Balkan actors argue over the overlapping legacies of wars fought
since the 1870s. The ongoing upheaval in the Middle East is at least
as much about dismantling the settlement of World War I as it is
about the West's imagined dichotomy between autocracy and democracy.
There is an inverse relationship between the
decibel levels in Western rhetoric and the actual existence of
Euro-American strategies to deal with either region. Vice-regal
insistence on various behaviors or constitutional reform largely
reflect the internationals' frustration with Balkan notables'
ability to manipulate, obfuscate, and avoid the outsiders' demands.
This is nothing compared to the messy Western
stance in the Middle East. Of course, no government or official
should be faulted for failing to anticipate that the self-immolation
of a despondent individual in Tunisia would lead to the collapse of
long-serving dictators and of the comfortable stability enjoyed by
Western governments that for decades ignored contradictions between
their human rights sermons and realpolitik practices.
There is no excuse, however, for Euro-American
performances regarding Egypt. As that crisis built the Europeans
regressed to sermon-mongering. Washington vacillated between support
for Mubarak (when he appeared strong enough to survive) and
expressions of shock that repression was going on reminiscent of
Claude Rains' attitude toward gambling in "Casablanca." Then, Air
Marshall Sarkozy spearheaded a poorly conceived bombing campaign
against Libya, a player much less important to the internationals'
interests than Egypt and much less dangerous than Yemen. The US,
meanwhile, launched the raid against Bin Laden that reduced the
pressure on Washington to construct a strategy to deal with
cascading changes elsewhere. At present, there exists no approach in
any Western capital aimed at such problems as the well
thought-through effort by militants to establish Islamist Emirates
on both sides of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. For the first time,
al-Qa'ida affiliated killers have a real shot at establishing a
strategic capability to stand astride a significant waterway.
Nothing this breathtaking is going on in the
Balkans, but there the post-Yugoslav settlement imposed by Western
force and ideological teleology is fraying and, eventually, could
come apart.
Fifteen years after the Dayton Agreement the major
communities in Bosnia remain largely separate and partly hostile -
there is no sign of that changing in the foreseeable future. This
belies the official and academic myth that a Bosnian civic culture
flourished before the wars of the 1990s, was thwarted by a few elite
nationalists, and since has been enabled by essential Western
leadership. The necessary, important arrests of Radovan Karadzic and
Ratko Mladic serve the needs of justice but do nothing to bring
closure to disputes about collective identity. Milorad Dodik and
Valentin Inzko both climbed down in the latest referendum flap, but
EU "Foreign Minister" Ashton's positive optic masks continued
international uncertainty over how to deal with the failure of the
Bosnian state.
The independence of Kosovo/a remains congenitally
incomplete. Partition will stay on the table whether the West likes
it or not, but its Serbian proponents eventually will realize the
discussion is going to include the Presevo Valley - whether they
like it or not.
Macedonian Slavs and Albanians recognize the
discussion about Kosovo/a underscores the continued fragility of
their country's existence. It would mark a major setback if perhaps
the only shard of former Yugoslavia not defined by a military
decision succumbs to conflict (ignore the usual declarative nonsense
that "there are no military solutions in the Balkans").
Serbia, like other post-Yugoslav entities south of
the Sava, yearns for inclusion in the EU, but the dangers inherent
in its stance on Kosovo/a and Belgrade's ambiguous relationship with
the Republika Srpska would not go away even if that magical event
eventually takes place.
Hans Dietrich Genscher's preferences of 1991 have
been realized - Slovenia and Croatia successfully escaped the
Balkans. They can claim never to have been anything other than
"Central European." However, the legacy of the former's cynical -
and under-analyzed - contribution to the demise of Yugoslavia and
the latter's role in amassing debts it insisted others must pay
continue to contribute to the troubles of their former Yugoslav
partners.
The evolving role of the successor to the Ottoman
state illustrates changing power relationships in both former
imperial peripheries. The AKP's tous azimouth diplomatic offensive
had its origins in the 1990s-era pan-Turanian policies of Turgut
Ozal. That initiative was premature, but anticipated the
increasingly active stance of Turkey's current crop of highly
competent leaders. The diminishing clout and legitimacy of Western
policies, the flowering of Agency among many voices in the Muslim
world, and simmering frustrations in a Balkan region that has
imploded with the failure of each security cap imposed by Western
and Soviet actors since 1878 create room for the kind of creative
diplomacy Ankara has to offer.
Of course, the extent to which skillful Turkish
regional policies and cultivation of Ottoman nostalgia contribute
usefully to the security of troubled countries along Turkey's
various borders remains open to question.
Going forward, problems related to conflict,
cooperation, politics, law, and religion will be grappled with by
Balkan and Middle Eastern peoples in the context of diminishing
inputs from the West. It is unclear what institutional and coercive
systems will replace the current tendency in Tunisia and Egypt for
disputes to be settled largely by dueling street demonstrations. The
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's absence from recent protests is one
indication of a possible Army-Brotherhood alliance that could moot
such Western- and NGO-influenced norms as constitutions, political
parties, and elections.
The West may yet gain a sort of military victory
in Libya. Nevertheless - as in Kosova/o after 1999 - without a
strategy more sophisticated than invocation of Democracy, these
outsiders may find themselves again ill-equipped to manage
conditions once the shooting stops. In both regions, Western norms
are irrelevant to family-based and informal economic and social
relationships central to communal existence (we tend to
under-characterize these phenomena as "corruption.")
Meanwhile, the outcome of the struggle between an
Alawi regime and a Sunni majority in Syria will say a lot about
Iran's regional influence and the existential, to-the-death
scorpions' dance between Israel and the Palestinians. There is not
and never was any "two-state solution," and would not be one even if
some day there is a two-state agreement - too many spoilers on all
sides.
Western planners would do well to scale back the
overly ambitious rhetoric that has engendered disappointment in
efforts to force the creation of a settled, civic condition in the
former Ottoman peripheries. Regarding the Balkans, the
Euro-Americans should be grateful that no protagonist wants a new
war . The most useful international input would be policies designed
to help keep the place quiet while enabling the locals to take
responsibility for forging future agreements or conducting future
squabbles - no matter US or EU preferences.
Residual dangers in the Balkans pale beside the
enormous social, resource-based, and security tectonics emanating
from the Middle East and the broader Muslim world. Constructing
creative and useful approaches to both former Ottoman peripheries
would require shedding tattered notions of Western "leadership" and
recognizing opportunities inherent in the acknowledgement of one's
own limits. A smarter, "weaker" West might just discover the
benefits of residual influence once it finally drops pretensions to
an imperial pride of place.
David B. Kanin is an adjunct professor of
international relations at Johns Hopkins University and a former
senior intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA). |