alemanya i Polonia representa un dels exemples mes interessants de dinamica politica i transformacio economica i social que es poden observar en l’Europa posterior a la Guerra Freda, i es un exemple reeixit d’estreta cooperacio. Les logiques desfronteritzadores en curs poden detectar-se aqui; tanmateix, les formes i els ritmes revelen un estancament i, fins i tot, regressio en determinats sectors. S’argumenta que la intensificacio de la cooperacio transfronterera, despres del col·lapse dels regims comunistes en aquesta part d’Europa, va ser el resultat d’un conjunt d’interaccions a escala europea, nacional i local. En aquell moment, els objectius principals eren relativament convergents, la qual cosa va contribuir a una rapida desfronteritzacio. No obstant aixo, amb el temps, aquests objectius van comencar a divergir entre els diferents nivells. Aquest proces s’ha contextualitzat en el marc de les simetries i asimetries existents en la frontera, que moltes vegades han donat com a resultat tendencies refronteritzadores.

Ukraine and the End of Post-Cold War Europe

Ukraine and the End of Post-Cold War Europe

Ishiguro's Diptych: Art and Social Democracy in The Unconsoled and Never Let Me Go

In making aesthetic performance and aesthetic education central to his dialectical evaluation of social democracy, Kazuo Ishiguro especially addresses teachers of culture. The Unconsoled and Never Let Me Go explore the position of art in European social-democratic society since 1945. To read these works in that historicist spirit (despite their nonrealist genre) is to identify social referents of central importance to their meanings. The city of The Unconsoled is typical of post–Cold War Europe in its emphasis on “culture,” in a world where civic mutuality coexists with economic inequality. The novel considers the relationship between the pianist Ryder's art and his apparent indifference to “deep-seated, intractable” social problems. Never Let Me Go explores the contradictions of the welfare state from the vantage point of a later neoliberal Britain: from here, despite those contradictions, the experiment of giving “clones” an aesthetic education can be seen to have had a progressive aspect.

From Community and Place to Network and Space: The Transnational Dimension of Immigration in American Jewish History

From Community and Place to Network and Space:The Transnational Dimension of Immigration in American Jewish History Cornelia Wilhelm (bio) The concept of “transnational history” emerged in the 1990s as a response to the call to “internationalize” American history.1 It is no accident that this new methodological approach among American historians had an extraordinary impact on Jewish history, a field of research that was at the same time particularly influenced by a re-emerging transnational consciousness in a newly united post-Cold War Europe. Transnational approaches have challenged previous understandings of “Americanization” and “assimilation” as linear, straightforward and one-directional processes. Today immigrant identities are generally understood by scholars to result from “complex and multidirectional processes of transformation and cultural hybridization.”2 Transnational history examines how such complex identities are influenced by such factors as the political or legal status of immigrants, including statelessness, [End Page 545] naturalization, multiple citizenships, and loyalties as new citizens. Transnational history is therefore a promising analytic category for understanding American Jewish history, which is intensely connected with histories of Jewish and non-Jewish communities abroad. A transnational perspective also allows us to judge if and to what degree American Jewry is unique, special or connected with other Jewries. In the form of comparative history it further helps us explore the commonalities and differences of diverse Jewries.3 In the following, I want to highlight where a transnational perspective has generated new insights on movement, political activism, and cultural exchanges between Central Europe and the United States. My first project explored the Nazi penetration of the German speaking community in the United States. Although this work did not primarily focus on Jewish history, Jews, antisemitism, and the systematic exclusion of Jews from the German-American community were an essential part of my interest.4 Nazi activities had a noticeable impact on American domestic and foreign policy and on American ethnic relations and cannot be understood solely as an American phenomenon.5 Only a transnational approach reveals the agency of a network of state and non-state actors in the mobilization of ethnic Germans in the United States by Nazism. Such an approach shows that their political mobilization developed gradually and went hand in hand with the establishment of total political control in Germany. A transnational perspective helps us understand how Nazi ideology affected the German-speaking ethnic group in the United States. The adoption of Nazi definitions of Germanness by parts of the organized German-American community, especially by those who depended on the contact with “the official Germany,” led to the formal exclusion of German Jews from the German-American associational life in the United States after 1933.6 A transnational view thus shows generally how racist definitions of national or ethnic identity may reach beyond state borders as “long distance nationalism.” It informs us of the transnational context of anti-Semitism and racism, an understanding that has added a lot to [End Page 546] Holocaust Studies recently.7 More importantly, the application of Nazi racism to the German speaking communities in America was not accidental, but rather the result of a decades-old anti-modernist German understanding of the links between modernity, America, and the Jews.8 To anti-modernists and anti-Semites, no other nation more symbolized the ideas of the French and American Revolutions, two events that had also set off the process of Jewish emancipation. For anti-Semites, America was symbolic for empowering the Jew and allowing him to be a driving force and supposed sole “winner” in the modernization of society, economy, and politics.9 How much American Jews as well as Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were affected by such policies, or how they have reacted to them, has largely been ignored and offers an interesting example of how long-distance nationalism polarized German speakers in the United States, particularly in the New York City area, where German-Americans, American Jews, refugees, and the Nazi movement intensively interacted with each other. Finally it is important to note that the Nazis’ impact on German-America severed a cultural link, which had been an essential part of the relationship between non-Jewish Germans and German Jews in the United...

