By Denko Maleski
Once again, these are dangerous times for the small Balkan states. The frozen conflict between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo is beginning to thaw.
What awaits us?
Will it engulf us all?
That depends primarily on future U.S. policies, but also, to some extent, on our own domestic and foreign policies.
Following its own national interests, American power is retreating from Europe, including the Balkans. Closing the war with Russia is its priority. After that, the U.S. intends to transfer responsibility for European security to European nations, including security in Ukraine and the Balkans. The rise of a powerful rival, China, necessitates shifting American power to Asia. What happens to small states in this process of strategic realignment towards the primary threat to U.S. security is of secondary importance to the great powers.
“I am reading your book ‘Diplomacy,’” a Macedonian ambassador once told Henry Kissinger on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
“Stop reading it,” Kissinger replied. “That book is about great powers, not about you. In fact, it might even be against you, small states like Macedonia.”
What will the new relations between the U.S. and Russia bring to the Balkans if the war in Ukraine is resolved? If you remember what Julius Nyerere once said—that the grass suffers when elephants fight, but also when they make love—then it is worth seriously contemplating our future.
How can we predict the future of the Balkans and U.S. behavior? If you want to understand someone’s future behavior, look at their past actions. The administration of Donald Trump has returned to power, and during his first term, at one point, he proposed the partition of Kosovo. After the case of Ukraine and the misguided policy of the Biden administration in projecting its and NATO’s military power in Ukraine, at Russia’s borders, and after Zelensky’s mistakes, we must think feverishly—with our own minds. We must, but we cannot. There is no such potential in scientific and political institutions that have been ‘occupied’ for more than three decades by people who have refused to work in the interest of their own nation. Given this, we will wait for the great powers to ‘decide.’ And do not complain later if they decide incorrectly, when you have left everything in their hands and refused to lift even a finger.
If everything in the new U.S. president’s policy comes down to costs, we may not be far from the new administration’s decision to withdraw from the expensive project with the EU aimed at reconciliation among Balkan nations within and between multinational states. The alternative is some version of Richard Grenell’s plan, Trump’s former special envoy for the Balkans, who may once again take on that role. I am referring to his plan to partition Kosovo. Today, Kosovo’s relations with the U.S. are strained. When Kurti claimed that under his leadership, Kosovo had improved its relations with the U.S., Grenell responded that Kurti was ‘delusional,’ that he ‘cannot be trusted,’ and that ‘relations have never been at a lower level.’
Under such circumstances, everyone who values peace would agree that, in cooperation with the Biden administration, it would have been better for Kosovo to resolve the issue of Serbian municipal autonomy and for Macedonia to settle its historical dispute with Bulgaria. Now, we must wait to see where the new Trump administration will make its move. In fact, according to the ‘no more free protection’ doctrine, it would be enough for Trump to close the Bondsteel military base.
And that is not the end of the story. Then, another plan is likely to resurface—the one that leaked in the form of a ‘non-paper’ during Slovenia’s presidency under Janez Janša. According to that plan, ethnic communities homogenized by the Yugoslav wars should be allowed to fall into Greater Serbia, Greater Albania, and Greater Croatia to eliminate the causes of ethnic conflicts in the Balkans. Without this, the plan’s authors argue, there will be no real peace or European integration for our region. Naturally, those drafting such plans are not disturbed by the likelihood that the fall of these dominoes would be accompanied by wars. They care even less about the fate of the smallest and weakest.
Whatever happens, if the U.S. leads in this direction, the fate of two ethnic communities—Bosnian Muslims and Macedonians—will be the most uncertain.
