Rethinking NATO Commitment to the Western Balkans
Rethinking NATO Commitment to the Western Balkans
Is it correct to talk about “NATO commitment to the Balkans” without considering both sides of the relationship? This paper reconstructs the highlights of the relationship between the Atlantic Alliance and the Western Balkans with the aim to demystify the narrative of the Balkans as passive recipients of NATO politics. It underlines instead how the countries in the region were active partners for the defence of Europe in the past and their potential for security and economic development today. It attempts to suggest the best course of action that would lead to a broader and deeper integration of the Balkan countries into the Euro-Atlantic framework, trying to overcome the perception issues that have hindered the process of deepening a truly meaningful partnership and political convergence.
By Shary Mitidieri
On 27 March 2020, North Macedonia entered the Alliance as its 30th member, depositing its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty to the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., thus marking another step in a process that has brought the Western Balkans from being a potential hotbed of crises and instability in the early 1990s to the protagonist of the NATO enlargement process.
This development can be traced back and analyzed through NATO’s Strategic Concepts of 1991, 1999, and 2010. The first of these concepts emphasizes a broad approach to security., While acknowledging that the threat of a full-scale military attack had disappeared, it stated that some risks to Allied security remained and were “multifaceted in nature and multi directional, which makes them hard to predict and assess.”[i] This was especially true for Central and Eastern Europe, where instability due to social, economic, and political difficulties (including ethnic rivalries and territorial disputes) could result in armed conflicts that could potentially spill over into NATO countries: an almost exact prediction of what would happen shortly thereafter during the Yugoslav wars. In this regard, some authors underlined how, “given the increasingly remote possibility of direct attack, it was [crisis management] which was deemed the more appropriate response to the variety of potential risks which NATO faced”,[ii] thus opening the door for out-of-area allied interventions.
Such interventions did take place in the form of Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999, thereby prompting a new Strategic Concept in 1999. The new Concept showed how the Alliance demonstrated its commitment to cooperation and mutual understanding in the Euro-Atlantic region through its efforts to put an end to the immense human suffering created by conflict in the Balkans,[iii] which was in a certain sense the testing ground for a broader approach to security and the renewal of NATO’s procedures and structures. NATO’s transformation from a defense to a security organization, providing not only deterrence and rapid deployment of troops but also a full range of military and civilian capabilities such as Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC), can be considered an offspring of the Bosnian operation.[iv]
Finally, the 2010 Strategic Concept makes reference to NATO’s continuing open door policy, which aims to create a “whole and free” Europe and promote Euro-Atlantic security through the strengthening of partnerships, including with Balkan countries. The three core tasks of the Alliance as stated in the document—collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security—are potentially capable of addressing virtually all of the security needs of the Balkans: the first implies that NATO is open to welcoming new members and therefore taking charge of their security; the second suggests that the Alliance will be monitoring the region for early signs of a crisis that would be then promptly defused; and the third reaffirms the possibility of a closer and deeper cooperation with partners even if accession should not take place.
In all of these documents though, which are mainly focused on NATO’s strategic priorities, the countries of the Western Balkans risk appearing as mere recipients of NATO policies aimed at containing instability, renewing NATO’s posture towards crisis management, or promoting enlargement; little to nothing is said about the strategic importance of these countries and their ability to fully integrate into the Euro-Atlantic security and economic framework. In short, it is clear how the Atlantic Alliance serves the stability and security of countries in the Western Balkans area, but it is not clear why and how these countries could be useful to maintain the stability, security, and development of the Alliance in return. Therefore, a new strategic concept may be needed in the future and should give more space to the Balkans, which are barely mentioned in the current one: the only direct reference to Western Balkans’ integration can be found at paragraph 35, which states: “We will aim to [...] facilitate the Euro-Atlantic integration of the Western Balkans, with the aim to ensure lasting peace and stability based on democratic values, regional cooperation and good neighbourly relations.”[v] There is no further explanation of the ways and means to achieve that.
The question I would like to answer with this article is therefore as follows: Is it really correct to talk about “NATO commitment to the Balkans” without considering both sides of the relationship? To this end, in the first part I will reconstruct the highlights of the relationship between the Atlantic Alliance and the Western Balkans with the aim to demystify the narrative of the Balkans as passive recipients of NATO politics and to underline instead how the countries in the region were active partners for the defence of Europe in the past and their potential for security and economic development today. In the second part of the article, I will try to suggest the best course of action that would lead to a broader and deeper integration of the Balkan countries into the Euro-Atlantic framework, trying to overcome the perception issues that have hindered the process of deepening a truly meaningful partnership and political convergence.
