On March 11 a Tu-141 reconnaissance drone crashed in the Croatian capital Zagreb. The Croatian Ministry of Defence say the drone carried a bomb. Having flown over Ukraine, it then crossed NATO airspace unchallenged, revealing the lack of real protection. The incident coincided with a number of other alerts affecting Serbian Airline and other aircraft flying, or rather wanting to fly across the region, as they were forced to return to Moscow.
On April 3 Aleksandar Vučic was re-elected as President of Serbia. He is known to be part of the team of representatives of “illiberal democracy”, and for his maintaining close contact with Russia and China.
Both these events show that the current war in Ukraine is part of a bigger picture having repercussions across Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The expansion of NATO across the former stalinist countries after 1989/90 is a reality: Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic joined in 1999, followed by Romania in 2004. Romania is worried about the situation in neighboring Moldova and its breakaway Republic of Transdniestria, which is heavily influenced by Russia.
Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and the three Baltic states joined NATO in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009. In 2017 Montenegro followed and, until recently, the last was North Macedonia in 2020. In addition, European Union troops (EUFOR) are based in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Balkans were, and still remain of central economical and geopolitical interest not only for western capital. The race for influence and assets was already beginning under the old Yugoslavia in the 1980s and became turbo-charged with the breaking up of the state and social system of stalinism. Indeed the current war in Ukraine is far from being the first war in Europe since 1945. Those that swept the Balkans in the 1990s were brutal and long-lasting, and in which various European players defended differing interests. France, Germany, Austria, and other “western” imperialist nations returned to the region.
As near-shoring as part of the de-globalisation process has been stepped up, especially for the European powers, the Balkans, which they consider their “legitimate backyard” are again of increased interest. They are far from happy about the growing influence of China and Russia over the last decades. China views the Balkans and especially Serbia as a key part of the Belt-and-Road-Initiative (BRI). This has resulted in Chinese investment, in which there is a high proportion of infrastructure projects like roads and ports that are key links in the trading chain.
The historic links of Russia especially with Serbia have been renewed in the last years with Gazprom taking over the former state-owned oil company NIS in 2008. Russian banks have been investing, and Russian military equipment sales have been increasing.
Corona boosted these connections as a result of Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Russian vaccine imperialism. Serbian president Vučic asked his “friend and brother” Xi Jinping for help during the pandemic. As EU countries stopped selling essential medical equipment to non-EU countries, China and Russia stepped in. This meant that whilst it was still hard to get vaccines in most west European countries, Serbia was the place to go to get vaccinated.
The mistrust in the EU and NATO is also understandable. It is rooted in the bombardment of Serbia in 1999. As in all wars, the ruling elites shout loudly about the war crimes of their enemies, and stay silent about those committed by their allies. The same happened in the Balkans, when during the various wars of the nineties, there were the mass killings of civilians, deadly war camps, ethnic cleansing, the structural use of rape and, of course, millions who had to flee their homes. NATO bombarded Serbia for 78 days without even the token legitimacy of a UN-mandate. Irrespective of the undemocratic and brutal character of the then ruling Serbian regime of Milosevic, NATO did not act to install democracy, but to leave no doubt about the dominance of western imperialism in the region.
As in many neo-colonial countries, who have their own negative experiences with NATO, western imperialism and its brutal exploitation and rule, in the Balkans there is an understandable rejection of the EU, USA, and NATO. These feelings are exploited by Chinese and Russian imperialism. As elsewhere, ordinary people on the ground are treated as no better than pawns in the games of the ruling elites!
The Balkan countries depend economically on EU countries, but also on Russia and China. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro are largely dependent on Russian gas, and are transit countries for the TurkStream and South Stream pipelines, which bring Russian gas into Europe.
Each government in the region is trying to maintain a balance as the scale of sanctions has become clear. Montenegro only supported them after the yacht of Russian oligarch Abramovich departed the country. Others only support the sanctions half-heartedly. A conflict has heated up as Milorad Dodik, head of Republika Srpska, the Serbian region within the highly unstable Bosnia-Herzegovina is seeking Serbian and Russian support for further independence.
For over 200 years the region was, and still is, used by the different imperialist countries for their own interests. This demonstrates that capitalism cannot ensure a secure or stable future for the region. It has led to wars, ethnic cleansing, and poverty, again and again. As in Ukraine, the Balkans are a region that the various imperialist countries have chosen as a battle-ground on which they fight for their own interests, while leaving the people on the ground to pay the cost.
A full all-out war might not be on the immediate agenda for the Balkans, but increased tensions could explode leading to new military conflicts.
On the other side though, is the fact that in the last period class struggle has returned. Protests have shaken the region, by youth in Bosnia-Herzegovina, while there have been movements over womens’ rights and in defence of the environment, as well as strikes at shipyards, in public transport, the health sector, and elsewhere.
The electoral success, again, of Aleksandar Vučic in Serbia has to be understood in the context of war. In periods of instability, ruling politicians and parties are often, in the first months, strengthened as people hope for security and stability. Vučic has benefitted from this, as indeed have Orban, Johnson, Biden and Macron. But none of them have genuinely strong support. Their war honeymoon might well be short, as new protests develop as it becomes clear that working-class people will have to pay the price for war and militarization.
War is the continuation of politics by other means, but it is also the midwife of revolution. The Balkan wars at the beginning of the 20th century were the overture of World War 1, and of the revolutionary wave that followed. Let’s skip the war this time, and go straight on to the revolution.
