Lecture by Dr Laurien Crump – 4 May 2018
European Security as a Joint Venture – Viewing the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe as a Pan-European Process
Lecture by Dr Laurien Crump (University of Utrecht), on 4 May 2018 at 11:00 – Sala del Camino, Villa Salviati, Via Bolognese 156, 50139 Florence, Italy
As a cooperative process between rivalling parties, rather than an organization of likeminded countries, the CSCE is a fascinating case of multilateral, Pan-European, diplomacy. The joint effort of thirty-five countries to explore common and diverging notions of European security and cooperation during two decades of international tensions is unique. Regarding the CSCE as a Pan-European process to manage European security beyond the remit of the superpowers, I will analyze to what extent the cooperation of non-likeminded countries contributed to a peaceful conduct of the Cold War. My investigation is based on the working hypothesis that the CSCE led to the ‘multilateralization of European security’, as I call it, and as such transcended the East-West antagonism. Through a comparative historical analysis of the participation of countries on either side of the Iron Curtain, I will explore how and to what extent the ‘multilateralization of European security’ contributed to overcoming the Cold War divide.