NATO membership: Why We Should Celebrate and Reflect

Finally, Albania is full fledged NATO member. The capital, Tirana, and governmental buildings especially are decorated with flags and NATO symbols to the point of gaudiness. Dressing governmental buildings with flags, slogans and NATO symbols can in a way be explained by the proximity of the upcoming parliamentary elections. Predictably, the government has begun to make heavy use of NATO accession for a second mandate in power. Interestingly, very nearby in Macedonia, the government manages to assure more votes for the exact opposite – failure to join NATO. Beyond the question of winning the elections however, the great celebrations for NATO accession that are being prepared by the government and the opposition (as even NATO is celebrated separately in Albania) are reminiscent for some of the similar celebrations for membership in, and then withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Celebrations might resemble but the times are different and NATO has certainly nothing in common with the Warsaw Pact as far as the values, role and contribution given for individual and national security and freedom. NATO accession is a historical event for Albania, and so are all the reasons to celebrate.
After the fall of the communist regime almost two decades ago, NATO membership is the most important historical development. Albania is the first former member of the Warsaw Pact that asked for membership in the western alliance and throughout the seventeen years ever since the former, most Stalinist country in the world has been a de facto NATO member. Albania has been a key partner of NATO during an entire decade of bloody conflicts in the Balkans and has consistently expressed the willingness and has supported NATO operations in other regions.
The mystery of Albanians’ love for NATO relates to the need and determination to assert a western identity after that absurd and tragic isolation, self-isolation, for almost half a century. The first reason of the first non-communist government in Albania to request NATO membership on the eve of the fall of the communist regime was the determination and impatience to break out of the extreme isolation imposed by that regime. The second, equally important reason why the Albanian government immediately asked to join the alliance in 1992 relates to national security in the purely conventional sense of the term.
The violent dissolution of former Yugoslavia represented a real threat to Albania’s national security and territorial integrity. A collapsed economy and defense capacity close to zero left NATO as the only defender of national security. The relations and close cooperation of the post-communist governments with the Alliance were the reason that, even though not a formal member, Albania was nevertheless under the euro-Atlantic roof. Albania’s benefits from close and unlimited relations with the Alliance must be understood in this context. On the other hand, throughout almost two decades of controversial transition, NATO (and EU) accession have and continue to be the real driving force for state building, for economic development and societal modernization.
Albania, as well as Croatia, join the Alliance at a time when the Alliance itself is in quest of a new strategic raison d’뵲e. The new generation of threats, however, that does not really resemble the traditional ones from inter-state relations and wars seem to be putting an end to the questions why NATO must operate “out of area, or out of business”
This new insecurity environment must be the first reason that Albania’s accession, besides being a celebration, must also become an important moment of reflection, above all for the government and opposition. The new generation of threats that NATO has begun to confront relate to functional state building versus weak or failed states, which represent a real threat on a regional and international level. Albania’s first contribution to the Alliance, in fact, must undoubtedly be the strengthening of the state on the basis of a political legitimacy derived from a democratic political process.
For almost two decades, Albania has consistently enacted a foreign policy likened to that of a member state, even though formally not a member. Now, after accession however, it is Albania’s domestic behaviour that cannot be required to be anything but the same as that of any of the twenty-eight members of the western club it has finally joined.