The influence of international security actors on the security of the Western Balkan countries

Abstract

The paper offers an insight in the influence of international security actors on the security of the countries of the Western Balkans, based on the 'changing nature of threat', that, instead of the threat of conventional armed conflict, emerge through economic and social inequalities, cross-border and organized crime, international terrorism, hazardous environmental degradation, as well as natural disasters. New security threats have led to some changes in the approach to the security maintenance, which has led the UN, NATO, and EU, as the most influential international security actors, to acquire common perspective of that the Euro-Atlantic security is indivisible and that freedom, democracy, human rights and liberal economies are shared values and common interests. It is exactly that such considerations have led to the development of different concepts of security, which can be classified into three major groups: the concept of collective security, the concept of security cooperation, and the concept of collective defense. Contemporary challenges, risks and threats call for an understanding of the new place and role of the Western Balkans, primarily Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Macedonia, Republic of Serbia, and Montenegro, in the context of international integration processes. The problem of inclusion of the mentioned Western Balkan countries into the Euro-Atlantic integrations has been a topic of many economic, political, social, military, and other debates at different levels and with different perspectives of this matter, but their deeper analysis shows that there is no unified position on the mode of inclusion into the integration processes. The first part of the paper looks at the aspect of contemporary international relations and their impact on national security of the Western Balkan countries, and the second part presents possible impact of these countries' security integrations into international security organizations on their respective national security systems.