Democratic Encirclement – Ditmir Bushati, March 2024

NATO has completed the security puzzle in Europe’s northern, Arctic, and Baltic regions with Sweden's accession to the Alliance. Sweden is now set to become a central hub for military activity in Northern Europe, joining—for the first time—the same military alliance as Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Norway. It will strengthen the defense of the three NATO Baltic states by providing naval and air support, as well as additional troops to NATO’s brigade in Latvia. These countries represent the vanguard of rule-of-law standards. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Nordic countries acted as guarantors for the Baltic states’ democratic transformation and reintegration into Europe.

With Sweden's NATO membership, the Baltic Sea effectively becomes a NATO lake, surrounded by alliance members—including those encircling Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave and controlling both shores of the Gulf of Finland, leading to Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg. It’s worth noting that Sweden has cooperated structurally with NATO since 1994 when it joined the Partnership for Peace program. Sweden already spends 2% of its GDP on defense—a threshold many NATO members still fail to meet. In December, it signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States, allowing American troops and military equipment to be stationed on Swedish soil. Sweden also boasts world-class military assets, including submarines capable of dominating vast swathes of the Baltic and a well-developed fleet of fighter jets—making it a valuable contributor to European geopolitics.

In many ways, Sweden's accession to NATO is even more significant than Finland’s in 2023. With its long border with Russia, Finland has always taken a cautious approach to foreign and defense policy. Whether inside or outside NATO, its historic goal has been to protect itself from Russia. In the past, NATO saw Finland’s neutrality as a stabilizing regional factor. That all changed in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Sweden’s traditional refusal to join NATO was officially tied to not abandoning Finland—to avoid leaving it as a lone buffer between the West and Russia. However, when Finland knocked on NATO’s door in spring 2022, Sweden had no real alternative but to join as well.

The unified response in the north contrasts sharply with the overlapping tensions in Europe’s south—even in the face of a radically transformed security environment driven by Russian aggression. The expectation that the EU would fundamentally shift its approach toward the Western Balkans—by resolving longstanding conflicts and offering a stable model to counter Russian expansion—has instead devolved into a reinforcement of the status quo.

Despite Albania’s commendable efforts to host a joint initiative between Ukraine and a group of Southeast European states, regional positions on European security remain polarized. Divisions persist between NATO members or aspirants and Russian allies. These stances have not softened.

Although Russia is sometimes portrayed as an economic heavyweight in the region, its strongest influence lies in political arenas, security structures, and intelligence networks—especially in Serbia, the Republika Srpska entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and, to a lesser extent, North Macedonia. In short, Russia views the Western Balkans as a territory it can continuously destabilize—and from which it can threaten broader European security.

Though it is often claimed that the Western Balkans unanimously condemned Russia’s aggression, in reality, Serbia has done so in a duplicitous manner—drawing false parallels to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo nearly 25 years ago. Politically and in terms of security, there is no unified stance from the Western Balkans. Serbia continues to reject Western sanctions against Russia and actively maintains diplomatic, military, and economic ties with Moscow—as if it had not launched a war of unprecedented scale in Europe. The same is true for Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the current climate of Russian isolation, Belgrade is the only European capital offering direct flights to and from Moscow. Serbia is also the only country in the region that refuses entry to Russian dissidents seeking asylum and declined to align with the EU on its statement following the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Ignoring these dangerous similarities hinders the construction of a stable security environment in the region. The foundation for such a strategy must include a democratic encirclement of aggressor states. If Vladimir Putin in 2005 called the dissolution of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Serbia similarly refuses to accept the post-war reality in the former Yugoslavia—fueling tensions with all of its neighbors that emerged from that breakup.

Russia’s foreign policy promotes the doctrine of the “Russian world”—a political, military, economic, and cultural sphere of influence. Serbia’s foreign policy promotes a parallel doctrine: the “Serbian world.” Putin denies the existence of Ukrainian statehood and language to justify his aggression. Serbia denies Kosovo’s statehood—destabilizing the region and obstructing Kosovo’s functionality.

This is why the Western Balkans remains the only corner of Europe without a unified approach to the new security landscape, and where rule-of-law mechanisms fail to function effectively. Initiatives that reduce tensions between regional countries are useful as an intermediate step between hostility and friendship—helping prevent escalation and promote democratic coexistence. However, this alone is not enough. A well-coordinated U.S.-EU approach in the Western Balkans must be seen as an opportunity to prevent another threat to regional and European security, especially given the region’s geographic and geopolitical significance.

The starting point must be a recognition that, despite Western efforts spanning more than two decades, the Western Balkans cannot yet be considered a unified political or security region. Countries that align strategically with EU foreign and security policies and implement transformative rule-of-law reforms should be encouraged—and decoupled from those clinging to the status quo or occupying a geopolitical gray zone.

It must also be acknowledged that the Western Balkans is made up of countries with unique characteristics. For Albania, the only real commonality with its Balkan neighbors is the Albanian population once part of the former Yugoslavia. Albania’s participation in regional groups is valuable only insofar as it helps advance the rights of Albanians across the region. Strategically, Albania must strengthen its Mediterranean identity—politically, economically, and culturally. EU membership would open new opportunities for interaction within the Adriatic-Ionian space.

Tailoring approaches to these specific characteristics—without compromising democratic standards—would encourage healthy competition in the EU accession process, improved governance, and sustainable socio-economic development. It would also demonstrate to skeptics that this is the real path to progress—and to the democratic containment of malign influence. These are vital elements for a stable security environment.

If current approaches remain unchanged, we risk a future where little has evolved: fragile regional security, fragmented cross-border cooperation, a persistent development gap with the EU, and an ever-distant accession horizon. It must be understood that EU membership for Western Balkan countries is, above all, a matter of security—running parallel to the rule-of-law reform process. Today, European security is a matter of the EU’s own survival and its future role as a global actor. Consolidating and integrating Southeast Europe is a crucial step in that direction.

A Europe that is whole, free, and at peace is achievable—through a genuine commitment to the core values of liberal democracy. Sustainable prosperity can only follow from this essential foundation. The EU must prove wrong those who believe its values and principles can be manipulated, for these values are essential for democratic transformation, security, and sustainable development.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ditmir Bushati is a former Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs and a former Member of the Albanian Parliament.

The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation or the organizations the authors work for.