By Claudia Ciobanu
SOFIA, Feb 27 2008 (IPS)

Croatia, Macedonia and Albania are hoping to become the newest members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in April this year. But the better chances a country has of entering NATO, the less enthusiastic its people seem to be about membership, and sending troops in dangerous missions abroad.

The final decision about the three countries’ entry to NATO will be made public during the alliance’s summit Apr. 2-4 in Romanian capital Bucharest. But a provisional decision could be announced as early as the first half of March.

“I hope that at our Bucharest summit we’ll be ready to open NATO’s door to new members from this region,” said NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the end of the Munich Security Conference Feb. 9. “We have to integrate the Balkans more firmly into Euro-Atlantic structures,” de Hoop Scheffer added, expressing a powerful endorsement for the entry of Croatia, Macedonia and Albania into the alliance.

The United States too is a firm supporter of NATO expansion to include the three countries. Croatia, Macedonia and Albania have all contributed troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Macedonia and Albania also support the U.S. in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The contingents sent by these countries in the combat areas are small, rarely surpassing 100 troops. However, their nominal endorsement of the controversial military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq is certainly appreciated by the U.S., and sometimes considered a price to pay for entry into NATO.

“The official stand is that Macedonia participates in these missions in order to show that it is a responsible member of the international community,” Cvete Koneska, research fellow at the public policy research organisation Analityka in Macedonian capital Skopje, told IPS. “Yet, the popular perception is that this is done only as a trade-off to NATO membership.”

Support for NATO is highest in Albania, whose government has sent troops to the combat zones with full agreement of the opposition, and without a debate in the parliament. According to Albert Rakipi, executive director of the Albanian Institute for International Affairs, a Tirana-based think tank on Euro-Atlantic integration, “the deployment of soldiers is not seen as a trade-off but as a response to the American coalition, since many people identify NATO with the U.S., towards which there is an overwhelming positive attachment.”

Albanians remain thankful for the U.S.-led intervention against former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, which put an end to the persecution of Kosovar Albanians. U.S. President George Bush, who visited Albania in the spring of 2007, received a hero’s welcome in Tirana, in spite of growing worldwide antipathy towards him.

Additionally, NATO is considered central to Albania’s transition to democracy and a market economy. “The elite in Albania have certain expectations that integration per se would steer forward internal democratisation reforms such as justice and electoral ones,” Rakipi told IPS. Furthermore, he says, NATO integration would “improve Albania’s international image and encourage investment in the country.”

Similar arguments about positive economic effects of NATO integration can be heard in Macedonia. There too, the government and opposition are in agreement about sending troops abroad.

On the other hand, as Cvete Koneska explains, Macedonians do not share the Albanians’ traditional sympathy for the U.S. As a matter of fact, when they opened their air space for the U.S.-led intervention against Milosevic in 1999, they did so reluctantly, and NATO entry is seen by some in the country as a reward for that gesture.

More importantly, Koneska told IPS, Macedonians hold the expectation that once a NATO member, the territorial integrity of Macedonia will be guaranteed. “This is especially important now, as Kosovo declared independence, but Macedonia has no officially marked border with them.” Macedonia has a significant ethnic Albanian population.

Koneska added that, while she doubts the political leaders of Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia are at the moment interested in initiating a process of union, “Macedonian and Kosovo Albanians are very close in the political and practical sense, and they surely have the capacity to destabilise Macedonia.”

But Macedonia’s entry to NATO is highly disputed, with Greece threatening to veto the country’s adherence to the alliance unless it renounces the name “Macedonia” because of its Greek origin and Greece’s own region of that name.

If Macedonia and Greece do not reach an agreement on the name dispute, a likely scenario is that both Macedonia and Albania – which is the least prepared of the three in terms of domestic reforms – would be left out.

Such an eventuality would be welcomed by some leaders of Croatia, the only country of the three that is sure to join in April. Croatian defence minister Branko Vukelic recently boasted that “Croatia might go into history as the only NATO member that has joined separately, and not in a group.”

On the other hand, the population of Croatia is not very enthusiastic about joining NATO, alone or in a group. It took a NATO promotion campaign to lift support for membership to 52 percent, from 43 percent, according to a GfK (one of the largest market research companies in the world) survey published in May 2007.

“The citizens are skeptical because they don’t see the meaning of NATO at the moment, they don’t see the real threats to Croatia, and we also all have the recent war experience which still influences us on a daily basis,” Gordan Bosanac from the Centre for Peace Studies in Zagreb told IPS.

Arguing that the attitude of the Croatian government towards NATO is “like the Catholic dogma in the Vatican, no questioning, no rethinking, no reflections,” Bosanac and his organisation are gathering signatures to call for a referendum over NATO membership, as well as proposing a non-military alternative to joining NATO.

Excerpt: