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The Balkans after the 2004 Enlargement of NATO and the European Union: What Next?
6 pages, pdf
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The Balkans after the 2004 Enlargement of NATO and the European Union: What Next?
Publisher: Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Volume: 6 pages, pdf
Description:
So much has been written in the past several years about the Balkans, yet some confusion still exists about what exactly constitutes the region. Therefore, at the outset of this essay, I will first make an attempt to geographically define the Balkans. There are more views—some of them very new—than just this one on the market regarding this issue. Of course, the classical concept still predominates: the Balkans comprises the countries of the Balkan Peninsula, which became part of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages. In the twentieth century, the “Balkans” overlapped with “Southeastern Europe,” and these two notions were used, and very often still are used today, to describe the same geographical area. Recently, some analysts have started referring to three geographical blocs, which today are quite distinct from the security point of view: the classical Balkans, the Black Sea area, and the Caspian area. They are considered to be parts of the northern tier of the most volatile region in the world, known as the “Greater Middle East,”1 where the most dangerous threats to international security are thought to have their origin. Experts across the Euro-Atlantic community are now combining these three blocs into one larger area called “Greater South-East Europe.” Recently, in July 2003, in Bucharest, the Institute for Political Studies of Defense and Military History, together with the National Defense University from Washington, hosted an international conference devoted to the topic “Southeast European Security after the 2004 Dual Enlargement.” Among the invitees in attendance were experts not only from the classical Balkans, or South-Eastern Europe, but also from the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, as well as from Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.