In the past couple of years the former Yugoslav states that are not members of the EU or NATO (with the exception of Montenegro that gained NATO membership in June 2017), notably Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo, have been confronted with a wave of rising ethnic and social tensions, authoritarian impulses and corruption scandals. These tumultuous events have led to democratic backsliding in a number of cases.

Serious vulnerabilities have emerged in this volatile region that are being exploited by non-democratic external powers for the purpose of increasing their leverage to achieve tactical and strategic gains with the ultimate goal of obstructing further integration of the Western Balkans into the EU and/or NATO.

The Balkans have historically been viewed as a zone of great-power rivalry, where shrinking European or US involvement in the past decade has created a window of opportunity for other external forces to diminish the freedom of action of several of the individual countries. Certain of these outside powers with relatively deep historical, cultural or economic ties to the region – most importantly Russia, China, Turkey and the Gulf states (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE), seek to increase their influence in the region employing a wide spectrum of tools, including economic, political, cultural and religious.