Abstract: In light of the recent international legal documents, this article examines the paramount aspects of the problem of European security on the example of the gap between the EU strive for implementing independent policy and the strategic reality. In order to achieve this goal, the author explores the factors that affected the new paradigm of European security and escalating tension in the international policy; provides assessment of the European Union Global Strategy on foreign policy and security policy determines opportunities of the EU as an independent actor in foreign policy; and considers the possible scenarios of the current situation. The effective protection of EU requires the application of international law and political power in all of its forms. For reducing the gap between the fraught with risks reality and political intentions, the European Union must develop and adopt the integrated program of European defense oriented towards its own resources or further dependence on the United States. Creation of the European military power under these conditions is an extremely difficult task due to the strategic discrepancies between the partners, and as a result of the ability of the state to adjust to the evolution of complicated foreign political situation in terms of civilizational opposition.

Abstract: The purpose of the work is to study the changing geography of international security in the modern age of civilizational confrontation. To achieve this goal the authors solve several tasks: 1) the authors consider the understanding of the territory of a nation-state in the modern studies; 2) the authors study the problem of blurring the areas of war and peace; 3) the authors consider the new geography of  power beyond national borders; 4) the authors analyze the methods and approaches to studying the new geopolitical landscape of the modernity in the age of civilizational confrontation. The results of the research can be used for the preparation of general and special courses in political science, sociology, geopolitics, and the history of international relations. The research methodology includes general scientific and comparative analysis, the historical and logical, and specific methods of political science (event-analysis, case-study, expert assessment). The authors study the modern interpretations of the theory of a nation-state, consider the problem of blurring the areas of war and peace and the key aspects of the new geography of power beyond state borders, analyze the key methods and approaches to studying the new geopolitical landscape of the modernity in the age of civilizational confrontation. In spite of the tendencies indicating the renaissance of nationalism in the modern civilizational confrontation, the larger structural transformations in the world policy still point at the necessity to solve security problems taking into account the geographical borders of a state and the current state of the globalising world. Blurring the borders between the areas of war and peace will mean the decrease of effectiveness of the policy of containment or strategical negotiations which is based on the understanding of states as unitary subjects.