NATO and Western Balkans: A history dating back to the 1950s
The long-standing relationship between NATO and the Western Balkans can easily be divided into three different phases: the Cold War era, the 1990s, and the present era. As for the first phase, when it comes to the Cold War era, both academia and public opinion think in an almost exclusively binary, Manichean manner: on one side stood the U.S. with its NATO allies; on the other stood the USSR with its satellite states. However, several other countries were unwilling to pledge their allegiance to one or the other side and struggled to remain autonomous and independent while being caught between the political and diplomatic crossfire of the two superpowers. In reality, the framework of global security in these years was much more complex and gave life to a full spectrum of relations that cannot be reduced to allies or enemies.
In particular, relations between NATO and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were not as cold as the common understanding of the Cold War period would lead us to think. As then soon-to-be Vice Admiral and incoming SHAPE Chief of Staff Ferdinando Sanfelice di Monteforte noted,[vi] the deterioration of political and diplomatic relations between Tito and Stalin opened a window of opportunity for the Allies to move the first line of territorial defence eastward, and under the auspices of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the Yugoslav military command made an informal commitment in the early 1950s for the advanced defence of the Italian border with Slovenia. According to this commitment, the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) would have put up a line of defense around Ljubljana, Klagenfurt, and Villach as well as Trieste and Gorizia (in Italian territory)[vii] in case of a Soviet invasion; conversely, it appears that the accord would also have allowed U.S. land forces—where properly authorized by the North Atlantic Council—to deploy in support of the JNA. From this not well-known part of Allied history, it can be deduced that Tito’s Yugoslavia constituted a fundamental part of Europe’s territorial defense to the point that even Italian concerns due to the Trieste issue had to be overcome in order to lay out a plan for the defense of Europe that ultimately benefited all Allies.
The second phase in the 1990s was famously a lot more problematic for the Western Balkans and therefore their role in European security. The lack of decisive action by the United Nations and the European Community, which were way too reliant on soft power,[viii] prompted a NATO intervention to avoid a huge humanitarian disaster at the doorstep of Europe. In this case, and in this case only, can the Western Balkans be said to be the recipients of NATO policies. To give a sense of the gravity of the situation, it is sufficient to say that the turmoil in the region had become a cause of serious concern for the internal stability of NATO countries—especially for states that, like Germany, saw a sharp increase in the number of refugees fleeing the shattered patchwork of territories that Bosnia-Herzegovina had become. Furthermore, the war exhausted Allied public opinion, which became worn out by the images of extreme violence that the media generously broadcasted.[ix] The necessity to address the deteriorating security environment prompted Allied governments to “do something” before the situation got out of hand. And yet, the European Community and the UN were unable to decisively end the conflict. EU countries were affected by a fatal lack of decisiveness whereas the then-UN Secretary General Boutros-Ghali, in addition to being preoccupied with maintaining neutrality, was wary of involvement with the “dirty people of the Balkans”[x]. Therefore, the hot potato fell into US hands, which—thanks to a heavy political-diplomatic commitment and an effective air campaign—were able to bring all the warring parties around the negotiating table in Dayton, Ohio, and consequently led a massive deployment of troops for the implementation of the peace agreement.
After the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo brought about an end to the fighting, the newly independent states that once formed Yugoslavia embarked on the long path towards integration both in NATO and the European Union. Presently, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia are all NATO Allies. Bulgaria has not only become an Ally, but also hosts the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC). Meanwhile, Serbia has become a NATO Partner in the Partnership for Peace framework, despite its ambiguous geostrategic positioning. Slovenia and Montenegro use the Euro as their official currency, although the latter is not yet a EU Member. All these developments suggest that the Western Balkans is today an integral part of Europe, no longer just geographically and historically but in security, political, and economic terms. And yet, as will be discussed in the following section, this process of integration is far from complete.
The long road towards democratization and economic development
After presenting the shared history of NATO and the Balkans, what is the most desirable posture for NATO to maintain towards the region is not clear. The suggestion here is that NATO should not aim for the kind of relationship that occurs between an outcast and its protector or between developed versus undeveloped countries, but a true partnership among peers, especially considering that the Western Balkans are nowadays unequivocally an area of primary importance when it comes to realizing the project of a Europe that is “one and free”.
