“If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?” 

Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in stone 

Imagine sitting in the finance minister’s chair of a Western Balkans country, staring at a dashboard and a cabinet table stacked with three urgent, competing and existential demands. Yet the budget beneath your hands, already squeezed by limited fiscal space, is stretched to breaking point, shaped as much by external shocks and geopolitical pressures as by your own decisions.

The first is from your defence minister, who, pointing to an increasingly insecure Europe, presents a compelling case for modernising the military. The second is from your environment minister, who presents terrifying data on the alarming costs of climate change from catastrophic floods to deadly air pollution, and pleads for investment in a green transition.  The third is from your education and economy ministers, who warn that without a significant investment in jobs and opportunities, the country’s brightest minds will continue to emigrate, accelerating the brain drain and hollowing out any chance of a prosperous future. 

Each demand is critical. Each is a matter of national security. Yet you cannot fully fund them all. This is the resilience trilemma, and it is the central, unspoken challenge facing the Western Balkans today. As the European Union moves toward a new era of rearmament, its pressure on the region to prioritise military spending creates a severe and dangerous opportunity cost, threatening to starve the very investments in climate, economy, and governance that are far more fundamental to building long-term, sustainable resilience.

The EU’s new arsenal: understanding ReArm Europe

At the heart of this strategic turn is the ‘ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030’, a complex and ambitious initiative launched by the European Commission in March 2025. The headline figure of over €800 billion is not a direct fund, but the leveraged potential of a multi-pronged financial architecture designed to refit European defence. It rests on five key pillars: (i) suspending EU budget rules to grant member states fiscal flexibility for defence spending; (ii) creating a new €150 billion loan instrument - the Security Action for Europe (SAFE), for joint military procurement; (iii) proposing the redirection of existing EU funds; (iv) lifting the European Investment Bank’s restrictions on financing military projects; and (v) creating a mechanism to mobilise private capital.   

The plan’s core objective is to compel member states to “spend better, work together, and prioritise European companies,” overcoming decades of fragmented national spending. However, its mechanics are crucial. The powerful SAFE instrument, for instance, provides loans exclusively to EU Member States for common procurement projects. While candidate countries in the Western Balkans can be included as partners in these projects, they are not eligible to receive the loans and would have to secure their own funding.   

So, why does a plan that doesn't directly fund the Western Balkans matter for the region? Because its impact is not financial, but strategic and ideological. ReArm acts as a powerful political signal, signalling the EU’s new security-first priorities across the continent. It creates an implicit expectation for candidate countries to align their own policies and budgets with this new European consensus, a shift evident in high-level meetings like the August 2025 Western Balkans Forum, which focused on the region's "readiness to shoulder a greater share of the collective defence burden". It promotes a dominant narrative that military spending is the primary path to resilience, which inevitably shapes the security discourse within Western Balkan capitals. This narrative is further reinforced by NATO’s own requirements for member and partner countries, including the Western Balkans Six, which emphasise collective defence, interoperability, and their roles as both consumers and providers of security in regional and NATO operations.

A zero-sum game of security

Even for wealthier Western European countries, pursuing guns, green growth, and governance simultaneously involves difficult trade-offs. For the Western Balkans, with their limited fiscal space and immense development needs, these choices are even more constrained -  a zero-sum game. Every euro spent on a new armoured vehicle is a euro that cannot be spent on a solar panel, a university scholarship or a judicial reform program. This is the harsh reality of the opportunity cost.   

The first demand, the call to arms, is politically compelling. With global military expenditure hitting a record $2.718 trillion in 2024, the pressure to rearm is immense. The EU’s own defence spending surged to €343 billion, and countries like Poland are now spending over 4% of their GDP on defence, held up as models of commitment. These numbers are not just statistics; they signal an increasingly assertive European security posture, driven by geopolitical uncertainty, hybrid threats, and the pursuit of strategic autonomy.  In the region, Serbia leads in absolute terms, while NATO members Albania and North Macedonia are projected to reach the 2% of GDP target in 2024, and Montenegro has pledged to meet the 2% target. This acceleration, while understandable, places immense strain on national budgets.   Kosovo, too, has stepped up, establishing a voluntary Security Fund to strengthen its Kosovo Security Force, and, together with Albania and Croatia, signing a joint declaration on military cooperation. The agreement focuses on closer coordination, joint exercises, and shared preparedness, reflecting Kosovo’s determination to play an active role in regional security. Yet these efforts, like elsewhere in the region, add pressure to already stretched national budgets.

The second demand, the climate imperative, is brutally real. The Western Balkans is a climate vulnerability hotspot, facing intensified droughts, increased flood risks, and a 40-60% increase in the duration of heatwaves. The economic toll is staggering, with extreme weather events projected to cost the region up to 16% of its GDP. The cost of adapting to these changes is estimated at USD   37 billion, while achieving climate neutrality by 2050 will require an additional USD 32 billion to transform the power, transport, and industrial sectors. This transition is further complicated by a heavy reliance on coal, which accounts for 70% of electricity production and carries hidden health costs estimated at €6-12 billion annually. Redirecting the €5.8 billion in fossil fuel subsidies provided between 2018 and 2023 is essential, but it competes directly with the push for military modernisation.   

The third demand, the human capital crisis, is an economic and democratic misfortune in the making. One in five citizens from the region now lives abroad, a massive brain drain that jeopardises future progress. The UN projects the region's population will shrink by a further 3 million by 2050. This is not just a demographic shift; it is a direct economic loss. North Macedonia, for example, invests up to €433 million annually in educating young people who then leave. For Albania, the lost potential GDP from each emigrating worker is estimated at €14,900 per year. This exodus depletes the tax base, strains already overburdened pension and healthcare systems, and removes the very people needed to drive reform and innovation. Slowing this tide requires massive investment in education and job creation, a goal supported by the EU's Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, but one that requires immense financial and political capital.  

Dual-use infrastructure and the limits of governance 

Some argue that investments in dual-use infrastructure — roads, ports, or energy projects optimised for both military and civilian needs —  can solve this trilemma. But these solutions are constrained by hidden trade-offs. A highway built for military mobility may bypass key rural communities. A port deepened for naval vessels may not support emerging green shipping industries. Prioritising military specifications can distort economic logic and divert funds from projects that would deliver greater civilian or environmental returns, making the trade-offs even harsher.

Crucially, even these dual-use ambitions rely on something more fundamental: the capacity of institutions to plan, implement, and sustain them. In the Western Balkans, fragile governance and entrenched state capture mean that the very same institutions that have struggled to absorb and effectively manage EU pre-accession aid for judicial reform would now be responsible for overseeing complex, high-value military procurement. In such an environment, dual-use projects risk inefficiency, corruption, and failure. Without governance reform, the promise of dual-use projects cannot be realised, highlighting the feedback loops that define the trilemma: poor governance amplifies opportunity costs, which in turn undermines resilience.

Redefining security: a holistic approach
True strategic resilience cannot be purchased from a defence contractor. It must be cultivated from the ground up: energy independence that reduces exposure to malign actors, clean air that protects citizens’ health, infrastructure that withstands climate shocks, and human capital that remains invested in the region.

A smart security policy prioritises investments with multiple benefits: civil defence capabilities for climate-related disasters, cybersecurity to protect critical infrastructure and democratic institutions, and governance reforms that ensure every euro is spent wisely. Security is not a singular, military metric; it is a multidimensional construct where prosperity, sustainability, and societal cohesion reinforce one another. The goal should not be to arm fragile states for a hypothetical war, but to build robust, prosperous, and sustainable societies that are resilient to the real and present dangers they already face.

Conclusion: Kadare’s bridge and building a whole new world

Kadare’s question in Chronicle in Stone remains a cautionary lens for the Western Balkans: “If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?” The resilience trilemma forces societies into similar ethical and strategic calculations. Every euro spent carries implicit trade-offs; every policy decision risks unintended consequences.

The challenge is deeply systemic. Pouring ever more into defence while leaving institutions, the green transition, and human capital underfunded, only deepens the region’s vulnerabilities. True resilience comes from building strength across several fronts: robust institutions, modern infrastructure, clean energy, climate adaptation, and retaining talent.

Building a “whole new world” does not require sacrificing society itself. It demands systemic thinking, long-term vision, and reflexive governance that embraces complexity and feedback loops. Integrating defence, green growth, and governance into cohesive strategies, the Western Balkans can transform the resilience trilemma from a zero-sum dilemma into a platform for sustainable prosperity, security, and societal flourishing. In this way, the region can build a bridge to a future in which society is strengthened, not sacrificed.

Re-ACT Lab promotes research and innovation as a means to advance governmental and policy-making reforms in Kosovo and regionally.