When Western Diplomacy Must Decide Between ‘Spiritual Unity’ And Strategic Advantages – OpEd
The Ibri Bridge has already turned into a symbol that will promote Kosova as “a frozen conflict” or a sovereign Republic. Peaceful coexistence with Serbia seems unattainable. The intention of the Presidency to exercise the German doctrine – Ostpolitik in relation to Serbia, as in the past with the Russian Federation, has not given the expected fruits.
Overcoming the fundamental postulate of Westphalia and the “Time of the Serbian takeover”
The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) came after the 30 Years War in Europe (1618–1648). Its end was more the result of the parties agreeing to recognize the created reality than the product of moral views.
The agreement of Kumanovo (1999), which marks the capitulation of Serbia, is neither the result of recognition and agreement with the created reality, nor an expression of agreement with the new order that was being imposed. Serbia had described it as the imposition of a ceasefire and treats it as such even today. Calling on the Nagorno-Karabakh model and Azerbaijan’s intervention to restore it under its full sovereignty, reaffirming “Serbian patience” as a strategy in the name of changing geopolitical circumstances, proves that, de facto, with Serbia we are still able war.
The return of the sovereignty of the Republic in the north, see for this, today is seen as a possibility of imposing a new political reality, as much as an opportunity for breaking the ceasefire from the Serbian side.
The Treaty of Westphalia found a place for the pragmatic understanding of the political reality created on the ground, thus bringing to life the political system that recognized State Sovereignty. The Brussels Basic Agreement (February 24, 2024) simultaneously contradicts the pragmatic understanding of the political reality created on February 17, 2008, when Kosova declared independence and was recognized by 117 UN member states, but also with the opinion of the International Court of Justice (2010) on the right of Kosova to declare the act of independence.
The states of Europe that were laying the foundations of a new order in Westphalia did not include Russia as part of that order, since, according to Henry Kissinger [1], it was left in the “Time of its capture” ( Russian “Smuta”), which marked the period of political turbulence, famine and interventions of external powers (1598-1613) and since he was doing his best to bring internal order.
Why is Serbia treated quite differently today? This question cannot be treated simply as rhetorical, especially not after the agreement reached by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić recently for the exploitation of large reserves of the precious mineral lithium.
More than an economic agreement, the re-opening of the mine seems to be intended to signal Perednimi that Belgrade is ready to take the turn towards the West, if Perednimi would also take into consideration Serbian strategic objectives that have already been made public in the Political Platform of the All-Serbian Assembly .
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The Treaty of Westphalia had imposed the postulate of reciprocity between states as a basic right in relations between states in the new system that was being promoted.
The Brussels agreement cannot restore these relations before 1684 only for the sake of the will of Serbia and any segment within the EU to restore Serbia’s sovereignty over parts of the territory or the citizens of the Republic of Kosova.
This political will of this neighborhood-states within the EU in relation to Serbia, in reality, has been reflected throughout the dialogue process between Kosova and Serbia (2011-2024), but it is more open in the decision on the punitive measures against Kosova that were took after the events of May 2023 in the north and with emphasis on the decision to remove visas for Serbian citizens who possess passports issued by the parallel mechanisms of Serbia in Kosova.
At the level of international law, this decision contradicts the basic principle of the current order, which is based on the right of the state to apply the unique legal order, but also with the modern law on the recognition of dual citizenship, which is applied by a good part of the states EU members. Consequently, this act cannot produce legal effects, therefore it is null.
The state structures should also treat it as such. It cannot be imposed on Kosova.
When a generation of diplomats fails
After QUINT’s statement regarding the “status of the Ibri Bridge”, meanwhile, the statement from the KFOR command on this “issue” was also made public.
Until now, KFOR had considered the presence of the patrol in the vicinity of the bridge as part of the regular patrol “on the bridge and around it”. Meanwhile, he now describes the presence as “fixed presence”, which means that de facto we have “a change in the status of the bridge”!
