Abstract
Victor Yushchenko's hard-won victory in the December 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine, also known as the ‘Orange Revolution’, seems typical of some important international political trends in Europe: one, democratic intervention by Western governmental and non-governmental organizations in the internal affairs of (semi-)authoritarian states in the eastern part of Europe has shown some remarkable results; two, the Russian Federation openly, though not very successfully, interferes into these disputes, in order to secure its interests in this region; and third, subsequently, tensions between Russia and the ‘West’ (in this case, the United States and the European Union are in agreement) are on the rise, using political terminology that reminds us of the Cold War era: democracy, human rights, and spheres of influence. Do we run the risk, ten years after the collapse of the communist powerhouse Soviet Union, to start a new East-West conflict? Does Europe have legitimate security interests in the ‘Near Abroad’ (the Kremlin's jargon for the republics of the former Soviet Union minus the Baltic States), and if so, how should we define them against the ambitions, imperial or otherwise, of the Russian Federation?
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