To concert is a virtue

The weekend allowed me to look at a number of interesting reports on the Balkans.  The common thread of the two I cite below is the recognition that the issues still plaguing Albania and Bosnia require concerted regional and international approaches.  It is often difficult to take concerted action, but when we do we tend to get results that are worth the effort.

1.  Antoinette Primatarova and Johanna Deimel, Bridge Over Troubled Waters? The Role of the Internationals in Albania.  Unsparing, they fault the internationals for failing to see the negative implications of 2008 constitutional amendments that ushered in a retrograde period in Albania’s young democracy.  But they see hope in the EU commission’s advocacy of 12 key priorities, now embraced by the Albanian government and opposition and supported by the U.S.

2.  Kurt Bassuener and Bodo Weber, Croatian and Serbian Policy in Bosnia-Herzegovina:  Help or Hindrance?  Equally unsparing of past mistakes that allowed Croatia and Serbia to favor their conationals within Bosnia and thereby undermine the country’s unity, they want to see a more concerted U.S., EU and Turkish effort to turn Zagreb and Belgrade in the direction of supporting the Bosnian state.  I’m not seeing this one posted yet on the Democratization Policy Council’s website, but I’ll come back and install a link when it appears there (and someone tells me so).

I haven’t seen a recent report on the international mistakes in Kosovo and the importance of concerted action there to overcome remaining problems between Belgrade and Pristina, but of course one could be written.  We saw in September the completion of the internationally imposed agenda for the four and a half year period of Kosovo’s “supervised independence.”  Last week, with the meeting between Prime Ministers Thaci and Dacic, we witnessed how effective concerted action by the U.S. and EU can be in pushing the remaining issues to the political level, even if there is good reason to be concerned with the lack of implmentation of earlier “technical” agreements.

Of course none of this figured in this week’s presidential debate, but it is relevant:  collaboration with the EU enables the U.S. to help resolve Balkans problems on the cheap, committing little more than the diplomatic and political weight of its oversized missions in Belgrade, Pristina, Sarajevo and Zagreb plus the occasional phone call from Hillary Clinton or one of her minions.  The EU provides the bulk of the troops, money and “European perspective” required to rescue countries that 20 years ago were basket cases.  Sharing burdens is a lot better than carrying them on our own, especially if our vital interests are not at stake.  Which they are not in the Balkans.

After I’d written the text above, the State Department announced yesterday that Lady Ashton, the European Union’s High Representative (foreign minister, more or less) and Hillary Clinton will travel together to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo October 29-November 1.  This is very much the right approach.  If they can concert their messages as well as their travel plans, there is nothing really important in the Balkans that can’t be solved.  That includes the political mess in Bosnia as well as the difficult relations between Belgrade and Pristina.