This publication stemmed from the December 7, 2005 conference, co-sponsored by East European Studies, West European Studies, and the Southeast Europe Project. The 1995 Dayton Accords ended the violent conflict that raged in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. Yet, while the fighting has ended, ten years afterwards the Dayton Accords have not been replaced by a more permanent legal foundation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. More than simply commemorating the end of a war, East European Studies proposes holding a conference to reflect on what the Dayton Accords achieved over the last decade, what remains to be done in terms of creating a cohesive and self-sustaining state in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and what role the international community can play to promote state-building there. A better understanding of the Dayton Accords will add to the knowledge of peace brokering and state-building, which has become highly relevant in terms of U.S. Security Policy towards the wider world. more

December 2002- Bulgaria's post-1989 transition to a multi-party democracy and market economy, both functioning under the rule of law, has obviously been slow if judged by Hungary's exemplary standard. Ten governments and five parliaments in 12 years have hampered the political pursuit of sustained policies. The shock of a collapsing Soviet trade regime hit Bulgarian exports – one half of which had gone to the USSR – particularly hard. Legal foreign trade suffered and illegal activity mushroomed with Western sanctions against Serbia and Greece's embargo against what it still calls the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. But that was the 1990s, and now in the new century, there are enough signs of progress to hope that impending NATO membership will indeed be followed before the end of the decade by EU membership. more

September 2008 - With predictable regularity, Russian officials regularly charge that American missile defenses (10 radars and interceptors) in Poland and the Czech Republic threaten Russian security. They claim that since there is no threat of Iranian missiles (conventional or nuclear), there is no justification for building these systems. Therefore, they can only represent a threat to Russia's vital interests. Since everyone admits that ten such units alone do not constitute that threat, Moscow charges that that these systems are merely the thin edge of the larger program to saturate Central and Eastern Europe with missile defenses to prevent Russia from launching its nuclear weapons in a first strike against a conventional or nuclear attack from the West. That first strike is in accordance with Russia's military doctrine that calls for such strikes to compensate for Russia's conventional inferiority vis-à-vis NATO and the United States. Missile defenses would then deprive Russia of the capability to launch a retaliatory strike or else degrade that capability, leaving Russia vulnerable to all manner of attacks. Because Warsaw and Prague defied Russia's objections and threats by accepting to host these missile defenses they have received numerous equally predictable and regular Russian threats to target them with nuclear and conventional missiles. more

Since the end of the Cold War, key regional organizations like NATO, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and lately, with the development of a security dimension, the EU, have been engaged in a race to transform and adapt to the changing security environment. These entities, however, have been transforming in competition rather than coordination with each other. more