The Chess Game Between NATO and Russia in Eastern and Southeastern Europe

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Today’s relationship between the member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on one side, and Russia on the other, is a continuation of relations shaped during the Cold War, which lasted from the end of World War II until 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc, and later the dissolution of Yugoslavia, created a new geopolitical chessboard on which, over the last three decades, the dominant world powers have been making moves. The NATO countries, led by the United States, have successfully played that game and occupied new territories in Eastern Europe, which Russia unsuccessfully tried to resist. At first glance, this may not seem so, considering Russia’s loud rhetoric in recent years, but it is enough to note that NATO has expanded over the last 30 years, while the opposing Eastern Bloc has disappeared from the scene.

Although the countries formed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia can be viewed as a separate entity—since Yugoslavia was a neutral country during the Cold War division—they are nevertheless part of a larger game that has been intensively ongoing for the last three decades. From 2004 to 2020, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia became full NATO members, while Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia maintain relations with the Alliance through the Partnership for Peace program. Kosovo, which is essentially under NATO’s security umbrella, has not started the official cooperation process with NATO due to unresolved relations with Serbia. Therefore, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo have been slowed on their path to joining the world’s strongest military alliance due to direct or indirect Russian influence.

NATO has been officially present in the Balkans since the wars of the 1990s. The UN Security Council passed resolutions at that time that gave NATO a dominant role in the war events by establishing a no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina and through other mechanisms to stabilize Southeastern Europe. While NATO was establishing its security levers in the Balkans, Russia was consolidating its own capacities to return to the world stage. By 2004, NATO had established strong borders with Russia through the membership of Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, leaving the Balkans deep in NATO’s rear. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2014 and Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Russia has begun strong and direct interference to block Balkan countries’ access to NATO and the European Union. All this has complicated international relations in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, culminating in the crisis on Ukraine’s border in 2021, where Russia stationed over 100,000 troops, shaking the security foundations of the entire Europe.

While the Ukraine crisis continues, Serbia has used all its capacities to destabilize the Balkans together with Russia. For a long time, it managed to convince Western leaders that it was a neutral country with good intentions, until tensions rose and Serbia’s true face was revealed as the main creator of the crisis in Southeastern Europe. In 2016, Montenegro became a NATO member, but that same year there was an attempted assassination of Montenegro’s president Milo Đukanović, who was a key advocate of Montenegro’s Euro-Atlantic approach. Over the last eight years of the war in Ukraine, with the help of Serbia and Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been destabilized and halted on its path to Euro-Atlantic integration. North Macedonia joined NATO in 2020 after the fall of the pro-Russian government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who found refuge in Hungary. All this shows that despite numerous obstructions by Moscow and Belgrade, Russia is losing ground piece by piece, and the space for destabilization is shrinking. Next in line is Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is a key country for uniting the territory of the European Union and NATO. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s accession, especially to NATO, would bring changes within Serbia itself, as it would be a clear sign that there is no longer any possibility to break the sovereignty and integrity of BiH.

The culmination of the crisis in and around Ukraine at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 brought to light important indicators for the future consolidation of NATO and the European Union. The most important conclusion is that the security of the Euro-Atlantic world depends on security on the European continent, regardless of whether some countries are members of the EU and NATO or not. It is also important to understand that the expansion of democracy and liberal economy eastward is impossible while autocratic Serbia remains in the deep background of Southeastern Europe as an open agent of Russia. Southeastern Europe, and especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, must not remain outside the security umbrella of NATO and the European Union because Moscow tests the readiness and unity of Brussels, London, and Washington through the destabilization of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Conversely, if Europe and NATO can solve the knot of Bosnia and Herzegovina and bring it under their wing, then they can solve other problems as well. The recent Ukrainian crisis, which is still ongoing, has shown that Croatia and Hungary—both members of the EU and NATO—are advocates of Russian interests in the Western Hemisphere. Hungary even threatened to leave the EU, while Croatian President Zoran Milanović openly spoke of disobedience to NATO and Western allies’ interests regarding the Ukrainian crisis.

In the future, the European Union and NATO will have to consolidate their internal ranks and show greater unity. The next step is to integrate the remaining Balkan countries into NATO and the European Union, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina as the central country for regional stability. Otherwise, the geopolitical chess game with bigger players could be lost if the remaining important fields in the depth of their own backyard are not covered.

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