If anyone can perceive the lousy and unnecessary tug-of-war between the United States and Kosovo, it is Volodymyr Zelensky. Ask the Ukrainian president to grant autonomy to ethnic Russians, and Zelensky will ask you without delay 3 questions: Will Russian speakers settle down?Will Russia recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity?And will granting autonomy nevertheless allow us to join NATO?
If anyone can perceive the lousy and unnecessary tug-of-war between the United States and Kosovo, it is Volodymyr Zelensky. Ask the Ukrainian president to grant autonomy to ethnic Russians, and Zelensky will ask you without delay 3 questions: Will Russian speakers settle down?Will Russia recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity?And will granting autonomy nevertheless allow us to join NATO?
The inability of the United States and the European Union to answer those same questions, implemented in Kosovo and Serbia, is at the root of the struggle of self-destructive forces of the West with Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti. Instead of autonomy strategically, as Zelensky would and as Russian President Vladimir Putin does, Biden’s management officials are as dogmatic as Kosovo’s prime minister, who has drawn the ire of the West.
Washington has focused on Pristina’s long-standing obligation, recently accepted through Kurti, to create an agreement of Serb-majority municipalities. Frustrated with Kosovo’s prime minister for setting up their situations to create the deal, and furious over his recent reckless special police operation in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, Biden’s leadership has already punished Kosovo and is about to inflict more pain.
Ignoring the pressure, Kurti has so far rejected US and EU demands to withdraw special police from the north, remove newly installed mayors from municipal buildings and head for new elections. Kurti insists that the Serbs who attacked NATO and Kosovo police on May 29 first come to justice, as part of the prime minister’s five-point plan to reduce tensions. In another Serbian boycott of the elections, Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani, who largely supports Kurti’s line, has proposed that at least 20% of the electorate signal a petition for a new election.
With his defiance, Kurti angered the United States, Kosovo’s top ally, alienated Kosovo’s Serb population and strengthened Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, just as the autocrat faces unprecedented domestic protests. Washington’s preference for imposing more sanctions on Kosovo is understandable.
This is also a serious mistake. Washington and Brussels largely blame for the crisis, adding to the premeditated violence inflicted by Serbs opposing NATO peacekeepers. of the United States],” as U. S. Ambassador to Serbia Christopher Hill said in an interview with Serbia’s Voice of America service, give Secretary of State Antony Blinken a break.
Instead of letting frustration advise policy toward Kosovo, or allowing the ghost to advise policy toward Serbia, Blinken urgently wants to reexamine his administration’s approach. Persuaded through his subordinates, Blinken signed an agreement with Vucic. Serbia for Ukraine is reportedly reflected in US clemency. The U. S. government turned to Vucic, which revived the “Great Serb” nationalism that led Belgrade to clash with its neighbors and NATO in the 1990s. As Hill explained of aid to Ukraine, “when there are other people on board, relations improve. “the administration’s stance towards Serbia.
What bothers Blinken is that Moscow is hardly fazed by any of the Biden administration’s achievements with the Vucic regime. The Serbian-Russian relationship continues despite Belgrade’s symbolic, and selfish, Kosovo-related votes against Russia at the UN General Assembly. As fashionable Western weapons turn the tide of the war against Russia, the Kremlin has dismissed reports, shown through Vucic, that Soviet-era Serbian munitions ended up in Ukraine. EU, they make their way through the Balkans.
As Serbia diversifies its fuel supply, Belgrade has doubled its share of Russian oil. The concept that Vucic will hand over Serbia’s lithium deposits to the West now sounds like Serbian citizens, many of whom are fiercely opposed to lithium mining, are mobilizing against their authoritarian president. Vucic’s tight pro-Russian ego, intelligence leader Aleksandar Vulin, just attended a primary security convention in Moscow, “signaling to centers of Western forces that Serbia has a [Russian] adjustment. “Serbia remains the only European country besides Belarus that is a best friend of the Kremlin: not to sanction Russia.
