Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 2015 Vol. 13, No. 2, 175–203, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2015.1022372

Making of an Ally – NATO membership conditionality implemented on Croatia Pjer Šimunović*

Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia

The study examines the convergence of critical factors of Croatia’s accession to NATO, revolving around policies of membership conditionality. Against the background of an overarching conditionality of NATO’s entire post-Cold War enlargement, which was making Croatia’s accession possible, it will look deeper – matching the defining traits of the accession process with the tenets of the main international relations theories – into Croatia’s own dynamics, conditioned by an application of the policies of NATO membership conditionality as to Croatia, to present a process decisively governed by a set of distinct parameters, composed of a specific geopolitical, sub-regional backdrop of relationship between NATO and Croatia, of the legacy of war of the 1990s, political, societal, economic and defence reforms, as well as of the criteria associated with the public support for membership. Keywords: Croatia; NATO enlargement; membership conditionality; post- Communist and post-war transition; international relations and security

Introduction In the third round of the post-Cold War enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), in April 2009, Croatia, together with Albania, joined the Alliance. A set of critical ingredients converged to produce this outcome, revolving around a respective implementation of the policies of NATO membership condi- tionality. The purpose of this study is to analyse how and why these policies, representing conceptual and practical drivers and regulators setting the rules of the accession game and pacing the dynamics of the enlargement of the Alliance, have been applied to and fulfilled by Croatia. The focus on such a pivotal role played by the membership conditionality – with the study employing also an insider’s perspective of the author as former Croatian National Coordinator for NATO – should also provide an illustrative insight into the ‘making of an Ally’, into the forging a member of the Western Alliance out of a state, society and the military undergoing a simultaneous post-Communist and post- war transition.1 Thus, the study will be developing a range of transitological, interdisciplinary themes, namely those related to a formative influence exercised by the process of European and Euro-Atlantic integration upon the reforms and policies of the post-Communist countries joining them. In order to both equip and contextualise the research theoretically, to provide it with a referential framework, it will be trying to correlate Croatia’s NATO accession

*Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

© 2015 Board of Transatlantic Studies 176 P. Šimunović process with the main international relations theories, aiming to identify, by looking at the most significant indicators of its dynamics, how much it lends itself to be explained by the power politics of ‘realism’, by a struggle for power among self- interested states; or by the international cooperativeness of ‘liberalism’, by its reliance on interdependence, spread of democracy and multilateralism, infused with the power of values and ideas of ‘idealism/constructivism’.2 The study will begin by overviewing the policies of conditionality contained in the NATO enlargement process in general, setting a background for subsequently crystallising defining geopolitical, military and societal features and parameters of Croatia’s conditionality-based accession process. It will reveal how a general context of the Alliance’s enlargement proved conducive to Croatia’s membership, while a mixture of universal as well as Croatia-specific criteria – the latter stemming chiefly from a multifaceted legacy of the 1990s war – had been shaping the country’s NATO accession process.

Conditionality of NATO’s enlargement A web of conditionality envelops the entire NATO enlargement process, aiming to ensure that an entrant to the Alliance will be able to operate as an Ally in its defining functions, when it comes to the Alliance’s internal dealings as well as when it comes to its external postures and actions.3 Its full integration remains however an extended, gradual undertaking, particularly in the defence sphere, continuing well beyond the accession period itself. NATO’s founding act, the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, in its Article 10, while leaving the Organisation’s door open, postulates the main, grand conditionality for membership, when its states that ‘any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area’ may be invited to join.4 The principles are those enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly related to a ‘desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments’; they encompass ‘freedom, common heritage and civilisation’ of the Allied peoples, ‘principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’, objective of the whole enterprise being ‘stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area’, to be secured through a unity of ‘efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security’.5 The Allies should be able to contribute to security by ‘strengthening their free institutions’ and developing cooperative economic policies,6 by maintaining and developing ‘their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack’,7 by their ability and willingness to consult and act together when the security of any one of them is threatened,8 and by their representation and participation in the Organisation.9 Once ‘satisfied that the security of the North Atlantic area will be enhanced by the accession’ of a new member, the Allies finally agree upon its admission.10 The Treaty envisaged all the overarching, grand conditionality for membership, setting the main criteria. They were to be implemented – intertwined necessarily with the actual political and security, practical considerations – while gradually accepting additional Cold War entrants,11 when an imperative policy of reinforcing the Alliance facing the Soviet adversary was the driving force behind such an enlargement; and they were, this time within a profoundly altered strategic framework, to be put in a massive motion of NATO’s move eastwards, made Journal of Transatlantic Studies 177 possible by the implosion of Communism, disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and by a desire of the Central and Eastern European emerging democracies to (re)join the West in all its aspects, materialised in a very visible and vigorous process of NATO’s post-Cold War enlargement,12 an enlargement which is still in progress.13 NATO’s membership logic, given a security and defence nature of the organisation, has always been predominantly a strategic one, underpinned by a set of other sensible policies of conditionality, indispensable for enabling a smooth functioning of the organisation. However, as the strategic stakes, with the disappearance of a titanic Cold War struggle, would be receding or changing, so a much stronger emphasis, entailing a more comprehensive and elaborated policy of conditionality, would be developed and implemented, added to the central strategic logic, reflecting a transformed global landscape and new missions and roles of the Alliance, and responding to a practical necessity to have in place a more structured and dedicated enlargement system to address the magnitude of interest to join the Alliance, expressed by the post-Communist countries, which had to be managed in a meaningful manner. There was also a parallel, critically important aim of stabilising these emerging democracies, the most effective way of achieving this being by embracing them. Thus, upon a ‘realist’, hard security fundament of the organisation, a more pronounced layer of ‘liberal’ and ‘idealist’ traits was added, related both to the missions of the Alliance (international cooperation and partnerships, peace- support), as well as to the membership conditionality (insistence on the political criteria, principally on the requirement that any NATO hopeful had to be a functioning democracy). Membership conditionality applied to Croatia would be a case in point. NATO’s leverage in making sure that the new members pursue adequate reforms to qualify for membership was decisively reinforced by the strategic interest of these countries to join the organisation in the first place. This would establish a rather straightforward relationship of conditionality. The membership perspective was also the most important motivation for conducting wide-ranging reforms of the post- Communist states and societies, fundamentally needed anyway.14 In an eventual absence of NATO/EU bids and the associated membership criteria, these reforms, amid a tense, complex transitional environment, would have hardly been able to be accomplished with the same dynamics and with the same results, if at all. The Alliance’s post-Communist enlargement was to feature on NATO’s agenda with an increasing prominence. The revolutionary drive of the post-Communist countries towards membership, upsetting a known order of things, had been however at the beginning met by the Alliance cautiously, the West being caught unawares, the issue necessitating a certain strategic grasp, evolution and maturation. As Zbigniew Brzezinski would succinctly argue, ‘[w]hat followed was less the product of strategic design than the result of history’s spontaneity. The latter is often confusing and contradictory, and yet ultimately decisive. That was largely the case with NATO’s expansion eastwards’.15 Progressively, the enlargement would be appearing in NATO’s Strategic Concepts, as well as Summit Declarations, different documents, official statements and in a multitude of individual accession programmes and discussions. The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept of 1991, drafted through a fog of fast-moving, ground-shaking events, was able to realise that ‘the political division of Europe that 178 P. Šimunović was the source of the military confrontation of the Cold War period has been overcome’,16 but it had not yet been able to declare that an enlargement was on the agenda – the talk at the time had to be confined on a multiplication of ‘opportunities for dialogue on the part of the Alliance with the Soviet Union and the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe’, composed under the heading ‘Dialogue’.17 In the Strategic Concept of 1999 ‘enlargement’ becomes one of the most important aspects of security, graduating from ‘dialogue’ into its own dedicated paragraph, with the Alliance, having already completed the first round of its post- Cold War enlargement, expecting ‘to extend further invitations in coming years to nations willing and able to assume the responsibilities and obligations of member- ship’, establishing also ‘a program of activities to assist aspiring countries in their preparations for possible future membership’.18 Closing the loop, the latest, 2010 Strategic Concept, reaffirms a fully ‘open door’ policy, recognising that ‘NATO’s enlargement has contributed substantially to the security of Allies’, with ‘the prospect of further enlargement’ advancing the overall stability in Europe.19 From its humble beginnings, the enlargement –‘historically timely and also the right thing to do’20 – has been able to evolve into one of the most recognisable aspects of NATO’s policies, confirming NATO’s great transformational potential. Circumstances surrounding the initial wave of the post-Cold War enlargement, in 1999, with three countries, had their specificities stemming largely from the fact that such an enlargement was the first of its kind. Thus, by virtue of its ice-breaking quality, it was especially burdened by an uncertainty of the consequences of a strategic shift which was about to take place, affecting the Alliance both externally and internally. Externally, what was actually to happen with the enlargement was a materialisation of NATO’s Cold War victory in a most physical, ‘territorial’ sense. Consequently, it involved concerns how not to end up destroying a nascent partnership with Russia, including a highly desirable success of its democratisation and stabilisation, by such a step, by the Alliance’s advance through Russia’s erstwhile geopolitical playground. Cooperative reassurances coming from NATO21 converged with Russia’s relative weaknesses – Russia’s drastically, very visibly declined strength and influence – to supress this concern, at least before the relationship would suffer a major setback with the crises over Georgia, in 2008, and Ukraine, in 2014. Internally, concerns were revolving around a question of (in)ability of NATO aspirants to function as Allies, adequately compatible and efficient politically and militarily, providing security instead of only consuming it, increasing stability instead of opening new vulnerabilities, fostering cohesion of the Alliance instead of undermining it. Relatively early stages of post-Communist transformation of states, economies, societies, security services and armed forces were leaving a lot to be desired. The question was essentially whether the benefits of a relatively early enlargement, embracing an extraordinary positive charge existing in Central and Eastern Europe, were outweighing dangers presented by deficiencies, inadequacies and uncertainties, particularly related to the effects upon an enlarged NATO’s ability to conduct its affairs and make decisions, inherent to the new, less-than- perfect post-Communist members. The scales were finally tipped in favour of taking the chance and opening the gates – with no regrets but with a number of lessons learned to be implemented during the incoming waves of enlargement in order to ensure a smoother integration. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 179

