SECURITY AND STABILITY IN SOUTHEAST EUROPE

INSTRUCTOR Professor Panayotis Tsakonas, University of Athens 

Course Description

The seminar will revolve around a series of thematic areas related to the post-Cold War, post-communist era of Southeast Europe. The seminar begins with a detailed introduction of the most influential strands of the main theoretical traditions with the aim of making participants familiar with the various theoretical approaches' strengths and weaknesses in analyzing and explaining international phenomena.

These thematic areas will --inter alia-- include: a critical assessment of the disintegration of Yugoslavia; the evolution of the strategies of particular external actors (i.e.  US, Russia, China and Turkey) vis-a-vis the Balkans and their role in peacemaking and peacekeeping in the region; the role of international institutions in managing and/or resolving inter-state and intra-state/inter-ethic conflicts in Southeast Europe ( i.e. the United Nations in Kosovo, NATO and the European Union vis-a-vis the Greek-Turkish conflict, the European Union and NATO in Bosnia, Serbia/Kosovo and the 2001 insurgency in FYROM); the evolution of Greece's post-Cold War foreign policy towards the Balkan region; traditional and critical conceptions of security and new threats and      challenges in the region ( i.e. Islamist radicalization and Jihadism) and current challenges and future prospects for building cooperative security schemes in the region.