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Balkan Tensions and the Future of NATO
By Ted Galen Carpenter
A key assumption long held by proponents of NATO enlargement is that
the process would both strengthen the alliance and stabilize potentially
volatile portions of Europe. That assumption is dubious in general and wildly
inaccurate when it comes to the Balkans. Indeed, the addition of new members
such as Croatia and Albania has produced the opposite outcome with respect to
both goals. Washington’s ongoing effort to add such countries as Bosnia-
Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) would likely
make matters even worse. Yet that is the course that U.S. and European leaders
seem determined to pursue.
New Balkan Members Weaken, Not Strengthen, NATO
It is mystery why NATO supporters cling to the notion that adding
small, militarily insignificant allies makes the alliance stronger and more
capable. It is an even greater mystery why opinion leaders in the U.S. foreign
policy community believe that such allies benefit the security and well being
of America. The opposite is true. Such NATO members are strategic
liabilities, not assets, and many of them bring with them political,
diplomatic, and military baggage that could prove very troublesome for the
United States.
The addition of Croatia and Albania confirms that NATO enlargement
has now entered the realm of farce. The military capabilities of those two
countries are minuscule. According to the most recent edition of The Military
Balance, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies,
Croatia’s annual military budget is a mere $875 million, and its military force
consists of 18,600 active-duty personnel. Albania’s budget is an even more
meager $254 million, and its active duty force is a paltry 14,295 soldiers.
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[1]
By not yet offering membership to FYROM, though, NATO will have to
do without Skopje’s $167 million and 8,000 troops. The alliance is also
missing the opportunity to add Bosnia’s $281 million in military spending and
11,099 soldiers. And, of course, there is always the prospect of gaining
Montenegro’s $61 million and 3,127 troops. Serbia remains enough of a pariah
to the statesmen of NATO’s leading powers that its $1.06 billion in spending
and 29,125 soldiers probably will be unavailable to the alliance for many years
to come.
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[2]
The combined annual defense outlays of all of those countries are
less than the United States spends in Afghanistan in one week. Why American
political leaders believe that such military pygmies augment the vast power of
the United States is inexplicable.
Potential Trouble for NATO–and the United States–in the Balkans
NATO’s new and prospective Balkan members are not just militarily
insignificant, they create the prospect of entangling the alliance–and its
leader, the United States–in a variety of messy problems. Albania is likely to
prove to be an embarrassment, or worse, for its NATO partners. The country is
notorious for being under the influence of organized crime. Indeed, the
Albanian mafia is legendary throughout southeastern Europe, controlling the
bulk of gambling, prostitution, and drug trafficking.
Moreover, Albania’s political stability remains highly uncertain,
as the country is barely a decade removed from the political chaos and near
civil war that led to an armed multilateral peacekeeping intervention,
Operation Alba, led by Greece and Italy. Longstanding animosity between the
two principal ethno-linguistic factions, the Gegs, who dominate the northern
part of the country, and the Tosks, who dominate the southern portion, shows no
clear signs of abating. It is important to remember that those ethnic tensions
contributed to the disorder in the late 1990s, and they could easily do so
again.
Problems associated with some of the countries proposed for
alliance membership are even more worrisome. Bosnia in the nearly 15 years
since the Dayton Accords has hardly been an unalloyed success story for
ambitious Western nation builders. Although the Dayton agreement did end the
tripartite civil war, Bosnia is still a country that lacks a meaningful sense
of nationhood or even the basic political cohesion to be an effective state.
The reality is that if secession were allowed, the overwhelming majority of
Bosnian Serbs would vote to detach their self-governing region (the Republika
Srpska) from Bosnia and either form an independent country or merge with
Serbia. And that sentiment has intensified since the United States and its
allies gave their blessing to Kosovo’s secession and unilateral declaration of
independence from Serbia. Most Bosnian Croats would also likely choose to
secede and join with Croatia. Bosnian Muslims constitute the only faction that
wishes to maintain Bosnia-Herzegovina in its current incarnation. Although the
situation remains relatively stable at the moment, that could easily change.
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[3] And if it did, NATO would be caught up in the new turmoil.
There are even more troubling aspects if the alliance were foolish
enough to add FYROM to its roster of members.
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[4] FYROM has a huge problem with its Albanian minority in the north and west
of the country. The Albanian inhabitants there have sought a degree of
political autonomy that amounts to independence in everything but name.
Indeed, serious questions remain about the proper location of the border
between FYROM and predominantly Albanian Kosovo–now a nominally independent
country thanks to its unilateral declaration in February 2008, which occurred
thanks to the instigation of the United States and the leading powers in the
European Union.
