What a surprise...

It is clearly noticeable that some contributors on this blog feel disappointed by what happened in Serbia today. I am honestly surprised by their reactions considering how deeply the Serbian society is divided on fundamental socio-political issues which date back long before Milosevic came to power. This partition on backward nationalists elements on one side and democratic oriented citizens on the other was further magnified during the last 20 years of political turbulence in the Balkans.

I believe such actions were actually secretly celebrated by those parties who recently lost elections in Serbia. Their argument is that aggression against Western companies and embassies will entail a sharp response from abroad which would further alienate the people in Serbia from the West. In addition, Kosovo’s crisis, evocation of the Kosovo's mythology, and calls for national unity are actually going to serve the purpose of diverting attention from more important domestic issues such as war crimes, economic issues, and origins of “dirty money” for a period to come.

On the other hand, there is an obvious responsibility of the West for the situation in Serbia. The ultimate questions that most of the Serbs would ask their counterparts in the West are: "How would you feel if 15% of your territory is forceably taken away from your country by breaking the international law (U.N. resolution 1244)? How would you feel if your country is bombed for three months because of the so-called humanitarian crisis? How would you feel if every nationality except yours has rights to self-determination?"

Additionally, the E.U., represented by the E.U. High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Mr. Javier Solana, actually put pressure on the Democratic Party to accept Mr. Vojislav Kostunica as the prime minister of Serbia even though he got only 13% of votes on the last parliamentary elections held last year in Serbia. This move kept the common and secret police under the control of nationalists. Moreover, due to a strong U.S. pro-Albanian stand, the so-called talks between the Kosovo and the Serbian leaders were condemned even before they started. Not to mention the U.S. claim of Mr. Milosevic as a "factor of stability and the main peacekeeper in the Balkans" in the mid-1990's as well as the role of the former U.S. ambassador in Serbia, Mr. William Montgomery, in defaming the reputation of the former pro-liberal prime minister of Serbia Mr. Zoran Djindjic.

Finally, I would like to address to Americans who found themselves hurt by seeing the pictures of the U.S. embassy on fire. At the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States ambassador, said he was “outraged” by the attack on the Embassy and would be seeking a unanimous statement today from the 15-member Security Council condemning it. “The government of Serbia has the responsibility under international law to protect diplomatic facilities, particularly embassies.” Now, I would like to quote my friend’s response, a graduate student of the New School at New York, Mr. Rados Piletich to Mr. Khalilzad’s demand. “Responsibility under international law, huh? Like the kind of responsibility when we invaded Iraq without UN Security Council approval? Or maybe the kind of responsibility we took when we decided not to pay Nicaragua one penny of the $17 billion in reparations that the International Court of Justice ordered it to pay for arming, training, and supporting the Contras, and mining the coast off of Nicaragua to prevent international trade? Or, perhaps the same kind of responsibility exhibited by the country that bombed Cambodia from 1969 to 1973, leading to the deaths of scores of thousands of civilians in that country, and preparing the way for the genocidal Khmer Rouge?
Mirror, mirror, on the wall... eyes wide shut."

The Pitiable Serbs

Such an outrageous display of virulent nationalism as we have seen today makes me ashamed for every time I defended the Serbs going all the way back 1991. While I have been careful to balance my position on Kosovo’s independence over the past week, I can no longer hold my tongue. The Serbs who have attacked the US embassy in Belgrade are manifesting a form of nationalism which I can only describe as pitiable.

This once proud nation has fallen behind the curve of history. Such chest-thumping nationalism in the Europe of Regions smacks of medieval backwardness. Let the Kosovars and their lignite mines go. Serbia has other more precious resources to protect. Why preserve the Field of Kosovo? To remember the loss to the Turk? Again, such backward-looking nationalism not befitting the once and future great power of the Balkans.

Why do the Serbs blame America for their loss of Kosovo? Thousands of cascading decisions led the country to this point—no small number of which were made in Belgrade, Brussels, London, and Berlin. Burning the US embassy will do nothing to reverse that long trend line.

I take back my defense of Serbia as more ready to join the EU than Croatia. I take back my defense of Serbia as the victim of a neo-liberal war of attrition in the 1990s. I take back my defense of Serbia as a misunderstood and wronged nation. Those rioters have made it clear that we in the West have often understood Serbia and sometimes Serbia is simply wrong.

The Politics of Eurovision

This debate is a few months old, but I thought the roster and content of this blog was perfect to revive a topic that in the United States gets the attention that it truly deserves: zero.

