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Return Of The Balkans: Challenges To European Integration U.S. Disengagement
Return Of The Balkans: Challenges To European Integration U.S. Disengagement
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This Letort Paper assesses the prospects for further turbulence and conflict in the Western Balkans and weighs the implications for U.S. policy and for potential future military engagement. Although the region has slipped off the American radar screen in recent years, several unresolved disputes have the potential of escalating. This Paper systematically describes numerous causes of domestic and regional tensions and outlines a number of conflict scenarios.
Regional disputes are evident over the status of specific territories, the validity of administrative borders, the credibility of specific governments, and, in some cases, over the legitimacy of statehood itself. Democratic progress is difficult where state building is incomplete and contested. Furthermore, as the author underscores, incomplete, conflicted, and contested states present serious challenges for European Union (EU, or the Union) enlargement and the institutional absorption of the Western Balkans.
The region can become a gray zone where limited progress in implementing reforms is followed by prolonged periods of stagnation or even reversal. Such conditions provide fertile terrain for political and nationalist extremism and heighten exposure to destabilizing foreign influences. Although these are unlikely to generate extensive armed conflicts, as witnessed in the 1990s, they will create pockets of insecurity and violence that would disqualify several states from the prospect of EU membership. Such exclusion would, in turn, prolong and exacerbate local disputes.
At the same time, the soft power capabilities of the EU are weakening for a number of reasons, including resistance among member states to further enlargement given the Union’s economic problems; disappointment with the performance of recent members Romania and Bulgaria, as well as with older member states such as Greece, Italy, and Spain, which are encumbered by massive sovereign debts; and the unfulfilled commitments of several Western Balkan aspirants in their quest for EU accession.
Europe’s overall economic downturn will also have negative consequences for the Western Balkans. It will curtail investment and credits in the region, encourage EU enlargement exhaustion, and reinforce Balkan reform fatigue. It will also create space for populists and nationalists, who will benefit from economic stagnation and public anger to promulgate ethno-nationalist solutions to mounting domestic challenges. Economic hardship decreases trust not only in incumbent governments but also in democratic institutions and international agencies.
Such negative scenarios would place the onus on key international actors to find credible solutions. However, the EU’s effectiveness as an institution builder is coming under increasing scrutiny at a time when the United States is preoccupied with more pressing crises outside Europe. While Washington has spent the last decade extricating itself militarily and politically from the Western Balkans and allowing EU institutions to assume the leading role, unresolved disputes that are mishandled by an indecisive and divided Union could pull Washington back into the region. This could be evidenced in more intensive diplomacy and intrusive mediation or even in the context of new peacekeeping missions.
The Paper concludes by offering a number of concrete recommendations for the U.S. administration, European governments, international institutions, and local political leaders to avoid the dangerous pitfalls of state paralysis, territorial fracture, and regional destabilization. In particular, policies must be geared toward preventing a scenario whereby U.S. ground forces are called upon to participate in renewed peacemaking operations. The priorities must include more comprehensive strategic intelligence gathering, the identification and monitoring of local and foreign political actors promoting instability, early warning signals that can pinpoint and defuse impending conflicts, a strong Allied diplomatic response to any deterioration of political conditions, and a firmer transatlantic strategic commitment to bringing all countries in the region into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the EU.
Regional disputes are evident over the status of specific territories, the validity of administrative borders, the credibility of specific governments, and, in some cases, over the legitimacy of statehood itself. Democratic progress is difficult where state building is incomplete and contested. Furthermore, as the author underscores, incomplete, conflicted, and contested states present serious challenges for European Union (EU, or the Union) enlargement and the institutional absorption of the Western Balkans.
The region can become a gray zone where limited progress in implementing reforms is followed by prolonged periods of stagnation or even reversal. Such conditions provide fertile terrain for political and nationalist extremism and heighten exposure to destabilizing foreign influences. Although these are unlikely to generate extensive armed conflicts, as witnessed in the 1990s, they will create pockets of insecurity and violence that would disqualify several states from the prospect of EU membership. Such exclusion would, in turn, prolong and exacerbate local disputes.
At the same time, the soft power capabilities of the EU are weakening for a number of reasons, including resistance among member states to further enlargement given the Union’s economic problems; disappointment with the performance of recent members Romania and Bulgaria, as well as with older member states such as Greece, Italy, and Spain, which are encumbered by massive sovereign debts; and the unfulfilled commitments of several Western Balkan aspirants in their quest for EU accession.
Europe’s overall economic downturn will also have negative consequences for the Western Balkans. It will curtail investment and credits in the region, encourage EU enlargement exhaustion, and reinforce Balkan reform fatigue. It will also create space for populists and nationalists, who will benefit from economic stagnation and public anger to promulgate ethno-nationalist solutions to mounting domestic challenges. Economic hardship decreases trust not only in incumbent governments but also in democratic institutions and international agencies.
Such negative scenarios would place the onus on key international actors to find credible solutions. However, the EU’s effectiveness as an institution builder is coming under increasing scrutiny at a time when the United States is preoccupied with more pressing crises outside Europe. While Washington has spent the last decade extricating itself militarily and politically from the Western Balkans and allowing EU institutions to assume the leading role, unresolved disputes that are mishandled by an indecisive and divided Union could pull Washington back into the region. This could be evidenced in more intensive diplomacy and intrusive mediation or even in the context of new peacekeeping missions.
The Paper concludes by offering a number of concrete recommendations for the U.S. administration, European governments, international institutions, and local political leaders to avoid the dangerous pitfalls of state paralysis, territorial fracture, and regional destabilization. In particular, policies must be geared toward preventing a scenario whereby U.S. ground forces are called upon to participate in renewed peacemaking operations. The priorities must include more comprehensive strategic intelligence gathering, the identification and monitoring of local and foreign political actors promoting instability, early warning signals that can pinpoint and defuse impending conflicts, a strong Allied diplomatic response to any deterioration of political conditions, and a firmer transatlantic strategic commitment to bringing all countries in the region into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the EU.
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