Peripheral Frontiers: Security, Vulnerability, and Geopolitical Agency at Europe’s Edges

Peripheral states have long played pivotal roles in European security, but the strategic relevance of Europe’s margins has intensified significantly since 2022. Arctic militarisation, the weaponisation of energy, the instability of the Black Sea region, and heightened competition in the Mediterranean have all underscored the vulnerabilities and agency of states located beyond Europe’s political centre. Simultaneously, differentiated integration—encompassing European Economic Area (EEA) cooperation, candidate status, and the EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP)—has produced institutional asymmetries that directly shape security postures. Understanding how these peripheries experience and respond to strategic pressures is essential for analysing the future of European security governance.

The goal of this Research Topic is to advance a systematic and comparative understanding of how peripheral European states navigate security challenges in an era of geopolitical disruption. Peripheral regions often serve as early-warning spaces where broader continental dynamics—military escalation, hybrid threats, critical-infrastructure vulnerabilities, and strategic competition—first become visible. Yet these states are frequently analysed in isolation rather than as part of an interconnected security periphery. This Research Topic intends to address this gap by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars of small-state strategy, European integration, security governance, and regional geopolitics. We aim to identify the shared patterns and divergent trajectories through which peripheral states manage risk, exercise agency, and shape relations with the European Union, NATO, and neighbouring powers. By integrating case studies across multiple regions, this initiative will contribute to a more robust theoretical and empirical understanding of how Europe’s edges influence its core security architecture.

We solicit contributions that explore security challenges across Europe’s peripheral regions, including but not limited to:

• Arctic and North Atlantic security
• Western Balkan geopolitics
• Black Sea and Eastern Partnership dynamics
• Eastern Mediterranean tensions
• Hybrid and infrastructural threats
• Small-state strategies
• Post-conflict governance
• The impact of differentiated integration on national security choices

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and comparative manuscripts, including original research articles, policy analyses, conceptual essays, and regionally focused case studies. Submissions may address threat perceptions, alliance behaviour, border security, strategic autonomy, resilience, or the role of peripheral states in shaping European institutions. Interdisciplinary approaches bridging political science, security studies, and regional studies are particularly encouraged.

This Research Topic builds on the Jean Monnet Chair grant (ISARCEUR) awarded to the Topic Editor Dr. Magnús Árni Skjöld Magnússon under the EU Erasmus+ programme.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: European periphery, security, geopolitical agency, hybrid threats, Arctic, Black Sea, Western Balkans, differentiated integration

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.