-Caveat Lector- >From ChicagoTribune http://chicagotribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,SAV- 9906010129,00.html REWARD SOUGHT FOR AIDING WEST'S WAR By R.C. Longworth Tribune Staff Writer June 01, 1999 TIRANA, Albania Soon after Albania awoke from its communist coma in 1991, James A. Baker III, then the U.S. secretary of state, became the first high American official to visit the country. Albania went nuts. Delirious crowds lined the crumbling road from the airport and filled Skanderbeg Square in the middle of Tirana. One million people, about the population of the city itself, turned out in a jumping, waving, adoring mob to welcome the decidedly uncharismatic American as a savior. Raina Kovaci, along with her husband and their infant daughter, were part of the crowd, and she has never forgotten it. "We thought he was bringing democracy." she said. He didn't. Albania remains an anarchic place, ruled more by clans than by laws. The country had a civil war two years ago, an attempted coup last year, and its main opposition party is boycotting parliament. But the faith remains. There's a sort of cargo-cult mentality in the Balkans, a belief that Albania and its neighbors will become rich and democratic if only the West bestows its gifts on them. Conversely, there's a feeling that the Balkans have missed the post-communist gravy train and have, once again, been consigned by the Great Powers, as the major nations are always called here, to history's scullery. The fact is that a new curtain of poverty has fallen across ex-communist Eastern Europe. The more Western and Roman Catholic nations of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have forged ahead with painful but productive reforms and have been rewarded with invitations to join NATO and the European Union. South and east of this curtain lie the Balkan countries, mostly Eastern Orthodox or Muslim, poorer now than when communism collapsed, stumbling from crisis to crisis, horribly damaged by the slow-motion unraveling of Yugo slavia, politically unstable and, most important, ignored by the West, from which all blessings flow. The silver lining of the Kosovo war is that this curtain has parted, as least for the moment, and the West is focused on the region for the first time since 1989. "This war has forced the United States and the European Union to really look at the Balkans," said Prec Zogaj, adviser to Albanian President Rexhep Mejdani. "This is the great irony. For the first time, Western eyes are t urned to the Balkans." Creating a postwar plan Everyone, including NATO officials, assumes that the West, by going to war against Serbia, has taken on a long-term responsibility for stability and recovery in the Balkans. At the least, this is going to mean years of mi litary presence, probably a NATO protectorate, over not only Kosovo but also Macedonia and perhaps Albania. Otherwise, these countries, already politically divided and economically broke, will collapse and bring on new st rife. But that's just the start. The search already is on for solutions to the region's long-range problems--recovery from war damage, economic aid, investment and good advice, including a road map for bringing these countries into NATO and the European Union. In short, even as bombs fall, officials in the Balkans and the West are charting the region's full membership in Western civilization. The best and most comprehensive blueprint so far has been drawn up by the Center for European Policy Studies, a Brussels think tank with close ties to the EU. The center's report said: "It is evident that the long-run solution to the Balkan conflicts will have to be through the integration of the region into civilian, civilized Europe, and that there will have to be a progressive transition from militar ized to civilian order." A NATO-led military protectorate won't do the trick, it said, any more than it has in Bosnia-Herzegovina. NATO can restore military security, but that's all. The U.S. can help with money but is too far away and too preocc upied with the rest of the world to really lead in the Balkans. Only the EU can do it. But can this be done unless Serbia is part of the process? If not, how does the rest of Europe persuade Serbia to join in? And how can the West give the Balkans the help and leadership it needs without reinforcing the reg ion's crippling sense of helplessness and fatalism, that its future depends on what the West does for the Balkans, not what the Balkan nations do for themselves? "The Balkans do have our attention for the first time," a European ambassador here said. "But in a country like Albania, foreign partners can't solve all the problems. We can open the door. But the Albanians have to under stand that the future is not only in the EU's hands but in their own hands." Common dreams, problems In the eight ex-communist Balkan countries--Bulgaria, Slovenia, Romania, Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, which includes the Republic of Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina--the picture is common. Nearly all desperately want to join NATO and the EU: Slovenia already is negotiating EU membership. All believe their cooperation with NATO in its war against Serbia entitles them to fast-track membership in both organiza tions. Many, especially Bulgaria and Macedonia, adopted democracy in the 1990s and have stuck with it, despite economic crises that would have derailed many governments. All have suffered from Serbia's wars and the UN embargoes on Serbia. The wars have blocked their trade with Western Europe, scared away investors and kept tourists from sampling the region's abundant mountain