The Balkans Stride Toward Europe's Mainstream

By Madeleine K. Albright

Sunday, April 8, 2001; Page B01

Slobodan Milosevic's arrest last weekend brought home to me once more just how much is at stake in the Balkans, not only for Serbs, but also for Europe and the United States.
    For some, the arrest was a minor postscript to Milosevic's fall from power six months ago. For others, it prompted outrage that the Serbs did not immediately turn their former leader over to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
    But there's a more realistic way of looking at the Serbian government's decision to bring charges against Milosevic: It's another vital step by the people of Yugoslavia (and Serbia, its dominant republic) toward becoming part of Europe's mainstream. And we should remember that this is a movement joined by the region as a whole -- creating a shift that is of fundamental importance to our European partners and of real benefit to our own country.
    The trend became dramatically evident to me two years ago this week when, in the midst of the Kosovo conflict, I met in Brussels with foreign ministers from the countries bordering Yugoslavia. The leaders of these "front-line states" -- Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia and Croatia among them -- were providing critical support for NATO's effort in Kosovo despite the considerable opposition many faced at home.
    When asked, one minister explained to me why his government would risk the intense domestic criticism it was receiving. "It is worth it," he said, "if we can join Europe and become a normal country -- in the European Union, in NATO, and with open borders." Another minister was even more direct: "Milosevic is the last dictator in Europe," he said, "and we cannot move forward as long as he is there."
    Those points should remain at the forefront as we think about how deeply America should be engaged in the Balkans. During the 1990s a historic opportunity opened to knit together Europe in a way that had never before been possible, though the challenges were -- and remain -- immense.
    Since World War II, American presidents of both parties have pursued the objective of a Europe whole and free. When the communist Eastern Bloc fell, the senior President Bush led a bipartisan effort to reunite Germany and started a process of bringing those states into the community of democracies committed to individual rights and free markets.
    It was the right policy -- and the Clinton administration continued to pursue it through the Partnership for Peace, by advocating NATO expansion and by working with the European Union to provide the states in southeastern Europe with the help they needed. Our involvement was based on the premise that America's prosperity and security are enhanced by a Europe that is stable and open to trade; our European partners and allies are the bedrock of our international engagement and are important partners when we need to engage militarily elsewhere in the world.
    That policy is still the right one, but the axis along which we approach it has changed. For most of my life, the struggle for a free and democratic Europe was between communism and democracy -- in short, between East and West. The struggle now is between democracy and extreme forms of nationalism, and Europe's geographic focus has shifted from the Cold War's east-west axis to a north-south or, more specifically, north-southeast one.
    Viewed from this perspective, the states of southeastern Europe occupy a crucial geographic position, and need to be integrated and allowed to participate in the key institutions of Western Europe. With access to the eastern Mediterranean, central Asia and beyond, their industry and people can provide markets, skill and labor within Europe's trading area -- all of which are of direct benefit to the United States. Beyond that, the support of these states can help us extend democracy and free markets as broadly as possible. And they can play a key role in persuad- ing Russia to join, rather than retreat to isolation or an outdated scheme for establishing spheres of influence.
    The alternative to integration is decay and chronic instability in the Balkans -- an area that could become responsible for exporting crime and refugees into Europe, while also separating Turkey and the crucially important Middle East from the rest of Europe.
    The people of southeastern Europe look to America to guide them in their reach to the West. They know we have our own interests at stake, but don't fear our motives. "We trust America," a foreign minister from the region told me last year. "The Euro- pean powers have competed in our territory for centuries."
    Indeed, for centuries, divisions between northern and southern empires, between Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim populations, have run like a fault line in Europe, keeping the Balkans apart from Western Europe's orientation toward free markets and, since World War II, from the regional institutions that resolve conflicts peacefully and integrate economies.
    The durability and depth of this divide was starkly apparent to me during my first trip to the Balkans as secretary of state, in 1997. I was meeting with Franjo Tudjman, then the president of Croatia, and he launched into a diatribe about the need for a Roman Catholic Croatian state to break the "green crescent" of Muslims extending from the Balkans to the Middle East and the "Orthodox cross" of Slavs extending also from the Balkans but to the east. Traditional European values, he said, meant that we should stand with him in creating his ethnically pure state.
