The End of an Era for Institutionalism in European Security?

摘要

The Ukrainian crisis, and in particular Russia's annexation of the Crimea in March 2014, has marked a dramatic shift in the post-Cold War European security order. The structure and the normative order that was built at the end of the Cold War, at the time pompously labelled 'the new world order', has, if not collapsed, then at least been put to its most severe test. The Yugoslav wars (1992-1999) and the Georgian War (2008) already represented failures and constituted challenges to the joint management of European security but they were regional issues and had only a limited impact on the fundamental aims and principles underlying the security order. In contrast, Russia's annexation of Crimea is a straightforward blow because all the key parties-Russia, the European Union (EU) and the USA/North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-are all intimately involved and at loggerheads while some of the key norms of the order, namely territorial integrity and peaceful resolution of conflicts, have been broken.