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NATO Membership Conditionality Implemented on Croatia Pjer Šimunović*

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NATO Membership Conditionality Implemented on Croatia Pjer Šimunović* 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
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