Since 1814, Sweden's security policy has been anchored to varying degrees of neutrality. Throughout this timeperiod, its interpretation has been flexible and trademarked by an ability to adjust to different external conditions; effectively enabling the country to combine participation in international affairs with an adherence to non-alignment.
The war in Bosnia has witnessed a broad swing in the moods of the "international community" and of European nations particularly. In the wake of the end of the Cold War and of the victory in the Gulf War, expectations run high at the outbreak that collective security would have been able to deal with regional disturbances.
Broad security has become a self-explanatory concept in these times of transition which affect every country with the end of the Cold War and the advent of 'cyberworld'. The multi-disciplinary approach to security is nothing new; its globalization is. The combination has radically altered the signposts of human cohabitation. The terms of the social contract between the citizen and the state have been altered, as transnational phenomena multiply.
With the end of the Cold War, security has acquired very different components. In Europe, it has broadened to include conflict prevention and crisis management, in an attempt to substitute persuasion for enforcement. It has essentially become a political rather than a military concept whose features are foresight, transparency and accountability, and which combines political and economic as well as military measures.
Changes in the post-Cold War strategic landscape have, among other things, affected WEU countries' Defence Industrial and Technological Base (DITB). The further evolution of WEU, with respect to the recently defined EU reform and that impending in NATO, heightens the importance of solving the problems hampering European armaments cooperation, which directly affects WEU's operational capabilities.
In recent months the Institute has been particularly involved in studying the concerns of countries that are candidates for membership of European security organizations. Seminars organized by the Institute and its participation in conferences have been mainly directed at that very topical aspect of the reform of European security institutions.
In December 1994, the WEU Permanent Council gave the Institute for Security Studies the task of analysing the security and defence policies of the Maghreb countries and Egypt, in liaison with security institutes in those countries. This was to become an addition to the Institute's continuing work on Mediterranean security.
This Chaillot Paper focuses on the main proliferation challenges facing Europe as a whole, and examines the policies which have been formulated by the main West European countries and their security organizations.
Rudolf Joó, a former Hungarian Deputy Minister of Defence sets out his thoughts on the subject, starting from the successes and difficulties encountered on the path to reform that he helped promote and widening the study to a more general context.
This Chaillot Paper represents a foray into a field that is not obviously in the mainstream of WEU's mandate, especially for those who still think that WEU should not stray too far from traditional European tasks. Yet Europe cannot decline the wider, global mission of preventing crises and building stability wherever necessary.