Efstathios Fakiolas

• Professor (Assistant)
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Peloponnese

In the early 2000s, the EU incrementally appeared to have espoused a distinguishing human security discourse. This was bound not only to inform its crisis management operations but also to shape its global role. Today, the Union seems to move toward a global strategy blueprint and an ensuing public discourse. Human security is no longer mentioned a...

The chapter examines the efforts of the EU civilian missions deployed in BiH (EUPM) and Kosovo (EULEX) to advance the consolidation of state-building and the establishment of the rule of law. It tries to map out and assess their track record, with a view to shed light on successes and deficiencies. It argues that the more focused and well specific...

Today’s Russian Federation is the legitimate successor to the former Soviet Union. The breakup of the latter, almost two years after the end of the Cold War following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Warsaw Pact, did not drag the former into disintegration or demise. Despite the withdrawal from territories that had been under So...

How does a small state expand and secure territorial gains? Does its grand strategy merit concern? The conventional wisdom in international relations theory is that small states scarcely have autonomy in the choice of action, and that accommodation and compliance with great powers is the persistent pattern of their strategy in return for survival....

The human security literature helps refocus attention on human beings but seems to assume that the state is separate from society. The article seeks to rectify this deficit. It combines Marx’s ontological and epistemological insights with a realist analysis of the state, in order to restore both human agency as the sole driving force of history and...

This article argues that in addition to ideology and an ensuing discourse, oneif not the onlyeffective grand strategic means for a great power to establish global hegemony is through space control. Today, the sole power with both the will and the capability to achieve the grand strategic end of hegemony is the United States, which spends nearly as...

This article reflects on the EU’s strategy towards the Western Balkans. It identifies the lack of a coherent and consistent strategy intended for stabilization and integration. In principle, the Western Balkan states’ road towards Europe is driven by the belief that regional stabilization and EU membership are mutually constitutive and reinforcing...

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States has been presented with a unique structural opportunity to establish world‐scale hegemony. But it was not until after the 11 September terrorist attacks that an American president explicitly set out, under the pretext of the "war on terror," to pursue hegemony in the form of a Pax Amer...

The profound political crisis within the EU and across Europe before and after the US-led war in Iraq is due primarily to the policies of governments and not diverging views among European publics. Among the majority of EU and European citizens the sense of belonging to Europe is well developed. For this reason the division of Europe over Iraq, agg...

Lacking the superpower status and global reach of the former Soviet Union, Russia is striving to tailor its power-status aspirations to the constraints and imperatives thrown up by the new international system and its domestic politics. The article sheds light on Russia’s great power possibilities by examining the strategic alternatives through whi...