Only a fool or a charlatan

My post yesterday has aroused some interesting responses. Most important: that I ignored Russia and its efforts to undermine both NATO and the EU.

It’s true. I did ignore Russia, because my primary purpose was to illustrate that we have come a long way. But future progress will encounter Russian-created obstacles. Moscow, which for many years was content to play a relatively minor and often positive role in the Balkans, has now decided instead to try to block NATO membership for those countries not yet in the Alliance: Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia.

The lengths to which Moscow is now prepared to go were apparent in Montenegro, where the Russians plotted and tried to execute an assassination/coup against President Djukanovic. That failed and Montenegro entered NATO, but the Russians continue to support the anti-independence, anti-NATO opposition in Montenegro, thus hindering the evolution there of a serious pro-EU, pro-reform political opposition, which the country needs.

Moscow’s attention has now shifted to Macedonia. Both in Skopje and Athens it is supporting opponents of the Prespa Agreement that would allow North Macedonia to enter NATO and begin accession negotiations with the EU. Russia has several opportunities to block the agreement and its implementation:

• The September 30 referendum could fail either because it does get 50% of yes votes or because more than 50% of registered voters don’t come to the polls.
• Even once approved in the referendum, the implementing legislation could face difficulties in parliament.
• The Greek parliament could fail to approve the agreement, or the government in Athens could fall before doing so, causing an inordinate delay.

The Russians are working on all these fronts to screw things up. Success on any one of them could cause real problems in Macedonia and elsewhere the region, where Skopje’s progress is regarded as vital to maintaining the West’s momentum.

In Kosovo, the Russians’ best bet for messing things up is support to the land/people swap that Presidents Vucic and Thaci are discussing. That would greatly enhance President Putin’s arguments in favor of independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia as well as the annexation of Crimea. He is in fact likely to condition dropping the Russian veto on Kosovo’s UN membership, which Pristina thinks has to be part of any swap, on acceptance of those propositions. The Americans have made it clear they will not go along, which could mean Kosovo ends up doing the swap but still without UN membership.

Things are even easier for the Russians in Bosnia, where Republika Srpska (RS) is already owned by Moscow. The RS’s many vetoes and its substantial autonomy mean that Bosnia as a whole will progress only slowly towards the EU and not at all towards NATO. Russia pays for the RS President’s allegiance to its cause with cash as well as weapons and training for his increasingly militarized police and their various militia sidekicks, but it is fair to say that by now most of the population of the RS is thoroughly imbued with a pro-Russia narrative that will be difficult to erase. The pro-Russian narrative is also making headway among the Bosnian Croats, who are not immune to seeing their bank accounts fattened. Driving Bosnia towards a three-way partition suits Moscow’s purposes, as it makes NATO and EU membership unthinkable.

In Serbia, things are a bit more complicated. President Vucic has steered Serbia away from NATO membership towards military “neutrality” but is anxious for EU accession. His problem in getting there is not just the Russians. He must know that the EU will not accept Serbia without a free press and an independent judiciary, neither of which he has been willing to countenance. Moreover, his government is laden with pro-Russian sentiment, due at least in part to its role in preventing Kosovo from becoming a UN member. Beyond that, Moscow has little to offer: a few excess MiGs, an investment in the energy sector that secured the Russian veto, and likely some walking around money. But if Serbia wants serious reform, it won’t find it in Moscow, and if it wants to be considered neutral it will have to get rid of the Russian logistics base it has allowed near Nis.

So yes, the Russians can interfere with EU and NATO prospects for the remaining non-members in the Balkans. They have learned how to do it at low financial cost, including second-rate murder plots and lots Russia Today and Sputnik News broadcasting, as well as Twitterbots and other instruments of cyber warfare. But only a fool or a charlatan would trade the prospect of membership in NATO or the EU for an alliance with a declining regional power heavily dependent on hydrocarbon revenue and facing slow economic growth, even as it overextends itself into the Middle East, threatens the Baltics, and murders its defectors in Britain.