Does Arms Race Threaten The Regional Stability?

There was no sign, after the collapse of Yugoslavia,  that the arms race among countries is slowing down. Mainly, Serbia and Croatia were continuing to buy weapons from Russia, US and some EU countries. The political tensions between Russia and the US affects the region in term of the arms race. Croatia buys new weapons from US to modernize military, Serbia takes them from Russia though the Balkan countries do not primarily target each other. Actually the race is between the US and Russia over the region.

Russia and the West are exerting their influence over the Balkan countries. After Ukraine crisis, general NATO perspective in the Balkans became to isolate Russia from the region. In this direction, isolating Serbia from Russia remains very hard for the West. In term of NATO adherence, Slovenia entered into NATO in 2004, Croatia in 2009, and Montenegro in 2017. Macedonia and Bosnia Herzegovina are still in progress for NATO membership. Only Serbia refuses to join the alliance because of memories of the 1999 NATO bombing that still fresh in citizens’ mind. Therefore, Serbia has proclaimed military neutrality. It’s maintaining to cooperate on economic and military matters with Russia while determining to join EU. Maybe, the main purpose behind letting Montenegro join the NATO, was to surround Serbia by NATO members’ states.

Croatia has been purchasing most of its weapons from US, and Serbia has bought it from Russia. The purpose of the countries is the development of their armed forces capacities. As announced by these countries leaders, the objective was to “keeping stability in their countries, the defense and military contributions are not for using offensively”. Acquisition of armaments by Serbia and Croatia is not only for defensive but also for domestic purposes. For instance, Serbia buys new jets from Russia because of air policing purposes. Anyway, most of weapons are received by donations or bought cheaply from allies such as Germany, US, Russia, etc. The Defense equipments are sold on cheap because of the fact that those super powers were putting them out of use.

Out of the big picture of the world politics, a main question is that; does the military equipment purchased in Croatia and Serbia endanger the regional stability? Many analysts say; the modernization of the military in both Croatia and Serbia is in the lowest level after the 2008 economic crisis. But these countries continue to buy defense technology symbolically, trying to rebuild their armed forces with air defense system and ballistic missile system. Many analysts say that the region become more unstable but there is a limit to buy weapons which is defined by Dayton Peace Accord after the war in Bosnia. None of the countries’ armies in the Balkan reach those limits yet. But military spending is too high compared to their small economies.

Technically, modernization of defense and military system is very complicated and expensive. That’s why it required to be funded outside the defense budget of Balkan countries. Serbia has self-proclaimed neutrality between Russia and NATO but mostly dealing to get Russian weapons. Russia has been donating MiG-29 jet fighters, 30 T-72C tanks, 30 BRDM-2 reconnaissance and patrol combat vehicles. Moreover Russia’s MiGs 29 sometimes is not able to fly without Russian batteries. Capabilities of those, having received by Serbia, should be improved by Russia. After buying Russian military equipment, you need to educate defense staff under the defense system of Russia to increase their capabilities for undamaged use. So, Serbia is becoming more and more dependent upon Russia’s own technology.

As seen, Russia’s influence in the region is rising day by day because of the reducing Western appearance. Especially after Trump being elected as the President of USA, it has brought an isolationistic policy, and then the power gap came to light. It caused many problems such as refugee crisis, train crisis painted with the slogan "Kosovo is Serbia", Edi Rama crisis who stated about a union between Albania and Kosovo, endless historical hostility between Croatia and Serbia. All those have coupled with the Putin’s efforts to stir trouble in the region. And finally USA and European Union’s disengagement on the integration process of Balkans created an ideal environment for Russia to gain influence across the Balkans.

To sum up, war is not expected in the near future. Arms race between Serbia and Croatia is just to make score to Russia while having democratic backsliding, stagnation. Otherwise new style military equipments are very expensive and there is amid austerity measures in those countries thus, Balkan countries are buying old fashion military equipment. Moreover, they are not industrialized countries and have many economic problems such as huge deficits, exploding public debt. In the light of these circumstances, economy could not be able to recover itself because of the defense and military spending. It then causes to raise the hate speech. Because people hypothetically see that there is arms race in the region and countries are spending a huge amount of money on it. People do not need the rising hate speech, threats, and violence against Serbs or Croats under these circumstances. The public might expect new schools, hospitals etc. instead of buying new and expensive weapons in order not to turn them to war.

After the 1990’s, high military spending between Turkey and Greece had led to macroeconomic instability. They were in an arms race due to the fact that both countries have had an invading history each other. It is similar to troubled relationship between Serbia and Croatia. They still allocates large amounts of money for defense spending, which cause a sacrifice in other more important spending such as health, education, technology etc. If the security concerns of the leaders continue with their neighbors under the NATO and EU umbrella, the regional stability will be threatened. That’s why; the recent summit in Trieste is not only pressure on Balkan leaders to take seriously steps on reforms but also robust return for enlargement process for the entire Balkan region by EU whose influence was decreasing.