European Security in Times of Crisis: Perspectives from Peace Research

Abstract

Russia's war against Ukraine has plunged Europe’s peace and security order into a deep crisis. While the ongoing war has been crucial in focusing our collective attention on the crisis of peace and security in Europe, this crisis took hold long before the current war and goes far beyond it. The central aim of this research report is to assess how we need to recalibrate the directions of research on peace and security in Europe at a time of confrontation and controversy, but also of global and planetary ruptures. Starting from our own research interests and from how they have been affected by the rapidly changing constellation of crises, this report examines what perspectives from peace research can bring to the study of increasingly confrontational and conflictual security dynamics in Europe and beyond. The report first discusses how we arrive at our understanding of peace research as a multi-perspectival approach that is characterised by normativity and problem-orientation, a focus on practice and knowledge transfer, and an emphasis on ethics and reflexivity. The report then identifies a series of research fields that we consider relevant for an era in which long-established order-creating and order-maintaining institutions in Europe and beyond are faltering - and in which new solutions must be found. These fields include Russia's role and cooperative security in Europe, Europe’s role in peacebuilding and conflict management, the internal dimension of the European peace project, societal peace formation, and European peace and security in the Anthropocene. While these themes represent only a selection of the issues at stake, this report demonstrates how peace research can animate current debates about the European peace and security order.