Original scientific paper
Dossier: Costs and Benefits of Croatia's Accession to NATO: Project Review and Analysis
Zvonimir Mahečić
Krešimir Jurlin
; Institute for International Relations, IMO, Zagreb, Croatia
Damir Demonja
orcid.org/0000-0002-4186-5137
; Institute for International Relations, IMO, Zagreb, Croatia
Mladen Staničić
; Institute for International Relations, IMO, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
NATO’s invitation from Bucharest for Croatia to join ranks of the full member states came after a long and protracted process of security sector reform undertaken by two successive Governments. It was preceded, but also followed, by vehement discussions and debates within the whole society. They were addressing many different issues of interest to the citizens, NGOs, media and scientific community, but still certain aspects of strategic considerations were hardly touched. In order to facilitate Croatia’s accession to NATO and raise the level of public support, successive Governments embarked on creating and pursuing at least two different iterations of the so called Communication Strategy for informing the public about the intricacies of the accession to the EU and NATO. The objective of these documents should have been to deepen the quality and strengthen national dialogue by involving many different subjects from the whole spectrum of the societal life. Discussions took many different forms with the principal objective to assess positive and negative features and consequences of accession to NATO. Numerous international, national, societal, economic, financial, organizational and functional related elements have been, more or less, thoroughly scrutinized during round tables, symposiums, conferences, etc. They all had to help find the answer is the Government and citizens on the same track regarding viability, desirability and usefulness of the Croatia’s accession to NATO. Even more crucially, this discussion had to bring the society and the Government closer to the conclusion what would be likely cost-benefit balance sheet after Croatia’s accession to NATO.
Keywords
Accession; analysis; communication; cost-benefit; dialogue; NATO; public; security; society; strategy
Hrčak ID:
58781
URI
Publication date:
15.3.2009.
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