ABSTRACT
During the Cold War years, the idea that political borders had somehow achieved a state of permanence enjoyed currency as an almost commonsense notion, despite lessons of history and long-durée processes of state formation in Europe and Eurasia. For countries on the frontline of the Cold War in Europe, especially on both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain, the inevitable Cold War logic based on the threat of nuclear war effectively prevented efforts to renegotiate borders. This situation changed with the end of the Cold War order, but not in a straightforward way. Military confrontation on European borders did ease but a new phase of unpredictability in Great Power relations emerged that was less bound to the logics of realist geostrategy. This chapter explains how a wide variety of actors and processes has influenced how post-Cold war borders have been reconceptualised. Within the EU important changes are the result of policies of deepening integration that have promoted institutional debordering and more extensive cross-border communication. Behind territorial conflicts, we recognise, however, broader shifts in great power relations and regional balance of power as well as contested interpretations concerning sovereignty and framing of political space that concern more broadly borders in post-Cold War Europe.
