Territorial claims or good neighbors
Serbian President Nikolic said today:
We are not giving Kosovo away. And [the] Bundestag should think about what kind of a decision it would make if it were about Germany.
This is a good point, whose meaning is precisely the opposite of what Nikolic intended. My guess is that many members of the Bundestag know full well that Germany has given up many territorial claims since 1945: to Alsace-Loraine (now part of France), to the Sudetenland (now part of the Czech Republic), and to a big chunk of Poland. Not to mention its pretensions to rule as an empire over Russia, France, Britain, North Africa and much of the Middle East.
Where would Germany be today if it had not given up these ambitions but instead, like Serbia, continued to maintain them in principle? It would not be the largest and most prosperous member of a large and prosperous Europe, albeit one with current economic and financial problems. It would not have been allowed to return to military prominence. It would not be a key ally of the United States or a major player in the world’s most successful military and political alliance. It likely would have been involved in several more wars and reduced to rubble many times. Or maybe it would have won one of the wars, thus enabling it to preside over an expanded Germany struggling to protect itself from hostile neighbors and domestic insurgency.
So if the Germans ask for Serbia to give up its claim to Kosovo, or at least to the north of Kosovo, it is asking no more than successive German governments have been prepared to do with claims to far more extensive and valuable territory, in order to secure peace and prosperity. Nikolic’s argument might be more compelling if it were addressed to the American Congress, which has presided over vast expansions of territory during the past 225 years or so. But it cuts precisely the opposite way when used against the Germans, who learned the hard way that territory is far less valuable than good neighborly relations.
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12 thoughts on “Territorial claims or good neighbors”
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Territorial claims – maybe it’s all about Trepca, after all. There was a story Friday about an American company signing a contract with the Serbian government for unspecified purposes at Trepca. (New Generation Power is an alternative-energy concern, not a mining group, but its representative mentioned having an interest in the lithium there.)
In a Bloomberg story the Serbian mining minister is quoted as saying that “Arrival of foreign companies improves our position in the political dialogue” with Kosovo and is “the best way to gain control of the part of Trepca that we don’t control.”
Serbia claims that it made the investments and is entitled to the whole lot. But a British firm built the core production facilities in 1928 in return for a 50-year concession, only to have the war intervene and then the Communists nationalize the facility. (Maybe the Brits can sue to force performance of the contract? There is a law on restitution of nationalized property, but good luck collecting under it.)
Photographs of an American who says he’s been in contact with the State Department meeting with Nikolic are probably intended as psychological warfare – a suggestion to Prishtina that its most reliable ally is willing to sell it out. Serbs explain the bombing and subsequent support for Kosovo as being due to America’s desire to get their hands on their natural resources in Kosovo, and look – here’s proof. (This version at least makes more sense than Chomsky’s claims in an embarrassing interview that it was all about Bondsteel, which he thinks was used as an airbase in the bombing of Libya.)
Unfortunately for Belgrade, the people in Prishtina don’t seem to suffer from weak nerves, and if they need legal help, the US is the Saudi Arabia of lawyers.
A very good analogy to which I would add just a small remark. After the Second world war Germany was put under much bigger international pressure than Serbia after the Yugoslavian wars of 1990s. Germany was virtually occupied by great powers of that era. Serbia was punished, but to a considerably lesser extent.
After all, it is understandable. Germany’s expansionism directly affected the entire Europe and much of the rest of the World. Serbia’s directly affected only its neighborhood, and only indirectly others. Even so, one can argue with good reason that the West has been too lenient with Serbia given everything it did throughout the 1990s – a view which most Serbian people would strongly disagree with, however.
On the other hand, I can undestand why Nikolić still tends to use a kind of “tough” rhetoric on Kosovo (and some other issues, as well). Voters and members of his party are largely nationalist and traditionalist, even if the party leadership is today pro-EU. Nikolić, as well as Vučić, must therefore occasionally “compensate” for the practical policy they are currently employing.
What is far more difficult to explain is why Nikolić’s predecessor, the purportedly “liberal” Boris Tadić, was trying so hard to ingratiate himself with nationalists, especially rigid ones, during his time in office when it was clear that they would never vote for him. Or, for that matter, why he gave control over foreign affairs to Vuk Jeremić, who is not only a hardline nationalist but also oftentimes behaves in a completely undiplomatic manner.
