[SmallWarsJournal] SWJ discussion with Luis Simón, research professor of international security at the Institute for European Studies (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and director of the Brussels office of the Elcano Royal Institute. He recently published a Whitehall Paper for London’s Royal United Services Institute: The Spectre of a Westphalian Europe?
Describe the broader geopolitical trends that question and shatter the traditional pillars of European stability, jeopardizing the continental balance - making for a likely return to a Westphalian Europe. It could be a mix between the pre-1914 nightmare and a post American Europe – weak, more of a geopolitical appendix of Russia as well as a gray-zone lab for Moscow (as in the Norwegian Series "Occupied"). The end of the Cold War generated the return of suppressed ethnic and nationalist energies. Compounded by a potential US retrenchment, what would a Westphalian ecosystem mean for Europe? What are the inherent dangers of a Westphalian Europe?
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