The European Security Architecture and Interregional Relations in the Context of World Order Change

The study is focused on medium-term developments of European regional security, which are empirically analysed by looking at the post-Cold War European Security Architecture (ESA). Generally, it is argued that the ESA has developed to increasingly reflect interregionalism between two different regional security orders (RSOs) – the Euro-Atlantic (democratic) one the authoritarian Eurasian RSO –, which has coincided with a broader context of a more dynamic global order. More specifically, it is argued that, before Russia’s waging war against Ukraine in February 2022, there had been significant signs of an increasingly aggressive Russia, which had been progressively using its interregional relations with the Euro-Atlantic RSO to challenge the ESA, including as regards its normative, institutional, and strategic (arms control) dimensions; furthermore, the challenge had consisted in Russia’s attempts to modify the ESA, rather than to distance itself from it, which is consistent with the thesis on the relevance of external legitimisation for authoritarian regimes, including by means of cooperation with democracies. Contrary to some prominent scholarship, the study suggests a lack of potential for regions to play a stabilising role in the international order. The study also critically revisits some recent attempts to re-design the ESA and concludes by offering a general forward-looking political perspective