Uncertain Europe: Building a New European Security Order - Review

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2001

Uncertain Europe: Building a New European Security Order. Martin A. Smith and Graham Timmins, editors. Routledge. [pounds]55.00. 284 pages. ISBN 0-415-23735-1. To date the reality of E.U. involvement in maintaining world order has failed dismally to match its vaunted aims: on the European stage, let alone the world stage, the E.U.

is not the U.S. When it has tried to act without NATO and therefore without America, it has come a cropper. What then is the future, if any, for the E.U.'s ambition to be regarded as a player on the world stage? This collection of fourteen essays, published as part of the Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics' series, looks at the whole question of European order and security. Two 'core questions' are examined: what should be the 'main elements to a "genuine" European security order?' Secondly, is this order being created at the present time or not? The essays are grouped in four parts. The first examines the key concepts of order, security and identity. The second examines the various institutions involved: the OSCE, NATO, the EU and the WEU. The third part looks at national and regional perspectives: the US, France, the UK, Germany, Russia, the Baltic States, Poland and Southeast Europe. The fourth and final part examines the future of an 'uncertain Europe'.