A few bright spots on Europe’s troubled periphery Even as the future of the European Union’s neighborhood remains under threat, a few developments on the EU periphery – in Ukraine, Romania, and Serbia – show that civil society and rule…
Serbia Reinvents Itself
Back in the 1990s, Ivica Dacic, known as ‘Little Slobo’, was the spokesman who justified strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s conquests of neighbouring non-Serbs in the Balkan wars. Aleksandar Vucic, as the information minister of Yugoslav President Milosevic, was the hatchet man…
The Hague Tribunal Heritage after 20 Years
As the special war-crimes court for ex-Yugoslavia celebrates its 20th anniversary in Sarajevo today and prepares to close its doors by 2016, it seems to have performed better at politics than at jurisprudence. That’s not a bad record, perhaps, for…
Serbia Enters Europe: The End of the Bloody Balkan Wars
Yes, it’s laudable that Croatia just became the first new member of the European Union in six years. Yet the really breathtaking news from the Balkans this week is the humdrum fact that Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga attended Croatia’s celebrations…
Serbia’s Metamorphosis: From “Bandit” to “Decent”
There are many things you could say about the European Union-brokered agreement on broad principles that the Serbian and Kosovar foes struck at long last this past weekend. That it is historic—the definitive end to the nasty Balkan wars of…
Gotovina Acquittal Risks 20 Years of International Jurisdiction
It’s bad enough that the appeals chamber of the Hague Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia has reopened old ethnic wounds by absolving Croatian General Ante Gotovina of responsibility for his troops’ persecution, deportation, and murder of Serb civilians in 1995. This acquittal…
Teaching an Old Dog EU Tricks
Those Europeans who fear a diminished future as they stare at the euro crisis and Washington’s pivot to Asia need only turn to the Serbs for reassurance of their worth. Yes, the Serbs. In particular, the ultranationalist Serbs who were…
Hints of a Serbia-Kosovo Rapprochement
It will be a hard sell. But it’s important for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to squeeze in a visit to the tiny Balkans the week before the U.S. presidential election. Her trip advertises that the West is now putting…