The Break-up of “Eastern Europe”?

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  • 『東欧』の解体？
  • 『東欧』の解体?--コソヴォを事例として
  • トウオウ ノ カイタイ コソヴォ オ ジレイ ト シテ
  • The Case of Kosovo
  • ―コソヴォを事例として―

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Abstract

Which countries were considered as comprising “Eastern Europe?” Generally speaking, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania are regarded as having belonged to Eastern Europe and, without a doubt, the concept of Eastern Europe as one region was grasped most easily in the era of the Cold War. However, even this conclusion is hasty. Yugoslavia never joined the Warsaw Pact and it was only a semi-member of COMECON, while Albania withdrew from the former in 1968 and from the latter in 1962. Even those people who think that “Eastern Europe” really did exist as an entire region are faced with the current dissolution of Eastern Europe because of the EU's eastward expansion.<BR>Furthermore, the case of Kosovo illustrates the dissolution of Eastern Europe as one region. Kosovo was an autonomous province of Serbia, but because of human rights violations against the majority Albanian population of Kosovo by the Milosevic regime, from March to June 1999, NATO undertook air strikes not only in Kosovo, but also in Serbia proper. This was a clear example of infringement of Serbia's state sovereignty, both formally and substantively. After the fall of Milosevic, state-building in Kosovo is being undertaken by neither Serbia nor Eastern Europe, but by the international community. On 2 February, Martti Ahtisaari, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for the future status process of Kosovo, announced his Draft Comprehensive Proposal on the Kosovo Status Settlement. According to the draft, Kosovo can, in practice, obtain independence. Kosovo will be an independent state, although Serbia strongly opposes this. Neither Albanians, Serbs, people in neighboring countries, or even the international community imagine “Eastern Europe” as one region.<BR>Nowadays, the EU member states in Eastern Europe are only interested in strengthening their political and economic relations within the EU and in building special relations with their eastern neighbors Russia and Ukraine. The non-EU member states of the region only desire EU membership. Moreover, the term “Eastern Europe” is closely connected with the memory of domination by the USSR. EU enlargement and Soviet connotations of “Eastern Europe, ” which cannot be detached from the term, ensure that Eastern Europe will no longer remain as a distinct region in the future.

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