Ten Years After: Democratisation and Security Challenges in South East Europe

2001

Name of Discord, Aim of Co–Operation: Changing Perceptions of Security between Neighbouring Countries.
Spyros Damtsas

Abstract

State relations are signified by major events in history. Alliances and wars, occupations and conquests are moments or periods of history that follow states in their relations many years or generations after the time they occurred. In the same way peoples and ethnic groups keep glorious or tragic memories and their aspirations or fears go beyond state politics or international balances. However, there are moments when the silent river-wise current of popular feelings joins the international conjecture. Time then comes for conflict where rationality inclines to history and fatal past precludes humanity from change.

In modern times the citizen model is dominant and the other is not a threat but a prerequisite of individual identity. Nations divide the world in states but the ethnic state is predominantly a state based on citizenship rather than on ethnic homogeneity. Powerful states are determined by their multiethnic composition. New developments marked the 20 century and the eruption of a globalising society inserted new concepts of analysis compatible to the emergent unified world, the new powers and possibilities offered. Soft borders, regional and global economic integration schemes, policies of non state actors etc. However, since states remain the principal components of international society, we have to analyse their interaction equally through the traditional key concepts of power politics.

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