QUINT diplomats, in the short but very clear statement read by the American ambassador, clearly affirmed: the status of the Ibri Bridge does not change!
“We representatives of France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, the United States met with Prime Minister Kurti to inform him that our governments, in consultation with NATO, cannot support any change of the current status of the Mitrovica bridge at present “, Hovenier said.
This statement contradicts not only the reality created in the north, but also the agreements of 2015 and 2016 and the entire dialogue process for normalizing relations and promoting peace. It seriously violates the constitutional order of Kosova and brings into question the very act of declaring independence.
This statement also contradicts the spirit of the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the hundred-year war in Europe. Atworld, the sages of Europe, at the head of which was the French minister Armand-Jean du Plessis, known for short as Cardinal Richelieu, who is making history. They were faced with the alternative: to decide in favor of spiritual unity or to take into consideration the strategic advantages, when they would decide on the end of the war, putting the national interest in the center, which will then be described as the raison d’etat [state reason] . With a pronounced majority, they decided on the second option and thus laid the foundations of a new European order. Behind this decision, as Kissinger says, was the “cold calculation on the nation-state”.[2]
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The Ibri Bridge, which separates South Mitrovica with an Albanian majority and North Mitrovica with a Serbian majority, created in accordance with the Ahtisaari Agreement, was blocked for the first time after the war in 1999.
During the dialogue process between Kosova and Serbia, in accordance with the UN resolution [2010], which charged the EU as a facilitator, an agreement was reached for its release, after being restructured. For this purpose, EU funds were invested in its infrastructure and it was opened for pedestrian traffic, but it, i.e. the Ibri Bridge, continues to be blocked for vehicles to this day.
At the beginning of 2023, the Municipal Assembly of North Mitrovica made a decision to open the bridge. They had said that they base the decision on the Brussels Agreement that had foreseen the opening of the bridge in 2015-2016.[3]
In the case of the Ibri Bridge, in the name of preserving the transatlantic unity [with elements of religious dogmatism!] and the interests of the countries traditionally known as friends of Serbia, the principles and values on which the modern state was built and its own cannot be violated EU.
KFOR’s statement goes one step further: it actually says the opposite of what QUINT claims about the status quo of the bridge’s status! Through it, the intention to cement this positioning in a kind of dividing border, even if formal, between Albanians and Serbs seems disturbing.
It seems that the morbid silence towards Serbia’s aggressive act on September 24, 2023 has its source precisely in this attitude!
What Serbia could not do with a unit trained for subversive activities and through the simulation of an uprising, as if it claims to do, is kept alive by diplomacy! Therefore, the actual division of the north, we must not forget, was done by diplomacy [the Rambuje Conference], even if under the rug and in silence, and even, according to all likelihood, in agreement with the head of the Albanian delegation [!]. The deployment of French KFOR troops in this very area was not entirely accidental.
This fact is now a public secret.
This behavior of diplomacy seems to remind us of the somewhat conciliatory attitude that it nurtured by silently burying Vucic’s statements, which he had made public after agreeing with the former president of Kosova, Hashim Thaçi, on the division of Kosova, but which was described in euphemistic language as “Re-delimitation” of the border between Serbs and Albanians [Vučić: Razgranićenje s Albancima najzdravije za Srbe]. [4]
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In Germany, the general perception that Ostpolitika — which is usually understood as a policy based on the idea of peaceful coexistence with Russia [5], whose author is considered to be the former chancellor Willy Brandt — but which was nurtured for a long time by Chancellor Angela Merkel, it is now completely discredited.
The attitude of Western diplomacy towards Serbia today seems to recall exactly this position against Serbia, since both the EU and the USA insist on a “peaceful coexistence” with Serbia at any cost, in the name of geostrategic interest and attraction her from the Russian orbit of influence.
