20 Years After the Collapse of the Soviet Union – New Challenges for the Contemporary Security Environment

The inexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in december 1991 can be seen, without any doubt, as the meta-event of the second half of the 20th century. The early years of this new Era determined a lot of confusion, but in the same time, as before in 1918 and 1945, many experts and politicians looked forward to more peaceful times, hoping that with the end of the Cold War the world would become a more settled and peaceful place. Unfortunately, the bloody conflicts in the 1990s, and especially the terrorist atacks from 9/11 highlighted the limits of those initial optimistic theories, marking the beginning of a new, much more complex, dynamic, instable Post Post-Cold War Era, with a new world order in wich we are witnessing a broadening and deepening process of the insecurity in the context of the globalization phenomenon.