ABSTRACT
Five salient, interrelated conditions look set to determine the character of European security arrangements over the medium-term, well into the first decade of the next century. These conditions are present and active in European security today, and there is little reason to expect their importance to diminish. Crisis management is made much more difficult when the behaviour of many decision-makers have to be taken into account. The reimposition of Russian military influence in some new states, such as Georgia, has so far been one answer to instability, but whether this is conducive to long-term security is open to question. While most risks and challenges arise from actual or prospective civil or ethnic conflicts, these are relatively low-level actual or potential conflicts. The threat least likely to contemporary European security at present, but most dangerous should it occur, is that of traditional, large-scale, interstate war between the Great Powers on the European continent.