In Germany’s political elite circles today, there is growing concern that Germany’s foreign policy elite meanwhile overwhelmingly believes that the Social Democrats were stuck in an outdated view when it came to the Russian Federation, even on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. , in February 2022,
There is no genuine study that would shed light on the source of the attitude of Western diplomacy today in relation to Serbia and specifically the “Serbian World” project, but the perception that this diplomacy, or rather this generation of diplomats, is failing again in relation to Balkans, is increasingly acceptable in critical Western intellectual circles.
But if the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, promised a new course after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which he described as a Zeitvende [Turning Point], he is meanwhile repeating the same mistake with Serbia, even signing the agreement on Serbian lithium that keeps the autocrat Vucic in power, completely ignoring the values on which the EU was founded.
The German analyst, Bodo Weber, in an interview for the Serbian newspaper “Danas”, spoke about the agreement between the European Union, Germany and Belgrade on lithium.[6]Commenting on the press conference of Chancellor Scholz and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, including the Kosova issue, Weber did not fail to underline the phenomenon of the fall of Western diplomacy into the Serbian trap, somewhat similar to that of the beginning of the Cold War, when specific interests prevailed over the ideological ones.
All of this is happening according to Weber, therefore, with this move by the EU, this community is opening the door to the third phase of softening Serbia.
He says that the tragedy of this policy of appeasement “much more than its moral dimension — that is, the betrayal of the liberal-democratic values of the West itself, has to do with the fact that this policy, according to the Vučić regime, has already been proven to has failed”.
Weber, as always direct, underlines that this has failed in an “episode of territorial exchange, where the region, and therefore Europe, narrowly avoided wider destabilization and violent escalation on a wider scale. Therefore, this policy of exchanging one interest for another, while serving to satisfy one interest in the short term, at the same time, in the long term, completely undermines the other strategic interests of Germany, the EU and the West. as a whole, with incalculable consequences”.[7]
If the mythical German principle “Wandel durch Handel” [Course change through cooperation/trade] with Russia failed completely and shamefully, the pursuit of this principle with Serbia can have no other end than the one that has already been tried with Russia.
When the basis of political realism is missing — Ostpolitika in relation to Serbia, and especially when it is exercised without a genuine basis of political realism, there is no way it will not turn into a liberal caricature.
Egon Bahr, the architect of Ostpolitik as well as one of Germany’s most successful former foreign ministers, Hans Dietrich Genscher, were realistic and had in mind in this action, not the transformation of the Soviet Union, but the vital German objective—the reunification of Germany.
Therefore, realists judge today that the German Ostpolitika was successful in relation to the German national strategic interest, being crowned with the agreement known as 4+2 that paved the way for the reunification of Germany.
Meanwhile, its continuation in completely different circumstances, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with emphasis after the occupation of Crimea [2014], is the emrional act that marks the fiasco of pre-Soviet diplomacy in relation to the Russian Federation.
Acting today with Serbia based on the concepts of Ostpolitik, speaks of your own lack of real concept and deep ignorance of the history of Southeast Europe. Doing business with Serbia, or building the political concept of Serbia’s alignment with the EU and the Eastern Mediterranean, taking geo-economic interests into consideration, does not serve the purpose. This concept has already turned into a liberal caricature without a real basis of political realism.
Peaceful coexistence with Serbia therefore seems unattainable. Meanwhile, the Perednim’s insistence on the exercise of the German doctrine – Ostpolitik in relation to Serbia, as once with the USSR and then with the Russian Federation, has not given the expected fruits, respectively it has failed.
Meanwhile, through the latest reactions in relation to the plan of the government of the Republic of Kosova for the opening of the Ibri bridge, the Eastern diplomacy seems to be throwing out the newborn baby with the bathwater!
Meanwhile, the position of Western diplomacy in relation to Kosova is completely surreal and upside down. Therefore, the common citizen cannot understand how it is possible for this phenomenon to happen only within two decades. This attitude at best seems irrelevant and at worst, extremely counterproductive in the face of Serbia’s objectives towards the north of the Republic.
