In weakness strength

On reflection a day after the fact, I’d like to reiterate what Kurt Bassuener has already eloquently asserted: the arrest of Ratko Mladic was certainly a triumph for the Dutch. Both stubborn and racked by guilt, as Jerry Gallucci suggests, they deserve credit for sticking with their insistence on Mladic’s arrest.

But here is the deeper point:  the EU’s famous weakness–its need for unanimity–becomes a strength when it comes to imposing conditionality.  For Serbia to achieve candidacy status for membership, all 27 member states have to agree.  The Netherlands’ hard line on arrest of Mladic as a precondition for its agreement to candidacy is what made the arrest happen.

I have little doubt that several years down the pike, when Belgrade has fulfilled all the technical requirements for EU membership, that the Dutch and others will insist that it also needs to resolve the issue of Kosovo (good neighborly relations being in any event an EU requirement).  Many in Belgrade already know this; the sooner the EU makes it explicit, the quicker Belgrade will make the necessary moves.

Of course this capacity of member states to block EU decisions can also work against what I might consider a good idea.  Witness EU relations with Kosovo, which are stymied by the five EU members that don’t recognize the government in Pristina as sovereign and independent, even though most of them seem to acknowledge its legitimacy and authority.  But look what happened when those five joined the other 22 in insisting that Belgrade and Pristina begin a dialogue:  it happened quickly and seems to be proceeding well.

The EU’s leverage is a powerful force, one that will need to be brought to bear both in Kosovo and in Bosnia and Herzegovina if the remaining Balkans problems are to be resolved peacefully.  The disturbing thing is that the EU seems so infrequently capable of wielding power effectively.

Lady Catherine Ashton’s sudden visit to Banja Luka earlier this month to prevent a referendum in Bosnia on the authority of the state justice system got President Milorad Dodik to postpone his plans, but it also strengthened his position as an EU “interlocutor” and gave him the opportunity to sideline the Sarajevo government and institutions.  I am not convinced the EU came out ahead with this maneuver, which undermined the international community’s High Representative and annoyed Washington.  It is still not yet clear to me whether Dodik will cancel the referendum altogether, or hold it over the heads of his antagonists.  But I can guess what he would prefer to do.

I can only hope that the EU will use its leverage well.  Projecting power is not its strong suit, but its need for unanimity on important issues provides a strange kind of strength when it comes to imposing its will on those who aspire to membership.

With respect to Serbia, Kurt draws the right conculsions:

Serbia has proven it responds to rational incentives – and there is no reason to believe that this is not a reality across the party spectrum. So instead of bending over backwards to ensure Tadic and the Democratic Party’s re-election, the EU and wider West should instead insist that standards be met whoever is in power, and cut Serbia no more slack.

The same should go for other Balkans leaders.