"Frozen Conflicts" in Europe


Book Description

Oft forgotten but simmering "frozen conflicts" continuously mark the political map of Europe. All located in South Eastern Europe, the Black Sea area and Transcaucasia, these conflicts run along ethnic, national, cultural and linguistic lines, separating communities. This insightful book offers a rare critical analyses of the cases of Northern Cyprus, Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Kosovo, and Crimea. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.




Beyond Frozen Conflict


Book Description

The five unresolved separatist conflicts of the post-Soviet space in Eastern Europe are the biggest risk to Europe’s stability and security. Four of these – Abkhazia, South Ossetia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Nagorny Karabakh contested between Armenia and Azerbaijan – date back to around the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991-2, and became called ‘frozen conflicts’. The fifth is Ukraine’s Donbas, which in 2014 saw large parts of its Donetsk and Luhansk regions violently separate from Kyiv at a cost of 13,000 human lives so far, due crucially to Russia’s supporting hybrid warfare there. This book is the first to give an up-to-date account of all five conflicts in an analytically consistent manner. It charts new territory in exploring systematically a full range of scenarios for the possible future of all five conflicts and offers a basis of sound information for officials, diplomats, scholars and the general public.




The International Politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict


Book Description

This book frames the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh in the context of European and international security. It is the first book to focus on the politics of the conflict rather than the dispute itself. Since their emergence twenty years ago, this and other “frozen conflicts” of Eurasia have been affected by transformations in European security, and many ways absorbed into an ever fiercer geopolitical struggle for influence. The wars in Georgia and Ukraine brought greater attention to some unresolved conflicts, but not to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. As the contributors to this volume argue, the conflict merits much greater European attention, for several reasons: it is on a path of escalation, existing mediation regimes are dysfunctional, and as both Georgia and Ukraine have showed, any outbreak of serious fighting will force the EU to respond. This book thus explains the interlocking interests of Russia, Turkey, Iran, the EU and United States in the conflict, and analyzes the negotiation process and the conflict’s international legal aspects.




“Frozen conflicts” in Europe


Book Description

Oft forgotten but simmering “frozen conflicts” continuously mark the political map of Europe. All located in South Eastern Europe, the Black Sea area and Transcaucasia, these conflicts run along ethnic, national, cultural and linguistic lines, separating communities. This insightful book offers a rare critical analyses of the cases of Northern Cyprus, Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Kosovo, and Crimea.




Unrecognized Entities


Book Description

The book comprehensively discusses legal and political issues of non-recognized entities in the context of international and European Law, combining perspectives of international and European law with those of the non-recognized entities themselves.




Engaging Eurasia's Separatist States


Book Description

In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, secessionist forces carved four de facto states from parts of Moldova, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Ten years on, those states are mired in uncertainty. Beset by internal problems, fearful of a return to the violence that spawned them, and isolated and unrecognized internationally, they survive behind cease-fire lines that have temporarily frozen but not resolved their conflicts with the metropolitan powers. In this, the first in-depth comparative analysis of these self-proclaimed republics, Dov Lynch examines the logic that maintains this uneasy existence and explores ways out of their volatile predicament. Drawing on extensive travel within Eurasia and remarkable access to leading figures in the secessionist struggles, Lynch spotlights the political, military, and economic dynamics--both internal and external--that drive the existence of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. He also evaluates a range of options for resolving the status of the de facto states before violence returns, and proposes a coordinated approach, spearheaded by the European Union, that balances de facto and de jure independence and sovereignty. Slim but packed with information and insight, this volume also offers instructive lessons about the dynamics of intrastate and ethnic conflict and the merits of autonomy and power sharing in places as diverse as Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, and Chechnya.




Beyond NATO


Book Description

In this new Brookings Marshall Paper, Michael O'Hanlon argues that now is the time for Western nations to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in eastern Europe to stabilize the region and reduce the risks of war with Russia. He believes NATO expansion has gone far enough. The core concept of this new security architecture would be one of permanent neutrality. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc, from Europe's far north to its south: Finland and Sweden; Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and finally Cyprus plus Serbia, as well as possibly several other Balkan states. Discussion on the new framework should begin within NATO, followed by deliberation with the neutral countries themselves, and then formal negotiations with Russia. The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to help uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner; after that, corresponding sanctions on Russia would be lifted. The neutral countries would retain their rights to participate in multilateral security operations on a scale comparable to what has been the case in the past, including even those operations that might be led by NATO. They could think of and describe themselves as Western states (or anything else, for that matter). If the European Union and they so wished in the future, they could join the EU. They would have complete sovereignty and self-determination in every sense of the word. But NATO would decide not to invite them into the alliance as members. Ideally, these nations would endorse and promote this concept themselves as a more practical way to ensure their security than the current situation or any other plausible alternative.




Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict


Book Description

This edited volume focuses on the links between the ongoing crisis in and around Ukraine, regional diversity, and the reform of decentralization. It provides in-depth insights into the historical constitution of regional diversity and the evolution of center-periphery relationships in Ukraine, the legal qualification of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, and the role of the decentralization reform in promoting conflict resolution, as well as modernization, democratization and European integration of Ukraine. Particular emphasis lies on the securitization of both regional diversity issues and territorial self-government arrangements in terms of Russia’s support for self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The volume captures the complexity of contemporary “hybrid” conflicts, involving both internal and external aspects, and the hybridization and securitization of territorial self-governance solutions. It thus provides an important contribution to the debate on territorial self-government and conflict resolution.




Post-Imperium


Book Description

The war in Georgia. Tensions with Ukraine and other nearby countries. Moscow's bid to consolidate its "zone of privileged interests" among the Commonwealth of Independent States. These volatile situations all raise questions about the nature of and prospects for Russia's relations with its neighbors. In this book, Carnegie scholar Dmitri Trenin argues that Moscow needs to drop the notion of creating an exclusive power center out of the post-Soviet space. Like other former European empires, Russia will need to reinvent itself as a global player and as part of a wider community. Trenin's vision of Russia is an open Euro-Pacific country that is savvy in its use of soft power and fully reconciled with its former borderlands and dependents. He acknowledges that this scenario may sound too optimistic but warns that the alternative is not a new version of the historic empire but instead is the ultimate marginalization of Russia.




Europeanization and Conflict Resolution


Book Description

This volume studies the relevance of European integration for conflict settlement and conflict resolution in divided states such as Cyprus or Serbia and Montenegro.




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