Following the initial post-Communist, three countries wave of NATO enlarge- ment – driven by such an overarching logic, more strategic and political than technical, more contextual than elaborately structured – an overall, conditionality- based enlargement mechanism as a ‘gradual, deliberate and transparent process’,22 aiming to set ‘perspectives’ for those wishing to join while ‘reassuring’ others,23 was to be put together by the Alliance’s 1995 Study on NATO Enlargement, developing on the main criteria enshrined in the North Atlantic Treaty, outlining purposes, principles, effects upon a broader European security, contribution to the Allied defence capabilities, rights and obligations of new members as well as modalities of enlargement.24 Acting upon lessons learned from the initial round, responding to a need to ensure a more solid preparation of the aspiring countries, a dedicated accession instrument, the Membership Action Plan (MAP), was introduced, in 1999,25 which was also to be the vehicle of Croatia’s accession. A better structured, more accountable and measurable relationship of conditionality was to be established. MAP, preceded by an introductory Intensified Dialogue with an aspirant, was based upon a NATO aspirant drafting, presenting and executing a special Annual National Programme (ANP) of activities pertaining to NATO membership, along its five set chapters, dealing comprehensively with political, economic, defence, security and legal reforms of the Alliance’s interest. The entire process was closely monitored by NATO staff as well as by the individual member countries, and regularly, exhaustively and intensively discussed with the aspirant at all levels. NATO was systematically providing expert advice, guidance, transfer of knowledge and experience, crucially important in the area of NATO defence planning, this very heart of the entire Allied architecture. An inter-agency coordination of all relevant instruments of a NATO aspiring state, beyond its individual ministries’ divides, was to be put in place to ensure a national unity of efforts in all things NATO and to prepare the country for participation in the Alliance’s businesses. For the purpose of such a specific coordination, as it was the case with other MAP countries, Croatia’s accession to NATO in all its stages would be managed through a special coordinative mechanism, Inter-Agency Working Group on NATO and MAP, headed by a high-level Foreign Ministry official as National Coordinator for MAP. The 2004 seven-MAP-countries enlargement was evolving within a considerably changed strategic environment, shaped by the 11th September 2001 mega-terror attacks, leading to a global war on terrorism, operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, introducing a new set of parameters, dominating also Croatia’s NATO accession environment. In such a context, the most sensitive aspect of the second round – inclusion of the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the first parts of an actual former Soviet Union to pass over to NATO, was contained, diluted, as a part of a strategic shift away from the legacy of the Cold War. Decisively, there was an overwhelming US pressure to enlarge NATO with these countries, which were shaping themselves as dedicated Allies, notably by supporting ‘war on terror’. Finally, in terms of conditionality inherent to the NATO enlargement process, it is important to note a close relationship with the process of EU enlargement. In the words of the 1995 Study on NATO Enlargement: ‘The enlargement of NATO is a parallel process with and will complement that of the European Union’, the two enlargement processes together making ’a significant contribution to strengthening 180 P. Šimunović

Europe’s security structure’; at a practical level, with no ‘rigid parallelism’ foreseen, ‘each organisation will need to consider developments in the other’.26 This complementarity was not necessarily synchronised or institutionalised, or employed up to its full potential, but it was nevertheless, in practice, very present. Reforms specific to NATO enlargement – related to security, defence, military and intelligence, particularly to the civilian and democratic control over the military – were serving prominently in putting in place and underpinning a backbone of some EU-compatible structures in the EU candidate countries. Also, vice versa, adoption of acquis communautaire, a complex and comprehensive set of requirements extended for achieving EU membership – made of the same fibre as the North Atlantic Treaty, with its roots in ‘freedom, common heritage and civilisation’, ‘principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’, in its pledge to strengthen free institutions and develop cooperative economic policies27 – was simultaneously ensuring the comple- tion of the most basic political and economic criteria for NATO membership, as well as facilitating the execution of a range of security and defence reforms. Each organisation was observing how the other organisation’s criteria were being fulfilled, although this may be applicable more to NATO’s than to the EU’s attitude. Against such a general background of NATO’s post-Cold War enlargement, Croatia’s ‘long and winding road to NATO membership’28 would be evolving. While sharing a basic logic, together with a set of uniform conditions, with other NATO enlargements, experiencing at the same time a gradual tightening up of the accession criteria, NATO’s Croatian enlargement was to appear somewhat atypical, featuring some distinct characteristics, stemming from the legacy of disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Croatia’s ‘coming in from the cold’ was to be affected by its war of independence 1991–1995 and its aftermath, as well as by a context of other wars of Yugoslav succession. Crucial policies of conditionality were developed and made-to-measure, based upon NATO’s fundamental criteria, values and interests, as a response to these factors, and applied to Croatia.

Geopolitics and nature of Croatia’s NATO candidacy For Croatia as a future NATO member, no element of a grand strategy surrounding NATO enlargement appeared to be problematic. Moreover, at that level, from the year 2000 onwards – the date being that of Croatia’s admission to NATO’s Partnership for Peace Programme (PfP),29 marking the official beginning of a type of cooperation leading ultimately to the membership in the Alliance – the road was clear. The first round of enlargement had already been successfully consummated, stimulating an appetite for a continuing expansion; MAP was introduced as a dedicated instrument of accession, facilitating the integration of new members; while a transformed strategic landscape was opening up a horizon populated by NATO’s new missions, mitigating some potentially restraining considerations, related to the impact on relationship with Russia. As much as Russia was concerned, in any event it was not a significant factor in Croatia’s and Albania’s NATO accession dynamics. Both countries were taking no part in a Cold War antagonism and its associated geopolitics sensu stricto, nor were they of a Russian traditional strategic interest. Also, their wish to join NATO was not motivated by an eventual search for protection against a perceived threat from Russia. Russia, in its turn, would have preferred not to see them in NATO, but its Journal of Transatlantic Studies 181 eventual opposition was not specifically noticeable, nor was Russia wasting any significant amount of energy or credibility conducting any serious action or campaign, either vis-à-vis NATO or vis-à-vis two NATO hopefuls bilaterally, aiming to undermine this particular enlargement. At the very concluding stage of this NATO enlargement, however, Russia would have to voice publically its opposition, when, in the summer of 2008, significantly within the context of a crisis with Georgia which was to escalate into a hot war, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman would criticise the signing of the NATO Accession Protocols with Albania and Croatia, situating it into a general framework of Russia’s ‘invariable [negative] attitude to the NATO expansion regardless of its geographical vector’, while perceiving it as a devaluation of ‘the key principle underlying the concept of indivisible security – not to build one’s own security to the detriment of the security of others’.30 Croatia’s NATO membership-related geopolitics belonged far less to a continental domain than to a regional, or rather ‘sub-regional’ one, characterised by the instability and wars of the 1990s. This factor explains why Croatia’s structured, more formal relationship with NATO, including the country’s participation in the PfP – launched by NATO and joined by other countries already back in 1994, started later than that of its fellow post-Communist NATO aspirants, in 2000. That was also why, when it came to evaluate a strategic impact of Croatia’s, as well as Albania’s, accession to NATO, it made sense to observe it predominantly within these distinct parameters, in function of its geographically narrower effects, while arguing, once the accession had been completed, that ‘it [was] possible that [Albania’s and Croatia’s] membership could play a political role in helping to stabilise south eastern Europe’,31 the two countries being ‘a potential factor for stabilisation of south eastern Europe’.32 Before such a positive view would prevail and establish itself as one of the conclusive elements underpinning a strategic logic behind Croatia’s NATO member- ship, Croatia’s credibility and ability in ‘helping to stabilise south eastern Europe’,a derivative of NATO basic requirement for any new member to be able to ‘contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area’, while proving its ‘desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments’,33 had to be under a particularly close scrutiny. The importance NATO and the member countries were attaching to a region of their immediate concern and interest –‘firmly committed to the promotion of security, stability, peace and democracy in South-East Europe’34 – a region in which they were heavily politically and militarily involved, including a massive presence of their troops on the ground, motivated such a special conditionality. After all, it was this very region, shaped by ‘Yugoslavia’s collapse’, which had exercised a formative influence upon NATO, forcing it to ‘assume a role it had never before contemplated – that of crisis manager and peacekeeper’.35 Croatia’s policy, in its turn, would be evolving and maturing over time under influences of both internal and external developments and pressures, related to the fortunes of war, political and economic transition, events in the neighbourhood, and the actions of the international community. It would be guided decisively by a general, mainstream strategic ambition, inherent to the whole idea of Croatia’s freshly acquired independence, to (re)join the West in all its shapes and forms, embodied most concretely in Croatia’s desired integration into the main European and Euro-Atlantic organisations. This ambition was strongly felt by the population, it was correspondingly pursued by the political leadership and executed by the 182 P. Šimunović administration, assuming a dominant national momentum. Croatia’s post-Commun- ist transition was leading the country ‘quite naturally’ towards membership in NATO, ‘[t]he basic values and interest on which the Organisation was founded’ being:

the same that Croatia itself [was sharing] without reservation: freedom, liberal democracy, rule of law, free market economy, solidarity and stable international relations which [should have been] governed by peace and security, the key to which [was] a strong strategic, Transatlantic link.36

