10.11.2022.

Lavrov's deadly kiss to the 'Open Balkans'

The European Union will no longer leave an open niche for Aleksandar Vučić to expand his influence on neighboring countries, but will define the modalities and rules of cooperation in the Western Balkans.

When in June of this year the attempt to provoke the free world by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by visiting Serbia, an authoritarian state on the edge of Europe, which systematically rejects any idea of participation in the processes of the free democratic world, failed, the isolated "diplomat" of Russian President Vladimir Putin resolutely spoke about how the flight of the Russian state plane over the territory of the Balkan NATO members was prevented in order to prevent him from supporting the "Open Balkans" project in Belgrade.
 
Serious American analysts immediately recognized that this statement by Lavrov, which did not receive much of a response, as well as his vain talk about the "competing project" of the European Union, which he christened the "Closed Balkans", was actually Lavrov's "kiss of death". to the "Open Balkans" project, to which the authoritarian president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, had an extremely strong "emotional attachment".
 
And indeed, the recently held summit of the Berlin Process clearly showed that the European institutions, and above all the German diplomacy, heard Lavrov very well and that they understood his message. In Berlin, it became obvious that the EU will no longer leave an open niche for the expansion of Vučić's influence on neighboring countries, but that the Union will define the modalities and rules of cooperation in the Western Balkans region, truly aligned with the European political tradition.
 
It is irrelevant whether the "Open Balkans" is a Russian political idea, served to destroy the democratic processes on the edge of Europe, whether it is the fruit of the "Trump" and ill-prepared Trump administration, or whether it is a consequence of the "political innovation" of Vučić and his team. After Lavrov's praise of that project, his superficial observation, which until then had dominated the international arena, was simply no longer sustainable, and the European administration, which normally tends to reduce its views to a "helicopter view" of the processes in the Balkans, had to think in more detail. what stands behind the concept of regional cooperation, to which Vučić and the executors within his regime are evidently strongly committed.
 
 
Basic political assumptions created
 
A superficial, "helicopter view" gave the impression that it was an autonomous and indigenous attempt to build a "European model" in the Balkans, a model that would ensure the consolidation of economic relations after the war conflicts, the opening of space for the free movement of people, goods and capital and the creation customs union, which should play the same role as the European Economic Community played in Europe. In Europe, however, they are very aware of the fact that the process of integration, from the European Coal and Steel Community, through the EEC to today's European Union, is also an extremely important peace process, a process of creating lasting peace on the European continent.
 
This peace process was carried out initially on two "fronts" - with the help of the Council of Europe, compatible democratic political systems were established, and through economic integration, a system was first created in which preparation for war and secret armament became impossible, because the heavy industries of the participating countries were integrated in process. By means of the process of the European movement within the Council of Europe, basic political assumptions were created: the importance of the rule of law, personal and economic freedoms was emphasized, and from the standpoint of establishing permanent peace, the principle of the immutability of borders was particularly important. The protection of minority groups in individual countries is ensured by the division of power, by strengthening democratic mechanisms, and not by the division of territory.
 
Only when the principle of the immutability of borders, combined with the principles of the rule of law and the protection of individual and collective rights of all citizens of the countries in the integration process, became a "common place", accepted by all participants in the process, could European integration become a successful process. It was also important to ensure the principle of equal matrix cooperation of all countries in the process. European integration would not be effective if it was not based on the equality of all countries in the process, but if it implied the hegemonic position of the largest or richest and the subordination of small and poorer members of the integration. This is precisely why another "pillar", the mainstay of European integration, has become extremely important and emphasized: balanced and sustainable social development.
 
Europeans have already somewhat forgotten that, apart from the EEC, a competing project once functioned on the territory of Europe - does anyone else remember SEV, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. It is about the economic dimension of what we still remember better - the Warsaw Pact, as a military alliance of Eastern Bloc countries. Unlike European integration, Eastern European integration was not based on the concept of protection of freedoms and rights, it was not based on the rule of law and legal certainty, it was not based on the inviolability of the borders of the countries in the "process", and especially not on their mutual equality. The ideological thread was the "development of real socialism", and this concept was based on Stalin's doctrine of "socialism in one country", according to which it was proclaimed that socialism in the world could only be spread by "tanks of the Red Army".
 
