Chapter 3 Case Study: The Republic Of North Macedonia Marina Mitrevska, Julija Brsakoska Bazerkoska and Aleksandar Spasov Introduction This chapter will offer a case study of the construction of the national se­curity culture in the Republic of North Macedonia as a key determinant in shaping the country’s strategic preferences. It will analyse the worldview of the country’s external environment and how it is perceived in terms of se­curity threats and potentials for cooperation. Furthermore, it will elaborate on the Republic of North Macedonia’s national interests and how they are connected with the global and regional international environment and the importance of the international organisations in the process of building its national security culture. The chapter will examine how the country’s independence from the former Yugoslav federation and its international positioning, followed by the inter­nal conflict in 2001 defined the security threats and the preferred available instruments relied upon to address them. It will offer an insight into how national security culture accounts for the securitization of threats. It will elaborate on how the vulnerability of the country in the process of gaining independence has influenced the defining of the national interests and how they are rooted in the country’s national security culture. Since the nation­al security threats were coming from both the outside – mainly from the expansionist aspirations of some neighbouring countries to create greater nation-states by seizing pieces of Macedonian territory, and from the inside – the ethnic tensions, the first formative years were the most important in shaping the national security culture of the newly independent state and defining its reliance on international cooperation. The country identified the European Union and NATO integration as one of the main foreign policy priorities that will contribute towards the security consolidation. 114 NATIONAL SECURITY CULTURES- A VIEW FROM THE BALKANS