The recent developments in Serbia are indicative of a change in the political makeup of the country. The regime is becoming more repressive. A spate of highly publicised assassinations has sparked wider debate about the ability of the regime to maintain order. Many military officials refuse to obey orders or are switching camps, especially in Montenegro.
This contribution to the Occasional Papers series of the WEU Institute for Security studies emerged from a report undertaken into the state of the transatlantic security relationship and the respective positions of the two candidates on key US-European issues in the run-up to the general election in November.
The first session focused on threat perceptions and threat assessments. The key question was whether a threat exists that justifies NMD deployment. Do the so-called ‘countries of concern’ really intent to threaten the US homeland and, even more importantly, do they have the financial and the technological means to scale up their existing arsenal to true intercontinental range?
What was of particular interest in this seminar was that it combined both a discussion of the technical, immediate aspects of European defence and a more general reflection on developments in American policy and the direction being taken by European construction.
The transatlantic defence community drew divergent conclusions from NATO’s Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. Many observers asserted that the operation showed the European allies to be irremediably behind the United States in applying decisive new forms of advanced technology warfare.
Among the institutions which emerged during the crisis management phase in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, the so-called Balkan Contact Group turned out to be the innovation with the greatest impact on European institutional structures.
This paper is about the potential consequences for European security of extending EU border policies to central and eastern Europe (CEE), a process currently taking place as the European Union moves towards eastward enlargement. Its central argument is that an inherent tension is growing between EU internal and external security policies in the region to its East.
The WEU Institute for Security Studies organised a seminar on ‘The future of the Euro-Mediterranean security dialogue’, on 13-14 January 2000 in Paris. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the possibilities of enhancing the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership’s political and security chapter, including the establishment of a military dialogue within the Barcelona Process.
Créer un marché de défense ouvert à l’échelle européenne est considéré, depuis longtemps déjà, comme un moyen de renforcer la concurrence entre les entreprises européennes et de favoriser les rationalisations industrielles. Mais plus encore, à l’heure où la restructuration de l’offre avance à grands pas, l’ouverture des marchés d’armement représente pour beaucoup un des enjeux majeurs de la réorganisation de la demande.
Militarily non-aligned Finland and Sweden are in many ways borderline countries in Europe. Historically, they are newcomers in the process of integration; geographically, they are located at the border of the Union; and borders play an important role also in their foreign and security policies – both because of their concern for the nature of the EU’s outer borders and because of their wish to draw a (border-)line between crisis management and defence.