ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three existing and nascent security orders in Europe today, and the interactions between them. The first order can be labelled '1989', taken as the symbolic date for the collapse of the Soviet 'empire' in Eastern Europe. The second order is called '1991', the combined dissolution of the communist system and disintegration of Soviet state. The third order comprises the countries trapped between 1989 and 1991 – which gives them the corresponding label of '1990' states. These are countries engaged to various degrees in the Eastern Partnership, half of which are in the South Caucasus. The great Caucasian war was provoked by Russia's attempts to consolidate its hold over the North Caucasus to ensure security and supply lines to the South Caucasus. Russia has proposed numerous ideas to rethink the larger pattern of European security. Russia's conduct in the Georgian and Ukrainian wars was in part an attempt to overcome the asymmetry in the end of Cold War.
