Steven Meyer, former CIA official in charge for the Balkans, in his Op-Ed for the Belgrade-based weekly magazine Nedeljnik, described seven theses of “Balkans’ pathology” B92 reports, re-running excerpts of the article.
“For more than a year tensions in the Balkans are running high. Although there are many individual examples, the most striking is a pathology that is part of all of them. The consequence of it is that large part of the Balkans goes through a period of very serious economic development stagnation, there is no possibility to resolve important political issues, and there is weakened security as well as interstate disputes,” Meyer wrote.
Pathology is what defines the Balkans – power, pressure and circumstances that shape the modern political reality there.
“Despite missed chance in the early nineties, Russia’s and USA actions ensured continuation of a Cold War. Now, the big part of that Cold War takes place in the Balkans, in particular in Serbia. Moscow has established a Humanitarian Centre in Nis that should offer aid in case of natural disasters. Both, USA and Russia opened a diplomatic front in the Balkans. The USA is imposing to Serbia membership to NATO, while Russia is opposing it with contracts on armament.”
“Decisions of the Western powers as to which “political community” has the right to be independent were unpredictable, inconsistent and illogical. The West “allowed” Montenegro to hold a referendum on independence in 2006. It hardly succeeded, but Montenegro got the right to become independent. And Kosovo was recognized as an independent state by the vast number of Western and other governments. But any attempt of Republic of Srpska to strive for independence from Bosnia is immediately rejected by Western centres of power,” Meyer wrote, adding the West never understood the ethnic issue in the Balkans.
Leaders in the region have habit to try to please great powers, saying they are “too weak and too small” to take care of themselves, and are regularly saying all what the main powers want to hear. This installs psychology of weaknesses and helplessness and opens a room for dreams about external dominancy. This way, Balkans leaders do not have to suffer consequences of their decisions and they have almost no responsibility, Meyer further said.
According to him, Balkans leaders too often hide behind psychological and institutional weaknesses, terrified they would make mistakes and are in constant panic to be in a situation to tell “no” to some of the Western colleagues. That is why they promise a lot, but deliver little, they are forced to postpone decisions or never make them. They do not take risks, they agree away from the public eye and rely on cycles of friends and families.”
“Maybe the worst example is a sad failure of Serb leaders to take matters into their own hands in relation to Kosovo, allowing the issue to postpone year after the year. It is in particular miserable that Presidents Vucic and Thaci said Trump and Putin would resolve the Kosovo issue when they met last month in Finland,” Meyer wrote, adding that Kosovo is responsibility of Vucic and Thaci, B92 reported.
