The Western Balkans have traveled an extraordinary distance from the catastrophic violence of the 1990s, but progress is not permanent, nor inevitable. This tiny region — both mountainous and coastal — has historically been easier for outside powers to occupy than for governance managed from within. For powers like China and Russia, that seemingly geopolitical propensity towards instability in the region has greatly aided their efforts to increase friction along the periphery of the Atlantic community. That latter fact, at least, should be a greater concern for Washington.
Author: Amanda Thorpe/Odgovor.ba
While not a top US regional priority, our national interests are served and preserved in the Western Balkans by promoting sustained political and institutional engagement that prevents conflict. Promoting security in regions proximate to our core geographic zones of interest (in this case the Eurasian borderlands) should be a permanent component of US foreign policy. Stereotypes about the Balkans as a powder-keg are overstated, but they do allude to an underlying instability which may portend yet another protracted European security crisis. Unrest in this corner of Europe will not remain contained, and the US cannot remain prosperous absent European stability; our chief political and commercial partners. The US must therefore work to improve governance in Europe’s ‘neighborhood’ or risk being forced to react to violence. This, in any case, was the clear lesson of delinquent American and European engagement during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
Sustained and beneficial engagement (beneficial, above all, to America’s national security needs) requires a practical and actionable roadmap: first, asserting and granting primacy to US interests in Washington’s approach to the region; second, advancing broader stability and governance measures to achieve the same.
The fundamental interest of the US in the Western Balkans is the region’s security and stability, and its integration into the political and economic space of Europe and the transatlantic community. We do not want the region to undermine our broader interests in Europe, and, ideally, we want to the region to develop as a modest but certainly not worthless site for American investment. Especially with respect to the Western Balkans strategic geographic position, its significant critical raw materials and other natural resource deposits, and its other strategically significant industries, including the region’s burgeoning defense and munitions sectors.
Full article find it here. (https://odgovor.ba/article/22182/)
The Western Balkans have traveled an extraordinary distance from the catastrophic violence of the 1990s, but progress is not permanent, nor inevitable. This tiny region — both mountainous and coastal — has historically been easier for outside powers to occupy than for governance managed from within. For powers like China and Russia, that seemingly geopolitical propensity towards instability in the region has greatly aided their efforts to increase friction along the periphery of the Atlantic community. That latter fact, at least, should be a greater concern for Washington.
Author: Amanda Thorpe/Odgovor.ba
While not a top US regional priority, our national interests are served and preserved in the Western Balkans by promoting sustained political and institutional engagement that prevents conflict. Promoting security in regions proximate to our core geographic zones of interest (in this case the Eurasian borderlands) should be a permanent component of US foreign policy. Stereotypes about the Balkans as a powder-keg are overstated, but they do allude to an underlying instability which may portend yet another protracted European security crisis. Unrest in this corner of Europe will not remain contained, and the US cannot remain prosperous absent European stability; our chief political and commercial partners. The US must therefore work to improve governance in Europe’s ‘neighborhood’ or risk being forced to react to violence. This, in any case, was the clear lesson of delinquent American and European engagement during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
Sustained and beneficial engagement (beneficial, above all, to America’s national security needs) requires a practical and actionable roadmap: first, asserting and granting primacy to US interests in Washington’s approach to the region; second, advancing broader stability and governance measures to achieve the same.
The fundamental interest of the US in the Western Balkans is the region’s security and stability, and its integration into the political and economic space of Europe and the transatlantic community. We do not want the region to undermine our broader interests in Europe, and, ideally, we want to the region to develop as a modest but certainly not worthless site for American investment. Especially with respect to the Western Balkans strategic geographic position, its significant critical raw materials and other natural resource deposits, and its other strategically significant industries, including the region’s burgeoning defense and munitions sectors.
Full article find it here. (https://odgovor.ba/article/22182/)
Photos by: US Embassy in BiH