Since 1 January 2007, Moldova has been a direct neighbour of the European Union. Nonetheless, Moldova and the Russia-dominated geopolitics of the Black Sea region receive still relatively little attention in the West. This is all the more surprising as there remain a number of consequential political divisions and unresolved conflicts in the area. One of them is the Transnistria conflict in Moldova.This book is a contribution to the, so far, small research and policy agenda on Moldova, and includes findings of several research trips to Moldova, Transnistria and their neighbouring countries. At first, the study reassesses the Transnistria conflict. Contrary to widely held assumptions, this conflict is found to be mainly based on a clash of elites and geopolitical interests rather than on ethnic tensions. The second part of the book analyses the interests, official position, actual impact and potential role of the EU in Moldova's internal separatist conflict and its related external tensions with Russia. So far, the EU has had a limited involvement in the conflict resolution efforts and in the international relations of Moldova. This book concludes that it is becoming increasingly important and possible for the EU to get effectively involved in this region, but that the scope of EU activities in Moldova and Transnistria depends on the country’s relations with, and on the actions in this area of, the United States and Russia. At its end, the study offers recommendations for future EU policies directed at Moldova.

This book examines EU intervention and non-intervention in conflict resolution, with a specific focus on the EU’s role in the post-soviet conflicts of Moldova, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and Azerbaijan.

In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, secessionist forces carved four de facto states from parts of Moldova, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Ten years on, those states are mired in uncertainty. Beset by internal problems, fearful of a return to the violence that spawned them, and isolated and unrecognized internationally, they survive behind cease-fire lines that have temporarily frozen but not resolved their conflicts with the metropolitan powers. In this, the first in-depth comparative analysis of these self-proclaimed republics, Dov Lynch examines the logic that maintains this uneasy existence and explores ways out of their volatile predicament. Drawing on extensive travel within Eurasia and remarkable access to leading figures in the secessionist struggles, Lynch spotlights the political, military, and economic dynamics--both internal and external--that drive the existence of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. He also evaluates a range of options for resolving the status of the de facto states before violence returns, and proposes a coordinated approach, spearheaded by the European Union, that balances de facto and de jure independence and sovereignty. Slim but packed with information and insight, this volume also offers instructive lessons about the dynamics of intrastate and ethnic conflict and the merits of autonomy and power sharing in places as diverse as Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, and Chechnya.

Through the study of five ethno-political conflicts lying on or just beyond Europe's borders, this book analyzes the impact and effectiveness of EU foreign policy on conflict resolution. Conflict resolution features strongly as an objective of the European Union's foreign policy. In promoting this aim, the EU's geographical focus has rested primarily in its beleaguered backyard to the south and to the east. Taking a strong comparative approach, Nathalie Tocci explores the principal determinants of conflict dynamics in Cyprus, Turkey, Serbia-Montenegro, Israel-Palestine and Georgia in order to assess the impact of EU contractual ties on them. The volume includes topical analyzis based on first-hand experience, in-depth interviews with all the relevant actors and photography in ongoing conflict areas in the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Caucasus. This revealing study shows that the gap between EU potential and effectiveness often rests in the specific manner in which the EU collectively chooses to conduct its contractual relations. The EU and Conflict Resolution will be of interest to all readers who wish to acquire an excellent understanding of the EU's impact on conflict contexts and will appeal to scholars of European politics, security studies and conflict resolution.

The five unresolved separatist conflicts of the post-Soviet space in Eastern Europe are the biggest risk to Europe’s stability and security. Four of these – Abkhazia, South Ossetia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Nagorny Karabakh contested between Armenia and Azerbaijan – date back to around the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991-2, and became called ‘frozen conflicts’. The fifth is Ukraine’s Donbas, which in 2014 saw large parts of its Donetsk and Luhansk regions violently separate from Kyiv at a cost of 13,000 human lives so far, due crucially to Russia’s supporting hybrid warfare there. This book is the first to give an up-to-date account of all five conflicts in an analytically consistent manner. It charts new territory in exploring systematically a full range of scenarios for the possible future of all five conflicts and offers a basis of sound information for officials, diplomats, scholars and the general public.

"Focusing on regime trajectories across three countries in the former Soviet Union (Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine), Lucan Way argues that democratic political competition has often been grounded less in well-designed institutions or emerging civil society, and more in the failure of authoritarianism. In many cases, pluralism has persisted because autocrats have been too weak to steal elections, repress opposition, or keep allies in line. Attention to the dynamics of this "pluralism by default" reveals an important but largely unrecognized contradiction in the transition process in many countries - namely, that the same factors that facilitate democratic and semi-democratic political competition may also thwart the development of stable, well-functioning democratic institutions. Weak states and parties - factors typically seen as sources of democratic failure - can also undermine efforts to crack down on political opposition and concentrate political control"--

There is extraordinary variation in how governments treat multinational corporations in emerging economies; in fact, governments around the world have nationalized or eaten away at the value of foreign-owned property in violation of international treaties. This even occurs in poor countries, where governments are expected to, at a minimum, respect the contracts they make with foreign firms lest foreign capital flee. In The Shield of Nationality, Rachel Wellhausen introduces foreign-firm nationality as a key determinant of firms' responses to government breaches of contract. Firms of the same nationality are likely to see a compatriot's broken contract as a forewarning of their own problems, leading them to take flight or fight. In contrast, firms of other nationalities are likely to meet the broken contract with apparent indifference. Evidence includes quantitative analysis and case studies that draw on field research in Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania.

The first English-language book to present a complete picture of this intriguing East European borderland, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture, illuminates the perennial problems of identity politics and cultural change that the country has endured.

The book comprehensively discusses legal and political issues of non-recognized entities in the context of international and European Law, combining perspectives of international and European law with those of the non-recognized entities themselves.

This volume studies the relevance of European integration for conflict settlement and conflict resolution in divided states such as Cyprus or Serbia and Montenegro.