The fact is that Putin believes that he, the West, is winning in the Balkans at a very low price. From the Kremlin’s perspective, the disorder in a region where the US, EU and NATO have strategic merit is proof that the Biden administration knows how to exercise power. If Vucic, without nuclear weapons and large reserves of oil and fuel, can confuse the West, then so can Putin. Moscow understands that Kosovo, the power or the Slavic Orthodox brotherhood, is the catalyst for Serbian-Russian relations and regional destabilization promoted from Belgrade.
With almost devout conviction, U. S. officials embrace Serbian autonomy as the holy grail for closing the Kosovo problem. In reality, granting a deal to the Kosovo Serbs, without increasing Kosovo’s popularity among the Serbs and the entire NATO alliance, is a voluminous proposition. Not that Russia also defends the Serbian autonomy program, in the same evangelistic language as American and European officials. Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, told news firm TASS that he expired last month.
The Kremlin understands what Washington and Brussels do not: the proposed arrangement is a vehicle for assigning Serbian ambition, not to Kosovo Serbs. Vucic does not need any edition of the arrangement that is compatible with the sovereignty, territorial integrity and functionality of Kosovo. According to assurances from senior US officials, Washington has not shown that it can convince Belgrade to adhere to some form of stabilization of autonomy, even in the vague sense proposed by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
On the contrary, officials are pressuring Kosovo to negotiate the Serbian autonomy proposal, although they admit that it is totally unacceptable. Validating a destructive opening position is a classic negotiation pitfall. agreement reached on 18 March, the day on which the EU and the USThey declared it “legally binding,” although the Serbian president refused to point it out.
The United States, the European Union or even NATO also do not seem to master the threat of validating physically destructive Serbian tactics in northern Kosovo. While a U. S. KFOR officer on the floor was furious over the May 29 attacks on Serbs, officials vilified Kurti, allowing Vucic to escape. Unimpeded. This is unforgivable given the use of conscientiously designed explosive contraptions that require preparation, which simply cannot go unnoticed in Belgrade.
Hill blames Kosovo, a country in which he is not accredited, while ignoring Belgrade’s incendiary actions. In December, Vucic called Kurti a “terrorist scum. ” In April, Vucic promoted a boycott of Kosovo’s Serb elections in the north, calling Kosovo’s government “occupiers. “With exorbitant demands, the Serbian president continues to save the Kosovo Serbs from opting for their leaders.
Last winter, U. S. officials were not able to do so. The US and NATO gave credence to Belgrade’s brazen call to send its troops into Kosovo and rationalized the threatening barricades deployed in the north of the country. Guards General now sees Vucic as the key to stability, days after the Serbian leader put his forces on high alert and failed to prevent attacks on NATO, prompting a buildup of KFOR troops.
There is no doubt that Kurti, having ignored the transparent and coordinated calls of the US. The U. S. and NATO are complicit in the violence. Unfortunately, the same is true for U. S. negotiators. The US and European affairs, led by the EU’s foreign affairs leader, Josep Borrell. In March, the EU and U. S. The US allowed Vucic to leave Ohrid, North Macedonia, the site of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, without committing the Serbs to return to Kosovo’s settlements and participate in municipal elections.
This puzzling oversight paralyzed autonomy negotiations, in which duly elected Serb representatives would play a key role. Successful elections would have legitimized the representatives in the eyes of all parties, adding those in Pristina, and marked a turning point in the bitter and manufactured strike. of Serbs on the overdue overdue licence arrears. Kurti’s unforeseen acceptance of the deal gave negotiators an opportunity to press Vucic for this important show of intelligent faith. Instead, the U. S. , hosted through Kosovo in favor of the U. S. , paved the way for the crisis.
Thinly veiled U. S. threats to topple the Kurti government over the deal, a difficult tactic also contracted in 2020 through the Trump administration, make it difficult to perceive the Biden administration’s failure to create or even perceive the situations to achieve autonomy. As the administration might eventually notice in Ukraine, autonomy is a matter of final status, representing the last lever of a country facing a hostile and irredentist neighbor like Russia or Serbia.
