Dominique Moise writes: The Balkans continue to constitute a threat to European peace, just as they did on the eve of World War I and at the end of the Cold War, when Yugoslavia’s implosion led not only to Europe’s first war since 1945, but also to the return of genocidal murder. The recent fighting in Macedonia, which left eight police officers and 14 Albanian militants dead, raises the specter of renewed violence.
The region remains an explosive and confused reality, one capable of threatening Europe’s stability, already on a knife’s edge following Russia’s adventurism in Ukraine. The region is a volatile mix of rising nationalism, deep economic frustration, and disillusionment about progress toward membership in the European Union.
From the Serbs’ perspective, attacks by Albanian nationalists were more likely the beginning of an attempt to enlarge their territory at the expense of their Christian neighbors, beginning with the weakest.
It is views like these that, along with the violence, risk reinforcing the deep ambivalence within the EU about the prospect of any new enlargement. The precedent of Greece, hardly a poster child for European accession, seems especially relevant when applied to its northern neighbors, which are similarly plagued with high rates of corruption and unemployment. And some in the EU are put off by the seeming affinity of the Orthodox Church and its adherents toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia, or by the region’s large Muslim population.
Europhilia has begun to give way in places like Belgrade to a pining nostalgia for the Yugoslav era. “At that time, we were respected,” was how a retired Serbian diplomat put it to me. “We were one of the Great countries of the Non-Aligned Movement.”
Similar sentiments are evident in Bosnia, and even in Croatia, an EU member since 2013. During the communist era, Yugoslavia provided a sharp contrast with the Soviet bloc. Economically and socially, its citizens were far better off than those of Central Europe. Today, their fortunes have flipped. Poland is booming, while Yugoslavia’s successor states (with the exception of Slovenia) are struggling.
Russian re-conquest of Crimea provides a gleeful talking point for ultra-nationalist Serbs bemoaning the loss of Albanian-majority Kosovo. Meanwhile, the Gazprom office in central Belgrade offers a large, visible proof of Russia’s energy presence in the country.
The truth, of course, is that there is no “Russian model” for the Balkans beyond the use of brute force. Ever-closer ties with Europe remain the best way forward for the region’s residents and the EU alike. In a time of severe economic crisis, European ideals remain, in spite of everything, the only efficient antidote to virulent nationalism. For the Balkans, as for the rest of Europe, the EU is the only alternative to a future as bad as the worst of the past.
