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For the past few months, Americans have been
contemplating the possibility that the integrity of their electoral
process may have been compromised.
The evidence is compelling. The U.S. government has officially
pointed to Russia as the culprit in the hacking of the Democratic
National Committee, and the FBI suspects that Moscow hacked into
Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails. And yet, whatever meddling Russia
has been doing in the United States has so far remained subtle
enough to leave a shadow of doubt among at least some Americans
regarding what is actually taking place.
Not so in the Balkans. Americans looking for a glimpse at what it
looks like when the Kremlin really, really wants to mess with an
election and its aftermath need only look at recent events in this
part of southern Europe.
The Balkan states have become an important soft power target for
Moscow, which worries about NATO and European Union encroachment in
its near abroad, as well as the presence of more or less successful
models of democratic transitions on its doorstep. It therefore seeks
to block further NATO expansion there and slow progress toward
joining the EU. Failing that, Russia aims to increase its influence
within various Balkan states, with a view toward using this to its
advantage in the future.
But the region has been inching westward, attracted by the prospect
of European standards of living as well as Western freedoms. Many
Balkan countries are already in NATO or the EU, or on track to
enter. Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Romania are all NATO and EU
members. Albania is a NATO member and is negotiating for EU
accession, as are Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. The latter has
also been invited to join NATO; Serbia has not made a decision to
apply. Macedonia wants NATO membership but is blocked by Greek
objections to its name. The laggard is Kosovo, which will want NATO
membership as soon as it gets an army and the EU as soon as it can
qualify, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, which aims for the EU
but has not yet decided on NATO.
Moscow has not given up on the Balkans, however. It relies on
Orthodox churches to preach Slavic solidarity, crony deals for oil
and gas, rigged privatizations to enrich its favored politicians,
and encourages ethnic nationalists — especially in the security
forces — to pursue a pro-Russian, pan-Slavic agenda. Brexit, the
tottering euro, and an American presidential candidate who sounds
like an ethnic nationalist and admires Vladimir Putin have made it
easier for Russia and its surrogates to argue that the EU is on its
last legs, while Washington is turning in Moscow’s direction.
And when Russia feels like all of the above aren’t enough, it
interferes in politics. What comes next often isn’t pretty.
Consider Montenegro’s recent elections, for example, where the
interference was brazen even by Russian standards. Moscow invested
heavily in Oct. 16 vote, hoping that anti-NATO Serb nationalists
could finally beat Prime Minister Milo Dukanovic’s multiethnic,
pro-NATO coalition, which in one form or another has governed for
almost three decades. Moscow financed opposition political parties
and demonstrations as well as an anti-Dukanovic media storm. They
failed. Dukanovic gained upwards of 40 percent of the popular vote
and enough seats in parliament to enable his party to govern in
coalition with other pro-NATO forces, including ethnic minority
political parties.
But pro-Moscow forces had a backup plan: Serb nationalist agents
provocateurs, dressed in police uniforms, planned to use an already
announced protest demonstration to fire on the anti-Dukanovic crowd,
then turn around and assist the crowd in storming the prime
minister’s office, where the fake police would arrest or kill
Dukanovic. The plot, hatched in Serbia, was foiled by the
Montenegrin police at the last minute. The ringleaders, including a
nationalist politician who formerly headed Serbia’s special police,
and a Serb who according to Ukrainian sources fought for the
Russians in Donbass, were arrested.
Several days later, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic
confirmed a foreign hand in this Montenegro scheme, without
specifying the country involved. Belgrade, a week thereafter,
reportedly expelled several Russians from Serbia who were allegedly
involved in the Montenegro plot, precipitating a sudden visit the
next day by the head of the Russian Federation’s National Security
Council. The Montenegrin Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime
confirmed that two Russian nationals are being sought as key
organizers of the coup plot.
