Maybe smaller is better, for now

I’ve been getting questions lately about the EU-sponsored dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. Will it restart in earnest? Is it just moribund or stone cold dead?

Certainly it has been unproductive. We are approaching the 10th year since the Brussels “political” agreement of 2013. A decade of stasis in the Balkans risks unraveling regional peace and stability. Just listen to Dugin:

So is there hope for progress?

The moment is not propitious. Serbia has aligned itself with Russia, not only on Ukraine, and the Serb-ruled 49% of Bosnia and Herzegovina is Moscow’s lap dog, as Dugin makes clear. The US, UK, and the European Union are preoccupied with helping the Ukrainians respond to Russian aggression. The Balkan region is way down the list of urgencies.

Besides, the 2022 and 2024 US elections will soon focus American attention on domestic issues. Everyone in the Balkans will be holding their breath to see if Donald Trump has a real chance of returning to the White House. If it looks good for him, Serbia will want to continue to pause the dialogue with Kosovo, as Trump was sympathetic to Belgrade’s territorial ambitions. If Pristina wants anything from the dialogue, it needs to get it soon.

Acknowledgement of abuses may be a non-starter

Listening to both Kosovo President Osmani and Prime Minister Kurti’s public statements, my sense is that they would both like Serbian President Vucic to acknowledge the abuses of the Milosevic regime in Kosovo in the 1990s. Vucic, who served in that regime, has been unwilling, both in public and in private. He suffers from a severe case of amnesia and “bothsideism.” Kurti, who spent time reading Sartre in a Serbian prison during the 1999 war, remembers well. Neither has a domestic political constituency that yearns for an agreement.

But Vucic’s acknowledgement of the Serbian effort to ethnically cleanse Albanians from Kosovo and of the thousands of rapes by Serbian forces would open the way to improved cooperation, as exhorted in the 2010 General Assembly resolution that launched the dialogue. Kurti would need to acknowledge Albanian abuses against Serbs and Roma, even if much smaller in number. Such acknowledgements would need to be coupled with as full accounting for missing people by both governments as possible. That would clear the way for exchange of bodies and provision for appropriate memorialization in both countries.

License plates should be easier

There should be room to resolve the issue that caused a brouhaha last fall: mutual acceptance of license plates. So far negotiations for a permanent solution have failed, due to Serbia’s refusal to allow Kosovo plates to enter the country with indications of where they originate. The current practice–covering state symbols on both Kosovo and Serbian plates before allowing entry–is a modest improvement on Serbia’s prior requirement that Kosovo plates be replaced with Serbian ones, but it is still wasteful and juvenile.

Accepting license plates and Kosovo documents is not the same as recognizing Kosovo as a sovereign state. The five non-recognizing members of the EU accept lots of Kosovo documents and also maintain diplomatic representation in Pristina. Serbia should do likewise.

Electricity is harder

Pristina wants the Serbs in northern Kosovo to start paying for electricity, which a Kosovo entity has provided free since 1999. This is reasonable, but if Pristina insists Belgrade may supply the electricity from Serbia, further detaching the northern municipalities from Pristina’s governance, an important Serbian objective. As tens of millions of euros are at issue, this one won’t be easy to resolve on its own. A broader financial settlement may be possible.

Hedging and bandwagoning

While these issues eat away at mutual confidence, Serbia has been re-arming itself and deploying forces near and around Kosovo. Belgrade tells Washington Serbian cooperation with NATO is much deeper and more important than cooperation with Russia. But the Defense Ministry vaunts a historical maximum in defense cooperation with Russia, which has provided fighter jets and tanks as well as lots of other goodies. Vucic has increasingly aligned himself politically and militarily with Moscow and Beijing, not only on Ukraine. He claims non-alignment, but hedging is difficult in an era of geopolitical tension. He has tilted way over to the East. Dugin knows of what he speaks.

By contrast, Kosovo has no hedging option so bandwagons with NATO, which is still responsible for defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pristina’s army, which the US and UK mentor, is slated to be fully operational in 2027. It will be NATO compatible. A few of its soldiers have already deployed with the Americans. Kosovo quickly welcomed Afghan and now Ukrainian refugees, aligns solidly with sanctions on Russia, and is providing de-mining training to Ukrainians.

So the dialogue is not just between Kosovo and Serbia, but also between West and East. As Lenin put it: “show me who your friends are, and I will tell you what you are.”

Maybe smaller is better for now

The situation is not “ripe” for a big agreement. Before 2010, when the more political version was launched, the dialogue focused on small, “technical” issues like Kosovo’s international calling code, return of cultural artifacts, and mutual recognition of diplomas. Maybe it is time to go back to those–including missing persons and license plates. Another possibility is a regional negotiation of basic principles of mutual behavior, which are sorely lacking. Neither idea is as grand as “normalizing relations” or mutual recognition. But maybe smaller is better for now.