ABSTRACT
The end of the Cold War presented an unprecedented opportunity for the development of a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI). With a transformed external environment, the US preoccupied with reassessing its post-Cold War role and pressure in Europe for deeper integration, the moment appeared propitious for an ESDI to 'come of age'. Hie Western European Union (WEU) would be the most likely vehicle chosen to advance this identity. Yet the enhancement of the WEU could only be achieved at the cost of encroaching upon North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's position of primacy. The end of the Cold War had heralded the emergence of a variety of weak and unstable countries in central and eastern Europe that had detached themselves from the Soviet empire. Western Europe emerged from the Cold War as a Deutschian 'security community' in which the threat of war had been removed from the relationships between the member states.