Besides the practical objectives of securing the country’s best ‘hard’ interests by providing it with the unprecedented security guarantees and by anchoring it ‘softly’ into a most solid cooperative international environment, membership in NATO, together with the membership in the EU – envisaged to bring also economic and social prosperity, was in essence understood as being about the identity, about the true international recognition the nation had been most profoundly aspiring for, the one certifying Croatia as being both independent and belonging to the West. It was the national strategic goal par excellence, from which other goals were to be derived, the fundamental political pledge to the constituency, worth any effort and sacrifice. This would be particularly visible when it would come to the fulfilment of criteria dealing with the highly sensitive issues of refugee return and war crimes prosecution. Thus, the paramount, immediate motivation behind Croatia’s NATO aspiration was cultural, values-driven, inherently encompassing important practical considerations and self-interest stemming from the desired effects of the integration into the West. While the experience of war of the 1990s was bringing home the importance of hard security, there was no immediacy in this motivation, the war having been fought and won, considered unlikely to return. Croatia’s interest to join PfP was expressed already in the mid-1990s, but the country would be admitted only several years later, in 2000, with the Alliance positively responding to ‘the democratic changes in Croatia after the recent landmark parliamentary and presidential elections’,37 honouring its promise, given repeatedly and announced notably just before these elections, of ‘an opportunity for the next Croatian government to move towards a closer relationship with Euro-Atlantic institutions’.38 The political changes of 2000, parliamentary victory of a centre-left coalition led by the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (Socialdemokratska partija Hrvatske, SDP) and the Presidential victory of Stjepan Mesić, also signalled the completion of the first, war and the immediate post-war phase of the Croatian post-Communist transition, marked by the Presidency of Franjo Tuđman and the governance of the Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ), which had included also a period of National Unity Government (1991–1992). President Tuđman passed away in 1999, leaving a legacy of his wartime leadership, during which an independent, internationally recognised Croatian statehood, together with its emerging democracy, had been established and defended, a legacy mixed however with some chiefly political impediments to Croatia’s further, conclusive progress towards NATO and the EU. Following a stage of an Intensified Dialogue, Croatia would be invited to join MAP in 2002,39 it would be passing through seven MAP cycles, drafting and executing seven ANPs, to be invited to start Accession Talks, at the Bucharest Summit, in April 2008,40 before, in July 2008, signing the Protocols of Accession, Journal of Transatlantic Studies 183 and finally, 1st April 2009, the ratification procedure having been completed, adhering to the Alliance, together with Albania. The process, conducted under the mandates of the centre-left, SDP-led government, under Prime Minister Ivica Račan (2000–2003), and the centre-right, HDZ-led governments, under Prime Minister Ivo Sanader (following the 2003 and 2007 elections), reflected a national, bipartisan consensus. Such a NATO consensus was translated into a mainstream parliamentary support for all measures related to the NATO accession process, detectable in the most critical of decisions, those on deploying troops with NATO in Afghanistan, and culminating in an almost unanimous ‘aye’ vote (minus one independent Member of Parliament) ratifying the North Atlantic Treaty. Croatia’s NATO accession process was running in parallel with its EU accession, mirroring a whole set of conditionalities shared by both organisations, including, very prominently, those related to the regional stabilisation and cooperation. Accordingly, Croatian political changes at the beginning of 2000 were embraced by the EU as a springboard to a larger, regional target, as exemplified most visibly by the Zagreb Summit, convened later that year as a top-level meeting of the leaders of the EU member states with the leaders of the countries of the region covered by the EU Stabilisation and Association Process. The Summit was to set perspectives to the countries of the region for their ‘rapprochement’ with the EU, conditioned by ‘democracy and regional reconciliation and cooperation’.41 Croatia’s progress would be followed by the beginning of a contractual relationship with the EU, by the Stabilisation and Association Agreement in 2001, leading to Croatia’s candidate status in 2004 and to the comprehensive membership negotiations, signing of the Treaty of Accession in December 2011 and to the actual EU membership, on 1st July 2013. During the first half of 1990s, Serbia’s leader Slobodan Milošević’s attempts to carve a ‘greater Serbia’ out of large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina prevented Croatia, forced to deal with the most pressing demands of survival, from developing a focused and systematic approach to its NATO ambition, while it also prevented NATO from considering Croatia, given such an unsettled environment, non-conducive to any meaningful accession talks, as a near-term candidate for membership. After the war, there was a detectable reluctance in the West for Croatia’s eventual early admission, amounting in a sense to its conclusive decoupling from the crisis legacy of the former Yugoslavia, out of a perception that this could be potentially detrimental to a resolution of issues emerged from the violent break-up of the former state, complex and critical, such as cross-border relations, return of refugees, prosecution of war crimes, minority rights, and thus destabilising. These issues, following Croatia on its path to NATO to the very end, belonged to an important category within a general constellation of NATO membership condition- ality, contextualised by the 1995 Study on NATO Enlargement:

States which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles. Resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance.42 184 P. Šimunović

One of the main concerns was revolving around Croatia’s attitude towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, around a lingering wartime suspicion of interference not supportive to the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This element would illustratively transpire when NATO Foreign Ministers, while admitting Croatia to the PfP in 2000, would notably welcome and support ‘the improvement in Croatia’s relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina’, specifically ‘Croatia’s commitment to the full implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement’.43 A border dispute with Slovenia, however, which was to represent a heavy burden during the final stages of Croatia’s membership negotiations with the EU, was never allowed (by the Alliance, notably by the USA) to interfere significantly with Croatia’s NATO accession. Within NATO, there was no specific division nor any substantial divergence among the member states on the issue of Croatia’s membership, including on setting the conditions and interpreting the progress. The approach was universally supportive, once the decision to start MAP process with Croatia had been taken, centred on Croatia’s fulfilling of the criteria set by the Alliance. Gradually, Croatia would be able to prove its status of a reliable partner of NATO in the region, through a set of political measures, related to normalisation of relations, confidence-building and cooperation with Serbia and a transparent and supportive approach to Bosnia and Herzegovina, coupled with many aspects of a practical support to the Allies engaged in the region, in their efforts to make and keep peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina44 and stop Milošević’s onslaught in Kosovo.45 During the final stages of wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were to end, in 1995, with NATO air campaign – Operation ‘Deliberate Force’, Croatian Operations ‘Flash’ and ‘Storm’ and finally with the Dayton-Paris Peace Accords, a scene had been set for such a partnership, through exchanges and cooperation principally with the USA, over an agenda to prevent further carnage in Bosnia and Herzegovina, establish and foster a Croatian-Bosnian alliance, and to roll back Milošević. The US-Adriatic Charter of Partnership initiative (2003), developed among Albania, Croatia, Macedonia and the USA as an instrument of regional cooperation aiming to mutually reinforce the three NATO aspirants’ membership bids, evolved to be a particularly efficient and much appreciated vehicle of getting closer to NATO. Croatia would be increasingly active in the initiative; it would be conducting an ‘exemplary’ cooperation,46 ending up by assuming very much a leading role. By working closely together in many NATO-related fields (security and defence reforms, regional stabilisation, public support), including by deploying a joint medical team for the Operation ISAF in Afghanistan, the ‘Adriatic Three’ (A3) countries were able to demonstrate an already existing ‘Allied mentality’. An important facet of the initiative was its openness towards other countries in the region, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. Responding to a set of larger, global strategic considerations, related to NATO’s commitment to ‘the preservation of peace and security’.47 Croatia had to prove itself as a country transformed ‘from a consumer of security into a contributor of security’.48 It would be sending messages of its readiness ‘to start exercising a full spectrum of stabilising tasks of a true member of the Alliance’.49 On top of acceding to all universal arms control, disarmaments and weapons of mass destruction non- proliferation regimes, Croatia would be progressively becoming a party to a full range of advanced international regimes and initiatives. It would succeed to obtain a Journal of Transatlantic Studies 185 non-permanent UN Security Council membership, in 2008–2009. It would be contributing to a range of international peace-support operations. An immediate post 9/11 global strategic landscape ended up being dominated by a ‘war on terror’, materialised most concretely by the US-led coalitions intervening militarily in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). In Afghanistan, NATO would assume leadership of the UN-mandated stabilisation Operation ISAF in 2003, and the operation was to be one of its top priorities ever since, being also a ‘testing ground’ for willingness, capabilities, tenacity and endurance of the prospective members of the Alliance. All NATO aspirants, Croatia included, would be making credible contributions. Over the years Croatia would be greatly expanding and diversifying its initial contribution, 50-troops strong, responding particularly to a critical need to provide trainers and mentors for the Afghan forces. By the time of its accession to the Alliance, Croatia would be deploying a contingent of 300 troops, supplemented by a civilian and police contribution, as well as by arms donations and humanitarian assistance. This engagement, ‘a truly valuable contribution’,50 was instrumental in underpinning Croatia’s NATO bid. Croatia’s contribution to ISAF has always been its forte, spearheading its thrust into the Alliance, forging a close and rewarding cooperation with the Allies. Iraq started as a rather different matter, in 2003, lacking both a UN mandate as well as a NATO consensus, preventing the operation from being conducted either under UN or NATO auspices, creating fractures both within international community as well as within the Alliance itself. However, NATO would be ultimately able to launch its own non-combat, training and mentoring mission to support stabilisation in Iraq, NATO Training Mission – Iraq (NTM-I, 2004–2011). Croatia would be contributing to this operation, by donating surplus assault rifles, explosive detection dogs and by training their handlers. Outside the NTM-I, Croatia would be deploying police trainers to train Iraqi police officers in Jordan. At the beginning, however, attitudes towards Iraq – the Croatian President’s vocal criticism of the intervention at the time, coupled with the government’s withholding of some concrete elements of support to the operation, such as overflight permits51 – had led to a setback in the USA–Croatia relations, albeit for a limited period, undermining the US support for Croatia, absolutely indispensable for any meaningful NATO bid.52 With the new government in Zagreb, this friction would be smoothed and ultimately neutralised, by cooperation in other fields, as well as by other ways in which Croatia would be supporting stabilisation of Iraq, such as by its aforemen- tioned support in training and donations, by its participation in the coalition’s politico-military consultations on Iraq and in diplomatic and humanitarian efforts. On the background of Croatia’s strategic cooperation with NATO and the Allies developed during the troubled 1990s, the 2000 centre-left government would provide a political opening, notably in its democratisation and regional reconciliation aspects, enabling NATO, as well as the EU, to respond by initiating formal relationships aiming to accept Croatia as their member. Croatia’s 2002 National Security Strategy confirmed integration into NATO as ‘one of the main objectives of the Croatian foreign and security policy’, setting it as the ‘strategic mid-term goal towards which all objectively available resources [would] be directed’.53 National policies, instruments and mechanisms of working with NATO on the accession project were established and set in motion. 186 P. Šimunović

The 2003 and 2007 centre-right governments were to provide the central efforts, ways and means, while setting NATO membership, together with the EU member- ship, as the ‘absolute priority’ upon which the international and security position of the country was to be built, which notably entailed ‘developing and deepening relations with the United States’, recognised as having the ‘leading role’ in the NATO enlargement process.54 Consequently, relations with Washington were to be intensi- fied, as a key part of an overall NATO drive, particularly by investing targeted efforts in a field where it mattered the most at the time, during the George W. Bush Administration’s sharp focus on ‘war on terror’, succeeding to inject a committed security, counterterrorism and operations-oriented component into the relations. Against the prevailing conceptual background of an ‘idealist’, values-motivated, and ‘liberal’, international cooperation-shaped NATO membership enterprise, this component – critically relevant – coupled with the collective defence reform effort, was the most ‘realist’, ‘hard security’ ingredient of Croatia’s accession process. The resulting trend was to be one of a solid, decisive US support for Croatia’s NATO membership, exemplified by President Bush’s ‘no one will be able to take your freedom away’ speech in Zagreb, celebrating Croatia’s (and Albania’s) invitation to start Accession Talks with NATO, issued few days earlier at the Bucharest Summit, in April 2008.55

