University “St. Kliment Ohridski”- Bitola, Faculty of Security- Skopje
Abstract
Security challenges have proven that NATO cannot longer rely on sole Military Power. Ranging from Cyber attacks to failed states, from energy security to “Arab Spring’s” democratic transition and from fragile security in Afghanistan to the severe financial crisis NATO have realized that in order to be able effectively to cope with security threats it needs active civilian component. Strategic shift over the past years from geographical to functional security have tasted NATO legitimacy in several occasions. Starting from Bosnia through Kosovo and now in Afghanistan the necessity of effective civilian component that could increase preventive approach and improve resilience is more than evident.
Euro-Atlantic integration has so far proven to be the key for stability in the region. However, open issues like “Macedonia-Greece name issue”, “Kosovo status issue”, Challenges for Bosnian functional Government, are challenges that influence remaining Balkan states to effectively flow in to the Euro-Atlantic pool. We argue that although bilateral issues prevent NATO “open door policy” to become fully effective in Balkan, the New NATO 2010 Strategic Concept offers great opportunities for Balkan states. Bold proposals that will offer solutions for NATO emerging security challenges and come out with functional actions that could nest under NATO interest would likely if not undermine “chill” the hot bilateral issues. The article will expand on how active projects relying on pulling and sharing could serve as effective social engineering that could then potentially used as a platform for either solve existing issues or improve regional stability