Do you remember when Joe Biden visited Belgrade a couple of years ago? He either said at the time or people remembered him saying previously that the U.S. should have treated Serbia the way it treated Germany after WWII. So of course people indignantly accused him of wanting put them all behind barbed wire. In fact, removing the leaders in power immediately, putting them on trial, and starting to eliminate a poisonous ideology would have been a a great deal kinder than all of these timid efforts to coax into 21st century a nation that was convinced (or could pretend to believe)that it was both the victim of unprovoked aggression and the victor in the war. (After all, they’d “fought NATO to a standstill.”) Allowing Serbia to wallow in the pleasures of victimization, especially when there was no economic payoff to distract them, certainly has done it no favors.
As for Nikolic’s talk, I assume diplomats discount it, but under the Brussels’ agreement he’s really not supposed to be calling on other countries to prevent Kosovo from joining the EU, which of course he’s been doing lately. What the “deal” with the American company is all about may become clearer after officials in Prishtina discuss the matter with our Ambassador there. I understand that Serbia used to have the best propaganda service in the Balkans, and I’ve never heard that it’s been disbanded, so for now I’m assuming this is an attempt to gain some advantage without provoking outrage. Probably one of many to come.
Wasn’t Jeremic a student of Tadic at one time? You’re right, it’s hard to see what Tadic saw in him – a bright kid (bright enough to get in on the demonstrations that brought down Milosevic at the last minute, at least), family/”godfather” ties to the Milosevic clique, a connection to the US via Harvard? Perhaps he felt that as a former teacher of Jeremic he could expect some loyalty from him? Americans said it was lucky for the Kosovars that Jeremic was FM and not Sutanovac, who was able to make a much better case for Serbia’s position than Jeremic ever did. He’ll probably get a statue in Prishtina some day for asking for that ICJ ruling that is helping to clear Kosovo’s path to legitimacy. (The big question: will it be in the same square as the one to Milosevic, or somewhere else.)
I remember that Mr. Biden visited Serbia a couple of years ago, but I don’t remember the statement you mention. Anyway, if he said that, he was absolutely right in my view.
On Nikolić, I agree with you (without discussing “tactical details”).
And I like your sarcasm on Jeremić. There are two basic assumptions about Tadić’s decision to appoint him foreign minister. One has to do with Jeremić’s father, who is a wealthy Serbian businessman and an important funder to Tadić’s Democratic party. In return for his donations to the party, Jeremić senior allegedly demanded from Tadić to take his son in the government.
The other theory says that Tadić picked the overambitious and contentious Jeremić as an ideal partner for his “good cop/bad cop” game with the West, where Tadić was, of course, playing the role of the good one, whereas Jeremić acted as the proverbial troublemaker.
It is not even impossible that both assumptions are true, as they do not contradict each other.
Milan, you been funded by Soros, no wonder that you are anti Serbian.
Supporting the view that Serbia should have been treated in the same way as Germany after WWII is just desperation of pathetic “journalist” which wants to be heard, nothing else.
Soros? Oh, no, not again!
Unfortunately for you, I am not by any means “anti-Serbian”. To the contrary, I am a Serbian patriot par excellence. Assuming, of course, that patriotism means acting in favor of your country’s better future.
Jeremic was not the one who demonstrated against Milosevic, he was not there, he was living abroad in that time.
Who would choose Sutanovac for FM, what a joke. He is the guy which everyone knows as son in law of Miroslav Ilic. Nothing worth about him mentioning, apart from being involved in corruption scandals.
You can say whatever you want about Vuk Jeremic, but his CV speaks about him. Cambridge and Harvard graduate, never plagiarized anything like some of those you mentioned in your post.
There is big difference between Nazi Germany and Serbia in 90’s. As for as I remember Serbia (Yugoslavia) has not committed any genocide or was running concentration camps?
Let me cite one French journalist who was one of the first to enter Racak village after so called “massacre”, “It was civil war, Serbs committed much less war crimes than French in Algeria and there were atrocities on both sides”.
Joe Biden is Serbian hater. Nobody else can say something like that, just people with embedded hatred. I just wonder if he is dare to talk about Kurdish independent state and Turkey?
Have a look in latest racist map of the world published in Washington post, who tops the Europe as the most racist country. It is not Serbia.
“There is big difference between Nazi Germany and Serbia in 90′s”.
You are right. There was a big difference. In the scope of military power.
You can not be patriot if you can compare Serbia from 90’s to Nazi Germany. That is sick. But if you think so, that is your problem.
