While the situation in the South is, from an european point of view, in long run increasingly critical, the situation in East Europe is right there now.
After the doom of the Sowjet Union was an emerge of a number of new states in East Europe and throught this a number of borderconflicts and territorial claims. One of the most devastading ones concerns the Crimea peninsular, given from the russian to the ukrainian Sowjet unter Chruschtschow. Not reason for this is known. After the epoch of the sowjets, Crimea stayed at now independent Ukraine. And while all nuclear weapons were brought outside of the country, Russia garantied full territorial integrity for the Ukraine.
The rhetoric between the West and Russia became increasingly intense during the constant extension of EU and, more importantly, NATO. It was obvious that even countries like Georgia or Ukraine should have been introduced to the alliance. This reflection of the russian zone of influence to that one of the Brest-Litowsk contract, installed by the Germans during WWI, was not acceptable for Moscow. The US on the other hand lost themselfes in a post Cold War hybris, as shown by their engagements in the Middle East, it´s behaviour towards Russia or in theories like that one of „the end of history“.
Next to Crimea the conflict in the East Ukraine provinces aren´t solved either after seven years of war. This conflict whil show how much of an independent diplomacy old Europe is able to implement.
Simon Dierich 