In other Balkan countries, Moscow has stopped short of facilitating
a potential coup, but has not exactly been discreet in its meddling
either. Vucic himself fought and won an election last spring on a
pro-EU platform, despite the Russians’ best efforts. Moscow had
backed the Serbian nationalist opposition, as well as nationalists
within Vucic governing coalition. Even post-election, Moscow
insisted successfully that Vucic include pro-Russian politicians in
his cabinet, including the foreign minister and the minister of
energy and mining. Russia’s promised veto of Kosovo’s membership in
the United Nations gives it leverage over Belgrade, in addition to
strong church, cultural, and business ties.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Russians back Republika Srpska
President Milorad Dodik, who governs 49 percent of the country as an
autonomous Serb region. This support has come in the form of loans
to his financially stretched entity as well as corrupt business
deals which make no economic sense but line the pockets of Serb
nationalist politicians. Russia has also helped train a Bosnian Serb
special police force. Putin has endorsed Dodik’s promise of a
referendum on independence in Republika Srpska. Such a referendum
would violate the American-sponsored Dayton Accords, which brought
the Bosnian War to a fragile end in 1995, and might lead to violence
— which could end Bosnia’s EU ambitions and NATO option, to Moscow’s
delight.
Russia doesn’t just put a heavy finger on the scales for its
favorite Balkan politicians; it also seeks to influence the entire
region’s worldview. Russian propagandists like RT and Sputnik News
don’t just mount their own media campaigns claiming that the EU is
collapsing, America is declining, and China and Russia are on the
rise: They also take advantage of cash-strapped Balkan media outlets
by making deals to share their content with them for free. The
cumulative effect of this could be seen in Macedonia recently, for
instance. Throughout Spring 2015, the Macedonian press faithfully
echoed the Russian outlets which accused the United States of
fomenting riots in response to Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s
repression of anti-corruption demonstrations at the time.
Why should Americans, preoccupied with their own election and
worried about international terrorism, concern themselves with
Russian troublemaking in these now-forgotten and out of the way
Balkan backwaters?
Following the wars of the 1990s, the United States and the European
Union embarked on a mostly successful effort to Westernize the
Balkans in order to consolidate not only democracy, but also peace,
in spite of lingering ethnic hostilities. NATO and EU membership was
offered as an incentive to Balkan leaders willing to undertake badly
needed political and economic reforms.
This gambit was successful until shortly before the 2008 financial
crisis, when European growth faltered and the Balkans — especially
the countries not yet members of NATO or the EU — began to backslide
on their democratic and economic progress. Even without Moscow’s
monkey business, they would still be plagued by slow economic
growth, persistently high unemployment, lagging reforms, corruption,
growing ethnic tensions, and youth dissatisfaction, as well as
alienation and sometimes radicalization of Muslims in Bosnia,
Serbia, and Kosovo.
By aggravating all these irritants, Moscow’s efforts are undermining
the electoral democracies that today exist in more or less liberal
form throughout the region, and threatening to produce renewed
instability. Ethnic nationalists, many of whom are willing to act as
surrogates for the Russians, are resurgent. Freedom of the press and
rule of law are under attack. It is not hard to picture the
reemergence of petty autocrats ready to exploit the situation. You
can even tell who the potential candidates are — one hint is that
they consistently speak out in favor of Donald Trump’s “America
First” campaign in the United States.
The Balkans will be way down the list of priorities for the next
American president. The Islamic State and al Qaeda; China’s claims
in the South China Sea; the wars in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Libya,
and Afghanistan; North Korea’s nuclear program; and dozens of other
problems are far more threatening to U.S. national security. But
what America does not need is any further distraction in the
Balkans, where two decades of investment have come close to
stabilizing a chronically war-prone area that played unhappy roles
in World War I, World War II, and the aftermath of the Cold War. It
would be better and far less costly to counter Russian efforts there
with a renewed preventive effort to enable all the Balkan countries,
if they want, to enter NATO and the EU, where they will find
themselves far less vulnerable to the Kremlin’s meddling hand.
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