Is the Balkans becoming a Region of Stability?
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As is always the case when discussing political and historical issues, any answer to the sort of question posed by this session will depend upon one’s perspective – as well, perhaps, as on one’s location, age, experience and psychology.
It can even depend on what one had for breakfast. Fortunately, I had a good one.
Seen from the perspective of
In
Two months after these elections – and the victories of the parties that took the most radical stances on this existential issue – we still have no state-level government. We may not get one until February.
Nor – and, again, thanks in large part to the long and bruising election campaign – has BiH made any progress this year in fulfilling the preconditions set by the European Commission for signing a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, regardless of the fact that the
This political vacuum at the centre and the absence of any guarantee that the country will again take up the reform agenda required for Euro-Atlantic integration have been sufficient for domestic and foreign commentators alike to warn that the planned closure of the Office of the High Representative in June next year is premature at best and potentially catastrophic at worst.
Add to this the regional environment and, above all, the looming decision on Kosovo’s future status and you will understand why it is nowadays difficult to see South-Eastern Europe as a region of stability.
As the rulers of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires – as well as the leaders of the Balkan national states that emerged from them during the nineteenth century – learned to their occasional benefit and more frequent cost, troubles, rebellions and wars on one part of the peninsula tended to spread far beyond their original breeding grounds.
Because
And so it was this past spring over
The eventual decision on Kosovo will do the same, particularly as
To borrow and adapt the immortal words of Bette Davis in ‘Three Faces of Eve’, we are all going to need to fasten our seatbelts and prepare for a bumpy few months ahead.
But that – if we maintain the sort of historical perspective to which I have alluded and also have some luck – is all it need be: a few bumpy months.
Kosovo is, in fact, merely the coda to the long and bloody drama of
The malevolent dramatis personae that made the wars of Yugoslav succession have long since left the stage. And the international ineptitude and incoherence that made those wars so much worse have been remedied.
As of January, four historically “Balkan” states will be EU members. The rest have the much-vaunted and genuinely popular “European perspective” to keep them peaceable and on track with the sort of thoroughgoing reforms they need to make.
In fact, it seems to me that “enlargement fatigue” in the older member states represents a greater long-term threat to the stability of the region than does anything the Balkan countries can nowadays do to themselves or others.
Fortunately, however, this threat is sufficiently remote as also to be remediable with the passage of time. Once
We need first, however, to get through the difficult months ahead, all the while keeping both our nerve and sense of perspective.
Thank you