    The next day, Milosevic -- in the only meeting I ever had with him -- proposed that the United States and Yugoslavia become partners for "stability" in the Balkans. He had only a dismissive wave of the hand toward the importance of protecting individual rights.
    It was clear to me that both Tudjman and Milosevic were thinking of the Europe of 1937, not of 1997.
    Nevertheless, while their leaders were flouting the basic standards that define modern Europe -- democracy, free markets and respect for individual rights -- the people of the region were moving toward integration. And, after years of violence, they have had striking successes. The democratic transformations in Yugoslavia and Croatia followed those in other countries throughout east and central Europe, which had improved protections for minorities and set aside long-simmering international disputes as they sought to join in Western institutions. Even Bosnia, which has suffered under rule by ethnic parties, now has a new government run by parties committed to joining Europe.
    And throughout, the United States' role has remained central. The night Stipe Mesic was inaugurated as the democratic president of Croatia, I had dinner with him in the official presidential dining room, which Tudjman had disdained as not glamorous enough. President Mesic offered thanks to "our friends in Europe and the United States, who helped by their example to reassure our people that the struggle for democracy was worth the hardship."
    In January 2001, in my last weeks in office, I welcomed Goran Svilanovic, foreign minister of the new, democratic Yugoslavia, to Washington. As I stood with him before a throng of journalists, I thought back to the many predictions I had heard that U.S. policies would fail and that cycles of Balkan violence would go on forever.
    That's when I heard him say that, even though extremists would continue to spark violence, "the wars have finally ended in the region." And I heard him pledge his government's commitment to democracy, accountability and a new era of "fruitful cooperation" with the United States -- something that, just a few months earlier, would have been unthinkable. Svilanovic thanked America for all our help after the war in encouraging democratic change.
    Our participation in the integration of southeastern Europe has been political, primarily. The lion's share of material contributions properly comes from Western Europe. In the Balkans, America contributes less than 20 percent of the funding for civilian assistance and fewer than 10,000 of the more than 65,000 troops. I expect that our troop contribution to Bosnia will decline further if the situation remains peaceful. But our voice -- especially in calling for democracy, respect for individual rights and integration into the international community -- cannot be replaced.
    Because the struggles in these countries are not over, America needs to continue its engagement. That is one reason the Clinton administration had agreed with Congress on last weekend's deadline, tying continued U.S. aid for Yugoslavia to its cooperation with the war crimes tribunal. With the arrest of Milosevic, Yugoslavia met that first requirement, but if it is to become a real partner with Western Europe, it must accept the decision of the tribunal as to when and where Milosevic will be tried.
    Fundamental change will take time. Economic recovery in the region is slow; democratic habits develop only gradually; violent extremism remains a threat. Behind the recent abhorrent acts of violence in Macedonia, southern Serbia and Kosovo are a few Albanian extremists who benefit from lawlessness and division.
    At the same time, the vast majority of the region's Albanians consistently choose peaceful, political options when those are available. The authorities in Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia need to continue to work on reform so that moderate Albanian leaders can show a return on their commitment to nonviolence.
    With these considerations in mind, Secretary of State Colin Powell is right to travel to the Balkans this week. The extremists have a bottomless capacity for deluding themselves into believing that America supports them -- a belief that fuels the fighting and undercuts our credibility throughout the region. Last year, I met senior Albanian leaders and persuaded several to stop supporting violence. This year, others need the same message -- from the highest level and in the bluntest language.
    The last brick in the Berlin Wall fell last October -- in Belgrade when Serbia's citizens bravely rejected Milosevic. With Milosevic's arrest, we now have a chance to welcome and help put in place the last piece of a Europe that is democratic, committed to institutions Americans helped build and friendly to the United States. This is the vision of Churchill, Truman and Eisenhower, of Marshall and of Acheson. The recent violence in Macedonia should only increase our resolve, not lead us to disengage.

Madeleine Albright was secretary of state from 1997 until January of this year.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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