Mediterranean Regional Security in the 21st Century: Regional Integration Through Development and Its Security Impact On Euromed Partnership Members. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 7 No. 9 May 2007

Boening, Astrid B. (2007) Mediterranean Regional Security in the 21st Century: Regional Integration Through Development and Its Security Impact On Euromed Partnership Members. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 7 No. 9 May 2007. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

[From the introduction]. In this paper I seek to explore a region of the world, the Mediterranean, which has been significant as a passageway for peoples and their trade and cultures through the millenia. However, as S. Victor Papacosma (2004, 15/6) writes (concerning in particular the Eastern Mediterranean) that despite their proximity, the diversity of the indigenous groups contributed little to harmony and much more to clashes among them … [and this region was characterized by] fragmented distributions of power and security systems that posed obstacles for this major avenue of economic and naval traffic. Today, progress has certainly been made – but much obviously needs to be done in the regions bordering the Mediterranean to remove obstacles not only to economic traffic, but to build bridges to traverse the cultural and political diversity between the East and the West and the North and the South of the Mediterranean, and to substitute military clashes with peaceful socio-economic and cultural interactions at last. Hence I would like to examine here a modus operandi which is intended to serve as a peaceful “bridge” not between “Them” and “Us”, or “the West” and “the Rest”, but one which utilizes approaches, such as functionalism, which have been historically successful in integrating neighboring countries that had an extensive history of “un-neighborly” relations, such as France and Germany, into a system which has brought not only prosperity to, but also peace between them, i.e. the European Union (EU) and examine its application to the Mediterranean regions in the Euro-Med Partnership (EMP), also known as the Barcelona Process.

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