Recalibrating the integration–peace nexus

This book began by referring to the impact of European integration on the Franco-German border conflict. This example was the historical nucleus from which the belief in the major ‘post-World War II promise’, namely that European integration has the power to substantially transform borders from lines of conflict into lines of cooperation, originally departs (Miard-Delacroix and Hudemann 2005). This assumption does indeed often nurture the belief system(s) of EU decision-makers and the image of the EU in conflict societies, as the previous chapters, and in particular chapter 7, have shown. We have not argued in this book that the assumption of such a nexus between integration and peace is entirely misguided (Tavares 2004). Indeed, there are plenty of examples that show integration has had a positive effect on border conflicts in Europe. What we have, however, attempted to show from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective is that any linear and one-dimensional conceptualisation of a catalytic function of integration and association on border conflicts does not stand the test of rigorous empirical research. Thus, the case studies in this book on border conflicts in Northern Ireland, Greece and Turkey, Cyprus, Russia and Europe's North aswell as Israel and Palestine have shown that alongside the manifold instances of catalytic effects of integration (and to a lesser extent association) on border conflicts, there always looms the potential of integration and association leading to an intensification of border conflict dynamics.