ALBANIA AND NATO WHY WE DO NEED NATO? Tirana 2008 This study was made possible through the financial support of the Public Affairs Section – American Embassy in Tirana. Analyses and Writing Maklen Misha Data Processing Dr. Guven Guneren Editor Dr. Albert Rakipi Research and Data Entry Dori Hyseni, Marsida Gjocaj, Alba Çela Translation Dori Hyseni Copyright Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS) Tirana 2008 ALBANIAN INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (AIIS) Rr. “Dëshmorët e 4 Shkurtit”, Nr. 7/1 Tirana., Albania Tel. +355 42 488 53 Fax +355 4 270 337 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.aiis-albania.org 2 Acknowledgments The Albanian Institute for International Studies is grateful to the American Embassy, whose support in the implementation of this survey is gratefully acknowledged. 3 INTRODUCTION Few issues interest the Albanians more than their country’s Euro-Atlantic integration. However, while accession to the EU must for the moment, remains a distant dream, in recent months expectations have been raised that Albania might receive an invitation to join NATO in the Summit of Bucharest due in April 2008. Several ministers have made declarations to that effect and the media has been quite active in discussing the possibility, too. If this indeed proves to be the case, it would be hard to explain the sense of accomplishment Albanians would feel at the realization of their dream. However, although the common belief is that the majority of the Albanians would support the integration of their country into NATO, no proper survey was conducted to date. Furthermore, while one can get a feeling of the existing support, it is difficult to ascertain the level of information the Albanians posses on NATO and their country’s membership process. Several surveys conducted by the Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS) on the perceptions and realities of the Albanians towards the European Union and the European integration process revealed overwhelming support for Albania’s EU membership, but at the same time serious lack of understanding on the EU, on the scope of the process, its costs and potential benefits. Because of the proximity of the Summit of Bucharest and the expectations that prevail in Albania concerning its possible invitation to join NATO in July 2007, AIIS decided to conduct a survey with four elite groups of the Albanian society. These groups are involved in the integration process more actively and directly than the ordinary Albanians are. The rationale behind the choice of target groups was based on the belief that these groups because of their position in society and their ability to influence decision-making. Therefore, it is interesting to ascertain the level of expertise that they possess on the NATO integration process. Because these groups, by their very nature, play a primary role in shaping the attitudes and beliefs of the public as a whole, by shaping attitudes one can also expect to gain a sense of what the public as a whole thinks of these issues. With these objectives in mind, the AIIS compiled a 36-question questionnaire and conducted interviews with 450 respondents from the public administration, military, media and civil society. 4 Executive Summary The survey shows that support for Albania’s NATO accession is very high for the general sample. Thus 91.3% would vote in favour of Albania joining NATO if a hypothetical referendum were to be held on the morrow of the day the survey was conducted. The percentages vary for each of the categories with a high of 94.6% of yes voters in the military and a low of 86.8% in the civil society. Civil society also had the highest percentage of undecided voters with 12.1% responding that they do not know how they would vote. Nevertheless only, a meagre 1.8% of the general sample responded that they were against Albania joining NATO. The responses were somewhat less enthusiastic when it came to the importance of Albania’s NATO membership. Only 62.3% responded that they deemed this very important, while a further 31.3% evaluated NATO membership to be important but not a priority. A small percentage of 2% replied that they did not find it important at all. Once again, the military was the group that had the highest percentage of very important answers with 76.1%, while civil society had the highest percentage of not important at all with 3.3% of the vote. As we see, civil society leads the group of sceptics although one can hardly conclude from these figures that there is any real opposition to NATO membership. However, these figures could be indicative of the beginning of scepticism or even opposition to NATO membership. A majority of respondents associate NATO membership primarily with improved national security for Albania. Thus, the single highest percentage of respondents for the general sample, or 34.8% claimed that improved national security was the main reason why they would vote in favour of NATO membership. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the military assigned the greatest importance to this reason for supporting NATO membership with 40.7%. Nevertheless the reasons fro supporting Albania’s NATO integration were by no means confined to a desire for better security. The respondents revealed that they are aware that Albania has much more to gain from joining NATO than a sense of security. Thus 25.4% of the general sample would have voted yes in the hope that NATO membership would strengthen democracy and the rule of law in Albania. Given the repeated emphasis that NATO and NATO member states have placed on reforms associated with the strengthening of democratic institutions and the rule of law it was to be expected that the respondents would associate NATO membership with an improvement and consolidation in these areas. The third most important reason with 23% of the vote, which was a favourite especially with the media and civil society, was the belief that being accepted into NATO would amount to a recognition and confirmation of Albania’s Western values. Indeed this can be said to have been one of the main motivations behind the enthusiasm with which Albanians have embraced Euro-Atlantic integration. Further confirmation for this interpretation can be found in the fact that confirmation of Albania’s Western values was deemed to be the second most important benefit Albanians expect to gain from NATO membership after the improvement of national security to which 41.3% of the general sample assigned a grade of 10 in a scale of 1 – 10. The respondents appear willing to pay most of the costs associated with NATO integration. Thus 79.2% were in support of increasing military spending to 2% of the state budget as opposed to 9.2% who were against the budget increase. On the issue of financing troop deployments, the support was somewhat lower with 74.9% in favour and 12.9% against. Nevertheless, it is clear that the respondents are willing to pay the financial costs for NATO membership although the figures 5 involved, although modest by NATO standards, amount to quite a burden for a small and not developed economy such as Albania. The support is somewhat smaller when it comes to the physical danger in which Albanian troops would find themselves deployed in NATO missions with 51.6% supporting them and 31.9% against the deployment. This is quite an important figure that shows that the Albanian public is quite sensitive to the “body-bag” phenomenon and that they appear reluctant to place their troops in harm’s way. It is also important as to date no surveys of this nature have been undertaken in order to evaluate the support or opposition to deploying troops in conflict areas such as Afghanistan or Iraq. Another cost the respondents appear not so willing to pay relates to the downsizing of Albania’s military. 52.7% support such a development while 30.4% are against while 12% are undecided. There are two possible interpretations for this result. On the one hand, the reluctance to downsize the Albanian military may relate to concerns about security, although such an interpretation appears less likely if one considers that respondents expect NATO membership to improve security. The other and more probable explanation relates to the social costs of such a development. In the recent months, Albania has witnessed several, albeit small scale, demonstrations by former military personnel who have lost their jobs as the result of the reforms. It is perhaps this concern that explains why this cost associated to NATO integration was especially unpopular with the military. Only 48.9% of them were willing to pay this cost while 41.3% were against it, the highest opposition from any of the groups. While the levels of support for NATO integration are quite high, the responses to the question whether Albania is ready to join NATO give cause for caution. Although the single largest group of respondents or 43.5% believed that to be the case, the percentage was lower than half the general sample. The percentage of sceptics was also quite high with 38.2% replying No. The percentage of respondents who did not know was also quite high standing at 18.3%. Public administration was by far the most optimistic of the groups with 58.9% answering yes. This figure however should be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. In the wake of the rotation of power following the elections of July 2005, the right wing government replaced much of the existing public administration with its own supporters. It would thus make sense to err on the side of caution when looking at these results as the public administration, now as always, can hardly be expected to be an impartial judge of progress and improvements in the country.