The impact of NATO
Publisher: Sandro Knezović
Volume: 7 pages, pdf
Description:
The conflicts that engulfed the Western Balkans in the early 1990s put the region in the spotlight of international attention and led to the direct involvement of the transatlantic community in particular. After many unsuccessful attempts at engagement by different external actors, NATO took over responsibility for ending the military conflict and undertaking the peacekeeping and peace-building activities that followed. The Alliance has conducted numerous demilitarisation programmes in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYROM) and Kosovo and deployed military missions to all the aforementioned countries, with the exception of Albania. Offering fully-fledged NATO membership to all countries in the region, using the conditionality mechanism during their accession processes to foster democratic transition, and providing different forms of assistance to this endeavour significantly contributed to the process of long-term consolidation in the Western Balkans. In other words, building on achievements made by peacekeeping missions by incorporating higher standards of democratic governance in the framework of the conditionality mechanism significantly contributed to the overall resilience of countries in the region.