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Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia’s Interior Minister, has become chief
spokesman for an idea he attributes to President Vucic: the “Serbian
world.”* This is a warmed up version of the Greater Serbia Slobodan
Milosevic failed to create because he lost four wars in the 1990s.
Vulin is clear that what he intends is military conquest, if need
be. Serbia, he says, must “have an army capable of preserving both
it and the Serbs wherever they live.” Serbs of course live in many
places–notably also the US and Canada–but Vulin’s real meaning is
clear to everyone in the Balkans. He means Serbia should be capable
of defending Serbs in neighboring countries: principally Bosnia,
Montenegro, Kosovo, and Croatia.
In classic aggressor fashion, Vulin attributes this need to harm
done to Serbs. Self-victimization is a classic precursor to
violence. The Serbian Academy memorandum that Milosevic used to
justify his wars focuses on the claim that Serbs were the victims of
an unjust Yugoslavia. Hitler justified his aggression against
Czechoslovakia and Poland on grounds that Germans were victims.
Stalin claimed Communists were the victims when he joined with the
Nazis to invade Poland. The factual basis of such claims is
irrelevant. Their main purpose is to justify aggression, not to seek
justice.
Meanwhile, the Serbian member of the presidency of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, is preemptively warning the US
ambassador that he won’t accept the decision to replace the
international community “high representative” in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, who is responsible for implementation of the Dayton
peace accords. Dodik claims he will defend Dayton himself. What he
means is that he will defend his version of the agreements, which
claims that Republika Srpska (RS), the 49% of the territory he
represents, is sovereign and should be independent. You won’t find
that in the Dayton accords. Dodik would no doubt take an independent
RS into the “Serbian home.” Never mind that the Dayton accords
guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
In Kosovo, the Serbian aim is also partition. Serbia wants the four
majority-Serb municipalities in the north. In Montenegro, a
pro-Serbian coalition now has a one-vote majority in parliament.
Most of them, too, are “Serbian world”* affiliates, but their
purpose seems not to divide Montenegro but to make it a solid
Serbian stronghold, despite the resistance of both those who
identify as Montenegrins and well as the country’s Albanian,
Bosniak, and other minorities. The “Serbian home” doesn’t like to
acknowledge that non-Serbs have rights too, or that they are
sometimes victims.
President Vucic was elected on a pro-European platform. But he
abandoned that years ago. He is now an unabashed supporter of ethnic
division throughout the Balkans. He may get the word out through
Vulin and Dodik. And he is cautious in dealing with Serbia’s own
minorities, as was Milosevic. You don’t want to start nasty at home
if you are planning nasty to your neighbors, as that could weaken
the home front. But Vucic is increasingly aligned with China and
Russia, both of which are much closer to his views on ethnicity and
minorities than Brussels or Washington.
Bottom line: the “Serbian world”* is a peril to non-Serbs and a
threat to regional peace and stability. The Americans and Europeans
need to recognize it for the illiberal, anti-democratic notion that
it is and counter it and its advocates as best they can. They aren’t
doing that yet.
*I originally wrote for “home” for “svet.” It should have been
“world.” My bad. |
