The decisive stage of Balkan civilisational development

In the last decade of the 20th century, the Balkan region and the broader area of South Eastern Europe, a number of states with old traditions or new emerging transformations, have entered into a recurrent, historically decisive stage of their civilisational development. The characteristic parameters are:

• an exceptional dynamism, instability and contradictory processes, events and phenomena;

• noticeable and periodical ethnic - minority, confessional, territorial and other problems and contradictions which unfavorably influence the general stability of the region and mutual relations among the Balkan states;

• non - equality of the countries from the region regarding the guarantees of their national security which depends on whether they are members of the European and Euro - Atlantic economic and political structures and organizations or not;

• an imbalance in their arms and armed forces as a result of the accumulated differences in military and economic potentials of the states in the region and the old bioc approach to the composition and implementation of the agreements in this area;

• periodically tense socio - economic problems and crises, which have turned into a characteristic feature of the internal political situation in the states of the region;

• the strong aspirations of all countries in the region, bar none, towards an accelerated, full and equal integration into the European economic, political and military structures, combined with attempts at establishing and strengthening mutual confidence, cooperation and a general Balkan dialogue;

• the continuing geo-political restructuring, both relations to the political powers in the countries of the region and in the sub - regional and regional levels.

The basic factors from a political, economic, military and humanitarian point of view influencing the various components of the geo - political situation and security in the Balkans and South Eastern Europe at the end of the XX century, can be characterized by the fact that, in addition to their individual relevance, they most often occur in combination and are manifested with different strength and intensity in each Balkan State respectively.

From a political aspect, this group of factors has the strongest effect on the changes in the geo - political status quo and preserves its leading role at the present. Some of the more relevant factors among these are the following:

• A major change in the geo - political configuration of the region and the appearance of a number of new sovereign and independent states as individual subjects in international relations; a new formula emerged: 11+2 states in the region (until the beginning of the 90's when there were 6+1);