Return of the Balkans: Challenges to European Integration and U.S. Disengagement
Abstract
This Letort Paper assesses the prospects for further turbulence and conflict in the Western Balkans and weighs the implications for U.S. policy and for potential future military engagement. Although the region has slipped off the American radar screen in recent years, several unresolved disputes have the potential of escalating. This Paper systematically describes numerous causes of domestic and regional tensions and outlines a number of conflict scenarios. Regional disputes are evident over the status of specific territories, the validity of administrative borders, the credibility of specific governments, and, in some cases, over the legitimacy of statehood itself. Democratic progress is difficult where state building is incomplete and contested. Furthermore, as the author underscores, incomplete, conflicted, and contested states present serious challenges for European Union (EU, or the Union) enlargement and the institutional absorption of the Western Balkans. The region can become a gray zone where limited progress in implementing reforms is followed by prolonged periods of stagnation or even reversal. Such conditions provide fertile terrain for political and nationalist extremism and heighten exposure to destabilizing foreign influences. Although these are unlikely to generate extensive armed conflicts, as witnessed in the 1990s, they will create pockets of insecurity and violence that would disqualify several states from the prospect of EU membership. Such exclusion would, in turn, prolong and exacerbate local disputes.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA580874
Entities
People
- Janusz Bugajski
Organizations
- United States Army War College