Concerts, Collective Security, and the Future of Europe

Europe’s strategic it or not, the architecture of the postwar order is outmoded. The Warsaw Pact has been disbanded. NATO is struggling to define a role for itself; the threat it was built to resist may soon be nonexistent. Profound and probably irreversible change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe means that we must confront the difficult task of erecting new security structures for a new era. A debate rages over how to respond to these changes in Europe’s landscape. Two broad schools of thought have emerged. The pessimists, pointing to the waning of the Cold War and the end of bipolarity, fear a return to a more fractious multipolar Europe.’ The optimists, on the other hand, welcome the end of the East-West struggle and do not fear a return to multipolarity. They argue that many of the causes of war that produced conflict during the first half of the twentieth century have either been eliminated or substantially moderated. While these optimists recognize that the political and economic future of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe remains uncertain, many argue that some form of collective security-a pan-European Charles A. Kupchan is Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. Clifford A. Kupchan is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Columbia University.