Geopolitics gives people in the Balkans an opportunity

I participated this morning by Zoom in a conference in Podgorica entitled “Podgorica Plenum: Quo Vadis Balkans?” organized by the Regional Academy for Democratic Development in Belgrade. My panel addressed “What can socialdemocratic politicans and CSOs further do?” This was the lineup:
• Ivan Vuković, Mayor of Podgorica and Deputy President of DPS, Montenegro
• Benjamina Karić, Mayor of Sarajevo, Social Democratic Party, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Daniel Serwer, Professor, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (via ZOOM)
• Stipe Mesić, Former President of Croatia 2000-2010 (via ZOOM)

I was asked to focus on the broader geopolitical perspective:

1. It is a pleasure to be with you, if only remotely. As Mayor Vukovic will know, however, I have a good Montenegrin source in the next office to mine—his cousin is my colleague at SAIS.
2. I hear from many people who live in the Western Balkans, especially in Bosnia and Serbia, that nothing has changed since the breakup of Yugoslavia.
3. This reflects their disappointment in what has happened in the last 25 years. I share that disappointment. I would like to have seen far more progress.
4. But it is not objectively true. Average per capita GDP is twice as high as it was before the 1990s wars. Apart from Covid-19, it is safe to travel throughout former Yugoslavia, regardless of ethnic identity or national origin. You can say pretty much what you want in all the former Yugoslav republics and in Albania, even if organizing and publishing are still not always free. Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims mostly worship as they like, often in renovated churches and mosques.
5. Progress has halted, with the end of what Americans have come to call the unipolar moment.
6. The Balkans have not had an easy time of it since. All the Balkan states are heavily dependent on EU economic growth. The 2007/8 financial crisis, Greek financial crisis and economic collapse, the flood of immigrants after 2011 from the greater Middle East, and the Brexit referendum in 2016 gave Europe more urgent and higher priority problems than the Balkans.
7. These developments also made Europe more cautious about the prospects for enlargement.
8. So things may be a lot better in the Balkans than they were in the 1990s, but today’s world is dramatically different from the one that existed then.
9. 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.
10. The Balkans in general, and Bosnia and Kosovo in particular, were the objects of top-tier attention in the 1990s. They now get much lower priority.
11. That is true in Europe as well, where Brexit, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and illegal immigration are issues that cast a shadow over Balkan aspirations to join Europe.
12. At the same time, Moscow and Beijing are engaging more than ever before in the Balkans.
13. The Russians are using assassination, media manipulation, rented crowds, arms sales, and political financing to slow if not halt progress towards NATO and the EU.
14. The Chinese are using their finances to loan, build and buy. Caveat emptor of course, though Beijing’s behavior is a lot less underhanded than Moscow’s and likely to produce some positive results for those Balkan countries and companies that know how to drive a good bargain.
15. Turkey—a strong force in the Balkans for historical, geographic, and cultural reasons—has taken a dramatic turn in a more Islamist and autocratic direction.
16. None of these powers share the European and American commitment to liberal democracy, that is pluralistic politics based on individual rights. They are far more inclined to ethnic nationalism.
17. Even the US had an ethnic nationalist president who opened the door to changing Balkan borders to accommodate ethnic differences—an idea that makes no sense to a liberal democrat.
18. Europe too has a Hungarian Prime Minister who is a committed ethnic nationalist as well as other presidents and prime ministers who flirt with nationalist populism.
19. Liberal democratic influence in the Balkans has declined. The autocratic influence—if I can use that umbrella term to refer to the different roles of Russia, China, and Turkey—has grown.
20. They are finding fertile ground. Ethnic populism is also thriving in the Balkans: it reignites and normalizes hate speech, divides people, and encourages untruthful historical revisionism.
21. The surge of disinformation polarizes political discourse and accentuates social cleavages so that compromise is seen as a sign of betrayal and defeat.
22. My bottom line: ready or not, responsibility for keeping Western aspirations and ideals alive now rests with the people of the Balkans: their governments, citizens, and society. The question is, can you do it and how?
23. One ingredient for success is apparent on this panel: politicians committed to liberal democracy who are prepared to do what is needed to serve citizens and win their votes.
24. Another important ingredient is civil society: the non-governmental organizations who take on the thinking and organizing required to support serious political and economic reforms.
25. They need to define what it means for each of the countries of the Balkans to become European and press elected officials to deliver.
26. Germany, Portugal, and Spain did that even in the midst of the greatest geopolitical confrontation the world has known. They chose the West, despite enormous obstacles. Berlin is now a stalwart liberal democracy and model of economic prosperity and social cohesion.
27. It is my fervent hope that you in the Balkans will find your own way to that kind of political, economic, and social outcome.

. Along the way, I addressed four additional issues, more or less along the following lines:

1. Montenegro’s recent government turmoil may concern many, but what happened in the past year or so was in line with the country’s constitutional system: an opposition government came to power after popular demonstrations, the coalition failed to hold together, so it fell. That’s what happens in parliamentary systems.
2. Liberal democracy is a pluralistic system of governance based on individual rights. Social democracy is a political program or platform, one that fits well within a liberal democratic system.
3. The politics of memory and commemoration are difficult and prolonged. In the US, we are just now getting rid of schools and highways in the South named for traitors who rebelled against the United States more than 150 years ago. I don’t want to discourage the effort in the Balkans, only to note that it can take a long time.
4. In the real estate business, the key factors are “location, location, location.” In Balkan governance today, the key factors are “corruption, corruption, corruption.” The Americans and Europeans are sending clear signals that the rule of law is a central concern for those who want to make progress towards NATO and/or the EU. Arrests and prosecutions are a sign the prosecutors are doing the right thing, not a sign that the situation is hopeless (as many in the Balkans assume).