NATO as a Factor of Security Community Building: Enlargement and Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe 4 pages, pdf  Download Back

NATO as a Factor of Security Community Building: Enlargement and Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe

Publisher: CORNELIU BJOLA CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY

Volume: 4 pages, pdf

Description:

This research project is motivated by a double empirical puzzle underlying the implications of NATO enlargement on the process of security community formation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). First, while the only CEE country (Yugoslavia) not covered by any NATO partnership programs is also the same which used to pose until recently the most serious risks to the regional stability, the development of institutional relationships between NATO and most of the former communist countries has nevertheless led to ambiguous results in terms of subsiding sources of political tension and military conflict (i.e., positive in the case of Romania and Hungary or Hungary and Slovakia, inconclusive for Armenia and Azerbaijan, and negative for Belarus). Secondly, despite their relatively similar, constant and strong support for NATO membership, the countries from the region have exposed curious policy discrepancies among themselves and especially in contrast with the vast majority of old NATO members, when faced with the option to assist certain NATO operations, such as the 1999 military intervention in Kosovo. Accordingly, while the first empirical anomaly calls attention to possible NATO institutional effects, the second one hints to its potential normative influences.