Notes from the Balkans.

• Author: Bardos, Gordon N.
• Position: Politics and economy of the Balkan region

LOST BENEATH the bloody headlines from Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq and Lebanon is the fact that the Balkans are undergoing their most profound period of change since Slobodan Milosevic's overthrow in 2000. Last June, Montenegro declared its independence, and the process to determine Kosovo's future status has entered its last stages. New governments are also in power in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.

All of these changes are taking place at a time when strategic uncertainty in southeastern Europe is increasing because Washington and Brussels are consumed by problems elsewhere, while Russia is increasingly asserting its political and economic interests in the region. Balkan stability over the past seven years has rested on three pillars: a significant U.S. military presence, the foreseeable prospect of EU accession for the Balkan countries and the fact that political elites in Belgrade, Banja Luka, Skopje and Zagreb support the political and territorial status quo in the region. Two of these three pillars--the U.S. military presence and the foreseeable prospect of EU accession--are either being withdrawn or pushed back to an increasingly distant future. The few remaining U.S. troops in Bosnia were pulled out in 2006, and a similar withdrawal is planned for Kosovo in the near future. Both moves reveal the mindset of bureaucratic planners who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Meanwhile, the Europeans are suffering from too many of their own problems to guide the Balkan states successfully through the transition process, so the EU is unable to provide firm assurances as to when the next round of enlargement that would include the Balkan states might take place. Hence, there is a significant danger that international policy toward the region could founder for the next couple of years.

The third pillar of Balkan stability--the status quo elites in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Serbia--is somewhat wobbly as well. Political forces challenging the existing state of affairs in the region--whether in the form of politicians in Sarajevo demanding a radical revision of the Dayton Peace Accords, revanchists in the Serbian Radical Party who still dream of creating a "Greater Serbia" or militant Albanian movements threatening to destabilize Macedonia, Montenegro or southern Serbia--all to greater or lesser degrees are waiting on the sidelines to see how quickly changing facts on the ground may play to their advantage.

Additionally, an important new variable has been introduced into the Balkan strategic equation--the re-emergence of Russia as an important economic and political player in the region. In Montenegro, Russians have bought the republic's largest industrial enterprise; in Bosnia, the largest oil refinery; in Macedonia, Lukoil is planning a major expansion of its operations; in Serbia, Russia is providing the capital to refurbish the hydroelectric plant at the Iron Gates of the Danube, Serbia's main source of electricity; and President Vladimir Putin has signed an agreement with his Bulgarian and Greek counterparts to build a new pipeline to carry Russian oil from the Black Sea to the Aegean.

Given all of these developments, the current political moment in the Balkans bears a disconcerting resemblance to the situation in 1991 when the Yugoslav crisis first began. Then, as now, rapidly changing political realities in southeastern Europe came at a moment when Washington and European capitals were distracted by problems elsewhere, and belated American and European reactions to the accelerating dynamic of disintegration and violence were unable to keep the lid on a volatile situation.

To be sure, there is little danger that the large-scale violence of the 1990s that ravaged Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo will erupt again in the western or southern Balkans. New security mechanisms and instruments are now in place, and there is greater recognition of the need for quick, preventive diplomacy in the early stages of a crisis than there was in the early 1990s.

Nevertheless, the problems facing the region should be neither underestimated nor dismissed, and after 15 years of intensive international engagement, there is no excuse for Washington and Brussels to be behind the curve. Moreover, it is not at all clear that the newly implemented security structures will be strong enough to counteract the powerful forces now being unleashed in the region. Maintaining peace and stability and promoting economic and political reform in the Balkans while simultaneously re-drawing borders and creating new states will be a tall order. Accomplishing this task will be especially difficult because Washington's and Brussels's ability to control developments on the ground is decreasing in direct relationship to their drawdown in troops and financial aid. Furthermore, the only carrot on offer is the increasingly distant prospect of EU accession.

For these reasons, many implicit assumptions about Balkan policy currently holding sway on both sides of the Atlantic are seriously flawed. In Washington, the prevailing sentiment is that we can grant...