Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 22 – At the end of
the 19th century, Otto von Bismarck prophesized that “some damn
thing in the Balkans” would be the trigger for a broader European war. The assassination
of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand I 1914 proved him right, with the great
powers moving with varying degrees of enthusiasm toward the disaster of World
War I.
The risk that Bismarck could be
proved right a second time now is frighteningly real, making two commentaries,
one by Russian journalist Kseniya Kirillova and a second by Ukrainian analyst
Vitaly Portnikov, on how Vladimir Putin is stirring the pot in that
historically unstable region particularly noteworthy.
Kirillova points out that Moscow is
promoting Serbian revanchism, separatist attitudes, and traditional hostilities
in the region to ensure that the situation in the Balkans remains at the
boiling point, thus limiting the ability of the region’s countries to recover and
to integrate into Europe (lb.ua/world/2017/01/19/356331_kremlevskaya_primanka_velikoy.html).
She provides evidence of the close links between Bosnian
Serb strongman Milorad Dodik and the Kremlin and points to other evidence showing
that Moscow was very much involved with the recent unsuccessful coup d’etat in Montenegro and remains
committed to the organization of a referendum there both to destabilize the
area and to provide the patina of legitimacy to its own “referendum” in Crimea.
But
perhaps Moscow’s largest operation is its cooperation with pro-Russian radicals
in Serbia itself who have “received the order from Moscow to ‘beat the enemy,’
who is understood to include the Albanians, NATO and the European Union,”
according to Serbian political analyst Ventsislav Buyich.
These
Serbian radicals, Buyich says, “are absolutely certain that they have impunity and
directly say that Russia ‘has reached agreement with Trump,’ and that the new
US administration not in any circumstances will block their activities.”
One
of the reasons a new round of Serbian and Albanian conflict is of such
potentially great use to Moscow, Kirillova points out, is that the Kremlin will
present it as being simply “a Christian-Muslim conflict.” Given Donald Trump’s statements, that
description will help keep him on Moscow’s side.
Moreover,
the US-based Russian journalist says, “the Russian media have already begun
actively promoting this legend,” and some Russian authors are “directly
predicting a future war in the Balkans, accusing in advance Islamist
terrorists, among whom, in the opinion of some experts, Russia has not a few of
its own people.”
Buyich
adds that Russian Deputy Prime Miniser Dmitry Rogozin was even more clear as to
what Moscow intends. In early 2016, he told Serbian radical Voislav Šešelj that he was giving him a
box showing Crimea with Russia and hoped that Šešelj would soon return the
favor by giving Rogozin one with a box showing Kosovo within Serbia.
None
of the countries around Serbia, not Montenegro, Macedonia or Kosovo, want to
become part of ‘Greater Serbia,’” Kirillova concludes. They are all
pro-European; “and that means Moscow’s plans can only be realized by a long a
bloody war on the entire territory of the Western Balkans.”
Portnikov
for his part extends Kirillova’s analysis and says directly that “Russia wants
a new war in the Balkans and is organizing this war” now by employing many of
the tactics it used just before the Maidan in Ukraine to block its moves toward
Europe and Moscow’s Anschluss of Crimea and invasion of the Donbass (7days.us/vitalij-portnikov-etot-poezd-v-ogne/).
Russia, he continues, “will do
everything possible to destabilize the relations of Serbia and Kosovo,” both to
create conflicts and to block Serbia moving away from Russia toward Europe as
Ukraine sought to do. “And no one will be surprised if as a result, new
wars break out” – and one possibly more horrific and more likely to spread than
the one in the 1990s.
Everyone should keep in mind,
Portnikov says, that “there is an essential difference between Milosevic’s wars
and the conflicts of today. Yeltsin’s
Russia for all its obvious sympathy to Milosevic nonetheless expected prudence
from the Serbian dictator and did not intend to fight NATO on his behalf.”
“But Putin’s Russia not simply will
help Serbia – it will be happy to transform this country into a new front of
military operations and covets the outbreak of clashes with NATO in Serbia,
Kosovo, Bosnia or wherever. And if NATO doesn’t get involved, that also will
please the Kremlin” which will see it as yet another indication that it can
advance elsewhere with impunity.
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