Facing the remnants of war Two issues associated directly with the legacy of war were to have a strong impact upon the content and the rhythm of Croatia’s accession both to NATO as well as to the EU: return of refugees and prosecution of war crimes. They were stemming from the main criteria set by the North Atlantic Treaty (belonging to its ‘liberal’ and ‘idealist’ conceptual sphere), from the ‘principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’, from a ‘desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments’ and establish ‘stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area’,56 reflected also in the 1995 Study on NATO Enlargement.57 Besides being independently followed by NATO/EU and by their member countries, both issues were put under the watchful eyes of two dedicated international instruments: the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission to Croatia (1996–2007),58 succeeded by a smaller OSCE Office in Zagreb (closed in its turn in 2011)59 and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY, established in 1993, with a wider, regional responsibility).60 Both issues, instrumental in trying to achieve justice, normality and reconciliation, were dealing with politically uneasy themes, touching some raw nerves brutally exposed by war. For Croatia, the most controversial aspect of the refugee return process involved return of the Croatian Serb refugees, those who had left the country following the hostilities and especially after the defeat of the Serbian rebellion, or those who had been internally displaced in the period 1991–1995. Ensuring the rights of these refugees, as Croatian citizens – by granting them the right to return, to get their property restituted and reconstructed – simultaneously with dealing with a large number of ethnic Croatian refugees and internally displaced persons, was testing for the Croatian state and society in a relatively early post-war period, in an environment politically and emotionally charged. Against the same background and atmosphere, prosecution of war crimes – embodied principally in the cooperation Journal of Transatlantic Studies 187 with The Hague Tribunal, but conducted also before the domestic courts – was sharing similar influences. In this case, an initial enthusiasm to see all those who had committed and were committing crimes attacking and tearing apart Croatia (and Bosnia and Herzegovina) brought before an impartial international justice, would be supplemented by a reluctance to admit that a war crime may have been committed by a defender as well. The importance of these two issues was stressed when NATO Foreign Ministers were inviting Croatia to join PfP, in 2000, welcoming, together with ‘Croatia’s commitment to the full implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement’ and ‘to promote regional security’, the country’s commitment ‘to accelerate the return of refugees without discrimination’ and ‘to co-operate with ICTY’.61 These two topics were the first two among ‘four key issues’ followed ‘particularly closely’ by the NATO Allies, as highlighted in 2004 by Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO Secretary General at the time, in his speech before the Croatian Parliament (the remaining two ‘key issues’ being judicial reform and defence reform).62 Both issues needed time and efforts to be satisfactorily resolved, with Croatia advancing towards NATO in essence only as fast as it was be able to work on these issues. Besides covering a wider range of topics related to Croatia’s political transition, the OSCE Mission was charged specifically with monitoring, advising and support- ing Croatian Government in the fields of return of refugees and prosecution of war crimes.63 The Mission acted as a central ‘field agent’ in reporting on fulfilment of Croatia’s political commitments for Euro-Atlantic integration, ‘most’ of them ‘reflected in the Mission’s mandate’.64 The importance of the Mission in such a capacity was increasingly understood by the Croatian Government, resulting in an initial ‘unease between the Mission and its host country’ evolving ‘into collaboration and cooperation’.65 An engaging and tactful leadership of the OSCE operation in Croatia by a senior Spanish diplomat, Ambassador Jorge Fuentes Manzonís- Villalonga, during the most critical, concluding stages of Croatia’s entry into NATO (2005–2009), contributed markedly to such an outcome, his tenure being described by the Croatian officials as ‘particularly fruitful and enriching’.66 Croatian analysts would conclude that the OSCE ‘supported democratic reforms without which Croatia would have not been able to enter into NATO nor it would be able to enter into the EU’.67 The linchpin around which the process of refugee returns revolved was provided by the ‘Sarajevo Declaration’, signed in 2005 by the ministers responsible for refugees and internally displaced persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia and Montenegro, responding to the requirements of a multi-way, multi- dimensional nature of refugee returns. The signatories of the Declaration, initiating a ‘Sarajevo Process’, pledged to identify their ‘individual and joint activities’ to ‘be undertaken in the forthcoming period with the assistance of the international community in order to ensure a just and durable solution’.68 Such a solution, achievable through national ‘Road Maps’, to be unified in ‘a joint implementation matrix’, should have enabled those wishing to return to their original homes to return, in security, provided them with the assistance and the support needed, enabled their reintegration, while it should have assisted also those choosing not to return.69 Croatia would be investing priority efforts in working with the OSCE (the OSCE Mission was also a regular briefer to NATO teams visiting Croatia) in resolving outstanding issues, conducting also, jointly with the OSCE Mission, a 188 P. Šimunović nation-wide public awareness campaign on sustainable return of refugees and their reintegration, under the slogan ‘Croatia is the home of all its citizens’,70 and establishing ‘Platform’, an innovative high-level Croatia-OSCE consultation and review mechanism for ensuring a satisfactory progress.71 Prosecution of war crimes was a continuous, top-priority criterion throughout all stages of the Croatian MAP process (as well as of the EU accession process). Acting under the supreme authority of the UN Security Council, the ICTY required a full cooperation of all States, obliging them also to ‘take any measures necessary under their domestic law’ in order to ensure compliance.72 In practice, this meant a full range of activities particularly related to investigations and prosecutions, including extradition of indictees, unimpeded access to documents, archives, witnesses and officials. The ICTY Prosecutor was the central figure in making requests and reporting on compliance. Croatia accommodated its domestic legal framework to enable adequate cooperation with the Tribunal, pursuant to its international obligations, and it also established its instruments of operational cooperation. The cooperation had its ups and downs, opening along the way some very sensitive questions. The Prosecutor’s requests ended up involving a number of popular, top wartime leaders and commanders, as well as a number of events linked most closely, and passionately, with the defence of the country. In Croatia, such an approach was considered ill-balanced, inconsistent with what had actually been happening in the war, in terms of the responsibility – resting squarely with Milošević, his regime and followers – for launching an aggression and conducting hostilities with an utmost brutality against the civilians. These issues were highly emotional, as well as politically and historically important, influencing the public debate, climate and political action. The ICTY was standing its ground in arguing that it was impartially investigating and prosecuting all war crimes, no matter who commit- ted them. A friction along these lines would culminate with the case of General Ante Gotovina, presenting for Croatia a highly traumatic challenge. The General was indicted by the ICTY, in 2001, over his alleged ‘individual and superior criminal responsibility’ for different ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘violations of laws or customs of war’, committed ‘during and after’‘Operation Storm’ in 1995.73 In Croatia, these charges against General Gotovina, as well as those against his co- defendants, Generals Ivan Čermak and Mladen Markač, were considered unfounded, unjust and, in any event, wrongly addressed, this being also the line of their defence. Ultimately, all of them would be acquitted and released by the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY (Gen Čermak in 2011, Gen Gotovina and Gen Markač in 2012) – Croatia’s convictions vindicated and its faith in the international justice restored. But before that, and before his arrest, in December 2005, at the Spanish Canary Islands, and transfer to The Hague, General Gotovina had been at large. The General not being accessible to the international justice was one reason for accusing Croatian Government of a deficient cooperation, the other reasons being, once General Gotovina had been arrested, existence or availability of certain documents pertaining to his case and requested by the ICTY Prosecutor. For NATO, as well as for the EU, a resolution of this case, together with an attainment – to be certified by the Prosecutor – of a ‘full cooperation’ with the ICTY, became critical for advancing membership talks with Croatia. During his discussions in Zagreb, in March 2005, while praising Croatia’s ‘impressive progress’ Journal of Transatlantic Studies 189 in implementing many reforms and fulfilling political criteria for NATO member- ship, Günther Altenburg, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy at the time, emphasised that the question of fugitive General Gotovina was remaining crucial, with the Alliance expecting of Croatia to resolve this issue as soon as possible.74 With the General in The Hague, Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, NATO Deputy Secretary General at the time, in February 2006, would praise Croatia’s ‘great strides toward NATO membership’, ‘one important step’ being ‘the full cooperation with the ICTY to ensure the handover of Ante Gotovina to The Hague’, which had removed ‘a major obstacle to Croatia’s membership aspirations’.75 NATO’s attitudes, deciding Croatia’s membership fortunes, were very much revolving around the ICTY’s reports to the UN Security Council76 and the Prosecutor’s statements. In 2003, the Prosecutor was accusing Croatian authorities for bearing ‘the responsibility for the failure to arrest and transfer General Ante Gotovina’, hence ‘Croatia’s obligations’ remained ‘to be fulfilled’.77 Speaking directly to the North Atlantic Council, in 2004, the Prosecutor was to voice ‘a great disappointment for the ICTY that Croatia did not arrest General Gotovina to [that] day’.78 In October 2005, however, following the actual arrest, the Prosecutor would be able to report that Croatia ‘was fully cooperating’ with the ICTY.79 Moreover, the Prosecutor would wish to use such a cooperation established by the Tribunal with Croatia ‘as a model to overcome the difficulties [it was meeting] in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia and Montenegro’,80 adding to the international pressure on Croatia to deliver in its assigned ‘role model’ capacity. A ‘generally satisfactory’ level of Croatia’s cooperation which was achieved, as evaluated by the Prosecutor, would succeed to keep NATO’s door open.81