With the aim of maintaining security in Europe, it is not only the Alliance that should decide to bet on the Western Balkans, but also the Western Balkans should decide to bet on the Alliance, on its values and principles, on its development model and way of life, continuing on the path undertaken in the 1990s towards democratization and economic development, thus building cultural and social resilience against the pressure of external actors willing to draw closer to these countries. These external actors range from NATO’s most traditional adversary, Russia, to China, to radical Islamic countries and groups exploiting the Muslim population of the Balkans to further their geopolitical ambitions.[xi] What these adversaries have in common is that they do not necessarily keep in mind the well-being of the recipient states and their citizens but skillfully mask their aggrandizement projects under a meek, friendly rhetoric. That said, it is clear that only through strengthening ties with the Western Balkans could an effective security line around Europe be created.
One meaningful example of the malicious intents of external actors could be China’s huge investment in Montenegro, estimated at around 1.3 billion USD. This project aims to construct a highway designed to connect the port city of Bar on the Adriatic Sea with Belgrade.[xii] Reporters have called this “a highway to nowhere.”[xiii] How has Montenegro gotten itself into this situation? This story starts several years back, when Montenegro tried and failed twice (in 2006 and 2012) to secure European funding for the project, because feasibility studies found that the highway would not have enough traffic to justify the costs.[xiv] This is when China came into view and, in the context of the 16+1 initiative, decided to fund the project, finding an excellent breeding ground for investment in a Balkan country particularly thirsty for foreign investment devoted to infrastructural modernization.
Regrettably, the highway project has produced a serious financial backlash for Montenegro, which saw the country’s debt spiking from 63% of gross domestic product in 2012 to 78% in 2019, to the point that the IMF recommended a new feasibility study.[xv] Furthermore, China exclusively used its own manpower to construct the project, therefore doing nothing to help lower unemployment in the country; there are now serious concerns that the project could cause environmental disruption. Even more gravely, if Montenegro were to default, the contract for the loans would give China access to Montenegrin land as collateral. With Montenegro being an Allied country, although a latecomer and a small state, NATO should worry about the consequences of these economic policies on the security and stability of the whole Alliance were they to spread in other countries as well.
It is this example that the Alliance should keep in mind when furthering the security, stability, and well-being of new member states and their citizens. Today, the Alliance should be able to depict itself anew as the guarantor of friendly relations leading to economic development and increased security for the area. The idea suggested above of a renewed strategic concept using a stronger wording when affirming the relevance of integration could help to build this narrative. A more visible commitment to the area could encourage Western Balkan countries to pursue their full integration in the Euro-Atlantic framework more urgently and thoroughly. This could happen through the respective Atlantic Committees, which certainly have stronger ties to the local civil societies and a better understanding of what can orient their opinion than the faraway headquarters in Belgium.
One cannot forget that these countries crave not only for security but also, and maybe more importantly, for economic development and foreign investment. In turn, economic development could alleviate those tensions in society that have so far impeded a full democratization of the Balkan countries and therefore the accession of all of these states to NATO and the EU. This process of contextual economic and democratic progress would benefit from a deeper involvement of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an institutional actor that was pivotal in monitoring the elections in Bosnia in 1996 and that, due to its heterogeneous composition and its nature as an open forum for discussion, could retake a leading role in accompanying the Balkans towards their full Euro-Atlantic integration. In particular, the OSCE could use its well-respected name and monitoring capacities to build trust among Balkan and Western European countries, causing the latter to be more willing to invest in the Balkans, especially in sectors that promise great returns such as infrastructural modernization and eco-friendly tourism in the many uncontaminated natural reserves that can be found in the region, such as the Tara River or Mount Durmitor.
A closer relationship that would benefit all
Developing such a relationship, based on parity and mutual benefit, means overcoming the simplistic narration of the Western Balkans countries as backwards, savage, somehow “naturally” prone to wage war on one another: narrations that offer an account of the former Yugoslav nature that is more the representation of lingering Western images of the people from the Balkans than the fruit of an objective anthropological analysis.[xvi] Such narratives have historically offered a convenient excuse for avoiding or limiting involvement in the region. Involvement in the Western Balkans cannot be postponed anymore, as security and possibilities for economic gains for all parties are at stake: it is now necessary to start thinking of ways to overcome the consequences of past conflicts.
This novel interpretation of the Western Balkans’ identity and potential role for European and Euro-Atlantic security must lead to a new—more coherent and engaged—posture towards this region and stimulate genuine cooperation in the military as well as in the political and economic fields. The stakes are high: if we do not recognize the importance of this region, certainly someone else will, as the case of Montenegro has unequivocally demonstrated.
