ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the gradual development of the vision for a new security order-based on co-operation and integration, from the early days of perhaps rather idealistic euphoria to the present much more pragmatic solution to Europe's post-Cold War security problems. The implementation perspective offers a theoretical framework for the analysis and assessment of the efforts to establish a new post-Cold War European security order. There are three different views on the structural framework of post-Cold War Europe. These are: a state-centric structure, a pan-European structure and a multiple institutional structure. During the Cold War, the concept of security in both public and academic discourse was heavily influenced by the state-centric, realist perspective, seeing security almost exclusively in terms of politico-military relations between states. The chapter summarises four tasks: keeping the core intact, extending the achievements to central and Eastern Europe, setting up damage-limiting structures and preventing new lines of antagonism.