Democracy, society and economy The North Atlantic Treaty’s ‘liberal’ and ‘idealist’ commitment to ‘freedom, common heritage and civilisation’, ‘principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’,82 to the strengthening of ‘free institutions’ of the Allies and encouragement of their ‘economic collaboration’,83 leads to the application of NATO’s membership conditionality to the area of democracy, society and economy. In its turn, NATO enlargement was meant to ‘contribute to enhanced stability and security for all countries in the Euro-Atlantic area by’–to begin with – [e]ncouraging and supporting democratic reforms’.84 It was meant to reinforce ‘the tendency towards integration and cooperation in Europe based on shared democratic value’, ‘thereby curbing the countervailing tendency towards disintegration along ethnic and territorial lines’.85 This ‘liberal’, values-driven conditionality requires monitoring whether and how ‘far-reaching political and economic reforms’86 are being implemented. ‘Democratic credentials’ of a new member may appear especially relevant in the eyes of parliamentarians in the NATO nations, those who in the last instance have to ratify the Accession Protocols.87 In the case of Croatia, there was also an additional, ‘example-setting’ require- ment. Lord Robertson, NATO Secretary General at the time, in 2000, would express exactly such a logic, in his invitation to Croatia to join the PfP, when describing how Croatia, ‘by turning its back on nationalist rhetoric and policies’, became ‘an example for its neighbours and an inspiration for moderate forces throughout the 190 P. Šimunović region’, demonstrating a possibility of a bright future of the region, while, ‘by sharing our values’, winning ‘its place in the Euro-Atlantic family’.88 Amid proclaimed and generally felt Western vocation, Croatia’s emerging democracy, undergoing an uncharted, troubled, multi-layered post-Communist, war and post-war transition, was exhibiting a number of shortcomings – absent an intimate understanding and experience how a modern liberal democracy should have been functioning, exacerbated by conflict and its fallouts, burdened by some vested interests and corruptive influences inimical to the full scope of political, economic and societal changes. These factors would be presenting continuous challenges to the development of good governance, transparent and accountable, of modern, unin- hibited civil society, free market economy, tolerant inter-communal relations, free press, and independent, reliable judiciary. The criteria related to a democratic political system were among the most important parts of a ‘ceiling’ which was, in terms of Croatia’s NATO and EU perspectives, staying in the way of initiating serious, formal integration processes. A political change in 2000 would provide an opening with a conceptual significance: for Croatia’s NATO and EU membership eligibility, as it was the case with other emerging democracies aspiring to this eligibility, it was of a notable relevance to be able to prove its elementary democratic credentials by demonstrating that an initial political transition after the dismantling of Communism could be followed by a genuine, systemic ability to alternate governments in a democratic process. From the beginning of the MAP process it was understood, in Croatia, that, ‘on the domestic front’, ‘wide-ranging reforms intended to strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law’, had to be implemented, with judicial reforms being ‘especially important’.89 Judicial reform was regarded by NATO as being of a particular importance, addressing the essence of ‘rule of law’. Croatia’s judiciary was considered as being ‘still inexperienced’, in 2004, needing ‘training and better organisation’, necessary in order to ‘reduce the big backlog in court cases’.90 The OSCE Mission to Croatia, as in the case of refugee returns, was the leading international ‘field agent’ in supporting and monitoring these reforms. The Mission was in charge of covering many aspects of Croatia’s post-Communist and post-war transition, encompassing judiciary reform and the rule of law, including minority rights and the war crimes prosecution, police reform and electoral reform, as well as reforms aimed at enhancing freedom of the media and the civil society. The transformation of the OSCE Mission to Croatia into a smaller OSCE Office in Zagreb, in 2007, would symbolically and factually mark a satisfactory completion of the many body of requirements from this portfolio. A prominent aspect of Croatia’s ‘democratic credentials’ involved respect for minority rights, the most critically those of the country’s largest, Serbian minority. Its rights were associated with the refugee return process, and also with the general political and legislative measures which were being enacted and implemented. On the political side, a notable contribution to the new political atmosphere was provided by the agreement by which the main Serbian party in Croatia (Independent Serbian Democratic Party, Samostalna demokratska srpska stranka, SDSS), represented in the Parliament, would be supporting the government (centre-right at the time, in 2003, following the parliamentary elections), specifically in its reform and EU efforts, while the government would be supporting, in its turn, the most important Journal of Transatlantic Studies 191 topics from the (Serbian) minority agenda. The SDSS would be also participating in the government. Throughout most of its NATO accession process Croatia was able to enjoy a decent economic growth, which was underpinning its membership credibility in the field of economic conditionality. In some aspects the growth was still sub-optimal but nevertheless ‘robust and stable’, for the years 2002–2006 averaging some 4.8%, preceded by a rate of some 3.25% in the period 1997–2001, with a mid-term potential growth rate estimated at 4–4.5% – just before the global and national crisis struck in 2008 and brought it tumbling down.91 Croatia’s free market economy, in terms of its overall transitional performance and its main trends, had been doing well enough to support the country’s eligibility for membership in NATO, particularly in terms of financial and macroeconomic stability. However, Croatia’s pronounced lack of sweeping structural reforms had not prepared it well for the incoming economic storm. Its economic fragility consisted of an overreliance on domestic investments, high public spending, low exports, rising foreign debt, mediocre level of foreign investments, relatively high unemployment, relatively low competitiveness, defective privatisation. The economy was particularly burdened and slowed down by cumbersome, low-efficient bureaucracy and delaying, arcane procedures, business environment considered less stimulating than those in the comparable countries, legal uncertainties and inconsistencies, rather inflexible labour market, and corruption.92 A series of high-profile anti-corruption court cases would involve a number of prominent figures, politicians – including former Prime Minister Sanader, officials and entrepreneurs.

Towards an Allied military The Washington Treaty sets the main, ‘realist’ parameters for defence systems required of the Allies when it states that ‘[i]n order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack’.93 Each member undertakes the obligation to develop adequate forces which would be able to operate as Allied forces. Defence requirements for the new Allies are detailed in the 1995 Study on NATO Enlargement, which prescribes:

[h]ow to ensure that enlargement strengthens the effectiveness of the Alliance, preserves its ability to perform its core functions of common defence as well as undertake peacekeeping and other new missions, and upholds the principles and objectives of the Washington Treaty.94

It deals with the issues of collective defence, command structure, conventional forces – specifically in terms of training and exercises, nuclear forces, intelligence, finance and interoperability,95 as well as with the personnel contribution to the joint Allied structures and the military preparations for membership.96 Membership-related defence reforms conducted by the post-Communist NATO aspirants were evolving within an overall context of the post-Cold War defence transformations. They were shaped by a decline of conventional, territorial threats, coupled with a strategic emergence of new, asymmetric ones, by a subsequent decrease 192 P. Šimunović in defence spending, force reductions and manpower cuts, conceptual, structural and doctrinal changes, requirements of deployability and sustainability of forces, intertwined with a rise of new, revolutionary military technologies. Croatia would be sharing these dominant trends. Its defence reform efforts would be very much crystallised in the main strategic documents, the 2005 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), followed by the Long-term Development Plan for the Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia 2006–2015 (LTDP).97 Interoperability, as the fundamental ability of the Allies to jointly plan, communicate, safeguard and act, was indeed of the paramount importance in the area of defence-related membership conditionality, but it did not presuppose an imperative acquisition of expensive Western military technology. It was a gradual, sequenced affair. Its priority elements consisted of adoptions, adaptations and investments in the fields of knowledge, expertise, skills, including, prominently, language skills, training and exercises, doctrines, concepts, standards, structuring, validation, certification, policy, planning and procedures, communication, security and intelligence. New members were still able to rely on many of the familiar systems they were using, while overhauling and upgrading them sufficiently. During the war (1991–1995), all available national resources were dedicated to the territorial defence, primarily to the nascent armed forces. The resulting force structure was responding to the type of war the country had to wage and to the threats it had to deal with, while relying on what it could have had at its disposal at the time, in terms of personnel, matériel and organisation. The military was heterogeneously armed and equipped, predominantly with the Soviet-style hardware, largely obsolete, with extensive stocks. It was a relatively large standing army with a vast pool of reserves, with an uneven level of training, effectiveness and readiness; compensating however very much for what it could not have had in terms of resources and sophistication with a sense of national mission and improvisation. Defence expenditure was running high, amounting to more than 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP) or close to that mark in the mid-1990s, before gradually decreasing to some 3%, in 2000, still elevated by the European standards and in any event financially burdensome.98 After the war, within a political and security environment shaped by regional stabilisation and normalisation, and by Croatia’s European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations, such a defence configuration became both unnecessary and untenable, enabling Croatia’s defence reforms to shift towards implementing NATO standards, as a fundamental part of preparations for the membership itself. President Tuđman, in his 1997 State of the Nation address, announced that ‘further development and modernisation of the Croatian Army [would] be conducted, as much as possible, by adopting standards of the Western countries, especially requirements of the Partnership for Peace and the NATO Alliance. The objective of the state policy [was] to fulfil the conditions for membership in these organisations as soon as possible’.99 Defence Minister Andrija Hebrang (May–October 1998), while addres- sing ambassadors of the NATO member countries in Zagreb, reaffirmed that the reorganisation process, ‘which had been going on for several years’, ‘was aimed at adjusting the Croatian Army to those organisations [Croatia was] trying to access, such as the Partnership for Peace and NATO’.100 However, the process was not without hindrances, as demonstrated by Minister Hebrang’s resigning from his short defence tenure, in protest at the lack of support he was receiving for reforms. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 193