"Open Balkans" more similar to EAS
In contrast to European integration, as a peace process and post-war healing of the wounds caused by the conflict, in its conception SEV was what a smaller entity is today within Bosnia and Herzegovina - a consequence of war conquest. The Balts and Poles, within the framework of what was rudimentary of civil society, mostly in conspiracy, kept awareness of the occupation, and the citizens of other countries in that "eastern integration process" were also very aware that they were living under Soviet, or crypto-Russian hegemony. Such integration was based on force, and as soon as that force disappeared, all traces of that "connection" disappeared.
 
The "Open Balkans" project, although an image is created as if it is a project of the original Balkan version of European integration, is more similar to the SEV or its current version - the Eurasian Alliance (EAS). The project is not based on the immutability of borders and the idea that the idea of redrawing borders should be replaced by the protection of individual and collective rights of citizens, and the project has no concept of matrix cooperation and equality of all involved in the process. Just as Putin's project of the "Russian world" and the EAS are strongly mutually complementary, so Vučić's version of Putin's ideology - the "Serbian world" - is firmly connected to the "Open Balkans".
 
The pathogenic character of Vučić's interpretation of the "Open Balkans" project is very recognizable in Montenegro, and the attitude towards participation in this project completely coincides with the fundamental division in Montenegrin society - the division between supporters of constitutional sovereignty and those who, in the name of participation in the "Serbian world", or as the old concept of "Greater Serbia" is currently called, they support the destruction of the institutions of their own state.
 
Just as the attitude towards the Basic Agreement with the organization that the Montenegrin sovereignists consistently label as the "Church of Serbia" exposed the real political position of the current Montenegrin Technical Prime Minister, Dritan Abazović, so too does the attitude towards the "Open Balkans" classify him as a political bloc that destroys the institutions of its state (and these days, by participating in the Great Serbian parliamentary coup, when they tried to change the constitutional provisions on the institution of the President of the Republic, on his powers and impeachment, by law, adopted by an ordinary parliamentary majority, he vulgarly completely exposed his true political character, incompatible with European values and tradition).
 
The pathogenic influence of the 'Open Balkans'
The "Open Balkans" should have had a similar pathogenic influence on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it seems that here the persistence of Putin's Trabant Milorad Dodik on forcing Bosnia and Herzegovina into the Vučić project was enough of an alarm and a warning to democratic political actors.
 
The nervous reaction of the Prime Minister of Serbia, but also of regime commentators and analysts there, to the project that Serbia had to agree to within the Berlin Process (mutual recognition of diplomas in the academic community and in employment and mutual recognition of the right of citizens of the countries included in the Berlin Process to cross the borders of those countries only with ID card) shows that Vučić, who by sending Prime Minister Ana Brnabić to Berlin, because the European arena has become too hot for him (and at the same time he had a job in exacerbating the crisis in a neighboring country, which is part of the Berlin process, but not of the "Open Balkans" , in Kosovo) understood very well that within the Berlin process, a European platform began to emerge that would place the "Open Balkans" where that process belongs, push it into oblivion where its role model - SEV, already rests deeply.
 
The Balkans need an initiative to connect each other, build trust and open up the economic space. This initiative must, however, be based on the concept of the immutability of borders and their respect, on peacemaking and the rule of law, but not least, on equality and balanced development, with the strict prevention of any form of economic hegemony and political subjugation. In this sense, the first summit of the Berlin Process, which was moderated by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, represents a bigger step forward for the Balkans than it might seem at first glance. After defining a clear position of the EU towards the dangerous contaminated project of the Western Balkans, the big slow diplomatic ship of the United States of America will change course more easily, and support for Vučić's Balkans in the future could only come from where the deadly kiss came from - from Putin's apparatus and the sender of the deadly kisses Sergey Lavrov.