Garcevic Speaks on Capitol Hill on Democracy In The Western Balkans
Ambassador Vesko Garcevic, Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, spoke as part of a panel discussion on “NATO and Promotion of Democracy In The Western Balkans,” on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. on April 3, 2019. The event was hosted by the group of American and Balkans NGOs.
Additional panelists included Reuf Bajrovic, former Minister of Energy, Mining and Industry for Bosnia and Herzegovina; Richard Kraemer, Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania; and Metodija Koloski, President of the United Macedonian Diaspora.
Amb. Garcevic discussed NATO enlargement in Europe, stressing that in the Balkans played an important role in the history of NATO. The first out of area operation took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993, when the alliance was entitled to enforce the UN imposed non-flight zone. Furthermore, The NATO intervention in Yugoslavia/Serbia in 1999, carried out without the endorsement of the UNSC, was the critical moment for peoples from the region. Inspired by humanitarian motives, with the aim to stop the ethnic cleansing and mass killing of Albanians in Kosovo, the intervention confronted the international community with the dilemma to stick to the principle of legality or the principle of international justice.
He highlighted three features of the NATO enlargement in Europe: 1) Transformative character of NATO – the accession to Euro-Atlantic integrations is inseparable from the EU integration and the democratic transition of aspiring countries; 2) The cooperation in security domain; 3) In geostrategic terms, NATO open door policy and the expansion of democracy and stability closes door for influence of other actors, such as Russia.
During his diplomatic career, Amb. Vesko Garcevic dealt with issues pertinent to European security and NATO for almost 14 years. In 2004, he was posted in Vienna to serve as Ambassador to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He had been a Montenegro’s Ambassador to NATO from 2010 until 2014 and served as a Montenegro’s National Coordinator for NATO from 2015 until he joined the faculty at the Pardee School.