Why bother with the Balkans?

The short answer to this question is the election campaign. Failed Ambassador to Germany/failed Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell is trying to deliver a foreign policy spectacular to President Trump’s re-election prospects, which right now are dim. The model is the Israel/UAE agreement: bragging rights to something the President can say no one else has ever achieved. Thus the invitation to Serbian President Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Hoti to meet under White House auspices and maybe even get a meeting with the President, if the two leaders give him something he can use in the electoral campaign.

The Administration is suggesting that the focus will be on economic issues, perhaps just implementation of agreements on air, rail, and highway links between the two countries. That however would be hard to dress up as worthy of the President’s attention, so more than likely some other things will be on the agenda: maybe special economic zones on the border/boundary between the two, or some sort of agreement to redevelop the mining complex known as Trepca and manage the water supply known as Gazivoda, both of which transcend the border/boundary. Depending on the details, where the devil resides, those could be useful economically.

Everyone is going out of their way to deny that any ethnically-based exchange of territory between Kosovo and Serbia is contemplated, a bad idea that would destabilize the region and help Vladimir Putin justify Russian aggression in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. But that of course doesn’t mean someone won’t try to revive the zombie and repackage it as a Trump achievement. It would be consistent both with his pattern of being good to Putin and with his white nationalist inclinations. Prime Minister Hoti has pledged his government will oppose the idea. His thin majority in parliament would likely evaporate if he returned to Pristina trying to sell it.

There is little likelihood of a so-called “final” agreement that normalizes relations between Kosovo and Serbia through mutual diplomatic recognition, exchange of ambassadorial-level representatives, and membership for Kosovo in the United Nations. President Vucic has telegraphed that he is not prepared for anything big of this sort, despite the fact that he is in a strong political position at home and could likely do it with minimal and temporary political damage. Prime Minister Hoti insists that full normalization is the goal of the talks. He would be a historic figure in Kosovo if he could achieve normalization, but it doesn’t look likely during this visit to Washington. If it happens, I’ll be the first to applaud.

One important issue the President and Prime Minister have seemed ready to proceed on is missing people from the 1999 Kosovo war and its aftermath. The still unidentified whereabouts of the missing (bodies) is inexcusable. This should have been settled soon after the war. But better late than never, as it would give both Hoti and Vucic something their citizens would appreciate on returning from Washington.

But that is not what Trump wants or needs. He is looking for a diplomatic triumph to parade in front of the American electorate. Few Americans care about the Balkans, but in our current highly polarized political scene a Rose Garden ceremony, which President Trump has promised if the two do something really good, might give the flagging Trump campaign a bit of a fillip. That is certainly what Grenell needs, if only for getting the next job he can fail at.