A common security area for the Western Balkans, as part of a single European security space, is not merely a step toward membership in the European Union. It marks a transition from the logic of national questions to the logic of shared security—a space in which no state builds its own security by producing insecurity for another.
By Veton Surroi
1.
Imagine, for a moment, the following event.
On 13 July 2028, the heads of state and government of the Western Balkan countries gather in Berlin. Their host, the German Chancellor, delivers a speech in which he notes that the date marking the 150th anniversary of the Congress of Berlin has been chosen for an event intended to represent one of the great turning points in the history of the Western Balkans and of Europe.
“We are here because, one hundred and fifty years after the Congress of Berlin, the leaders of the states of Southeastern Europe, together with those of us from other parts of the continent, recognize that the national questions opened in the nineteenth century cannot be resolved with the instruments of the nineteenth century. Security can no longer be built through territorial expansion, spheres of influence, or the protection of communities by external patrons. It can be built only through a common European security space.”
At the signing ceremony, the leaders of the Western Balkans are seated, while behind them stand the leaders of the European Union member states, waiting for their turn to add the signatures of their countries as guarantors.
One hundred and fifty years later, the guarantors are no longer only the traditional powers—Britain, France, Germany, and Italy—but also, among others, Spain, Poland, and Ukraine.
The Secretary General of NATO delivers the welcoming address.
“Today, for the first time in the modern history of the region, the states of the Western Balkans have gathered not for someone else to decide on their behalf, but to assume responsibility themselves for their shared security.”
In the official family photograph, the leaders of the Western Balkans hold in their hands the Agreement on Security and Cooperation among the States of the Western Balkans.
Ever since the Security and Cooperation Conference of the Western Balkan States in Berlin and the signing of its final document were announced, the media have adopted a shorthand based on historical analogy. In place of the Congress of Berlin, the event is called the Berlin Conference on Balkan Security, or simply the Berlin Conference, while the document signed there is referred to as the Berlin Conference Agreement.
2.
The Berlin Conference is the culmination of two years of intensive work, which began with an analysis produced in 2026. Its conclusions ran approximately as follows:
a) The withdrawal of the United States as the principal contributor to European security is an irreversible process, regardless of who occupies the presidency.
b) The states of Europe will assume responsibility for their own security space, extending from Great Britain to the Ukraine–Russia border and including Turkey as one of its fundamental pillars.
c) The European security space must include the Western Balkans. This zone of unfinished conflicts must be integrated as a security area within the single European security space.
d) Integrating the Western Balkans as a security area within the broader European security space would accelerate both the region’s integration into the European Union and Europe’s political and security cohesion.
The analysis concluded by focusing on a central question:
What are the driving forces—the historical vectors—that continue to make the region a zone of unfinished conflicts?
3.
The ideological extremes of the twentieth century? The division of the world during the Cold War? A Balkans divided among competing spheres of influence?
Yes, all of them carry their share of responsibility.
But it was the Congress of Berlin in 1878 that marked the moment when Europe institutionalized the national questions of the Balkans as part of its political order.
At the time, Bismarck’s Germany, presenting itself as a party with no direct interest in the future of the Balkans, summoned the Great Powers to determine how the “Eastern Crisis” should be managed—that is, the slow and certain death of the Ottoman Empire. In protecting the interests of the Western powers, the Congress decided to recognize the independence of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro.
For the next 150 years, Serbia remained captive to the concept established at that moment: if Serbia was a nation-state, then all Serbs should be included within it. The entire twentieth century bears witness to wars and to the suffering of Serbs and of neighboring peoples in pursuit of this unattainable objective.
The Albanians, excluded from the Congress of Berlin, remained its prisoners.
Through the League of Prizren, they attempted to articulate their own project: a form of political and territorial autonomy within the Ottoman Empire that would encompass the Albanians of the Western Balkans. The project of a proto-Albanian nation-state was not realized in the form imagined in the nineteenth century. The twentieth century passed with Albanians being killed, expelled, and persecuted in the effort to integrate their interests within the states among which they had been dispersed.
Bosnia and Herzegovina also remained a hostage of the Congress.
Its capital heard the gunshot that triggered the First World War, and in the final decade of the twentieth century the country experienced Europe’s last genocide. Among the forces behind that tragedy was the idea that the state belongs to a “state-forming nation”—in other words, to the dominant nation.
The concept of the “state-forming nation” continues to obstruct the functioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a democratic state belonging to its citizens.
The same formula has also been—and remains—the source of tensions surrounding the Republic of Macedonia, now North Macedonia.
The process of national and ethnic state-building, legitimized within the European order of the nineteenth century, continued to fuel competition over territory, borders, and populations even after empires, ideologies, and political systems had changed.
4.
In 2026, a non-paper was produced proposing the idea of a Berlin Conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the Congress.
Among the points contained in the non-paper were the following:
a) Nation-states, a concept inherited from the nineteenth century, cannot be built in the Western Balkans of the twenty-first century. The continued pursuit of the nation-state will remain the principal force keeping the region trapped in unfinished conflict.
b) The arms race among the states of the Western Balkans, the constant conflict-driven narratives, and the culture of war are all developing in parallel and in open contradiction to the idea and the efforts of European Union integration. The specter of national questions hangs over every other process, while the arms race remains, even now, part of the competition to complete the nation-state.
c) National questions can be resolved within a space of security and cooperation among democratic states that respect the rights of their citizens, including those belonging to non-majority communities.
d) The six states of the Western Balkans belong to their citizens and meet the identity needs of the nations of the region. All six states must begin to regard security as a shared value and develop policies for a common Western Balkan security area. The weapons being purchased and produced should not arise from fear of one another, but from a common European defence project.
e) To achieve this, the six Western Balkan states must formalize their commitments to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and inviolability of the states of the region and, on that basis, build their own space of security and cooperation.
f) The Western Balkan area of security and cooperation would form an integral part of the single European security space. European countries invited to participate, and willing to do so, would act as guarantors of the Western Balkans’ common security area.
g) In 1878, Europe decided what the Balkans would look like. In 2028, the Western Balkans have the opportunity to determine how they wish to contribute to European security. The nineteenth century sought to resolve national questions by creating states; the twenty-first century can transcend them only by creating a common security space.
5.
This outline describes one possible future.
Within it, a common security space means that no state builds its own security by producing insecurity for another.
Achieving this requires a paradigm shift.