Reformist efforts, aiming to bring in NATO standards particularly in the areas of transparency, accountability and civil-military relations, had been upsetting some vested interests, especially in the field of acquisition and finances. Post-war defence reforms involved a great deal of downsizing and restructuring. An initial, more systematic exposure to Western concepts and expertise would be coming in the second half of 1990s via private US defence consultancy in the areas of civil-military relations, reorganisation, transition, education, defence management and military professionalisation. Over the years, an overwhelming number of Croatian officials and officers who would be assuming increasingly influential positions in all segments of the Administration, dealing with foreign affairs, international and national security, defence, military, intelligence and police matters, would be passing through different advanced Western, mostly USA, educational and training establishments. Creation of such an ‘intellectual interoperability’, via education and training as well as via seconding military personnel to a number of Allied institution and commands, was to be a strong factor in enabling Croatia’s NATO integration. Following the political decisions to invite Croatia to the PfP, in 2000, and grant it its MAP status, in 2002, the main defence-related conditionality for Croatia’s NATO membership would boil down to some imperative conceptual requirements, which had to be complied with early on. The compliance with these sine qua non requirements presupposed that an aspirant understood and accepted the essence of its collective defence, ‘hard security’ responsibilities, having demonstrated that it would be willing and able to shape, develop and field its defence capabilities accordingly, credibly and dependably. These requirements ventured deep and had a number of critical features. First, NATO had to be sure that Croatia was living up fully to its ambitions to join a collective defence organisation. This meant understanding and accepting, demonstrably, that defence matters had indeed ceased to be Croatia’s national affair only, and that they had now embraced the defining tenets of collective defence. Shifting away and ultimately breaking away from a concept of individual national defence had not necessarily in all its aspects been a done deal and without oscillations. An attachment to the individual national defence, coupled with a certain suspicion that a collective defence could ever be a truly reliable substitute, was stemming partly from a legacy of Yugoslav ‘non-alignment’, partly from an experience of standing alone in the Homeland War 1991–1995, and partly from a professional unfamiliarity with a new system, motivating some personal preferences. While there was no frontal opposition against NATO membership per se, there were some reservations vis-à-vis certain elements of defence reforms, indispensable however for reshaping Croatian military as a NATO-integrated force. These reservations had to be overcome, together with some frictions along the civil- military lines, related to the extension of a proper civilian and democratic control over the military, registered in the early stages of the accession process. Any residual ambivalence which may have coexisted together with a convincing NATO drive, and which may have surfaced to be picked up with uneasiness by NATO officials dealing with Croatia at the time, would be ultimately dispelled by the guidelines provided by the 2005 SDR, which would incorporate collective defence into the primary mission of the Croatian Armed Forces, taken up to ‘defend sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Croatia, defend the Republic 194 P. Šimunović of Croatia and the Allies’.101 A conceptual, two-way reliance on collective defence would end up driving the entire Croatian defence reform. Together with a set of measures necessarily underpinning it, it would transpire from the logic and the content of the entire document, and it would become policy. A ‘collective defence- oriented’ SDR, followed by the LTDP, putting in motion the main findings of the SDR, together with actual contribution Croatia was making to the operation in Afghanistan, would be Croatia’s main defence and military entry tickets into NATO. Additional overarching proofs of Croatia’s eligibility for membership in the defence sphere were derived from a conceptual adherence to the collective defence and were related to the crucial notions of ‘realism’ and ‘dependability’. First, there was a requirement for Croatia’s defence planning and its associated force size and structure to be in line with the country’s realistic capabilities, financial, human, organisational and technological. They had to be further balanced with the Alliance’s needs and its overall posture and configuration. Second, an Allied dependability was to be made credible, consisting of defence capabilities developed by an Ally and from its willingness and ability to field them, reliably and timely. Gradually, Croatia was able to prove both its defence realism and Allied dependability, by results demonstrated in its defence planning, force size, structure and affordability, particularly associated with the main strategic documents and throughout its ANP’s commitments, and by the actual deployments of its Armed Forces. In building up a future Ally’s defence realism and dependability, by initiating it into the Allied force planning, structuring, budgeting and capability development, there has been a formative influence exercised systematically by a dedicated, focused involvement of Frank Boland, Director of NATO Force Planning, and his team, confirming most tangibly that the Alliance was totally serious in its intention to get Croatia on board. This engaging reassurance was a critical fulcrum in ensuring pivoting of all necessary reforms, providing also a staunch support to the leading reformists in the Croatian defence system. Reforms which had to be conducted in the context of NATO accession were addressing practically all aspects of functioning of the defence system. Advantages of the Croatian defence system, relative to the ex-Warsaw Pact NATO aspirants, may have been recognised in a significantly reduced influence of some extensive, ossified, Soviet-style structures (it had inherited, however, some aspects of a similar Yugoslav system), which would have presented a conceptual and practical impediment to a rapid reorientation, but these advantages were being counterbalanced by the fact that the Croatian defence system, in its turn, due to its rapid and big wartime growth, ended up very large too, as well as territorial, top-heavy, uneven and very much technologically obsolescent. It was judged to be ‘too expensive, cumbersome and inefficient’.102 However, it may have been also argued that Croatia’s Armed Forces were ‘probably more flexible and open to change than most of those of the former eastern bloc’.103 Taking into account how ‘dramatically’ the circumstances in the region have been changed since the Croatian armed forces were created, Croatia would necessarily have to take ‘a fundamental look at how the armed forces should be structured and equipped in future’.104 The then NATO Secretary General, in 2004, would go on arguing that: Journal of Transatlantic Studies 195

it [meant] a hard-headed look at how Croatia [would] deal with the problem of ageing and obsolete equipment and whether there [were] sufficient resources to obtain real military output from the force structure that [was then] foreseen. That, in turn, [meant] that the Strategic Defence Review that [had] been set in train must [have been] carried through thoroughly and realistically. If this Review [was] not conducted properly it would risk to fail, and the process [would] have to start again until a realistic plan [was] delivered.105

Transformational plans which would be developed and executed would succeed to set Croatia within the Allied context. There would be conceptual and material shift from an extensive, territorial and static structure towards a smaller, mobile, expeditionary force, driven powerfully by a direct experience of operating in Afghanistan. A wartime, national service, manpower-intensive configuration would be gradually transformed into a fully professional, all-volunteer, streamlined military.106 Military active duty personnel would be gradually downsized, from its 2002 size of over 40,000 – in its turn already having been significantly decreased, aiming to go down to a figure of 16,000 projected by the 2005 SDR.107 Civilian personnel would be also reduced, following the same trend. A model of voluntary, contractual reserve would be envisaged. Development of capabilities specifically assigned to NATO would be given priority. Defence budget allocation would not reach NATO’s collectively pledged 2% benchmark, but it would set it as the target, while in reality moving within a 1.5– 1.9% range,108 still tolerably within an actual NATO average.109 Internal structure of the defence budget would however remain unfavourable, allocating far too much on personnel (over 70%), not leaving an optimal share for the much needed equipping and modernisation. Nevertheless, some important parts of the modernisa- tion programme had been launched, including an acquisition of infantry fighting vehicles, before Croatia’s defence investments and the Armed Forces modernisation were to suffer heavily by the far- and wide-ranging effects of the 2008 economic crisis. Indispensable elements of NATO accession process also involved intelligence services reforms and standardisation, dealing with the respective legislation, oversight, procedures, cooperation and exchanges, professionalism, integrity of communication and information, certification, and vetting of personnel. In this area, Croatia would be completing its homework with a lot of substantial efforts to invest but with no major hindrances, the country enjoying a relative advantage over the ex-Warsaw Treaty NATO aspirants for not having been previously exposed to an extensive, deep and prolonged Russian involvement and penetra- tion. In the area of an overall legal compatibility, Croatian system was presenting no obstacles to the requirements of NATO membership and to the adoption of NATO acquis.

A sudden criticality of public support Given a highly positive sentiment in Croatia towards the Alliance in the 1990s, as well as a general aspiration to re-join the West, it may have appeared surprising to see an issue of public support coming up almost out of the blue and ending up rather high on the agenda of Croatia’s accession to NATO. This issue was one of the most prominent topics discussed time and again during the advanced stages of 196 P. Šimunović

NATO-Croatia talks, provoked by a perception that there was ‘a certain lack of public support for NATO membership’,110 and raised by NATO out of a value- motivated concern over a democratic deficit of its potential new member. Croatia was urged to ‘make [its] case for NATO membership – not just in Brussels and other NATO capitals – but also vis-à-vis [its] own population’; its citizens being ‘entitled to know what eventual membership in NATO [would] mean for Croatia, and for themselves’.111 The Riga Summit Declaration of November 2006 would specifically encourage Croatia to make ‘further efforts to ensure that its member- ship aspirations [were] backed by stronger popular support’.112 From Croatia’s perspective, the government’s task had been recognised in familiarising Croatian citizens with NATO issues and in ‘explaining them why NATO was good for Croatia’.113 ‘An open public debate on all aspects of membership in the North Atlantic Alliance, and a high, credible degree of public support for such a membership’, were understood as ‘the key conditions for Croatia’s entry into NATO, as an organisation of European and North American democracies, practically at the same level with the conditions concerning compre- hensive political, social, economic, legal, defence, military and security adjustments to the Alliance’s criteria’.114 ‘A continuous public discussion on NATO issues, transparent and serious’, had to be pursued.115 In describing how the NATO accession ‘permeated the entire nation, primarily through efforts to involve all segments of society in the process’,116 Croatian officials would be referring principally to the efforts which had been invested in the public dialogue as an increasingly critical aspect of the NATO endeavour. Having passed through a stage of an almost unquestionable support for NATO in the 1990s,117 stemming from a strong ‘Westernising’ idealism following the collapse of Communism and from some immediate security concerns, public support for joining the Alliance would fall, as registered by a variety of public opinion polls as well as in a prevailing perception, to some unconvincing, indifferent levels, with the support rating percentages oscillating in their 30s–40s,118 before it would be raised to a comfortable and stable 50–60% range at the time of the accession and beyond.119 A number of factors had converged to contribute to a sudden criticality of the issue of public support. A rise of pacifism and individualism in the Croatian society, interspersed with an overall feeling of war-weariness, and a resulting declining interest in security affairs, had been ‘sequencing out’ a cycle of intense collective emotions and concerns, which could have been increasing sympathy for NATO membership, while foreign military interventions pursued by NATO and by the leading Allies, particularly the USA, in Iraq and Afghanistan, had been exposing NATO membership drive to a vocal public criticism. NATO conditionality associated with the handing over Croatia’s indicted Generals to The Hague Tribunal had also been notably unpopular. Ultimately, the country had been lacking a previous exposure to political and defence alliances, covered by the Yugoslav ‘non-alignment policy’ during Communism and self-reliant during its Homeland War in the 1990s – this dual legacy had left some traces upon the nation’s mentality. A systematic public awareness effort was launched by the Communication Management Strategy for Croatia’s Accession to NATO, annexed to the 2006–2007 ANP. The Strategy, having detected a fragmented public opinion, registering roughly one-tier support for NATO membership, one-tier against and one-tier undecided, would develop a comprehensive, multi-dimensional approach. In this Journal of Transatlantic Studies 197 suddenly critical area of public support, more than anywhere else during the most advanced stages of Croatia’s accession to NATO, the country’s commitment to NATO membership – judged to be on occasions not so universally pronounced, notably because it had allowed a weakness to develop in the public sphere – would have to be additionally proven, to the Croatian citizens and to the Allies. At the top, with NATO membership perceived at the time as being eventually not the most popular of issues to be associated with, it seemed that the politicians reacted instinctively by being cautious and somewhat withdrawn, at least in terms of their public NATO advocacy. An ad hoc top-level body, State Committee for Croatia’s Membership in NATO, would be formed, in November 2006,120 to be in charge of a strategic guidance of the entire NATO accession process, but clearly, its main purpose would be to send a reassuring message of national unity over NATO membership. It was co-chaired by the Heads of State, Parliament and the government, putting together all the relevant ministers, civilian and military officials, as well as the leading parliamentarians, including those from the opposition benches. Supported by the effort from the top, which included unequivocal pro-NATO messages, a nation-wide public awareness campaign was conducted over the benefits and responsibilities of the membership in NATO, tapping in to a solid potential for support stemming from a range of civilisational, political, security and economic reasons. With their encouraging declarations and interventions, NATO and the member countries’ leaders and officials helped to create a welcoming atmosphere, dispelling along the way some ingrained Croatian anxieties about the country, in the final instance, not being really accepted. It would be notably in the area of ‘dialogue with the public’–so critical in covering the very last mile towards the Alliance – that Croatia would be making its first high-level personnel contribution to the NATO HQ, with Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, former Foreign Minister (2005–2008), becom- ing, in 2011, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy.

