Balkans: Still Digging Toward NATO

By Igor Mekina

April 17, 2015. 

http://fpif.org/balkans-still-digging-toward-nato/ 

Despite the fallout in Ukraine, several Balkan countries are angling to join NATO — and freely misinforming their publics to get there. 

The first law of holes — “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” — still doesn’t seem to be valid in Europe, especially in the Balkan region.

Applied to geopolitics, this law would mean that because of the cold relations between Russia and the NATO countries, one could expect no further NATO expansion, at least for the time being. There are several good reasons for such a pause, or even for a complete stop to further expansion.

Instead, just the opposite is happening.

Forming and expanding military alliances — as realists in international relations observed a long time ago — quite often encourages the formation of counter-alliances. It can also instigate wars, and not only “cold” ones. This can happen especially when such alliances (like, for example, NATO) are prepared to act not only in a defensive manner among members, but in out-of-area missions as well — even without the authorization of the UN Security Council.

The establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization — as well as the increasingly close cooperation between Russia and China — are good examples of such a development. This proves that the expansion of NATO in Europe after 1991 really was a “strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions” for the West, as American diplomat George F. Kennan put it.