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They could even go farther by saying Croatia will
block Serbia’s membership indefinitely if he dies in his bed in
Serbia (still spitting out his venom of hate and national
obscurantism) without having gone back to sit out the interminable
ritual by which the Tribunal continues to slouch toward its end. It
is important not to just ignore a creature as malevolent as Šešelj,
even if he is well past his political prime.
Perhaps Zagreb and Belgrade (where there is a
government as embarrassed by Šešelj as others are angered by him)
should strike a deal that would keep Šešelj in Serbia as a sort of
object lesson and entertainment vehicle. The authorities at a zoo
could put him in a cage—dressed in his Chetnik finery—and let him
spew forth his rants as long as his lungs permit. Teachers could
bring school children to see for themselves what the face of hate
and horror looks like.
Adults would be reminded of how it felt when
politics, society, and security all collapsed at once. They also
would remember that in the 1990s Šešelj was not alone. He was only
among the most rabid of nationalists on all sides of the complicated
set of disputes that shattered an economic and (potential) social
federal structure that—with all its faults and history as an
oppressive Serb Kingdom and then a Communist dictatorship—could have
led to something better than the chaos that has replaced it.
Instead, thanks to Slovene and Croatian fictions about their
“Central European” status, Milosevic’s short-sighted bully-boy
tactics, Serbian enthusiasm for artillery, and international
determination to impose teleology rather than think through a set of
problems, what the region has now has no functioning formal
structure at all. The patronage networks provide what passes for a
political and economic system.
Seselj-watchers of all ages would be well-served
to see in his contorted face the kind of mis-directed passion that
kills countries, poisons communities, and leaves the kinds of scars
that do not easily heal. The layered conflicts that have afflicted
the Balkans since the 1870s still resonate—no matter the serial
declarations by generations of local activists and international
activists that the region has moved on. The bedrock truth is that
there are as yet no final statuses in a shatter zone that remains
dependent on the latest version of international oversight.
Serbia’s official reaction to having Šešelj dumped
in their trash bin is instructive in this regard. Prime Minister
Vučić had the option of welcoming, noting, or ignoring a European
Parliament resolution condemning the tribunal’s decision to disgorge
this defendant. Instead, he condemned the Parliament’s action and
reminded its members of the hypocrisy involved in its expressions of
anger. This was meant for internal consumption, of course, but that
is the point. Serbia’s political class reasonably worries about
being outflanked by nationalists who still can play on the general
belief that Serbia was a victim, not a perpetrator of the events of
the 1990s.
Vučić also should be excused for perhaps being a
little miffed that the tribunal decided to dump this problem on a
government already dealing with economic problems (and its
Ukraine-based balancing act between Russia and the West). This is
the sort of blunder that feeds the conspiracy theory machine that is
so central to Balkan thinking. Alexander Vulin’s is not the only
overheated mind that believes the US ordered the Tribunal to release
Seselj in order to destroy the current Serbian government. Fantasies
of international plots help the locals construct rationales as to
why they are the pawns of outsiders who do nothing but think up ways
to make them miserable. This makes it easy for Balkan politicians
and some public intellectuals to avoid taking responsibility for
their own future.
Šešelj’s nonsense has focused public and elite
attention on the record of the 1990s in Bosnia and Croatia. There is
good reason for that, but the publicity blip surrounding his
reappearance also reflects on Kosova. The conventional wisdom is
that the deal struck in April 2013 between Belgrade and Pristina
marks Serbia’s practical acknowledgement that its former province
really is lost, and that the technical negotiations will lead to
Belgrade’s acknowledgment of Kosova’s independence sometime before
it finalizes its entry into the EU.
This is not the case. Belgrade’s reaction to the
European Parliament’s Seselj resolution is a reminder that Serbia
will not accept Kosova’s sovereignty—and there is no reason for
Belgrade to do so, as long as the EU continues to equivocate as to
whether recognizing Kosova is a non-negotiable condition for
Serbia’s entry. It does not matter that many Serbian politicians and
publicists would not mind seeing the back of a place that actually
was a part of the modern Serbian state from 1912-3 until 1999. These
notables may well tell Western interlocutors privately that this is
the case, but those outsiders should not make the mistake of
imagining that something said privately to them is more important
and more authoritative than public statements meant for those
peoples’ constituents. The opposite is true.
Šešelj’s noise also underscores the continuing
difficulty the US has in its flagging effort to get the five EU
members who do not recognize Kosova to do so. The unexpected result
of Romania’s presidential election may well focus Washington on
pressing President-elect Iohannis and a weakened Prime Minister
Ponta to be the first of the five to change its policy. My guess is
that Ponta’s embarrassment at the polls will make this less likely
to happen—at least until he restores some sense of balance to his
internal political compass. Ponta needs to take the measure of
Iohannis and deal with dissent from inside his party. Iohannis,
meanwhile, will ponder what sort of a stamp he will put on his
country’s foreign policy. The US’s best shot would be to press
Bucharest to use recognition of Kosova as a low-cost means of
demonstrating Romania’s opposition to Russia’s intervention in
Ukraine. The West as a whole could attempt to get Slovakia to follow
suit and then round on Belgrade to suggest its reluctance to join
the sanctions regime against Moscow and recalcitrance regarding its
Lost Province are untenable.
The chance of such a strategy working would be
low, of course, but at worst it would just become another chapter in
the record of American diplomatic failure over Kosova since 2006. If
Washington is lucky, Šešelj will do it the favor of making enough
noise to seriously annoy at least two of the EU-5.
Meanwhile, the fallout from the Šešelj
release—limited as it likely will be—will obstruct relations among
the other shards of the former Yugoslavia. Slovenia and Croatia can
use the brouhaha to assuage their pain over internal political
problems and their shift in status from relatively will-off parts of
the shattered Federation to struggling states at the periphery of
the EU. Slovenes and Croats can tell themselves that at least they
are superior to the Serbs. By taking advantage of the Šešelj
distraction, weakened Bosnia Serb strongman Milorad Dodik can ramp
up his secessionist rhetoric, even as he maneuvers to lash his
declining patronage machine to Bosnjak and Bosnian Croat
counterparts.
The fact these inter-elite chess games further
push back any hope of meaningful political and structural change
once again demonstrates the bedrock dysfunctionality of Bosnia. It
also will give hope to Šešelj and this who think (if that is the
right word) like him that someday they or their children can provoke
the new regional conflict they seek.
David B. Kanin is an adjunct professor of
international relations at Johns Hopkins University and a former
senior intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA). |
