Paolo Soave
The end of the Cold War raised the issue of European security again. Through increasing participation of societies, as a long-term consequence of the Helsinki Final Act, and especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, expectations “from below” could no longer be ignored. Among the most transnational ideas of that historical phase was the so-called “common European home,” an evolution of the liberal democratic culture that emerged in Helsinki in 1975 and finally inserted human rights in international relations and reshaped European public law. From East-European dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s up to movements issuing a new Europe, definitely free and integrated. However, such a valuable transnational idea of security had to deal with the international context, urging a new balance of power. That historical duty was up to the USA as the only legitimate international actor entitled to do that. After a temporary, prudent phase through the Partnership for Peace, based on NATO-Russia strategic cooperation, the Clinton administration solved the impressive Power Vaccum in centre-Europe, opting for widening NATO eastward, a process also adopted by the EU. On the one hand, despite the U.S. diplomatic and financial support to Eltsin, post-Soviet Russia never successfully fulfilled the transition toward the Western liberal democratic model; on the other hand, after the Cold War, Moscow could no longer contain the U.S. influence over Europe. The Western enlargement aimed to provide Europe with a new continental, homogeneous balance of power. Theoretically, it could pave the way to a new era based on a shared and transnational security culture, socially based and rooted in freedom and human rights rather than strategic affairs. The birth of a European society sensitive to security issues could be the most optimistic outcome.