Validating simulation-based models of conflict

This article discusses the Genesis of War project, in which the author employed the PRISONERS' DILEMMA SIMULATION (PDS) to generate data on the etiology of violent conflict and war as a basis for developing theory relevant to better understanding and dealing with violent ethnic conflicts occurring in post-cold war Europe (e.g., former Yugoslavia). Given the simulation basis of the intended theory construction, there was a need to validate the simulation-generated data before going forward, made more acute by the observation that very little validation of simulation-based data seems to have been done or reported in the literature. Accordingly, a comprehensive validation of the multivariate findings generated by the use of the PDS is presented: an assessment conducted through comparisons with findings from other studies in terms of (a) direction of relationship, (b) magnitude of relationship, (c) ranking of dependent variables by proportion of variation explained, and (d) ranking of independent variables by proportion of variation explained. Across comparisons, the level of agreement between PDS and corresponding (mostly real-world) findings was not only relatively high but also consistent, basically falling within the range of the 75% norm established by Guetzkow's assessment of his INTER-NATION SIMULATION (INS). Such triangulation of findings reinforces the view that some simulations are appropriate for investigating real-world conflict processes.

Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion

Did the United States promise the Soviet Union during the 1990 negotiations on German reunification that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe? Since the end of the Cold War, an array of Soviet/Russian policymakers have charged that NATO expansion violates a U.S. pledge advanced in 1990; in contrast, Western scholars and political leaders dispute that the United States made any such commitment. Recently declassified U.S. government documents provide evidence supporting the Soviet/Russian position. Although no non-expansion pledge was ever codified, U.S. policymakers presented their Soviet counterparts with implicit and informal assurances in 1990 strongly suggesting that NATO would not expand in post–Cold War Europe if the Soviet Union consented to German reunification. The documents also show, however, that the United States used the reunification negotiations to exploit Soviet weaknesses by depicting a mutually acceptable post–Cold War security environment, while actually seeking a system dominated by the United States and opening the door to NATO's eastward expansion. The results of this analysis carry implications for international relations theory, diplomatic history, and current U.S.-Russian relations.

Norm dilemmas and international organizational development: humanitarian intervention in the crisis of Bosnia and the reorganization of North Atlantic Treaty Organization

ABSTRACTConventional constructivism presents conforming to normative expectations as a constituent force in state legitimacy. However, what is broadly considered appropriate is not necessarily realized since concrete action can collide with other norms, just as prevention of human rights violations is generally viewed as desirable, but related action provokes a debate over sovereign integrity and the use of force. This article argues that this ‘norm dilemma’ prompts states to develop international organizations. That is to say, if international mechanisms exist to deal with regional contingencies effectively, such dilemmas that accompany intervention are more likely to be pre-empted. For this reason, states move towards development of institutions for security management. This article examines this claim by analyzing North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) reorganization through the intervention in Bosnia and explains why investigating norm dilemmas elucidates more aspects of this case than paying attention to the influence of humanitarian norms alone. Given the stress placed on conflict ‘prevention’ in NATO today, instead of promotion of intervention, as reiterated in the 2010 Strategic Concept, analysis of the first major crisis in post-Cold War Europe offers important insights into future management of norm dilemmas by the Alliance.

