Frederica Mogherini, the EU’s ersatz Foreign Minister, returned from a recent trip to the Balkans and solemnly told European potentates “there is no other power in the World that has had so much good on the Western Balkans as the EU.” This bragging gets to the heart of the matter. All sanctified rhetoric from Brussels about a “European path” for benighted Balkan states has nothing to do with the Balkans, but rather amounts to self-serving self-righteousness by a ruling class that exploits southeastern Europe for its exaggerated self-narrative.
Another European diplomat was quoted as saying “We have neglected the Balkans and now see it is increasingly fragile.” This is doubly false. The Euros have done anything but “neglect” the region. Since the 1980s succeeding generations of officials, NGO mavens, military personnel, and others have descended on Balkan troubles spots to issue lectures, give instructions, and assert that ”Europe” can implement a principled and strategically sound foreign and security policy. Branislav Radeljic has done a good job chronicling the serial inconsistencies and fecklessness (my term, not his) of European rhetoric regarding Kosova since the 1980s.
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