This book, authored by a multi-national team, draws a complicated, yet logically evolving picture of the problems in the security sector reform field of South-East Europe, examining the post-totalitarian and post-conflict challenges to be faced.

This book, authored by a multi-national team, draws a complicated, yet logically evolving picture of the problems in the security sector reform field of South-East Europe, examining the post-totalitarian and post-conflict challenges to be faced.

Both Europe and the US have now dampened the shrillness of invectives hurled against each other over the last years. But the underlying differences have not been resolved. The two sides drift apart in their views on what internal politics should achieve, as well as in their vision of the global order they would like to see established. The economies of both Europe and the US are highly developed and densely interwoven. Their societies are post industrial. Many social and economic trends converge. Similar too, are the challenges to maintain security against threats emanating from other parts of the world. Divergences thus do not originate from conflicting material interests. They arise from different perceptions of the nature and of the threats from the outside world and from how the two societies wish to define themselves through their internal and external policies. The search for a distinct "European" or "American" identity fuels this discord. Therefore, appeals to common merely material interests will not obliterate it. The twelve contributions to this book address these concerns, reaching beyond academia to those that are involved in actual international decision making.