scenery and seacoasts. Most have big crime problems, exacerbated by the embargo-busting smuggling that often kept their economies afloat. Albania, a major link in the Mideast-to-Europe drug traffic, is in many ways a criminal nation. None is remotely ready to face the economic challenges of full membership in the EU, where they would be competing with world-class economies like Germany and France. But all need the promise of eventual EU membership to repair their economies and to give them the kind of goal and incentive that have been so important in the transformation of Poland and Hungary. The military phase NATO protection through continued NATO troop presence and eventual NATO membership is the first step. "We want membership in NATO very much," said Boris Trajkovski, deputy foreign minister of Macedonia. "NATO is basing its policies here. We've been real allies and we deserve membership. This is realistic." More immediately, the continued existence of Macedonia is crucial to any peace in the region. The country has been the prize in centuries of Balkan wars. Right now it faces the fierce hostility of Serbia, the influx of 15 0,000 Muslim refugees from Kosovo, a badly strained economy and the threat of secession by the Albanian-dominated third of the country. But Macedonia is only the start. "There's going to be a large-scale institutional disintegration in the region," predicted Ognyan Minchev, head of the Institute for Regional and International Studies in Bulgaria. "If NATO gets rid of (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic, there's likely to be anarchy. Power will go to local leaders, and you'll have clan politics, together with mafia and smuggling. "So you'll have a disintegrated Serbia, a disintegrated Kosovo, a disintegrated Albania, all together with big problems in Macedonia. "The only answer is large-scale protectorates over all of this by NATO and the West," Minchev said. Bulgaria, although not in NATO, has given NATO warplanes use of its airspace. So has Romania. And Albania is host to NATO troops and could be a launching pad for NATO strikes into Serbia--"NATO's front door," as Foreign M inistry spokesman Sokol Gjoka put it. All believe they have done more to help NATO this spring than have new NATO members such as the Czech Republic or old NATO members such as Greece, and they expect a reward. "We can't expect to become full members of NATO before we do what's necessary," said Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Boshkov, "but we're halfway there. Once we get to the level of reforms reached by Poland or Hu ngary, we expect the process of enlargement to go on." Time is limited. The crush of refugees and the loss of trade and investment have cost the front-line Balkan countries big money--for instance, an estimated $802 million in Albania, or about one-third of its total annual i ncome. They want some sign the West appreciates it. Bulgaria abided by UN embargoes on Iraq and Libya and lost billions of dollars in trade with those countries and unpaid debts by them. Sofia lost more billions from the UN embargo on Yugoslavia during the Bosnian crisis a nd expects to lose $2 billion more this year because of NATO's war on Serbia. "So it's a legitimate question: What's the benefit from being on the side of the West?" Minchev said. "Any democratic system has to balance the pain and gain, and, so far, the pain has been too much. "Right now most Bulgarians want to join NATO. But if NATO doesn't win soon, the debate may be reopened, and Russian influence will grow. Russia always felt it owned Bulgaria. Now the Russians want to keep Bulgaria neutral until the time when they feel strong enough to restore their influence here. "So it's vital to get Bulgaria into NATO before Russia is ready to do this." For the U.S. and its NATO allies, expansion into the Balkans has several advantages. It would spread NATO's steadying influence into a traditionally fractious area and reduce the chance of new Balkan wars. No NATO nations --not even those two old Balkan enemies, Greece and Turkey--have ever gone to war with each other. Expanding NATO into the Balkans would close the geographic gap between Greece and Turkey and the rest of the alliance. And it would increase U.S. influence in the region. But some of this influence would come at the expense of Russia, which would oppose NATO expansion into the Balkans, as it did when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined the alliance. Washington and its allies woul d have to balance Russian sensitivities against Balkan stability and persuade Moscow to go along with any expansion. The economic phase EU membership is the second and harder part. Throughout Europe, the EU has developed a reputation as a magic wand that, once waved, can end strife between old enemies, as it healed the wounds of World War II, and bestow t he gift of rich and healthy societies. Right now, it's hard to see how the Balkan countries can fit into the European Union in any way that matches their dreams. Albania, for instance, is an Africa-poor nation with no decent roads, primitive telephones, an eco nomy dominated by drug-running, political parties that call each other crooks, unemployment rates of 17 percent to 40 percent depending on who's counting and a government that controls little more than the capital of Tira na. The rest of Albania is essentially bandit country. The EU is a mighty global machine galloping into the 21st Century. Albania is still struggling with the accumulated wounds of the 14th Century, not to mention the trauma of the worst communist regime of all. "But membership is our goal," said Gjoka, the Foreign Ministry