[ALBSA-Info] FAREWELL TO THE BALKANS-Vremya Novostei

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Published in Johnson's Russia List/October 16, 2000.

Vremya Novostei
October 16, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
FAREWELL TO THE BALKANS
They Do Not Need Russia There Anymore 
By Timofei BORDACHEV, senior researcher, Institute of Europe  
of the Russian Academy of Sciences
     
     
This autumn Russia is withdrawing from the Balkans completely.  Despite 
Moscow's touching attempts at least to mark its presence, it will never again 
be one of the determining factors of local politics for a number of objective 
and subjective reasons.
     
The fall of Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia really winds up a whole period of 
European history, making the entire political space from the Bug to the 
Atlantic Ocean really homogeneous. Its nations are either already drawn into 
the process of European integration or consistently working to become drawn 
into it. In this context, the fate of Yugoslavia is in fact predetermined, 
despite inevitable difficulties of the transition period. The prospects of 
Serbia's and Montenegro's integration into the Euro-Atlantic space do not 
depend on the desire of either their people or their political elites. The 
importance of Yugoslavia for the entire Balkan region, which is 
preconditioned by its geographical situation and scale, merely forces NATO 
and the European Union into currying favors with the new Belgrade leader.  
With such a line-up there is practically no room left for Russia.
     
Furthermore. After the change of regime Yugoslavia stopped being a player of 
European politics and became part of internal European politics. That is why 
Russia, as an outside player with regard to so-called Greater Europe, 
automatically loses the possibility to take part in its internal affairs. 
Under the new conditions, the rules of the game for Belgrade will be 
determined in Brussels - the way it is with Poland, the Czech republic and 
other candidates to EU membership. Using the fact that Moscow does not 
understand this, the Belgrade smart alecks will undoubtedly try to continue 
using Russia as a card in bargaining with the EU. Under such circumstances, 
however, it will be a hundred times more difficult for Russian diplomats to 
have a serious expression on their faces, which will deprive Moscow's 
presence in the region of the smallest meaning.
     
Reasons of a subjective character, which are connected with certain 
peculiarities of our national policy, have also had a no less important role 
to play in the loss by Russia of what was left of its erstwhile influence in 
that region. Practically throughout the whole of its almost 10-year-long 
history Russian diplomacy has been senselessly knocking about in Yugoslavia.

Under three of its foreign ministers it repeatedly dared to open 
confrontation with the West, flirting with Milosevic and desperately ignoring 
the UN. Its declared aims were to take care of its "historical ally" and 
preserve its political positions in the region, but unofficially it tried to 
help Russian business to get hold on the Balkans. And this was against the 
obvious historical facts, which show that relations between Moscow 
(St.Petersburg before it) and Belgrade were ostentatiously friendly only when 
temper and selfish interests pushed Serbs on the brink of military troubles. 
No sooner had an outside threat retreated, than the Balkan "Slavic brothers" 
forgot all about their Russian brothers in faith and preferred more 
advantageous cooperation with the West. Now that the regime of Milosevic the 
Terrible has collapsed, Serbia is swiftly turning to Europe, while Russia is 
kicked out from the programs of Yugoslavia's restoration. By and large, 
Moscow's many-year-long activities towards stopping bloodshed in the Balkans 
have not reaped any concrete political and economic fruit.    
 
The non-sanguine residue of the Yugoslav crisis, which has been one of the 
most important international events of the late 20th century, has become a 
not very comforting sentence for Russian diplomacy in the region and the 
entire foreign policy activities of the new Russia. Moscow's failure in the 
Balkans is explained not only by the non- professionalism of concrete Foreign 
Ministry officials. Its fiasco in the Balkans and some other regions is the 
result of the lack of new foreign policy ideas and strategy, which would 
adequately reflect the present state of affairs and international situation. 
For ten years since the disintegration of the USSR Moscow has clung to its 
geopolitical legacy, looking at the world through the spectacles of Soviet 
foreign policy. And this has naturally been leading it to new setbacks.