Review article
INTEROPERABILITY AND ACCESSION TO NATO THE CASE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Dražen Smiljanić
; University of Defence and Security, Zagreb
Abstract
The article examines interoperability as a critical condition for accession to NATO. We distinguish between two fundamental types of interoperability, political and military, and discuss their specific nature and significance in conditioning accession to NATO. In applying the concept of interoperability, we reviewed the achievements of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on the path towards NATO membership. We identify specific political conditions that have caused the lagging of BiH’s fully-fledged membership. The case of BiH shows that, despite substantial progress achieved by the state’s defence sector in approaching NATO, the political process is stalled due to incompatible views and rhetoric among BiH’s main entities. Since a country joins NATO as a whole and not only with its military, BiH’s progress towards NATO exists within the context of Western reluctance and concerns. In conclusion, BiH’s example shows that, given the nature of NATO as a political and military alliance and the significance of sharing common values among its members, political interoperability outweighs military interoperability, rendering BiH a hostage of ethnonationalist politics.
Keywords
NATO; Bosnia and Herzegovina; interoperability
Hrčak ID:
317235
URI
Publication date:
27.12.2023.
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