The charter of Paris and a new European order

Abstract

The end of the Cold War opened up new vistas for building a new international order in Europe, free of dividing lines. The more so since the liberal world order, which emerged due to the evolution of the global order in the field of security, on the one hand, and the rules, norms, and practices established within the community of Western countries in 1945-1991, on the other hand, was formally the most successful combination of the effects of such categories as the balance of power and international institutions. At the global level, this combination for a long time made it possible to avoid revolutionary situations that might have been caused by utter dissatisfaction of one or several major powers with their position. However, in Europe, where the institutional basis of international interaction was most developed, the rules of the liberal world order brought about significant distortions in favor of one of the participants in this interaction—the European Union, which acted as an instrument for increasing individual capabilities of major Western European countries. This happened because the factor of military capabilities was excluded from the overall balance of power of the main actors. Since for a long time after the end of the Cold War Russia was limited in all factors of power except for the military one, its position in relations with the EU was weak, which is why its interests and values ​were ignored in building an EU-led European order. This eventually paralyzed the entire system of multilateral interaction in Europe, which, along with the shift of the global center of power competition towards Asia, considerably marginalized the European space in global affairs.