Djuric to Americans: Balkans Not a Problem to Solve, but an Advantage to Nurture

Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric (BETAPHOTO/MINISTARSTVO SPOLJNIH POSLOVA SRBIJE)

Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric said on June 27 that the tendency in Washington political circles to treat the Balkans as a problem to be solved rather than an asset to be nurtured is a strategic mistake that is becoming more costly by the day.

He said this in an opinion piece for the U.S. Statecraft Strategy political magazine. “The Western Balkans lies at the crossroads of Europe, bridging NATO’s eastern and southern flanks and is threaded with energy corridors, migration routes and supply chains that matter to the entire transatlantic community. Stability here is not a regional finesse. It is a prerequisite for European security. But when attention drifts elsewhere, that stability becomes strained,” Djuric wrote.

Djuric also referred to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war, saying that efforts to centralize the country far beyond what the agreement provided for are fueling dangerous tensions. “Attempts to undo it create the risk of reopening wounds that took an entire generation to heal,” the Serbian minister said.

Speaking about Kosovo, Djuric said the situation remained unresolved “in ways that require candor, not diplomatic euphemisms.” He noted that Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 and that more than half the countries in the world, including five EU member states, did not recognize it. He said Serbia cannot and will not recognize the declaration. Djuric stressed that EU membership remains a strategic goal for Serbia, but also noted that progress has stalled, although not primarily because of shortcomings in the rule of law, as Serbia’s critics claim. He said the bar for accession has been raised selectively and substantially for the Western Balkan region and argued that the main obstacles to Serbia’s accession were internal divisions within the EU and enlargement fatigue.