FLASH
Shkruar nga Daniel Serwer
American policy must return to favoring its friends in the Balkans and against its enemies. This should not be too difficult to do.
The US ambassador in Belgrade has praised the cooperation with the Serbian Army even though the president of Serbia makes clear his intention to invade Kosovo at an appropriate moment. The question is how can both be true?
No big puzzle
It's not really hard to figure this out. Serbia cooperates with US and NATO exercises for two reasons. First, they provide good training, which the Russians are unable to achieve. The performance of the Russian military in Ukraine has improved, but its losses are simply colossal. No one would want to imitate them. Second, NATO exercises provide excellent opportunities to gather intelligence. This will serve well in any Serbian military action against NATO-led forces in Kosovo. Belgrade, no doubt, also feeds this intelligence back to Moscow.
Only slightly more difficult to understand is the reference to the Kosovo Security Force (KSF) as the KLA (or Kosovo Liberation Army). The KLA was demobilized after the 1999 war. The KSF that exists today is the creation of American and British training and equipping several generations of organization and personnel left by the KLA. The American ambassador in Belgrade knows this very well. But his reference to the KLA is meant to signal that he agrees with the Serbian government that the KSF is illegitimate.
The petting didn't work
This coddling of Vučić has become default behavior in Belgrade. The question is why it is tolerated in Washington. I think there is a reason. But they are unlikely to be good. No amount of slapping will change Belgrade's decision to align itself with Russia. Vucic has made it clear that he intends to try to take back a part of Kosovo whenever he gets the chance. Any deal in Ukraine to hand over territory to Russia will offer this opportunity.
Washington should reconsider its long-standing efforts to prosecute Vucic. That attempt has failed. It has also encouraged his irredentist ambitions, not only in Kosovo, but also in Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The "Serbian world" he aims for is strictly analogous to the "Russian world" that President Putin is trying to create in Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, and more ambitiously in Ukraine. The West should oppose Russian and Serbian ethno-territorial ambitions, not encourage them. Instead, Washington is doubling down on a policy that has failed to produce anything more than minor results.
A better policy would not be difficult to find
A reassessment is overdue. The current Trumpian fondness for ethnonationalism and irredentism is inconsistent with the liberal Democratic pretensions of the Biden administration. Blinken, it's the hard-travelling body and no doubt the preoccupied minds must be telling Assistant Secretary of State Jim O'Brien: we have failed to keep Vucic on our side. Let's try tough love.
This means reading the riot act to many things. First would be the prioritization of justice, preferably in Kosovo, for the organizers and perpetrators of the September 24 terrorist incident that Belgrade sponsored within Kosovo. The second would be to ensure that Pristina receives the support it needs not only for membership in the Council of Europe and relief from the outdated and counterproductive "consequences" of the EU, but also for the opening of negotiations for NATO membership. The third would be the willingness to denounce any fraud in preparation for the next iteration of the Belgrade elections.
I could go on, but you get the point. American policy must return to favoring its friends in the Balkans and against its enemies. This should not be too difficult to do. Double the success, not the failure./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Peacefare"
Lini një Përgjigje