The preceding chapters have attempted to look beyond the immediate fog of war and reflect upon the longer-term impacts of Ukraine's conflict. The war presents a range of profound questions that flow from these aftershocks. Although it is clear that the conflict is set to have lasting effects on Europe, two years on from Russia's invasion it remains uncertain how much structural re-ordering it will entail and what kinds of change will ultimately prevail. Will the emerging European order ultimately be a more harmonious and values-based one, or the reflection of greater turmoil and nationally centred self-preservation? Will European peace and liberal values ultimately emerge from the tragedy re-empowered? Or does the conflict mark another step in inexorable Western decline and solipsistic fragmentation? Will Russia's influence now be excised from the wider European order, or is it set to become even more disruptive?

These are the kinds of questions that will feature prominently in European affairs in the years to come. European governments are beginning to map out their responses, but do not yet have a clear, long-term plan for the kind of European order best able to advance regional peace and prosperity. It is undoubtedly the case that the conflict has spurred an unprecedented range and depth of policy change; how much deep re-ordering this generates is more difficult to determine. While the war is ongoing and these issues are still very much in flux, however, it is possible to draw reflections that can help guide thinking about the emerging postwar European order.

PARTIAL RE-ORDERING

Much of the debate about European responses to the war has been about very specific and immediate imperatives of supporting Ukraine. However, it has also involved some signs that point towards deeper re-ordering – at least potentially. European governments have come to reconsider some of the core concepts or principles that have nominally been central to their long-standing notions of order. The emergent tenets touch upon some core structural parameters of the way that the European order is organized internally and also how it stands in relation to its immediate borderlands and other powers. The book has ranged widely over different areas of policy and institutional restructuring precisely because this breadth of change shows that the war has had multiple layers of impact, and it is this very multiplicity that amounts to the stirrings of a potential re-ordering that extends beyond modifications to individual policies only.