WORKSHOP: Vision(s) of Post-war European Security

Workshop at the Centre for East European and international Studies (ZOiS)

22 January 2025 Online

Organisation: ZOiS, KonKoop

Convener: Nadja Douglas

Europe’s security order is currently dysfunctional. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has fundamentally changed regional and local security dynamics. The continent is afflicted with a fragmentation of notions of order and overlapping military and economic blocs. At the same time, increasing inter- and intra-societal tensions and individual fears are contributing to perceptions of growing insecurity. Instead of co-operation and dialogue, conventional and nuclear rearmament, mutual deterrence and border closures are back on the agenda. Security perceptions on the ground have been constricted and nationalised, and the vision of an overarching European cooperative security has further been weakened.

For the time being, pan-European cooperative security is being held hostage by Russia until it returns to the principles of international law enshrined in the OSCE Helsinki Final Act and the Charta of Paris. Following an end to the war in Ukraine, the question of how to ensure peaceful coexistence and reorder European security will inevitably come up. The need to provide security guarantees for Ukraine (and other non-NATO states) will be another important issue. To stabilise and improve European security in the medium to long term, a regional setting will be necessary.

Despite many international constraints, the present interim period could and should be used to ponder ways of restructuring European security. On a wider regional level, the interests of the most-affected ‘in-between’ (i.e. non-NATO) states should be given priority. This workshop will therefore concentrate on the regional and local levels. Recognising that politicians and academics are not the only experts on the politics of security, we take again a vernacular approach and give equal consideration to security vision(s) and needs from below (i.e. those of civil societies, populations, ‘ordinary’ citizens).

This workshop is the last in a series of workshops organised as part of the KonKoop In:Security topic line, which aims to question state-centric notions of security and insecurity in times of war and conflict and to dismantle Eurocentric perspectives.