inRESPONSE Panel Presented at EISA – August 2024
An inRESPONSE panel has presented three distinct papers at EISA’s 17th Pan-European Conference on International Relations. The conference took place between 27-31 August 2024 at the Lille Catholic University in France.
The panel’s scope was the following:
A changing European multilateral security order? Institutional responses in a contested post-liberal landscape
The European security order which emerged at the end of the Cold War, designed to mitigate violent conflicts and to build and maintain peace, is arguably currently in decline or even in an outright state of breakdown. The Russian invasion in Ukraine in 2022 has entailed an upset of the established European security order, based on cooperative security principles and provided through the interlocking security providing institutions: the OSCE, NATO and the EU. These institutions together formed a network of mutually reinforcing organizations, upholding fundamental liberal security principles and providing forums for management of conflict among all member states and associated partners. After 2022, it is worth exploring whether the interlocking institutional set-up to safeguard order in a now increasingly post-liberal Europe has become obsolete and/or what lies ahead. This panel pursues a dual objective. First, we will examine what combination of factors lead up to the malfunction of the liberal European security order to make inter-state war in 2022 possible. Second, we will also explore how security multilateralism, in a Europe in which liberal principles are challenged, is transforming, and what kind of new complementary multilateral practices, norms, actors, and institutions are evolving. Are OSCE, NATO and/or the EU becoming mere empty shells, unable to execute their founding objectives of liberal peace, security, and stability on the European continent or will they adapt in their functions?