An independent Kosovo is already exacerbating problems with several
neighboring countries, especially FYROM. There is scant evidence that
advocates of a “Greater Albania” have relinquished their territorial ambitions
in the Balkans. It was an ominous development that less than a month after
Pristina’s declaration of independence, the leading ethnic Albanian party in
FYROM threatened to withdraw its support and bring down the government because
of what party leaders described as a failure to support minority rights or to
recognize Kosovo’s independence. Among that party’s demands were greater use
of the Albanian language and flag in the increasingly autonomous northwestern
region of FYROM and increased benefits to veterans of the 2000-2001 Albanian
guerrilla insurgency.
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[5]
The situation has not noticeably improved over the past two years.
Indeed, there was an especially alarming incident in early May 2010. Four
individuals were killed in shootout with FYROM police near the northwest border
hamlet of Radusa. They were driving a van transporting illegal arms from
Kosovo.
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[6] Unless we assume that the FYROM police are exceptionally competent at
their interdiction efforts, it is highly probable that there have been other
shipments and that this is part of an ongoing campaign to foment a new
insurgency.
If FYROM ever becomes a member of NATO, that nasty ethnic
separatist problem becomes a matter of direct concern to the alliance. One
would think that the United States has enough foreign policy headaches around
the world without adding that one to the list.
Fortunately, it is doubtful whether FYROM will gain membership
soon. Its ongoing quarrel with Greece remains a major impediment. The primary
reason that FYROM was not invited to join NATO when Albania and Croatia
received invitations was because Athens continued to object to that country
using the name “Macedonia,” which Greeks rightly insist applies only to a
region of their nation.
That controversy is not merely over a historical and linguistic
point. Greeks worry the Skopje government’s insistence on calling its country
Macedonia implies a territorial claim to Greek Macedonia. Maps circulating in
FYROM that include major chunks of Greek territory as part of a “Greater
Macedonia” do nothing to allay such fears. In early 2008, FYROM’s prime
minister was photographed laying a wreath at a monument that featured a map of
Greater Macedonia, which even included Greece’s second largest city,
Thessaloniki.
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[7]
Such provocative territorial claims are hardly consistent with the
view of FYROM that the U.S. State Department has tried to promote. The nature
of Washington’s continuing lobbying campaign for NATO membership for FYROM can
be seen in a gushing article about the country in the April 2010 issue of State
Magazine, the department monthly publication. The cover described FYROM as the
“pearl of the Balkans.” The title of the article itself was “Skopje: Ancient
Macedonia Builds Modern Democracy.”
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[8] The American Hellenic Institute issued a scathing 5-page letter rebuking
the State Department for publishing such a puff piece, and the letter
effectively debunked several of the article’s claims.
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[9]
Conclusion
NATO expansion into the Balkans is a spectacularly bad idea, for it
entangles the alliance in an assortment of murky disputes and potential
dangers. Most of those issues are of little relevance even to NATO’s other
European members, much less to the United States. The alliance has not been
strengthened by the process of enlargement; to the contrary it has acquired new
strategic liabilities rather than assets.
The new Balkan members are militarily useless, and they all bring
with them a variety of unpleasant problems. Enlargement has been an especially
bad deal for the United States. As NATO’s leader, America is responsible for
implementing the alliance’s goal of maintaining stability throughout its
membership zone in Europe–and in even in security arenas beyond the continent.
Given the history and current condition of the Balkans, U.S. policymakers have
now made all the quarrels and problems of that volatile region America’s
problems. That is an extremely unwise strategy.
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at
the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books and more than 400 articles on
international affairs. His most recent book is Smart Power: Toward a Prudent
Foreign Policy for America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). He is a contributing
editor to the National Interest and serves on the editorial boards of
Mediterranean Quarterly and the Journal of Strategic Studies.
Notes
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[1]. International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 2010
(London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 119, 123.
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[2]. Ibid., pp. 179, 186, 189, 190.
[3]. See Patrice C. McMahon and Jon Western, “The Death of Dayton: How to Stop
Bosnia From Falling Apart,” Foreign Affairs 88, no.5 (September-October 2009):
69-83.
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[4]. For a good overview of the costs and potential problems (substantial) and
prospective benefits (meager) of admitting FYROM to NATO, see Scott N. Siegel,
“Weighing Macedonia’s Entry into NATO,” Mediterranean Quarterly 21, no. 1
(Winter 2010): 45-60.
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[5]. Kole Casule and Matt Robinson, “Albanian Party Threatens to Bring Down
Macedonian Government,” Reuters, March 12, 2008.
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[6]. Jasmina Mironski, “Four Dead in Macedonia-Kosovo Border Shooting,” Agence
France Presse, May 12, 2010.
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[7]. Dora Bakoyannis, “All In a Name,” Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2008.
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[8]. Stephanie Rowlands, “Skopje: Ancient Macedonia Builds Modern Democracy,”
State, April 2010, pp. 22-25.
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[9]. Aleco Haralambides, President, and Nick Larigakis, Executive Director,
American Hellenic Institute letter to Hillary Rodham Clinton, April 27, 2010.
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