Last May, Columbia University's Duncan J. Watts wrote this interesting Op-Ed on political bloc-voting in the annual Eurovision contest. Serbia had just won the contest, receiving most of its votes from Former Yugoslavia republics. And England got trounced, in another supposed demonstration of anti-British sentiment and the buoyancy of ethnonationalism in Europe in the 21st century.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22watts.html

I wrote this in response: Mr. Watts is not alone in suggesting a political bias in the Eurovision contest. British and German tabloids also cried foul, and the British Parliament debated (!) this question. They couldn't be more wrong. It is true that voting patterns over the years show some recognizable voting blocs, but this is more due to geographic proximity and cultural affinities -similar languages, similar tastes- than the reflection of political alignments within Europe. There is no anti-Western or anti-British bias. Contrary to Mr. Watt's assertion that "no one votes for Britain," the United Kingdom is the country that has received the most votes overall in the history of this contest. The politics of Eurovision have more to do with other issues, such as the exclusion of Serbia for several years or the reaction in Arab countries to the inclusion of Israel, than with Western European countries having one bad year.

Having said this, did Marija Serifovic ever explain what she meant by giving the three-fingered salute to the cameras when she received 12 points from Bosnia?

The Fourth Wave of Newly Independent States

[Note: This is in part a reply to Miodrag Kapor’s earlier post on Kosovo, but due to its length, I have decided to make it a separate post rather than a comment.]

You are right to worry about the cascade effect of Kosovo’s independence. As we have discussed previously, I believe the province’s independence is a fait accompli and cannot be avoided at this point. While some commentators have said Russia will block it out of ideology and not use it a bargaining chit, I disagree. I have watched the Putin administration closely for almost a decade and have yet to see ideology rear its ugly head. He is a pragmatism to the core and will ultimately sell out the Serbs (an outcome which, I believe, would be in the nation's long-term interests) to get his way with Abkhazia (though I still not see an independent South Ossetia in the cards).

Given this, I believe that the international community needs to begin addressing the implications of the “fourth wave” of newly independent states within and on the borders of the European Union. The first and most important wave (1918-1922) resulted from the breakup of the Romanov, Habsburg, Ottoman, and Hohenzollern empires after the Great War, creating Cazecholovakia & the Baltics and reviving Poland and Albania. While the second wave (1945-1969) which was associated with decolonization did little to redraw borders in Europe, the loss of colonial possessions did much to change the face of the Continent. The third wave (1989-1993) again remade the map of Eastern Europe, as the federal states of Yugoslavia and the USSR disintegrated. Today, we sit in the liminal space between waves three and four. In addition to Kosovo, Republika Srpska, Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Flanders, Wallonia, Euskadi (Basque Country), Catalunya, Padania, Corsica, and various ethno-republics of the Russian Federation are clamoring for absolute autonomy or outright independence. The devolution of power to regional and ethnic areas which the EU has facilitated over the years is a powerful catalyst for these polities. Kosovo’s independence will encourage them even more.

Inside the European Union (especially within the Euro- and Schengen-zones), granting independence is a bureaucratic nightmare, but will have little effect on peace and stability. Outside its borders, things are much stickier—especially where Russian troops might have a say in territorial transfers. Regardless, the lawless statelets which have proliferated since 1989 are a major problem and must be addressed soon. Forcing breakaway republics to adopt parts of the acquis communautaire could possibly function as tool to reduce crime, trafficking, etc. However, to get to that point, the EU needs a policy. In post-Soviet space, it will be Russia that rewards and punishes behavior, and so the Kremlin will need to do its part as well. The question is: how comfortable is the international community with the fracturing of the current state system? Is a 300-member UN anathema or could it be accommodated?

A unified position is the only way forward. Back in the early 1990s, Bush the Elder told Croatia and Slovenia not to jump ship, but there were back channel signals which contradicted this official position, and, of course, the Germans did not hide their feelings about Croatian and Slovene independence. Currently, such mixed messages again proliferate. As Miodrag pointed out in his earlier post, a common EU position on Kosovo itself is almost unimaginable, much less a concerted agreement on the general trend towards splinter states. This situation is likely to emerge as an important shibboleth in years to come. Angela Merkel has shown an amazing propensity for ostrich-like behavior on tough issues, so don’t look to Germany to provide answers. I suspect it instead be Nicholas Sarkozy that decides the future of the European map.