Bulletin n. 3/2015
January 2016
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Nordenman Magnus
    Whither the Transatlantic Community?
    in Mediterranean Quarterly , Volume 26, Number 4, December ,  2015 ,  pp. 1-12
    The southern Mediterranean rim forms part of what the former Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt called in a recent speech in Washington, DC, the “ring of fire” around Europe. Coupled with continued sluggish growth across Europe, the ongoing Greek crisis, and the rise of populist parties in many European countries, the European neighborhood faces a long litany of challenges, and the outcomes will define and determine the future of Europe and regions beyond. The broader Mediterranean region plays an integral role in this drama. While the economic and political problems of Europe have been simmering for more than five years, the security challenges have arguably emerged more suddenly and quickly. European security and stability have been disrupted in recent years by the twin challenges of a crumbling Middle East order and a newly assertive Russia that is willing and able to use force to keep nations out of the orbit of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and also to test the credibility of NATO in Europe’s north and southeast. Quite arguably, European security is at its worst since the Cold War, notwithstanding the turbulence and sometimes violence that was generated in the early 1990s due to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the wars in the Balkans. Little suggests that this is a passing crisis; it looks instead like the beginning of a new era of geopolitical competition in Europe and intractable conflicts and unrest across the broader Middle East and along Europe’s southern rim. So far, the transatlantic community has been able to devise only stopgap measures in response to these challenges—measures that are made increasingly complex [End Page 1] because they are generated by revanchist state power and by the collapse of states and social governance. Effective responses to them have also, in part, been frustrated by the economic and political interdependence that has been the dominant characteristic of global developments over the past thirty years. These challenges have strategic implications for the transatlantic community in general and for Europe’s Mediterranean countries in particular. The EU, NATO, the United States, and leading European countries must devise long-term and holistic strategies in order to effectively face the challenges in the east and south and to preserve the peace, stability, integration, and prosperity that has increasingly defined Europe in the post–Cold War period.
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