Ahead of  NATO’s summit in Bucharest this week, one thing seems very clear to many in the Balkans. And that is – that the US continues to play a crucial role in the region’s stability.

It has been thirteen years since the Dayton agreement which ended the war in Bosnia ; nine since NATO’s bombing of Serbia ; seven years since Macedonia ’s confined ethnic clash in 2001. In each and every of these crises, the US played a decisive role and carried the burden of leadership towards their resolution.

Europe, prone to indecisiveness and self-paralysis as it can be, was happy if it could give a hand to Washington and pick up the reconstruction bill afterwards.

When in late 2004 Macedonia ’s peace accord was at risk of cracking under nationalist pressure, it was again the US maverick political engineering that saved the day and kept the country on course of stability. The EU’s autopilot rhetoric of the carrot and the stick was certainly not helping. To the contrary, it was likely aggravating things.

And finally, the US had to bite the bullet and step forth with recognition of Kosovo’s independence earlier this year.  A move neither easy nor void of risk. Without the US lead, Europe would have likely never found the political will to do it. It would have kept  Pristine  in the limbo until violence burst again, same as in March 2004.

In the period before the NATO meeting, the US has again assumed the burden of keeping things on course of stability in the Balkans,  on itself.

Washington has been pushing hard to see the countries from the so called Adriatic group, Albania , Croatia , and Macedonia , ushered into the North Atlantic Alliance. This should provide additional security to the Balkans in  a case of possible aftershocks from Kosovo’s independence.

However, there is a problem with Macedonia , the country whose stability is very closely entwined with that of Kosovo.

Greece says it would veto Macedonia ’s entry unless a long-standing name dispute resolved before the summit. There is nothing more to the Greek veto threat except the desire of the government in Athens to use its position as a member of a club to force Macedonia to bow.

As much as everyone in Europe understands, or must understand the political hazard of Greek behavior, nobody seems able to do anything about it. It is clear that if left up to the EU, Greece would have it its way, no matter what the consequences to the region.

If these are the benefits of multilateralism, no wonder the US has had its reservations about it occasionally.  

In an attempt to fix things, Washington had to step in it with its full weight forcing Skopje and Athens into a compromise. And it is possible that 17 years after its inception, this dispute could finally be resolved, only days, if not hours before the summit. Intensified talks are underway.

If Macedonia stays out of NATO, it would become increasingly susceptible to pressures from outside but also within. The country remains the only viable example of multiculturalism in the Balkans. 

There is no doubt that without the United States there would be no solution, and things would be left to linger from bad to worse. This goes for this as well as  the previous crises in the Balkans.

Washington has had its doubts about engaging too deep into the Balkans in the past. Back in the early 1990s,  in the words of then Secretary of State James Baker, it felt “it did not have a dog in the fight”. Yet, it apparently proved right each time it intervened.

It is fair to acknowledge, as Brussels likes to call it,  the “transformative power” of the European Union. It is true that the lengthy process of accession into the EU makes candidate countries gradually conform to democratic norms. But it is also true, that the EU’s capacity to react promptly to  crises is still very limited.

In addition, it is true that is has been deliberately keeping the visa-lid over the Balkans for far too long, thinking it could use it as a lever of its conditionality. Can one really think that ghettoizing angry, unemployed young men is a good recipe for political stability?

The US has wanted and rightfully so, to disengage from the Balkans for quite some time now, and to hand things over to the EU.

However, as things stand right now, the Balkans will need the US as a guarantor of its stability still for some time to come.

Risto Karajkov*
Skopje & Bologna