Analytical Report: A New Security Policy for Eastern Europe?

Interested in the security policy situation in Eastern Europe?  Download now an analytical report from the Future of Freedom annual consultation. 

Threats mainly stem from Russia, and more precisely- from the Kremlin, and its pursuit of a course of aggressive and military-backed revisionism. Strengthening of defence capability is therefore inevitable. Security, however, also has a strong civilian component. Accordingly, undesirable developments in the Eastern European states themselves can seriously jeopardise the security of these states. The same consequence may be brought about by the unilateral orientation of some Western European states towards Russia.

The key conclusions of the report are:

• Western Europeans must engage with Eastern Europe and refrain from adopting a paternalistic attitude.
• Eastern Europe should not be classified predominantly under geopolitical criteria.
• Security ultimately lies in the legitimation of the state and society, in their sustainability. The political agenda of the liberal forces in Eastern Europe must respond to this. This takeaway applies also and especially with regard to Ukraine.
• Lastly, one must not continue to evade the takeaway: the Kremlin is waging a political war against Europe and the West as a whole. The German liberals must also seek to resist it, and do their utmost to advocate that Germany and the European Union invest in the stability of Eastern Europe and thus in the security of Europe.

Dr Falk Bomsdorf is the author of the report. In 1993 Dr Bomsdorf joined the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and set up the Foundation´s office in Moscow that he led until 2009. Since then he has been working as an adviser for the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation (until 2013) and for the FDP.

Please download below the full versions of the analytical report (12 pages) and/or the executive summary (2 pages) and/or résumé (half a page). All documents are available both in English and German. 

The “Future of Freedom” Annual Consultation for East and Southeast Europe for 2017 took place in Kharkiv, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in Eastern Ukraine. Its focus was on the security of Eastern Europe—for good reasons, since there is a war being waged in that region. Representatives from 15 Eastern European countries as well as from Germany and from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament discussed the threats and dangers facing Eastern Europeans and ways to counter them.

Learn more about the situation on the ground by the documentary film below. 

A series of short documentary films are being released for the war in Ukraine as a follow-up from the consultation from different perspectives - the local Ukrainian one, the policy experts and liberal thought leaders, high-level policians from the region and ALDE.  Have a look in the playlist below to find all documentaries: