the national security culture of the Republic of Macedonia from its begin­nings as a newly independent country was built around its international promotion and recognition, and its voice in the international society was strongly dependent to its membership in plethora of different international organisations, after 2008, the national security culture of the country was connected to its identity and history. Instead of learning the lesson, that: “alliances, including NATO and the EU, are created to defend the interests of their own members and not to distribute justice”(Maleski, 2010), the country’s leadership blamed the whole international security for its failures and turned towards authoritarianism. Redefining the National Security Culture in a Crowded Region Both international and regional context in the Balkans changed over the past years, and consequently, during the 2010s, there were numerous fac­tors of possible destabilisation. One important factor of destabilisation was the migrant crisis, which highly affected the Republic of Macedonia as part of the Western Balkan route. The route became a popular passageway into the EU in 2012 when Schengen visa restrictions were relaxed for five Balkan countries – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and the Republic of Macedonia. It was during the 2015 when the record number of migrants arriving in Greece had a direct, knock-on effect on the Western Balkan route. The migrants who entered the EU via Greece were trying to make their way through to Macedonia and Serbia, on to Hungary and then further on mainly to Austria, Germany, and Sweden. 57 Large number of mi­grants and refugees that were crossing the Western Balkan route were us­ing illegal border crossings and these irregular movements which were very often connected with trafficking in persons and human smuggling, were additional concerns for the states on the migration route. The transnational crime connected with the illegal crossing of migrants during the 2015 crisis has put additional strain on the country’s weak institutional systems, pos­ing a great security threat, and negatively affecting access to protection for those in need of it(Brsakoska Bazerkoska, 2022). Another security threat in the Western Balkans in general and in Republic of Macedonia in particular, was the violent extremism which was devel­57 During all of 2015, the region recorded 764,000 detections of illegal border crossings by migrants, a 16-fold rise from 2014. The top-ranking nationality was Syrian, followed by Iraqis and Afghans. The numbers presented are according a Frontex esti­mate. The CoE numbers are 100,000 higher than Frontex’s estimate for the same period of time. Chapter 3 – Case Study: The Republic Of North Macedonia 129