The notion of Eastern Europe today

[Tadeusz Lemańczyk]

In order to follow Mislav's postscript ("we should have made a discussion topic of this"), let me begin with this discussion. As TadFromPoland ( http://forums.ec.europa.eu/debateeurope/profile.php?mode=viewprofil... ) and Neddy ( http://forums.ec.europa.eu/debateeurope/profile.php?mode=viewprofil... ), I've already learnt the problem of Europe (Longman Interactive American Dictionary ©Addison Wesley Longman 1997--3 the mainland of the CONTINENT of Europe, not including the British Isles) discussing with my British friends at Debate Europe ( http://europa.eu/debateeurope/index.htm ). This time we discuss another meaning of Europe [Longman Interactive American Dictionary ©Addison Wesley Longman 1997--1 one of the seven large land masses in the world (CONTINENTs). Europe lies N of the Mediterranean and goes E as far as the Ural Mountains in Russia.].

The most controversial problem of the picture questioned by Rainer Michaeli and me is connected with East Germany belonging to Eastern Europe and Berlin (probably only West) belonging to Western Europe. Next, why Poland (24°09'E) belongs to Eastern Europe and Finland (31°35'E), Norway (31°03'E), Greece (29°38'E), and Sweden (24°15'E) to Western Europe? It's because you wish to use the political criterion, not the geographical one, isn't that so? However, the political criterion used in that picture to draw a line between Western Europe and Eastern Europe is the criterion of the past. Today, the political situation of States described on the picture is extremely various. Concerning any intelligence problem, the most important is the fact that some of those States are members of NATO and the EU, which means that they are expected to obey some security regulations (see, for example, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:164... ).

[Mislav Jurisic]

Dear Tad,
I have mentioned in my comments that it was my overlooking the picture (regarding East Germany). Some colour nuances sometimes I don't at first see :). That's I guess why I always ask someone sitting next to me when I drive, is it red, is red ?
I agree some criteria wouldn't be bad to have. Maybe some renaming is needed.
I should have maybe consulted with more people. My pure intention was to start bringing us together and maybe by doing so some local communities in long term future will form from this. In other words if I would create a group on CI in Croatia, we could be speaking there in our local language, but we would be very few, some even wouldn't be joining us for this or that reason.
I haven't so much thought about naming and thank you for bringing up that question.
Bringing up such group is also result of talks I had on many occasion earlier with people from this region on SCIP's conferences (when I mentioned Eastern europe I refered to new accession countries + ex-yu+ex ussr). Some of them were from Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia. And I always heard questions like: what are you doing, let's do something together, what do you do to help create some local CI community (whether formal or informal), can we apply some of your approaches. I was also pushed by seeing at last SCIP annual conference only one person from Poland and three of us from Croatia. If someone else was there appologies, haven't notice you.
If there are some suggestions we can change the naming or make clear definition what is ment not to confuse or annoy anyone. Maybe we can call it even CI in European emerging markets or something like that to avoid any political context.
I think that users of the forum will in any way decide whether this group makes sense or not, by putting up questions and discussions.
All suggestions are wellcome! This is not my property:)

Cheers

[Viktor]

Dear Mislav, and other users,

There is no need to make things complicated. Term Eastern Europe is quite acceptable and it is widely used, and this is not just a matter of geopolitical situation, it is also a question of history, culture etc.
The definition that Mislav gave is proper for this group.

Regards.

[Jerry Spencer]

Of course the representation is geo-political inasmuch as Poland, for instance, was last occupied by the Soviet Union and designation of East and West was based upon that relationship.
The new resurrection of the Great Bear of Russia makes these new situations vis a vis EU and NATO a real problem intelligence wise. As the Bear exerts pressure, the lines will blur.