Justification of military straightening in Balkan Region

checkmate

Peace. As much as one wants to be an optimist, no one with common sense is going to think that Global peace is something that we can achieve in this structure of the world. Big, powerful states, natural resources, money float, poverty and economic disparity in the world are some factors that lead to the cognition of the fact that there will always be some armed conflicts in the Earth. There will always be some interest of powerful subjects (state or non-state) that will lead to some conflict. Also, manufacturing of weapons and military equipment are one of the largest economies in the world. This is why we can say that war is very profitable for some actors in the global stage. 

Powerful state in the region

With the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Balkan was left without the most powerful state in the region. One country became five, and in the 2000s, six countries. One army divided on six, one economy divided into six, population divided on six… when we add years of an armed conflict between states, how much the war can cost, and more than 3 million people left the Balkan and went to Western Europe, Scandinavia, North America, and Australia, we see how much all of these states lost with the dissolution like it was. Could it be the other way? We believe yes, but there is a saying: “After the battle, everyone is a general”. This means that it is easier to speak about the things that happened earlier, from this perspective, mostly because we have more information and we don’t involve the emotion as much as we would in the real situation.

map

More than 20 years after?

So, what is happening now, more than 20 years after? Antagonism between ethnic groups multiplied with the speeches of the politicians. The leaders that don’t have the courage to admit their fault and the faults of the government that led those states into war. Those are the reasons why we can’t start looking into the future and not in past. Also, the courage is not the only impediment in reconciliation. Power, interests, economic issues, border disputes, rights of minorities… These are all the obstacles for peaceful coexistence which is most needed in future.

Special Police Forces

These days, Balkan countries are still in military marketing, trying to convince the citizens that military threat is the big security challenge. That the strong military is indispensable for territorial integrity. Of course, this is a two-way street. You need at least two subjects to have an altercation. In this case, we need at least two countries to have a military competition, and that competition is not good for any of these countries because neither one of them is economically capable of this competition. Forming an army when you have neither money nor equipment, is everything but endeavor to reconciliation. Also, buying used military equipment is mostly marketing. Buying used aircraft when your pilots have a few dozens of flight hours per year if we look logically, is just a commercial for future elections..

Necessity or not?

So, from this perspective one question is emerging – Is it necessary, to modernize the military in a way that Serbia and Croatia, as the two most important states in Balkan, are doing? Well, in a way it is because every state of former Yugoslavia is afraid of the rising influence of others in the region. If they want to stop this competition, the first thing that has to be done is building trust. However, trust is hard to build on the foundations that are built in the 1990s. Those foundations have to be demolished because they stand on the base of nationalism and antagonism. Every single country has to work on that thrust which has to be the first pillar of the future in the region. This is Sisyphean task… very hard but still not impossible to be done.