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Putin’s brain, or brainlessness?
So is there hope for progress?
The moment is not propitious. Serbia has aligned
itself with Russia, not only on Ukraine, and the Serb-ruled 49% of
Bosnia and Herzegovina is Moscow’s lap dog, as Dugin makes clear.
The US, UK, and the European Union are preoccupied with helping the
Ukrainians respond to Russian aggression. The Balkan region is way
down the list of urgencies.
Besides, the 2022 and 2024 US elections will soon
focus American attention on domestic issues. Everyone in the Balkans
will be holding their breath to see if Donald Trump has a real
chance of returning to the White House. If it looks good for him,
Serbia will want to continue to pause the dialogue with Kosovo, as
Trump was sympathetic to Belgrade’s territorial ambitions. If
Pristina wants anything from the dialogue, it needs to get it soon.
Acknowledgement of abuses may be a
non-starter
Listening to both Kosovo President Osmani and
Prime Minister Kurti’s public statements, my sense is that they
would both like Serbian President Vucic to acknowledge the abuses of
the Milosevic regime in Kosovo in the 1990s. Vucic, who served in
that regime, has been unwilling, both in public and in private. He
suffers from a severe case of amnesia and “bothsideism.” Kurti, who
spent time reading Sartre in a Serbian prison during the 1999 war,
remembers well. Neither has a domestic political constituency that
yearns for an agreement.
But Vucic’s acknowledgement of the Serbian effort
to ethnically cleanse Albanians from Kosovo and of the thousands of
rapes by Serbian forces would open the way to improved cooperation,
as exhorted in the 2010 General Assembly resolution that launched
the dialogue. Kurti would need to acknowledge Albanian abuses
against Serbs and Roma, even if much smaller in number. Such
acknowledgements would need to be coupled with as full accounting
for missing people by both governments as possible. That would clear
the way for exchange of bodies and provision for appropriate
memorialization in both countries.
License plates should be easier
There should be room to resolve the issue that
caused a brouhaha last fall: mutual acceptance of license plates. So
far negotiations for a permanent solution have failed, due to
Serbia’s refusal to allow Kosovo plates to enter the country with
indications of where they originate. The current practice–covering
state symbols on both Kosovo and Serbian plates before allowing
entry–is a modest improvement on Serbia’s prior requirement that
Kosovo plates be replaced with Serbian ones, but it is still
wasteful and juvenile.
Accepting license plates and Kosovo documents is
not the same as recognizing Kosovo as a sovereign state. The five
non-recognizing members of the EU accept lots of Kosovo documents
and also maintain diplomatic representation in Pristina. Serbia
should do likewise.
Electricity is harder
Pristina wants the Serbs in northern Kosovo to
start paying for electricity, which a Kosovo entity has provided
free since 1999. This is reasonable, but if Pristina insists
Belgrade may supply the electricity from Serbia, further detaching
the northern municipalities from Pristina’s governance, an important
Serbian objective. As tens of millions of euros are at issue, this
one won’t be easy to resolve on its own. A broader financial
settlement may be possible.
Hedging and bandwagoning
While these issues eat away at mutual confidence,
Serbia has been re-arming itself and deploying forces near and
around Kosovo. Belgrade tells Washington Serbian cooperation with
NATO is much deeper and more important than cooperation with Russia.
But the Defense Ministry vaunts a historical maximum in defense
cooperation with Russia, which has provided fighter jets and tanks
as well as lots of other goodies. Vucic has increasingly aligned
himself politically and militarily with Moscow and Beijing, not only
on Ukraine. He claims non-alignment, but hedging is difficult in an
era of geopolitical tension. He has tilted way over to the East.
Dugin knows of what he speaks.
By contrast, Kosovo has no hedging option so
bandwagons with NATO, which is still responsible for defending its
sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pristina’s army, which the US
and UK mentor, is slated to be fully operational in 2027. It will be
NATO compatible. A few of its soldiers have already deployed with
the Americans. Kosovo quickly welcomed Afghan and now Ukrainian
refugees, aligns solidly with sanctions on Russia, and is providing
de-mining training to Ukrainians.
So the dialogue is not just between Kosovo and
Serbia, but also between West and East. As Lenin put it: “show me
who your friends are, and I will tell you what you are.”
Maybe smaller is better for now
The situation is not “ripe” for a big agreement.
Before 2010, when the more political version was launched, the
dialogue focused on small, “technical” issues like Kosovo’s
international calling code, return of cultural artifacts, and mutual
recognition of diplomas. Maybe it is time to go back to
those–including missing persons and license plates. Another
possibility is a regional negotiation of basic principles of mutual
behavior, which are sorely lacking. Neither idea is as grand as
“normalizing relations” or mutual recognition. But maybe smaller is
better for now.
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