Unfortunately, the Brussels-Ohrid agreement between the United States and the United States. The US-EU and EU sanctions have largely imposed on Serbia and Kosovo is only provisional in nature. This means that Western technique is based on a contradiction: Kosovo will ultimately have to make a concession. However, the West can only promise, at best, slow progress in relations with Serbia and with Kosovo’s candidacy for a full-fledged foreign figure.
Even if Pristina fulfills all its obligations, adding the status quo of partnership, Kosovo has no promises about its basic strategic requirements. Kosovo Serbs can maintain their loyalty to Belgrade and defy Pristina. Serbia can reject Kosovo’s de jure popularity. Finally, Kosovo may be left out of NATO, the only guarantee of Pristina’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Kosovo’s path to the alliance remains blocked through 4 NATO members: Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain. US State Department officials, Blinken added, argue that the implementation of the Ohrid agreement will allow Washington to appeal to the 4 recalcitrants.
In fact, the three hardliners — Bucharest, Bratislava and Madrid — cling to their positions for reasons that have nothing to do with Kosovo’s behaviour. There is little evidence that Washington has invested much in converting the minds of those actors, who hold the key to progress in the region, even temporarily. Spain and Slovakia, for example, can easily send their troops back to the status-neutral KFOR mission. Madrid can simply emulate Bratislava and open a link in Pristina, a step that would go a long way in assuring Kosovo that Serbian autonomy can lead to NATO membership.
Instead, Spain, along with Romania, voted in April against the Council of Europe’s Kosovo club. Serbia did the same, in flagrant violation of its obligations in the EU-brokered settlement. Belgrade’s blatant and characteristic obstruction provoked any of the fulminations. directed to Pristina for delaying feet in the association.
In short, it will take more than welfare sanctions for the U. S. to get the U. S. to do so. The US will emerge from the crisis that Washington and Brussels have helped create. Pretending that the U. S. A U. S. has a wife in Belgrade and an enemy in Pristina will ease existing stalemate in the north or lead to stability.
Despite his frenetic global agenda, Blinken will have to personally enforce U. S. policy in the Balkans. For starters, Biden’s leadership will have to deploy its ambassadors to the region, restricting Hill’s forays into the politics of a country, Kosovo, that no longer belongs to Serbia. Divisions between the US embassies in Belgrade and Pristina have drawn the attention of the EU’s main partners and undermine Blinken’s authority.
Basically, Blinken will have to decide whether the regional disorder and attacks on America’s credibility are worth the hasty embrace of a Serbian autocrat shunned by large swaths of his own population. After all, Washington has a model of choice. In neighboring Hungary, U. S. Ambassador David Pressman has shown that a firm, values-focused strategy can have a far greater effect — on a far more formidable autocrat — than anything achieved in Serbia.
Instead of worded reprimands, Blinken deserves to deliver a thoughtful speech on U. S. policy. The U. S. is traveling to Serbia, Kosovo, and the entire region. Blinken will have to refocus democratic values at the center of U. S. politics. He added U. S. and partnership with the EU. envoys and ambassadors to convey this message to Balkan leaders, and added Vucic.
Blinken is expected to stick to this discourse with – not the region, but Athens, Bratislava, Bucharest and Madrid – the 4 capitals that hold the key to Kosovo’s advance, and therefore Western strategy, in the region.
Blinken is expected to wrap up his excursion in Brussels, along with Borrell and the EU’s special representative in the region, Miroslav Lajcak. Blinken deserves to remind those diplomats that the agreement between Serbia and Kosovo is called the EU. Brussels can no longer hide what is only a facilitator. Instead of more “constructive ambiguity,” the U. S. and the EU want to concentrate on clarity. agreement, well before the end of the year.
In this way, Blinken will alienate the U. S. The US and EU are sending Moscow a signal of principled determination to consolidate the Balkans in the West, along with Ukraine.
Edward P. Joseph teaches crash control at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He served for a dozen years in the Balkans, in the U. S. Army. He worked in the U. S. and as deputy head of the OSCE project in Kosovo.
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