Dark Knights in the Balkans: for how long will the EU remain the only 'game' in town?

Abstract

  This article analyses the transformation of the Balkan foreign policy environment from the middle of the 1990's until today. The argument put forward is that the EU and NATO have essentially operated as twin pillars of a single Euro-Atlantic regime in the region that has for nearly two decades been uncontested. The policy of the two international organizations had in many ways been revisionist in that utilitarian principles rather than established normative international principles were employed for the revision of the territorial status quo and the recognition of successor states in the former Yugoslavia.
  The article introduces the historical conditions that were conducive to the emergence of what is hereby referred to as a unipolar-multilateral paradigm of diplomacy in the Balkans, which emerged in the 1990s. It then goes on to discuss the resurgence of traditional multipolar-bilateral diplomatic options in Balkan diplomacy in the first decade of this century, which is mainly associated with the increasing leverage of Turkey and Russia in the region. Finally, there is a discussion of the conditions that are conducive to a paradigmatic friction between these two culturally distinct approaches to foreign policy.