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Geopolitics in the Balkans

These are the notes that used in making remarks via Skype to the Geoffrey Nice Foundation Conference on “Transitional, Post-Transitional and Strategic Narratives about the Yugoslav Wars: from Wars and Search for Justice to Geo-Political Power Games” in Pristina today.

1. It is a pleasure to be with you remotely, even if I do wish my schedule would have permitted me to join you in Pristina.

2. The world has changed dramatically since the breakup of former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

3. That was, we know now, truly the unipolar moment, when the US had no rivals and together with Europe could do what it wanted in the Balkans and much of the rest of the world.

4. With a lot of help from Croatia, NATO ended the Bosnian war at Dayton in 1995 and forced Serbia’s withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999.

5. Europe and the US together invested massive financial and personnel resources in Kosovo as a UN protectorate mandated to build self-governing democratic institutions.

6. The unipolar moment ended with the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the US responses in Afghanistan and Iraq.

7. But the state-building process in Kosovo had significant momentum and continued, first with standards before status and later standards with status, leading eventually to supervised and unsupervised independence.

8. You have not had an easy time of it, but I think your young state has risen to at least some challenges quite well: the economy has grown, after an initial spurt you managed to limit Islamist radicalization, your courts have begun to prosecute high-level corruption cases, your army is incubating with nurture from NATO, and you have managed several power transitions in accordance with election outcomes.

9. Today’s world is however dramatically different from the one that existed in 2001 or at independence in 2008.

10. While still globally dominant, the US faces regional challenges from China, Russia, Iran and even North Korea that take priority in Washington over the Balkans.

11. Bosnia and Kosovo, the object of top-tier attention in the 1990s, now get much lower priority.

12. That is true in Europe as well, where Brexit, Ukraine, and illegal immigration are issues that, each in its own way, cast a shadow over Balkan aspirations to join Europe.

13. At the same time, Moscow and Beijing are paying more attention than ever before to the Balkans.

14. The Russians are interfering blatantly by both violent and nonviolent means in the Balkans: assassination, media manipulation, renting crowds and financing political parties are all being used to slow if not halt Balkan progress towards NATO and the EU.

15. The Chinese are using their financial strength to build and buy. Caveat emptor of course, though my own view is that Beijing’s behavior is a lot more salubrious than Moscow’s and likely to produce some positive results for those Balkan countries and companies that know how to do business.

16. Turkey—also a strong force in the Balkans for historical, geographic, and cultural reasons—has taken a dramatic turn in a more Islamist and autocratic direction. The secular Turkey that contributed forces to NATO interventions in the 1990s is moribund. Erdogan’s Turkey is building mosques, capturing Gulenists, and encouraging political Islam while trying to maintain its previous good relations with non-Muslim countries in the Balkans.

17. How does all this affect Kosovo?

18. The Turkish influence is direct and palpable: though still largely secular in orientation, Kosovo is far Islamic than it once was and has cooperated with the capture and rendering of Gulenists in ways that don’t seem right to me.

19. As for the Chinese, most Kosovars might welcome more interest in investment from Beijing. I wouldn’t fault you for that but only urge caution about the financial and political conditions, which can be onerous.

20. The Russians have no purchase on the Kosovo Albanians, but their weight with the Kosovo and Serbian Serbs is certainly felt here. Moscow is a strong advocate of land swaps and of course blocks Kosovo entry into the UN and opposes its entry into other international organizations.

21. How Moscow will be brought around to accepting Kosovo’s UN membership is still a mystery, even to those of us who think Kosovo independence and sovereignty is permanent.

22. Washington continues to have enormous influence in Kosovo, but it is not the same Washington as even three years ago. Today’s Washington has an ethnic nationalist, not a liberal democratic, administration. Trump and some of his closest advisors are self-avowed “nationalists” who do not believe in equal rights.

23. That in my view is why they were open to the failed land swap idea, which may have died in Kosovo but still survives in Washington.

24. As for Europe, it’s failure of nerve is all too evident to everyone in the Balkans: the French and Dutch vetoes on opening accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia—negotiations that might take a decade—was tragic. So too is the failure to provide the visa waiver to Kosovo.

25. The Western, liberal democratic influence in the Balkans has declined. The Eastern, autocratic and ethno-nationalist influence—if I can use that umbrella term to refer to the very different roles of Russia, China, and Turkey—has grown.

26. Bottom line: responsibility for keeping the Western aspiration alive now rests more than in the past with you: the government, citizens, and society of Kosovo. The Europeans have already disappointed you. The Americans may do likewise. The Chinese and Turks will try to lure you in bad directions while the Russians will give aid and comfort to your antagonists.

27. But you showed how unified and good Kosovo can be to the English soccer fans. I hope you will harness that spirit to the cause of maintaining a liberal democracy that treats all its citizens equally!