Serbia and NATO

Gobi Desert

Countries applying for accession to the European Union also have to deal with the Union‘s Common Foreign and Security Policy, and eventually adopt it. This currently implies taking up a position on the annexation of Crimea which occurred contrary to international law, and on the war in eastern Ukraine, which is a difficult task for the Serbian Government. On the one hand, the Serbian Government wants to take into account the friendship between Serbia and Russia. On the other, however, it has also become dependent on the Kremlin‘s good will and fears the latter’s wrath. The war in the Ukraine created a new division in Europe, provoking politically unilateral positions. The German section of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, in an open letter to the Russian ambassador in Berlin, as well as in an interview, has expressed a remarkably balanced stance which connects adherence to principles with the consideration of Russian security interests. The manner in which the Serbian Government defines its relation to NATO is closely associated with the Ukraine crisis. In the past few years, there were no new members of the European Union which had not previously, or in parallel, also become NATO-members. In those countries, NATO has monitored the reform of the security sector which could not have been accompanied by an EU army or the countries’ own respective armies. This is the path that, for instance, Montenegro intends to take. The Serbian Government empathically rejects Serbia’s NATO membership. Still, at the same time it has signed IPAP - the Individual Partnership Action Plan - which moves Serbia very close to NATO and assigns to NATO far-reaching powers in Serbia. In regard to this issue, we have commissioned the translation of two articles from the Serbian pres.