The Balkans Project

March 2009

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>> About the Discussion

>> List of Panelists

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What impact is the new Obama administration having on perceptions of America and Americanization in the Balkans? Are there signs of “change we can believe in” in the Balkans too?

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Shoba Šerić, Artist

Hi everybody,

. . . First of all, the “Americanization” of the Balkans is a long shot. Unlike the USA, the Balkans is really a multicultural environment at all. In reality it is multi-religious and mono-cultural, with some minor language and other regional differences. Multiculturalism was only introduced recently by Slobodan Milosevic and his “import” of a significant number of Chinese people (in order to upset western governments). These Chinese people spread around and brought with them their culture, language, religion, food habits and all their other very distinctive cultural differences. Almost immediately people in Serbia and Bosnia were introduced to racism, pushing aside nationalism (insane!).

The term “multiculturalism” is widely and mistakenly used in the Balkans (especially in Bosnia) by an international community that wanted to stop conflicts by attempting to draw differences between people, not to encourage similarities. The damage done by Samuel Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations is huge: every right wing politician took that book as a bible and started to apply it on every level of society. Nationalistic rhetoric is still the same as it was at the end of the 1980s and 1990s; not many things have changed. Economically, the entire region is struggling to maintain basic functions. Most of the governments are still very inexperienced, vulnerable, and weak.

In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we cannot even call it a government. The dysfunctional Dayton Peace Accord brought peace, but nothing else came through. Divisions are still enormous, and the international community doesn’t care much as long as there is no military action in sight. Building a nation-state is a science-fiction project from this perspective, and something should be done soon. A constitution like we have here in the United States doesn’t exist in Bosnia; it’s a very negotiable and misinterpreted document and varies between two separate entities: the Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation. The Office of the High Representative in Bosnia is dysfunctional as well, without real power or the will to help impose state order on the entire territory. Mixed messages and political confusion are constantly flooding domestic and international circles, grinding everything to a halt. A vicious circle of lawless politicians who constantly lie to everybody is a big problem; there are no partners that international community can rely upon. In that light, the Dayton Peace Accord must be revised. More functionality must be imposed either by force, media bombardment. or some other way of forced “pursuit of happiness.”

The influence of the Obama administration could be significant. The Balkans are an important part of American foreign policy even though there are other priorities now (the economic meltdown, Afghanistan, Iraq…) The partial success of Bill Clinton’s policy in stopping the conflict in Bosnia was productive. Everything looked like there would be a long extension of positive American influence in Balkans. But with the appointment of G. W. Bush everything stopped and the entire region was abandoned to its local and disabled politics. The partial spreading of the EU into the Balkans didn’t help much, and the situation in Romania and Bulgaria still is not good. There is still a big economic and political gap between Greece and Hungary. The expansion of the EU has halted, and many countries are waiting in front of Europe’s doors. The spread of NATO is too slow, and the United States and EU should push much more strongly for NATO integration, which could bring more stability overnight.

Whether we can believe in “change we can believe in” is a long shot. Some steps must be taken, and some serious moves by the U.S. administration should be made. The Balkans are still a powder keg, and someone is always playing with matches. The Balkans are definitely the Achilles heel of the EU, there is no doubt of that. Geopolitical alliances within Europe are still strong and we still have two major blocs: the United States and UK on one side and Germany and France on the other. The debris of the Eurasian clash of giants will always fall on the back of the weak Balkan states. Maintaining instability and keeping everything loose and fragile is a dangerous game played by some.

Maybe some other solutions are available. We should look for them (if peace in the Balkans is a real option within EU and U.S. circles).

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Fritzie Brown, Executive Director, CEC ArtsLink

Thanks for this opportunity to hear from those on the ground in the Balkans. On this side, the domestic plate seems to be piled high with trouble. What’s everyone’s take over there?

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Ranko Milanović-Blank

… I would ask this distinguished panel: What do actually “Americanization” and “change” mean? What is “Balkan/the Balkans” – a geographical, geopolitical, or psychological-psychiatric term?

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Suzana Milevska, Art Theorist and Curator

I will start from the middle and try to take a detour in the opposite direction, toward questioning the term “Balkanization” in the title of the discussion.

One could definitely read some kind of fear into the term itself, but I am not sure if it is a fear of geopolitical and cultural division – of a kind of fragmentation of the United States or something else… The term “Americanization” was coined as a kind of assimilation of immigrants while turning them into Americans or, in the more recent period of globalization, acceptance of American cultural values: a turn towards “Westernization,” development, democratization, capitalization, or McDonaldization (with no sympathy for the “rogue state” that plays the role of world vigilante).

“Balkanization,” however, has a very limited meaning. Although it could have meant many other things that are not yet listed in any dictionary, the general understanding of the term is actually still limited to the split of Yugoslavia (I guess a more accurate term, though, would be “Yugoslavization,” since no other Balkan state split in the 1990s when the term was coined). Maria Todorova warned of this misnomer already in 1997 in her book Imagining the Balkans, but nothing has changed since then in the terminology.

In the context of this discussion, I am actually interested in investing in re-writing the meaning of Balkanization – or in ditching it all together. Otherwise its negative meaning is baggage that will haunt all of us and prevent us from discussing the agency of a new Balkan subjectivity, which for me is more relevant today (the hope for a new perception of America could also be a good starting point).

Now let me address the first question of the panel more directly. Even though I am not an expert in foreign policy – neither of the United States nor of the Balkans (and, as far as I am aware there is no such thing as a Balkan foreign policy as such, anyway) – I can easily state that the perception of America in the Balkans can change rapidly without any steps being taken first to re-conceptualize the representation of the Balkans in the United States. The misapplied term “Balkanization” is the best example of the urgency of such a turn in the perception and representation of the Balkans. In order to have any impact on already existing stereotypical perceptions of America, and not only in the Balkans but elsewhere, the Obama administration should first find capacities for re-thinking the relation of the United States with individual states and with the region. I am not talking about assessing the geopolitical interests (I am sure that this is done already). I am talking about the promise of change.

To put it concretely, how could a citizen in Macedonia believe that there will be any change in the biggest hot-potato issue – solving the “name issue” – if one of the first meetings of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton with Greek officials (namely the Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyanni) ended without ever mentioning the issue? Or perhaps one should read into this lack of action a sign of careful politics? I can’t help but think that the economic crisis will slow any major changes in U.S. policies toward the Balkans. And with the EU refusing to help the economic crisis in the region I am afraid that “change” is still wishful thinking and not one in which we can believe.

Finally, I must admit that I find the “Americanization/Balkanization” dichotomy from the title disturbing and not very helpful from the start of this discussion exactly because the terms themselves do not connote symmetrical meanings. Rather, by contrasting them like this, one gets the false impression that there is a kind of correspondence between the two concepts.

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