Excessive hesitation or caution
Western diplomacy, insisting at all costs to withdraw Serbia from the sphere of Russian influence, respectively from being stuck in Putin’s lap, has exercised excessive tolerance in relation to its behavior towards its neighbors, with emphasis on Kosova and Montenegro and Bosnia. .
This attitude has emboldened Belgrade, that’s why on June 8 we had the organization of the All-Serbian Assembly and the public proclamation of the platform on the “Serbian World”.
This positioning of the West, it is clear, frustrates many citizens, but also observers who have not stopped criticizing this behavior of diplomacy. Special experts from the West, see for this, have called for the arming of Kosova and the training of the KSF for self-defense. Therefore, some former governments in this case are often accused of having submitted to their national interests and the spirit of traditional friendship with Serbia, respectively to the unfounded fear of a Serbian counteraction [“Selbsabschreckung”] or are continuing to allow themselves to be manipulated by Vučić.
It is very possible that a neighborhood of the states of Perednim, since the post-war [June 1999], could have followed a more convincing policy in relation to Serbia, without provoking illusions about the possibility of its annexation of the north. This attitude would be quite possible, if the EU were more unique in relation to the future of Kosova. Let’s remember that, only after the mass protests of the spring of 2004, there was a revival in diplomatic circles, convinced that there is no possible return of Serbia to Kosova and that the independence of Kosova should also be considered as a compromise that the Albanians were making. in relation to their right to self-determination and union with Albania.
This kind of hesitancy on the part of the Western diplomacy in relation to the aggressive behavior of Serbia [even when Belgrade does not hide the expansionist projects at all], brought the first test of the transition from the position of the hybrid war to the real one: the Serbian aggression of September 24, 2024 in the north of Kosova.
In practice, this behavior, not only towards hybrid activities, but also after concrete aggression, has proven that the West has given Vucic the courage to project the “Serbian Empire” that he conceives as the “Serbian World”.
In this case, the warnings of some analysts who applied the creative phrase [“deterrence by entanglement”] to make the principle of prevention acceptable in this gray zone of hybrid war did not help!
The most adequate response of the West in this case would be the strong support of Kosova in the comprehensive plan, significantly influencing the strengthening of the stability of the State, economy and society, said Michael Rühle, the German military expert. [8]
Some of the reasons for the failure of diplomacy
Western diplomacy in this particular case in the Albanian public opinion and not only, is being perceived as not successful for several essential reasons:
1. The intervention of other powers — In the Balkans, other global powers, such as Russia and China, have pursued policies that are often at odds with the interests of the West. These countries offer economic and political alternatives to some Balkan countries, diluting the influence of Western diplomacy. For example, Russia has supported Serbia in the Kosova issue and has cultivated strong ties with several Orthodox ethnic groups in the region.
2. Corruption and internal political problems – Many Balkan countries face high corruption, institutional weaknesses and major problems in governance. These challenges make it difficult to implement the reforms requested by the EU and the US. Furthermore, political elites are often more interested in maintaining power than advancing the reform agendas that Westerners seek.
3. EU enlargement fatigue — In recent years, there has been an EU enlargement fatigue both within the Union and among candidate countries. This has led to a slowdown in the accession process for the countries of the Western Balkans. Many states in the region feel disappointed and neglected by the EU, losing faith in Western diplomacy and looking for other alternatives.
4. Internal problems of the EU and the US — Internal crises within the European Union and the US, such as Brexit, the rise of populism and political polarization, have diverted attention and resources from the Balkans. As a result, Western engagement in the region has often been fragmented rather than coordinated.
5. Double perception and lack of coherence — Western diplomacy is often perceived as incoherent or based on double standards. The military intervention in Kosova in 1999 compared to the attitude towards other conflicts in the region, as well as the management of the refugee crisis, have created different perceptions about the motivations and principles of Western diplomacy.
These factors together have created a challenging environment for Western diplomacy in the Balkans, causing many efforts at stabilization, democratization and European integration to stall or fail completely. However, in the case of Kosova, this failure seems more glaring.