spokesman. "We are going to move toward an associate agreement, which is the last step to becoming a full EU member. "We can't meet all the criteria now, but the EU does operate at different speeds--one for Germany, for instance, and one for countries like Greece. We're asking for another speed for the Balkan countries." This sounds like wishful thinking. But it's not. There have been proposals for a postwar Marshall Plan for the Balkans, and the EU is preparing a Stability Pact for South-East Europe that would increase cooperation between Brussels and the Balkans. But Michael Emerson, the former EU ambassador to Moscow who authored the report at Brussels' Center for European Policy Studies, said this is so gradual that it amounts to "a half-baked stability pact that doesn't mean a thing." There's a war going on, the report said, and "a new policy needs to comprise a far more powerful . . . approach, offering a far higher and quicker inclusion quality than policy so far." The European think tank, like Gjoka, proposed a "New Associate Membership." This would give the Balkan countries trade breaks. It would let its politicians join the European Parliament on a non-voting basis and give its c itizens jobs in EU institutions. The new euro could become their official currency, even if the countries hadn't met any criteria for membership in the currency bloc. West European countries would buy their banks, to teac h them how to finance their economies, and West Europeans would run their customs services, to control smuggling. This is tough love, as Emerson conceded. It doesn't mean the Balkan countries would be on a fast track to full membership. But they would at least be in the process. "The depth of the culture of modern European `civil society' cannot be achieved in the Balkans for a generation, so what counts here is a judgment whether the political institutions are respecting the fundamental rules an d sincerely driving in the right direction," the think tank report said. Full membership is not possible "for many years." but this would give the Balkans a sense of "inclusion," a sort of "virtual membership" and a feeling of momentum, the report concluded. Some countries, such as Bulgaria and Macedonia, already have made good progress toward this "civil society," CEPS said. Albania is so primitive and crime-ridden that the EU can only suggest a "complete change in the groun d rules of society and the economy" and see whether the Albanians agree. Conspiracy of compassion? Bosnia is seen as an example of the wrong way to make progress. The former Yugoslav republic has NATO-guaranteed security but little economic or social reform. The plan proposed by the European Center for Policy Studies is bound to be controversial. But one European who took part in its preparation is Romano Prodi, the former Italian prime minister who has been named president o f the European Commission, the EU's administration. All this is complicated by the Balkans' history with the Great Powers and the fact that the region is fertile ground for conspiracy theories. Most Balkan nations have been stunted by foreign empires, from the Ottoman to the Soviet Union. In between, their politics, borders and fortunes have been dictated by the major nations, from the U.S. to Britain to Prussia to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Russia. Bulgaria lost most of its territory at the Conference of Berlin. Albania owes its existence to President Woodrow Wilson and the Versailles Treaty. Macedonia has been carved and r ecarved throughout history by foreign powers. NATO and the EU are seen as the latest versions of the Great Powers but also as more high-minded entities that may actually do some good. "The intervention now is not the same," insisted former Bulgarian President Zhelya Zhelev. "Here you have the EU and NATO countries, the Council of Europe, countries with a majority in the United Nations, that can claim t o represent the democratic world. "The moral and political power of NATO provides the moral and political justification for what's happening in Yugoslavia," he said. But this is still the Balkans, where conspiracies flourish and the simplest explanation is dismissed out of hand. Many conversations veer into wild theories of what NATO and the U.S. are doing in the region. Most assume that Washington plotted with Milosevic to start the war to keep the Balkans in turmoil and therefore dependent on t he West, or to give Americans a place to test their new weapons, or to destabilize Europe and end the euro's challenge to the U.S. dollar, or to impose Muslim control over the Balkans. "There an attitude here that Clinton and the Masons and George Soros are getting together to run this," said Bulgarian television journalist Boyko Vassiliev, only partly in jest. "Here's what people think," said Jasmina Mironski, deputy editor of Nova Makadonski, Macedonia's leading newspaper. "They think there's got to be some strategic purpose at work here, for NATO to get control over the Balka ns. Or even that there's been some secret deal between NATO and Milosevic to destabilize the Balkans." Does she believe that herself? "To be frank, I don't know what to think." Bringing the Balkans into the West means not just a change of politics but a change of mentality. In this region the highway signs point to Belgrade or Athens, not to Paris or London and certainly not to Washington. The closest neighbors, their geographical frame of reference, are Balkan, not Western. The road to Brussels is always going to lead through Belgrade, and no solution is possible until that road is open. 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