In the Western Balkans, “security” is rarely an abstract concept. It is encountered as a lived condition, shaped by memory, geography and a persistent awareness that stability can erode when trust is thin. Security, in this context, is not discussed only in strategic documents or institutional language, but reasoned through expectations: what will hold under pressure, who can be relied upon and where uncertainty begins.
It is against this background that debates about NATO often narrow too quickly. Public discussion tends to concentrate on capabilities, such as budgets, platforms, readiness or rapid reaction. These factors matter. But capabilities alone do not produce security outcomes. They do so only when states can combine them, trust one another with them and sustain cooperation politically over time.
This analytical lens informs the analysis that follows. Drawing on a series of interviews conducted in Tirana by the Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS) with students from the College of Europe and the University of Tirana, the focus is on how security is reasoned through at the societal level when credibility, coordination and resilience are at stake. The purpose is not to register opinion or approval, but to examine whether NATO’s value language functions as a usable framework for making sense of security under conditions of pressure and uncertainty.
From this starting point, the argument is straightforward. NATO values are not rhetorical add-ons to “hard” security, but part of the infrastructure that makes collective security workable. They shape how commitments are interpreted, how coordination becomes reliable and how societies sustain legitimacy when decisions become costly. Student contributions are treated accordingly: as indicators of whether this framework remains intelligible and operational beyond institutional settings.
The analysis that follows traces how students articulate this logic in practice, across questions of credibility, coordination, and resilience.
First, the interviews reveal a consistent way of reasoning about credibility: the binding condition of deterrence. Across the conversations, collective defence was not approached as a formal clause that exists on paper, but as a question of expectation management under risk: whether commitments are believed to hold when they become politically and strategically costly. Military capability, in this reasoning, mattered less as sheer capacity than as a signal of follow-through, because it is expected to be sustained under pressure. As one student put it, “Deterrence is not only about strength; it is about whether commitments are expected to hold when it becomes costly.”
The analytical implication is that credibility is not produced by assets alone, but by the institutional and normative constraints that make reversal difficult. Rule-bound governance and accountable institutions anchor predictability: they raise the political cost of inconsistency and reduce uncertainty about how decisions will be made when stress intensifies. In this sense, values function as credibility infrastructure, therby converting power into assurance.
Second, students consistently treated coordination as an institutional accomplishment rather than a technical achievement. Interoperability was not reduced to compatible equipment or shared standards. It was reasoned through practice: routines, procedures and repeated interaction that shift coordination from a discretionary political choice to an operational default. Several students described this logic through the experience of multinational training itself. As one participant noted, “When soldiers from different Balkan countries train side by side, cooperation stops being theoretical. It becomes normal.”
Analytically, normalization is not a rhetorical benefit; it is a structural one. Repeated joint training builds a baseline of familiarity and disciplined expectation: who leads, who communicates, who acts when time is scarce. It lowers the friction of collective action by reducing the need for ad-hoc negotiations at the moment when uncertainty and time pressure are highest. Coordination, in this sense, is not improvised; it is activated.
Third, the interviews framed societal resilience as a functional security condition, not a normative aspiration. Students linked democratic norms, civic trust and rule-based institutions directly to a society’s capacity to sustain decision-making under pressure. Polarization, institutional distrust and manipulative narratives were discussed as immediate constraints on collective action: they do not merely distort public debate, rather they degrade the state’s ability to mobilize, prioritize and maintain legitimacy in crisis conditions. One student captured the asymmetry of contemporary pressure in stark terms: “Disinformation is cheaper than tanks; that is why resilience has become a frontline security issue.”
The analytical implication is that resilience operates as governance capacity. Where institutions are perceived as legitimate and rule-bound, societies are harder to fracture and external pressure is less effective. Not because citizens become uniformly aligned, but because disagreement remains governable and collective response remains feasible.
In the Western Balkans, credibility, coordination, and resilience form an integrated framework: together they stabilise expectations, make collective action executable under time pressure, and reduce the effectiveness of attempts to weaken cohesion from within.
NATO’s advantage in this context is not only what it can deploy, but what it can stabilise: shared expectations that make cooperation reliable under pressure. NATO values provide that stabilising layer by shaping how commitments are interpreted, how coordination is practised, and how societies sustain legitimacy when challenged. The student exchanges underscore a simple point: this value logic is not confined to official statements. It is understood as practical security reasoning beyond institutional settings, strengthening the Alliance’s long-term credibility and the region’s capacity to hold stability when external actors seek to manufacture doubt.
This article was produced under the project “After the Hague Summit: NATO’s steadfast commitment to defence and deterrence,” implemented by the Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS) with the support of the Public Diplomacy Division of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The content is the sole responsibility of AIIS and does not necessarily reflect the views of NATO.
The post NATO Values as Security Infrastructure: Evidence From Student Conversations appeared first on Tirana Times.