Yes, a very good analogy, as Mr. Marinkovic says, except for the contrast between statesmanlike Germany giving up all its claims and ambitions and self-deluding Serbia clinging to all of its claims and ambitions. That seems odd, given that Serbia has so far reacted to its defeat in the Balkan wars in much the same way as Germany, in its main, West German incarnation, reacted to its defeat in World War II.
Here are the respects in which Serbia has religiously followed the West German example.
(1) Right from the start, the West German state gave up on the various German expansionist ambitions that Mr Serwer mentions; likewise, once it was clear that the Balkan wars were lost, Serbia gave up on its expansionist hopes and accepted the independence of Croatia, Bosnia, and eventually also Montenegro within their pre-1990s borders.
(2) On the other hand, West Germany wasn’t nearly so prompt to acknowledge the loss of the main territories that had actually belonged to it before World War II. It took no less than 25 years to give up on the idea that East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia were still part of Germany and merely “for the time being under Polish/Soviet administration.” In clinging to the notion that “Kosovo is Serbia” even though it isn’t anymore (while taking no steps actually to regain that territory), Serbia is exactly reproducing the dominant West German attitudes and policies up to the late 1960s.
Furthermore, this West German obstinacy was not the result of having to take into consideration the unwillingness of a significant minority of Germans to live as part of Poland or the USSR, since the “transfer” of Germans out of the lost territories, unlike the “displacement” of Serbs from Kosovo, had been complete rather than partial.
So Serbia has actually been taking to heart in advance Mr Serwer’s advice to imitate Germany, both in what it has and what it hasn’t done to acknowledge the results of defeat. For the analogy between the two countries to continue to hold in the future, however, the following things would have to happen.
(1) For the next dozen years, Serbia continues to refuse recognition to Kosovo and holds out on the issue of the north, thereby matching the West German total of 25 years of nonrecognition.
(2) During those dozen years, Serbia is admitted to the EU and (if it should so desire) NATO, regardless of its refusal to bend on Kosovo–just as West Germany became one of the founding members of the EEC and joined NATO regardless of its refusal to recognize borders that all of its partners accepted, and that two of them (USA and UK at Potsdam) had actually joined in decreeing.
(3) Meanwhile, Serbia’s refusal to recognize Kosovo doesn’t prevent its enjoying an economic miracle and becoming a leading force in regional affairs, any more than West Germany’s quarter-century of refusal to recognize the new Soviet and Polish borders prevented it from doing so. Serbia eventually does recognize Kosovo, but only from its newfound position of strength, and being generally well esconced in the EU-NATO system, it one day gets a consolation prize as a by-product of a wider upheaval, like German reunification as a by-product of the collapse of communism. Let’s say unification with the Republika srpska as a by-product of a collapse of Bosnia.
Of course, neither Mr. Serwer nor the Germans themselves would like Serbia to imitate Germany in these particular respects, and none of (1)–(3) is going to happen. Instead, Serbia has already compromised on the north, at least, as a result of the recent agreement. More or less of the measures recommended by Mr Serwer will make the compromise a reality: Serbia cutting off financing, thereby facing the northerners with the alternatives of compliance or destitution; movement of northerners out of Kosovo (strictly voluntary, so far as natural disgust or reasonable fear can be described as voluntary) and movement of “displaced” Albanians into northern homes, thereby diluting Serb predominance in the north. (And how about movement of “displaced” Serbs into southern homes, not mentioned by Mr. Serwer, which would have the same effect?)
Will these measures help turn Kosovo into a multiethnic democracy in which all nationalities (sorry, ethnicities) share a common narrative, live in harmony, and feel themselves fortunate not to live as part of a Serbian or Albanian state? Will the measures take effect fast enough to satisfy the Germans and open Serbia’s path to the EU? Will Serbia, or for that matter Kosovo, under prevailing economic conditions ever be more than part of an emerging group of EU second-class citizens? Maybe, or then again . . .
Gavin thank you on your post. It seems those cynics, who suggested that Serbia should have been dealt in the same manner as Germany after WWII, are speechless after your post.
I try to challenge those examples of double standards written on this blog on regular basis, but your post is a peace of art.
However, there is hope, as Germany went from the biggest enemy of US to the biggest ally of US in less than 50 years (Serbia went in opposite direction) we don’t know what will happen in 50 years from now. Time will tell.