Michael Berndt examines the question of how central consensual features (threat definition, understanding of Europe, definition of violence as a means of countering threats) of a European security architecture were constructed between 1990 and 2004 among the EU/WEU, NATO, and CSCE/OSCE. After a discussion of the state of research and an outline of the theoretical approach, an analysis of documents from the three organizations will show that an essential insight from the period of the East-West conflict is increasingly losing relevance in the current political discussion: security can only be achieved with the opponent.