Bringing Order Out of Chaos: Russia’s Aspirations to Greatness

Bringing Order Out of Chaos:Russia’s Aspirations to Greatness Charles E. Ziegler (bio) Realists argue that Russian foreign policy is not sui generis—the Kremlin pursues balance-of-power politics, reacting to threats and opportunities as any great power would under similar circumstances. Constructivists focus on the role of domestic factors and questions of national identity—they see Russia as unique, with national interests derived from Russia’s specific historical experiences and cultural characteristics. Bobo Lo’s comprehensive study, Russia and the New World Disorder, draws on both perspectives. This method is appropriate since Russian leaders—from Vladimir Putin on down—emphasize Russia’s historical and cultural uniqueness, distinct from both Europe and Asia, while adhering to a classic European concept of great-power politics in which Russia deserves a privileged seat at the international table. Russia’s idea of equality and democracy in world politics extends only to the great powers, as Lo observes (pp. 65–67). Smaller and medium powers merit little attention. Moscow also remains fixated on traditional security threats, slighting issues such as global warming or infectious disease. For Lo, the domestic context is critical to understanding Russian foreign policy. He argues that Russia’s authoritarian system has less impact on its foreign relations than do structural factors, namely, geography and history. Russian leaders seem to agree. In a recent article, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized the historical dimension in his country’s foreign policy, asserting that Russia has always been a political outsider on the [End Page 230] margins of Europe.1 In a speech justifying the annexation of Crimea, President Vladimir Putin stressed Russia’s historical links with the peninsula. He also rejected Europe’s centuries-long efforts to contain Russia by “constantly trying to sweep us into a corner.”2 Insecurity is a constant in Russia’s external relations. Reflecting a classic security dilemma, Moscow’s preoccupation with military power and aggressive behavior generates fear and insecurity in other states, a process that Russian leaders either cannot or will not understand. NATO expansion may have been driven by Washington’s goal of consolidating its position in post–Cold War Europe, but Russia’s smaller neighbors welcomed the NATO security umbrella as insurance against a revanchist Moscow. Lo does not take sides in the debate over who is responsible for NATO expansion and the current tensions in Europe, though his characterization of Russia as a postmodern empire tends to align him with Moscow’s critics. Russians view international politics as a zero-sum game, with great powers competing for influence among smaller powers, and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics are viewed through this prism. Thus, NATO’s enlargement is framed as a challenge to Russia’s hegemony instead of a rational response by weaker states to perceived threats from Russia. In recent years, neo-Eurasianism has become an important strain of Russian political thought that emphasizes its national uniqueness and has moved from the fringes of discourse toward the center. Putin appears to buy into the perspectives of prominent Eurasianists such as Alexander Dugin, who draws on Halford Mackinder’s notion of geopolitics as a struggle between sea powers and land powers. In the 21st century, this school of thought positions Russia and China as the leading land powers (and of course Russia rules the heartland), gradually displacing the United States and Great Britain for global prominence. Layered onto this view is the civilizational idea that Russia is not only distinct from but culturally and morally superior to a decadent West, with the civilizational divides outlined by Samuel Huntington becoming more salient than nation-state boundaries. Russia, then, is both a nation-state and a civilizational core. The 21st century is a challenge for the richest countries and most adroit leaders, yet, as Bobo Lo argues, Putin and his supporters are operating under a 19th-century view of the world that thinks in terms of [End Page 231] balance of (hard) power, zero-sum competition, and spheres of influence (pp. 73–81, 98–99). Lip service is paid to economic strength, yet the Kremlin has avoided making the painful reforms that would modernize the country and reduce overdependence on hydrocarbons. Moreover...

Germany, America and the shaping of post-Cold War Europe: a story of German international emancipation through political unification, 1989–90

German reunification within NATO in 1990 marked the end of the Cold War. It also cemented America's role as a ‘European power’. By focusing on three key moments in German-American security relations in 1989-90, this essay explains how this outcome materialised. For Chancellor Helmut Kohl, driving the process of unification offered Germans the prospect of international emancipation after four decades of limited sovereignty. For President George H.W. Bush, backing unification proved an opportunity to preserve and transform NATO. Moreover, the new, more political version of the Alliance that emerged became Washington's device to shape the post-Cold War era.

Preserving Post-Cold War Europe

Preserving the post-Cold War system in Europe should be the aim of Western strategy towards Russia.