Furthermore, it is not only shared ideals and history that make Western European Allied countries akin to those of the Western Balkans, but also—and more pragmatically—a number of common interests. So far, a closer relationship between the Western Balkans and NATO (and the EU, of course) has entailed several benefits for both parties: on the one hand, NATO has successfully stabilized the Western Balkans region, dragging it out of a decade of violent conflicts and taking meaningful steps towards the realization of the project of one Europe; on the other hand, the Balkan countries that have gained accession to NATO have earned a great deal in terms of internal stability, balancing of power in the region, and international credibility, which, in turn, has guaranteed a better bargaining position when it comes to development policies.
In conclusion, and to answer to the question that was asked at the beginning of this article, we can finally say that “NATO commitment” is still pivotal for Western Balkan states. However, this commitment can only extend so far as the Western Balkan states see their future in NATO. A belief in the Alliance’s values and principles is the best way to reach the stability and growth these states crave.
In this sense, the term “commitment” must assume a new, non-paternalistic, mutual acceptance. On the one hand, for Western Balkan states, NATO could be a means to the end of reaching stability in political, economic, and security terms, something that these states are hardly capable of doing as single actors but are rather better off doing as members of the Alliance. In addition to that—and given the credibility that membership in the Alliance inevitably gives to member states—accession into NATO could be positively exploited as a bridge to further integration in other forums and international organizations, thus generating a positive path to security and development.
Conversely, the membership of the Western Balkan states in the Alliance is pivotal for NATO in order to maintain hard-fought stability in Europe and possibly even its central position in the global balance of power, especially when participation in a political-military alliance should have a positive effect on economic development, growth, and the well-being of member countries. Thus, membership discourages the interference of external powers, which may have shadowy motivations but can put forth masterfully elaborate, reassuring narratives.
About the Author
Shary Mitidieri is a II Level Master in International Strategic-Military Studies at the Centro Alti Studi per la Difesa (CASD) in Rome. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and International Relations and a Master’s Degree in International Relations of Asia and Africa from “L’Orientale University” in Naples. During the final two years of his studies, he specialized in the geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa and in Conflict Analysis as well as interned at NATO Rapid Deployable Corps (ITA). He hopes to pursue a PhD.
Notes
[i] NATO, “The Alliance’s Strategic Concept agreed by the Heads of State and Government
participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council”, Rome, 8 November 1991
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_23847.htm.
[ii] M. Webber, J. Sperling, and M. Smith, NATO’s Post Cold War Trajectory: Decline or Regeneration (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 48.
[iii] NATO, “The Alliance’s Strategic Concept approved by the Heads of State and Government
participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council”, Washington, D.C., 23/24 April 1999, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27433.htm.
[iv] Wessel Toonen, “CIMIC in Missions and Operations: Reflections on History, Current Affairs and
Perspectives”, Civil Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence, October 2017, 16.
[v] NATO, “Strategic Concept For the Defence and Security of The Members of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation: Active Engagement, Modern Defence ”, Lisbon, 19/20 November 2010, para. 35, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_68580.htm.
[vi] Ferdinando Sanfelice di Monteforte, Le Strategie Declaratorie della NATO e dell’UE. Analisi dei Concetti Strategici (Rome: Aracne, 2014), 44.
[vii] A. Bebler, The U.S. Strategy and Yugoslavia’s Security, “American and Yugoslav View of the 1990s”, Institute of International Politics and Economics, Center for North American Studies, Belgrade 1990, 177.
[viii] Warren Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers America’s Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and Why (New York: Times Books, 1996), 177.
[ix] Richard Sobel and Eric Shiraev, International Public Opinion and the Bosnia Crisis (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003).
[x] Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Modern Library, 1998), 174–175.
[xi] Francesco Generoso, La Scelta dei Balcani: le Prospettive della NATO nella Regione, Opinio Juris, 3 September 2018, https://www.opiniojuris.it/la-scelta-dei-balcani-nato/.
[xii] Austin Doehler, “Montenegro Moves Onto Next Phase of Highway Project and Further Into China’s Debt Trap”, The National Interest, 25 March 2020, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/montenegro-moves-next-phase-highway....
[xiii] Noah Barkin and Aleksandar Vasovic, “Chinese ‘Highway to Nowhere’ Haunts Montenegro”, Reuters, 16 July 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-silkroad-europe-montenegro-insi....
[xiv] Michael Peel, “Montenegro Fears China-backed Highway Will Put it on Road To Ruin”, Financial Times, 10 April 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/d3d56d20-5a8d-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a081a.
[xv] International Monetary Fund, Montenegro: Staff Concluding Statement of the 2019 Article IV Mission, June 28, 2019.
[xvi] An example of such superficial—in a way even “orientalistic”—analysis is: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Other Balkan Wars: a 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect with a New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Conflict by George F. Kennan (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1993).