The time has come for a new generation of diplomats who would approach Cardinal Richelieu and who consider and treat Southeast Europe as a real part of the Western Hemisphere.
Albanian vital objective
Despite this bitter reality, the two centers of the nation, Tirana and Pristina, urgently need a strategy to get out of the current situation, even in relation to the diplomatic diplomacy of the East, not only with Serbia. Regardless of all the conceptual differences, as a nation we are in a more favorable position than we were throughout the Cold War era, respectively before Kosova’s independence. Today, when the current situation in Europe is increasingly resembling that of the Cold War, now more than on the eve of the war in Kosova, the strategic positioning of our two republics will give the appropriate specific weight to the Nation. This means that the strategy that was missing until yesterday, cannot be missed tomorrow, when we will be in the process of restructuring the new architecture of Europe.
At this historical juncture, Egon Bahr’s concept contains two extremely innovative and interesting aspects that are important to be taken into consideration by both our two governments and by Western diplomacy. The first aspect has to do with the paradoxical idea of accepting reality in order to be able to change it.
Serbia and Kosova are in a state of war. Serbia continues to treat Kosova as an integral part of it. This has been sanctioned in the constitution. Meanwhile, in the recently approved Platform on behalf of the “Serbian World”, Kosova is described as a Serbian province, an inalienable part of Serbia![9]
The failure of Serbia and not only Serbia, on September 24, 2023, to make the annexation of the north a completed act, this reality has manifested itself in the new dimension that Belgrade is already promoting in relation to Kosova through an elite of Western diplomats failed.
The second aspect of Ostpolitik concerns the idea of working in small steps towards a long-term goal that seems unattainable.
Taking the first steps to create the Albanian Federation, especially in the field of security and defense, would serve as a powerful message not only for Belgrade.
The era of Serbia’s expansion to the detriment of the vital Albanian interest has come to an end.
Kosova has already enjoyed the freedom that has been bloodied for generations and recently it is willingly knowing it.
It is already clear that the war in Ukraine and the real possibilities of the most pronounced manifestation of the New Cold War with consequences for Europe will also reflect in the Balkans. However, after the liberation of Kosova and the creation of the second Albanian Republic, the position of Albanians is far better than what we had during the Cold War [1949–1989].
Our political class, in our two republics, should now think about how they can implement these two aspects that I mentioned above, reflecting on the situation created not only around the Ibri Bridge, which is being exploited further by Serbia and its allies in order to promote it as a symbol of a “frozen conflict”. See for this the Ibri Bridge has already been transformed into a symbol that will promote Kosova in “a frozen conflict” for an indefinite period or a sovereign Republic.
Ostpolitika teaches us to accept the current reality on the one hand, but it also teaches us the fact that in this process we dare not lose the conceptual and vital objective for the Nation. Mitrovica is an integral and essential part of this interest. The complete integration of the north is the historical mission of this current political class in Pristina. Therefore, it is time for a deep reflection and interaction in accordance with the historical mission.
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1. Henry Kissinger, Welt Ordnung, Botimi 4, Muenchen, 2014, f. 12
2. Henry Kissinger, Welt Ordnung, Botimi 4, Muenchen, 2014, f. 34
3. https://www.evropaelire.org/a/ura-e-ibrit-si-dhe-kur-mund-te-hapet-/33069381.html
4. https://balkans.aljazeera.net/news/balkan/2019/6/6/vucic-razgranicenje-s-albancima-najzdravije-za-srbe
5. https://www.ipg-journal.de/rubriken/aussen-und-sicherheitspolitik/artikel/mission-frieden-7668/?utm_campaign=de_40_20240802&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
6. https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/bodo-veber-intervju-litijum/
7. Ibd
8. https://internationalepolitik.de/de/moeglichkeiten-und-grenzen-der-abschreckung
9. https://www.evropaelire.org/a/kuvendi-gjitheserb-i-serbise-dhe-republikes-serpska/32983800.html
