A New Concert for Europe: Security and Order After the War

Since the end of the ColdWar, the idea of reviving concert diplomacy as a means to manage order and security in a reunited Europe has been repeatedly discussed in theory, but never pursued in practice. While some more limited forms of concerted crisis management have been tried, the broader task of maintaining continental order has been left to a network of ostensibly “interlocking institutions and relationships” including formal multilateral organizations such as the OSCE, NATO and the EU, as well as various forms of more or less institutionalized cooperation like NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP), the NATORussia-Council (NRC), and the EU’s Neighborhood Policy (ENP). With the gradual demise of the liberal order underpinning it, this elaborate arrangement has progressively eroded over the course of the past decade. And with the start of Russia’s all-out attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, it has—for all practical intents and purposes—essentially collapsed. Most of its inclusive institutions have either been dissolved or deadlocked, and its most fundamental norms and principles undermined by their constant and blatant violation. To restore continental order and security when and however the war ends, therefore, new arrangements will be needed that go far beyond the immediate conditions of a peace deal. Given the apparent failure of prevailing liberal norms and institutions to prevent Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, such a reform of the European order will likely lead to a more pragmatic, realist approach to continental security. This new realism, however, comes in two seemingly conflicting varieties. One posits that, for the foreseeable future, security in Europe will be security from Russia and