Conclusion – membership of ‘a special significance’ A closer look into the implementation of NATO membership conditionality on Croatia reveals a set of defining features, punctuated by some critical junctures. Croatia’s accession was fitting harmoniously within the framework of previous NATO enlargements and within an overall NATO strategy, but it was to be determined principally within its narrower, sub-regional context, ‘affected by terrible conflict’ until only a few years before the membership, giving ultimately this membership ‘a special significance’.121 This unstable context, shaped by war and its immediate aftermath, which had not been conducive to some meaningful member- ship discussions, account for Croatia’s initial delay, relative to other post-Commun- ist NATO aspirants. Later, presenting imperative requirements, Croatia’s core democratic credentials, as well as the country’s ability to engage in regional stabilisation and reconciliation, had to be satisfactorily proven. Fulfilment of the criteria associated with the ‘remnants of war’–return of refugees and prosecution of war crimes – had been continuously, and at times most pressingly, exercising its influence, together with the fulfilment of the criteria associated with defence reforms and public support. Croatia would succeed to underpin its NATO bid by contributing to many aspects of international security, especially to NATO operations. Crucially, it would 198 P. Šimunović develop a strong relationship with the USA, ensuring a robust, indispensable American support for Croatia’s NATO membership. Incrementally, it would be directing focused, priority attention and resources to the requirements of different stages of its MAP process. Efforts to accede to the Alliance would be transcending the main party affiliations in the country, reflecting a wide national endeavour. Ultimately, NATO membership conditionality for Croatia, as it had been adminis- tered and complied with, multifaceted and dynamic, presented a meaningful and realistic set of criteria, applied by the Alliance supportively, confirming credibility of its ‘open door’ policy, and fulfilled by Croatia determinedly, testifying to the importance of NATO accession process in driving forward many transformational reforms. The whole process of Croatia’s accession to NATO, rooted in an elementary, underlying hard security, ‘realist’ logic, befitting a defence alliance, on one side, and, on the other, expected from a country fresh from war, was however most formatively motivated and shaped – matching the most pronounced postures of the two sides – by the application and implementation of policies of membership conditionality derived from a ‘liberal’ and ‘idealist’ realm, encompassing the pursuit of cultural and civilisational values, and the fulfilment of criteria of democracy, human rights, international solidarity and cooperativeness.

Notes 1. For an illustrative discussion on post-Communist transition, see e.g. Taras Kuzio, ‘Transition in Post-Communist States: Triple or Quadruple?’, Politics 21, no. 3 (2001): 168–77. 2. For an insightful overview of international relations theories, see e.g. Stephen M. Walt, ‘International Relations: One World, Many Theories’, Foreign Policy, no. 110 (1998): 29–46. Special Edition: Frontiers of Knowledge; and Jack Snyder, ‘One World, Rival Theories’, Foreign Policy, no. 145 (November/December 2004): 53–62. 3. As defined by the Articles 3, 5 and 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington D.C., 4th April 1949, NATO Website, www.nato.int (N.B.: NATO Website is used as the source of all subsequent references in this study to official NATO documents, speeches and statements, unless specifically mentioned otherwise). 4. Article 10, the North Atlantic Treaty. 5. Ibid., preamble. 6. Ibid., Article 2. 7. Ibid., Article 3. 8. Ibid., Articles 4–5. 9. Ibid, Article 9. 10. Protocol to the North Atlantic Treaty on the Accession of the Republic of Croatia, signed in Brussels, 1st April 2009. 11. Greece and Turkey in 1952, West Germany in 1955, Spain in 1982. 12. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999; Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in 2004; Albania and Croatia in 2009. 13. Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Georgia, have also declared their aspirations to join NATO, and to different respective degrees they are engaged in the integration processes. 14. For an analysis of the influence of NATO membership conditionality, see e.g. Inna Melnykovska and Rainer Schweickert, ‘Regional Security as a Driver of Institutional Change in post-Communist Countries? Empirical Evidence on NATO Accession Incentives’, Kieler Analysen zur Sicherheitspolitik, no. 26 (2010). 15. Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘An Agenda for NATO, Toward a Global Security Web’, Foreign Affairs 88, no. 5 (September/October 2009): 8. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 199

16. Paragraph 1, Part 1 – The Strategic Context, The New Strategic Environment, The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept, agreed at the Summit in London, November 7–8 1991. 17. Paragraph 28, Dialogue, Part III – Broad Approach to Security, Protecting Peace in a New Europe. Ibid. 18. Paragraph 39, Enlargement, Part III – The Approach to Security in the 21st Century, The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, approved at the Summit in Washington, DC, April 24 1999. 19. Paragraph 27, Open Door, Promoting International Security through Cooperation, Active Engagement, Modern Defence, NATO Strategic Concept, agreed at the Summit in Lisbon, November 19 2010. 20. Brzezinski, ‘An Agenda for NATO, Toward a Global Security Web’,9. 21. Notably by establishing North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991, with Russia taking part, launching Partnership for Peace initiative in 1994, as well as by signing Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation in 1997, later to be followed, in 2002, by the establishment of NATO-Russia Council. 22. Introductory remarks by NATO Secretary General at the presentation to Partners of the Study on Enlargement, September 28 1995. 23. Ibid. 24. Study on NATO Enlargement, September 3 1995. 25. Articles 4 and 7, the Washington Summit Communiqué, Washington DC, April 24 1999. 26. Article 18, the Study on NATO Enlargement. 27. Preamble and Article 2, the North Atlantic Treaty. 28. Opening statement by NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, at the press conference following the signature of the Protocols of Accession of Albania and Croatia, July 9 2008. 29. Croatia joined Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) and the Partnership for Peace (PfP), by signing the PfP Framework Document, at the Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council held in Florence, May 24–25 2000. See Article 3, the Final Communiqué of the Ministerial Meeting. 30. ‘Response by Russian MFA Spokesman Andrei Nesterenko to a media question concerning the signing of the NATO Accession Protocols for Albania and Croatia’, July 10 2008, official Website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, www.mid.ru 31. Vincent Morelli, Carl Ek, Paul Belkin, Steven Woehrel and Jim Nichol, NATO Enlargement: Albania, Croatia, and Possible Future Candidates, CRS Report for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, April 14 2009), Summary. 32. Ibid., p. 1. 33. Article 10 and preamble, the North Atlantic Treaty. 34. Article 2, the Final Communiqué of the Florence Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council. 35. Speech by NATO Deputy Secretary General, Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, at the Law Faculty of the University of Zagreb, February 23 2006. 36. Miomir Žužul, ‘“New NATO”–Croatia, a Future Member State’,inNATO and New International Relations, ed. Lidija Čehulić, (Zagreb: Atlantic Council of Croatia and Political Culture, 2004), 11; Miomir Žužul was Croatian Foreign Minister at the time of the publication of the article (2003–2005). 37. Article 3, the Final Communiqué of the Florence Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council. 38. Article 14, the Final Communiqué of the Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council held at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, December 15 1999. 39. Article 9, the Final Communiqué of the Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council held in Reykjavik, May 14 2002. 40. Bucharest Summit Declaration, issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest, April 3 2008. 200 P. Šimunović

41. Article 2, the Final Declaration of the Zagreb Summit, November 24 2000, European Commission Website, http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/enlargement_process/accession_ process/how_does_a_country_join_the_eu/sap/zagreb_summit_en.htm 42. Article 6, the Study on NATO Enlargement, italics added; see also ibid., Article 17. 43. Article 3, the Final Communiqué of the Florence Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council. 44. Operations IFOR (1995–1996) and SFOR (1996–2004); Croatia was providing an extensive logistical support, and it was also to contribute to a NATO Trust Fund, set up in 2006, to support defence reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 45. The Kosovo air campaign (March–June 1999), followed by the Operation KFOR (1999– ongoing); Croatia allowed use of its airspace and was providing logistical support, also, from 2009, it has been participating in KFOR directly, by deploying two very much needed medium-transport helicopters with their crews and ground personnel. 46. Speech by NATO Deputy Secretary General, Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, at the Law Faculty of the University of Zagreb. 47. Preamble, the North Atlantic Treaty. 48. Statement by Tonino Picula, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Croatia (2000–2003), at the Meeting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, at the level of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, June 4 2003. 49. ‘Croatia on its way to NATO – towards a new wave of enlargement’, address by Pjer Šimunović at the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung Conference: ‘Die NATO: Auslauf – oder Zukunftsmodell?’, Nürnberger Sicherheitstagung 2005, Nürnberg, June 25 2005, www.la. fnst-freiheit.org/uploads/1178/Vortrag_Pjer_Simunovic_Nuernberger_Sicherheitstagung_ 2005.pdf 50. Speech by NATO Deputy Secretary General, Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, at the Law Faculty of the University of Zagreb. 51. See e.g. Mladen Pleše, ‘Croatian Government Harshly Rejects USA’, Nacional weekly, no. 383, Zagreb, March 19 2003. 52. See e.g. Ivo Pukanić, ‘Six sins of the Croatian Policy towards the USA’, Nacional weekly, no. 413, Zagreb, October 14 2003. 53. Articles 51 and 53, Chapter V, Security Policy of the Republic of Croatia – Areas and Instruments, Integration into NATO, National Security Strategy of the Republic of Croatia, adopted by the Croatian Parliament on March 19 2002, Narodne novine, no.32, March 28 2002. 54. Article 11.1, The European Union and NATO, Chapter 11, Croatia and the World, Program of the Government of the Republic of Croatia for the Mandate Term 2003– 07, 35. 55. ‘President Bush Meets with Prime Minister Sanader of Croatia in Zagreb, Croatia’, transcript of the President’s speech at St. Mark’s Square, April 5 2008, the White House Website, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/04/20080405-1.html 56. Preamble, the North Atlantic Treaty. 57. See Articles 3–6, the Study on NATO Enlargement. 58. OSCE Permanent Council, 65th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal, no. 65, Agenda item 1, Decision No.112, April 18 1996; OSCE Permanent Council, 174th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal, no. 174, Agenda item 4, Decision No.239, June 25 1998. 59. OSCE Permanent Council, 694th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal, no.694, Agenda item 1, Decision No. 836, Establishment of an OSCE Office in Zagreb, December 21 2007; OSCE Permanent Council, 894th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal, no. 894, Decision No. 1026, Closure of the OSCE Office in Zagreb, December 15 2011. 60. UN Security Council Resolution 827 (1993), May 25 1993. 61. Article 3, the Final Communiqué of the Florence Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council, italics added. 62. Speech by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, before the Croatian Parliament, May 26 2004. 63. For a range of studies on different aspects of the OSCE presence in Croatia see e.g. OSCE Yearbooks, The Centre for OSCE Research (CORE), Institute for Peace Journal of Transatlantic Studies 201

Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), http://www.core- hamburg.de/CORE_English/pub_osce_yearbook.htm 64. The OSCE Mission to Croatia, OSCE Factsheet, May 2005, www.osce.org/zagreb/13730 65. Ambassador Todd Becker (Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Croatia), ‘Croatia: An OSCE Success Story in the Making’, December 6 2011, OSCE Magazine, 4/2011, www. osce.org/home/86996 66. Statement of Ambassador Vladimir Matek, Permanent Representative of Croatia, at the 704th meeting of the Permanent Council of the OSCE (Agenda item 1), PC.DEL/197/08, March 6 2008, www.osce.org/pc/31053 67. Jurica Körbler, ‘Cooperation between Croatia and the OSCE is a success story’, Vjesnik daily, Zagreb, October 5 2011. 68. Declaration of the Regional Ministerial Conference on Refugee Returns, Sarajevo, January 31 2005. 69. Ibid. 70. See e.g. ‘Croatia, OSCE launch refugee return and reintegration campaign’, Hina Croatian News Agency report, Zagreb, November 30 2005; ‘Croatian Ministers and OSCE Mission launch media campaign on return and reintegration of refugees’, OSCE Mission to Croatia Press Release, December 1 2005. 71. See e.g. ‘2006 Review, Report on Croatia’s progress in meeting international commit- ments since 2001’, chapter ‘Current Co-operation between the Mission and the Government’, OSCE Mission to Croatia, June 9 2006, 3–4. 72. Article 4, UN Security Council Resolution 827. 73. See the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak, Mladen Markač, different indict- ments (2001–2007), ICTY Website, www.icty.org (NB: ICTY Website is used as the source of all subsequent references in this study to official ICTY documents, speeches and statements, unless specifically mentioned otherwise). 74. ‘Altenburg: Croatia advancing well towards NATO, Gotovina crucial question’, Hina report, Zagreb, March 9 2005. 75. Speech by NATO Deputy Secretary General, Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, at the Law Faculty of the University of Zagreb. 76. See ICTY Website, www.icty.org/sid/14 77. Address by Carla Del Ponte, Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY, to the UN Security Council, on October 9 2003. 78. Address by Carla Del Ponte, Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY, to the North Atlantic Council, in Brussels, on November 3 2004. 79. Address by Carla Del Ponte, Prosecutor of the ICTY, to the UN Security Council, December 15 2005. 80. Ibid. 81. Address by Carla Del Ponte, Prosecutor of the ICTY, to the UN Security Council, June 18 2007. 82. Preamble, the North Atlantic Treaty. 83. Ibid, Article 2. 84. Article 3, the Study on NATO Enlargement, italics added. 85. Ibid. 86. Speech by NATO Deputy Secretary General, Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, at the Law Faculty of the University of Zagreb. 87. Remarks by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, at the Joint press point with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Albania and Croatia, following the signature of the Signature of the Protocols of Accession of Albania and Croatia, July 9 2008. 88. Statement by Secretary General Lord Robertson regarding Croatia, May 10 2000. 89. Statement by Foreign Minister Picula at the EAPC Meeting, June 4 2003. 90. Speech by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, before the Croatian Parliament. 91. David Moore and Athanasios Vamvakidis (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund), ‘Economic Growth in Croatia: Potential and Constraints’,inFinancijska teorija i 202 P. Šimunović

praksa [Financial Theory and Practice], 32, no. 1 (Zagreb: Institute for Public Finances, April 2008), 2 and 16. 92. For an analysis of the main trends in the Croatian economy at the time see ibid., 1–28. 93. Chapter 3, the North Atlantic Treaty. 94. Chapter 4, ‘How to ensure that enlargement strengthens the effectiveness of the Alliance, preserves its ability to perform its core functions of common defence as well as undertake peacekeeping and other new missions, and upholds the principles and objectives of the Washington Treaty’, the Study on NATO Enlargement. 95. See ibid. 96. See chapter 5, ‘What are the implications of membership for new members, including their rights and obligations, and what they need to do to prepare for membership?’, the Study on NATO Enlargement. 97. For the two documents see the Website of the Croatian Ministry of Defence: www.morh. hr/images/stories/morh_sadrzaj/pdf/Strateski_pregled_obrane.pdf; www.morh.hr/images/ stories/morh_sadrzaj/pdf/20_dugoroc_plan_razvoj_os.pdf 98. For the trends in the defence spending, see The World Bank, Data, Topics, Public sector, Military expenditure (% of GDP), Croatia, The World Bank Website, http://data. worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS 99. Chapter VII, ‘National, State and Civil Security’, heading 4, ‘Defence Security of the State’, Report of President of the Republic of Croatia dr. Franjo Tuđman on the State of the Croatian State and the Nation in 1996, at the joint session of both chambers of the Croatian Parliament, Zagreb, January 22 1997, Website of the Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia, www.predsjednik.hr/zagreb22.Sijecnja1997 100. Hina news agency report from Zagreb, July 8 1998. 101. Strategic Defence Review, 16, italics added. 102. Words of Željka Antunović, Vice Prime Minister and Defence Minister (2002–03), in Olga Ramljak’s interview with Željka Antunović, Slobodna Dalmacija daily, Split, July 31 2002. 103. Roderick de Norman’s interview with Lieutenant-General Krešimir Ćosić, Jane’s Defence Weekly 28, no. 20, November 19 1997. Ćosić was Deputy Defence Minister at the time. 104. Speech by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, before the Croatian Parliament. 105. Ibid. 106. Strategic Defence Review, 27. 107. Ibid., 25. 108. See the World Bank data on military expenditure. 109. For data on NATO countries’ defence expenditure, see ibid. and NATO-Russia Compendium of Financial and Economic Data Relating to Defence, Defence Expendi- tures of NRC Countries (1985–2005), NATO Press Release (2005) no. 161, December 9 2005. 110. From a statement of NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, as quoted in Augustin Palokaj, ‘NATO Secretary General: Croatia lacks public support for NATO’, Jutarnji list daily, report from the Riga Summit, November 29 2006. 111. Speech by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, before the Croatian Parliament. 112. Article 32, Riga Summit Declaration, issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Riga on November 29 2006. 113. As emphasised by Zoran Milanović, the first National Coordinator for NATO, later to become leader of the Social Democrats and the Prime Minister following the 2011 elections As quoted in Bruno Lopandić, ‘Croatia will be invited to join NATO by 2006 at the latest’, interview with Zoran Milanović, Vjesnik daily, Zagreb, October 12 2003. 114. Pjer Šimunović, ‘The Croatian public and NATO’,inNATO and New International Relations, ed. Lidija Čehulić (Zagreb: Atlantic Council of Croatia and Political Culture, 2004), 188. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 203

115. From the address by Foreign Minister Miomir Žužul (2003–05) at the meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty with Croatia, in Brussels, April 30 2004, as quoted in Šimunović, ‘The Croatian public and NATO’, 189. 116. Speech by Gordan Jandroković, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Croatia (2008–11), at the signature of the Protocols of Accession of Albania and Croatia, July 9 2008. 117. Public opinion polls from the mid-1990s were giving a 85% support to NATO membership, stabilised at some 70–75% prior to the Iraq War, as quoted in Radovan Vukadinović, ‘Croatia on its way to NATO’, Međunarodne studije [International Studies], 6, no. 1, (Zagreb: Politička kultura, 2006), 50. 118. Such as 37%, as quoted in ‘Croats do not want NATO’, Večernji list daily, Zagreb, October 29 2005; 42%, as quoted in Neven Šantić, ‘Citizens would say ‘no’ to NATO’, Novi list daily, Rijeka, January 18 2006; 36%, at the beginning of 2006, as quoted in Vukadinović, ‘Croatia on its way to NATO’, 51; some 34%, in March 2006, according to a poll conducted for the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration; 39%, in December 2006, and 43%, in March 2007, as quoted in Nikola Jelić, ‘Croats increasingly supportive to entry into NATO’, Jutarnji list daily, Zagreb, March 19 2007. 119. See e.g. Krešimir Žabec, ‘More than half of the citizens support accession to NATO’, Jutarnji list daily, Zagreb, May 21 2007, reporting on a GfK agency public opinion poll registering a 52% support; ‘GfK: Croatia’s entry into NATO supported by 52% of the interviewees’, Jutarnji list daily, Zagreb (quoting a Hina news agency report), February 11 2008; for an overview of public opinion polls 2007–10, registering a 50–60% support, see OPSA/NAPO (Organizacija za promicanje sjevernoatlantskih integracija – North Atlantic Integrations Promotion Organisation) Website, www.nato.hr/republika- hrvatska—nato—javno-mnijenje; ‘Anniversary of Croatia’s NATO membership: Stable public support together with a support for participation in the international operations’, Orange Newsletter, GfK Croatia, no. 15, May 2010, 7, www.gfk.hr/imperia/md/content/ gfkaustria2/pdf/nl15.pdf 120. ‘State Committee for Croatia’s Membership in NATO formed’, Communique by the Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia, November 2 2006, Website of the Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia, www.predsjednik.hr/Default.aspx? art=13231&sec=806 121. Opening remarks by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the North Atlantic Council Summit meeting with invitees, April 3 2008.

Notes on contributor The author has been directly involved in Croatia’s accession to NATO as National Coordinator for NATO and Chairman of the Inter-Agency Working Group on NATO and the Membership Action Plan, Assistant Foreign Minister in charge of International Organisations and Security, Defence Policy Director and Defence State Secretary (2004– 2011). A career diplomat, analyst and foreign affairs journalist, presently Croatia’s Ambas- sador to Israel, he has published a range of international studies and articles, covering conflicts and peace-support operations, post-Communist transition, defence industry and arms trade. He obtained his MA degree at the King’s College London, Department of War Studies. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent those of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Ministry of Defence or the Croatian Government.