Index – Foreign – Balkans 2020: Churchill is right

We have known since Winston Churchill: the Balkans produce more history than they can consume. But the 2020 coronavirus epidemic has put their economies in the Western Balkans to the test of their brain drain from weak legs and brains anyway. The countries of the region have not been able to draw up serious economic protection plans, they are heavily in debt: more recently, Montenegro had to be rescued from the risk of state bankruptcy with a loan of 750 million euros.

The words of the patriarch

The best-known victim of the coronavirus in the region to date was the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Irinej, who died in November. For decades, he defined the spiritual-political direction of a church that is present in almost all Yugoslav successor states.

The successor to the religious leader who left at the age of 90 is expected to be elected in early 2021. And the identity of the successor is by no means a trifling issue: the Orthodox Church has traditionally played a prominent role in politics. Serbian identity.

Irinej was one of the most determined opponents of the recognition of an independent Kosovo. According to Hit,

what we give away is lost forever, but what is lost by force can be legitimately claimed at any time.

The patriarch was undoubtedly a wise man, but now he is

because for some time the will of the United States and NATO will prevail in the Balkans.

In 2020, NATO stationed some 4,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo; more than ten percent of them were Hungarian soldiers. According to Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, the Hungarian force is expected to be led by a Hungarian general in the fall of 2021.

The tentacles of NATO

As the most important geopolitical event in the Balkans this year, North Macedonia became a member of NATO in March, leaving only Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo to form an island in the embrace of NATO members. The Adriatic and Ionian coasts from Istria to Corfu had previously been under Alliance military control; this was completed with the accession of Montenegro in 2018. And now the land link between NATO members in the Western Balkans (Croatia, Montenegro, Albania) and the “Eastern Balkans” (Romania, Bulgaria) has been established, which would have originally took place in 2009, at the same time as Croatia and Albania. Of course, only if there isn’t a protracted dispute over Greek-Macedonian names that has sentenced Skopje to a decade behind schedule.

North Macedonia could not rejoice much at the conclusion of the name dispute and the fact that in March 2020 it finally received a political invitation from the European Union to start accession negotiations. Starting in November, it became increasingly clear that another hurdle had emerged: Bulgaria vetoed the start of accession talks with North Macedonia in December, while the Netherlands prevented Albania from starting talks. The question for 2021 is whether the departure of the Biden administration, who will take office in the United States, on the international stage can give new impetus to the enlargement of the EU from abroad.

This year, the US and the EU have finally sought to give a new impetus to the dialogue aimed at normalizing relations between Belgrade and Pristina. In early September, the Serbian head of state and the Kosovo prime minister were sitting at a table in Washington to sign a series of promises with them.

In addition to stabilizing the Western Balkans, this measure by the US administration was also part of a policy of restraint against growing Russian and Chinese influence. The Russians are supplying Serbia with more and more arms, building strong positions in the region’s energy sector, but also present in the Balkans through their ecclesiastical and political ties. The Chinese have become major players in commerce, the high-tech sector, and certain infrastructure projects, in fact over the course of a decade. The Biden administration is likely to make more efforts in 2021 to curb the rise of Russians and Chinese in the region: in this, continuity is expected between the policies of the outgoing Republicans and the return to power of the Democrats.

They slowly approach each other

Although the EU tried to capitalize on the September momentum of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue in Washington, negotiations slowed in the fall when the Serbs refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence without further compensation. And the Kosovo Albanians are not prepared for any concessions. Former Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák, who has been tasked with mediating the talks, has so far shown that his diplomatic and political expertise and experience in the region are insufficient to stop disputes between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs. .

Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1997-2001) outlined some priorities at a hearing before the Washington House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month, which aimed to compile policy recommendations for the Biden administration. In addition to the growing influence of Russia and China, and the corruption that slows the development of the entire region, he mentioned two risks with special emphasis. These:

• Serbia remains reluctant to recognize the independence of its former province, Kosovo, respectively.
• The majority Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Republika Srpska) is threatened with secession.

Bosnian games

Behind this 15-year threat is Milorad Dodik, the current Serbian member of the Bosnian collective presidency, former prime minister and Bosnian Serb president, and the power structure behind him. In 1998, Dodik’s party still had only two representatives in the Banja Luka legislature from the Bosnian Serb entity formed in the wake of bloody ethnic cleansing. Yet over the past decade and a half, with its loud populist rhetoric, it has become a dominant and almost invincible force.

Unexpectedly, in the November municipal elections, a new 27-year-old political star, a millionaire hotbed from the Balkans, conquered the state capital, Banja Luka, from Dodik’s party. In his anger and fear for the young contender for the throne, Dodik already threatens to turn off all the taps, leaving the great city of the opposition starving. It does not take much fortune to predict: in 2021, this nest of opposition will already enjoy informal protection by the administration. If for no other reason, at least to break the pepper under the nose of Dodik, who has had the reputation of a Russian friend for some time.

Moscow’s leadership does not have to put 2020 into a dueling framework in the Balkans. What they tried to achieve with another failed coup a few years ago was the completion of the August parliamentary elections in Montenegro. In early December, a pro-Belgrade, pro-Russia government was formed in Podgorica, a NATO member country with 25 percent of its public debt held by China. The 22-year-old Independence Party has now been replaced by political forces culminating in anti-corruption rhetoric that are ready to help Moscow’s interests in regional politics. It was immediately suspected that they appeared to be backsliding in the recognition of Kosovo’s independence, although this had been initially refuted.

A taxi revolution on the horizon?

It’s as if Kosovo doesn’t have enough problems without him. In the spring, right in the middle of the first wave of the epidemic, the government of the charismatic Albin Kurti was overthrown with a motion of no confidence, in which the country’s young generation put tremendous hopes in the 2019 elections to eradicate the corruption that threatens the lives of many. Behind the parliamentary coup was allegedly the confidence of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, Richard Grenell: Kurti, known as an inflexible individual, did not want to stand up fast enough on some issues of the dialogue with Serbia. The Self-Determination Movement, winner of the elections, has thus recovered the opposition after four months of government, and the existence of the current ruling coalition has been suspended for months due to the minimal parliamentary majority. The political instability is compounded by the fact that, in the meantime, a special court has been established in Kosovo to investigate the war crimes committed by the Kosovar Albanian guerrilla army in The Hague. As a result, the head of state, two former presidents had to travel to The Hague, and the line was certainly not over.

In the person of the new Kosovo president, the current ruling coalition has not been able to reach an agreement so far, so one of the first major events next year may be the snap elections in Kosovo. In just 13 years since independence, this would be the fifth. And if that happens, Self-Determination, which grew out of the radical student movement, will almost certainly win out at an even faster rate than in 2019. This would bring another anti-corruption “niche revolution” in the Balkans after Montenegro, forcing the former political elite, which had been in power for two decades, to the opposition.

The author is a senior researcher at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economy.

(Top Image: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stands next to Patriarch Irinej’s glass-roofed coffin at a funeral ceremony at St. Sava Church in Belgrade on November 22, 2020. Photo: Vladimir Zivojinovic / Getty Images Hungary)