The collapse of communist rule in the late 1980s set in motion a process of radical political, social and economic change in the former USSR and Central and Eastern Europe. Throughout the eastern half of Europe and beyond, among the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) the early 1990s have been characterized by attempts to move away from the legacy of the communist era towards new democratic political structures, market economies and societies based on the rule of law. The challenges and dilemmas posed by these developments to the stability of the region are the central focus of Central and Eastern Europe: The Challenge of Transition. Recognizing the need to adopt an approach doing justice to what is unquestionably a momentous process of change, the book focuses on the security implications of continuing developments in the political, social, economic and military spheres. The heart of the book is a set of case studies examining in detail the situation in a number of Central and East European countries: Hungary, Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltic states, the Balkan region and in the former Yugoslavia. By way of introduction to the case studies, a further section of essays assesses developments in Central and Eastern Europe from a broader thematic perspective, focusing on such important issues as the role of European organizations in the ethnic conflicts currently much in evidence throughout the region.

This book examines the question: is the elimination of nuclear weapons politically feasible and technically practical? With the end of the cold war, a re-thinking of the nuclear foundations of international security is imperative. There are no compelling reasons to perpetuate a cold war-era nuclear security approach. Neither is the world ready to abolish nuclear weapons by agreement. What it is ready for, however, is a radical reappraisal of conventional strategic and disarmament wisdom. The book's explicit focus on non-nuclear security takes issues with prevailing pro- and anti-nuclear views. The study challenges the assumptions of the strategic community that there is no alternative to nuclear security in an anarchic international system and of the advocates of radical nuclear disarmament who propose solutions at the expense of security. Instead, the contributors argue that nuclear weapons abolition should be seen as a long-term process, pursued on a broad political front, aimed at a steady transformation of international politics that encourages security co-operation between states. Individual chapters of the book address the major conceptual, technical, and economic issues in t

SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) is an independent institute for scientific research, which aims to further an understanding of the conditions for peaceful solutions to international conflicts and for a stable peace. Over the past 20 years, SIPRI has concentrated on problems of armaments, disarmaments, and arms regulation. This study analyzes the evolution of the current security order and the role of nuclear weapons in it. It investigates how and why countries have responded to the existence of nuclear weapons as they have. It traces the development of security thinking in the nuclear age through case studies of countries that have nuclear weapons, those that do not, those on the nuclear threshold and those whose security is believed to benefit from the nuclear arsenals of other countries. The framework of analysis is comparative, and the study provides insight into shared and different appreciations of the impact nuclear weapons have had upon states' understanding of national and international security. This book offers a comprehensive reassessment of the concept of security with nuclear weapons that goes beyond traditional East-West analyses of the nuclea