Intelektualiści zachodnioeuropejscy od wybuchu II wojny światowej do współczesności

This study aims to show the forms of political involvement of Western European intellectuals. In doing so, the paper attempts to answer the question about the role they played in Western and Central Europe in the discussed period. The paper also demonstrates the cultural and political causes of their decline.streszczenieFor the intellectuals of Western and Central Europe, World War 2 was an extremely difficult period. The genocidal policies of the totalitarian states induced them to take a position, while at the same time depriving them of the ability to express their views publicly. This engendered a sense of helplessness; also, apart for a few exceptions, only emigrants could actually perform the function of intellectuals. Among those, an important role to play fell to two groups: German emigrants who distanced themselves from their nation, and Jewish emigrants, who addressed the subject of the Holocaust. After the war, the Iron Curtain also restricted the actions of intellectuals. It soon turned out that the tenor of spiritual life was set by left-wing authors, fascinated with the USSR. The fascination petered out after the disclosure of Stalin’s crimes in 1956. It was terminated definitively by the ruthless suppression of the Prague Spring. It was at that time that conservatism and right-wing intellectuals returned to Europe. Their aim was to reverse the trend and prevent Western Europe from drifting leftward. The change of the paradigm served to settle the scores with the leftist intellectuals. They were accused of subversive activities against the state and nation or treason. Also, in the intellectual circles there emerged a conviction that the previous formula had been exhausted. A new formula of activities of intellectuals was considered particularly in France, by authors of such eminence as R. Aron, M. Foucault, or P. Bourdieu. The deconstruction of the figure of the intellectual was completed by J.-F. Lyotard, who pronounced the death of intellectuals. Involvement of intellectuals remained a valid notion only in the countries of the Eastern bloc. In post-Cold War Europe, the decline of intellectuals became even more discernible. This was occasioned by a number of political and cultural factors. In this respect, particular role should be attributed to postmodernism which, by disproving the Enlightenment understanding of culture, undermined the role played by intellectuals.

Heimat, space, narrative: toward a transnational approach to flight and expulsion

At the end of the Second World War, millions of Germans and Poles fled or were expelled from the border regions of what had been their countries. This monograph examines how, in cold war and post-cold war Europe since the 1970s, writers have responded to memories or postmemories of this traumatic displacement. Friederike Eigler engages with important currents in scholarship -- on Heimat, the much-debated German concept of homeland; on the spatial turnin literary studies; and on German-Polish relations -- arguing for a transnational approach to the legacies of flight and expulsion and for a spatial approach to Heimat. She explores notions of belonging in selected postwarand contemporary German novels, with a comparative look at a Polish novel, Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night (1998). Eigler finds dynamic manifestations of place in Tokarczuk's novel, in Horst Bienek's 1972-1982 Gleiwitz tetralogy about the historical border region of Upper Silesia, and in contemporary novels by Reinhard Jirgl, Christoph Hein, Kathrin Schmidt, Tanja Duckers, Olaf Muller, and Sabrina Janesch. In a decisive departure from earlier approaches, Eigler explores how these novels foster an awareness of the regions' multiethnic and multinational histories, unsettling traditional notions of Heimat without altogether abandoning place-based notions of belonging. Friederike Eigler is Professor of German at Georgetown University.

Re-Imagining Union in Europe: The Politics of Body, Family, and Reproduction in Sotiris Dimitriou’s Short Stories

In an era of intense migrant labor flow followed by economic crisis in Greece and in several other European countries, Sotiris Dimitriou’s short stories reflect on the affective influence of these changes on the fragile body of the individual as well as on social and sexual reproduction. As the body becomes a receptacle of social tensions, the ideals of healthy reproduction and communitarian identity, an ideal “union” based on family, are disrupted in Dimitriou’s work. The author’s dystopias of reproduction provide an insightful portrayal of the way neoliberal regimes of production in contemporary Europe bring migrants and the underclass together: both groups are subject to the violent politics of disposability of bodies under an economy obsessed with efficiency. Dimitriou’s short stories, elusive as they are to social and political analysis, render visible a population excluded from the promise of prosperity in post-Cold War Europe and propose alternative forms of community.

Historical Memory in Post-Cold War Europe

This article examines European memory and memory politics. Taking as my starting point the deepening divisions between the “old” and “new” members of the European Union since the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, I investigate whether differences in official memory concerning World War II on the one hand and communism on the other should be regarded as permanent. Using examples from the development of West-European postwar memory-regimes and comparing them to the current state in postcommunist Europe I suggest that with respect to historical memory the two parts of Europe underwent similar developments, crises and debates, thus making eventual convergence and consensus possible. However, there are various factors that complicate progress in this area: postcommunist countries have to contend not only with their wartime history but also with the experience of communism, which latter colours the assessment of the former.

1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, by Mary Elise Sarotte

1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, by Mary Elise Sarotte