The “Power of Weakness”? The Western Balkans and Europe’s Global Neighbourhood

Putin’s war in Ukraine might result in a shift from the worn-out refrain of “Europeanization” towards a more realist approach to EU enlargement and its geostrategic stakes. Russia has turned into a significant threat due to its weakness rather than its power. The author considers the “power of weakness” a crucial concept in the ongoing aggression and its geostrategic consequences. Paradoxically, weakness might be an actual source of power in these uncertain times of global transformation. Is that an opportunity for the Western Balkans (WB)? Analyzing the troublesome Western Balkans’ EU integration based on their economic, demographic, and other (limited) features while relying on the decolonization approach, the author finds that their integration constitutes an emergency precisely due to their weak points. Russia and China seek for weakening states across the globe, minor players where anti-Western feelings are easy to instrumentalize. The WB candidates deserve to be better integrated into the list of European priorities. A lack of EU strategy in the WB might indicate the absence of sound perspectives for the Union’s broader international role. The paper explores Bertrand Badie's decolonization approach, applying it to the Western Balkans, Hungary’s practice regarding the “power of the weak”, and Turkey, aiming to illustrate that weakness should not be perceived solely as the opposite of power, but as a suspicious international element since the Cold War onwards.

Abstract licence: CC BY-SA

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