Balkanalysis.com

It is remarkable that Timothy Garton Ash, writing about the issue of EU expansion in the Balkans, can correctly point out the dangers of inciting internal grumblings about “overextension” and taking in the poor masses – and still conclude that “…isn’t the prospect of a Pax Europeana, embracing the whole continent, worth the undoubted risk?”

Well, jolly good! This tired and all too common argument for empire posits that, left to its own devices, the Balkans will smolder in war and discord for all eternity. Therefore, it is up to the EU – altruistic and benevolent as always – to save the Balkanians from themselves: “…in the Balkans, the choice is Europe or war.”No, this is the choice as presented by the EU and reverberated endlessly through its echo chamber  in the Western media. This is the same hysterical logic that confronted voters in Macedonia’s November 2004 referendum with huge billboards on which was printed Europe- Now or Never! Despite the obvious hypocrisy between Macedonia’s (non) right to a referendum and those of EU states, as Ash breathlessly informs us, the situation is too dire for  fairness to come into play:  ”…according to a recent survey, three out of every four Macedonians expect a new military conflict in their country.” I don’t know any of them.

There is something deeply revolting about the tone of this article, and something very suspicious about its presuppositions and assignation of guilt. The basic premise is to blame it all on the Turks: “…it is remarkable how many of the most pressing problems for today’s Europe can be traced back to the tangled web of ethnicities, polities and religions that the Ottomans left behind.”

Ah yes, and the Ottomans were operating in a peerless vacuum. Italy and France  never had designs on the Balkan Adriatic. Britain was never interested in the upkeep of Greece. Russia never  fought a war  in Bulgaria. And of course, there was no such thing as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The overly simplistic (though entirely fitting for the task at hand) impression left by Ash is of a whole part of Europe ruined by one civilization. Further, the whole of the Balkans must be brought in to the fold by August 2014- to create a  majestic  symbolic spectacle  out of the one-hundred year anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the beginning of World War I, something that could potentially be an even more uplifting show of continental harmony than the Eurovision Song Contest or the World Cup.

Considering that the EU has always, politically at least, been characterized far more by symbolism than substance, it is not surprising that they would set such grandiose but in reality meaningless goals for themselves. With the pace of this remorseless expansion, and the increasing grumblings it’s causing in the established countries of the union, it can only be hoped that the great anniversary will also mark the death of the European Union itself.

Yet mourn not those selfless Eurocrats: they are prepared to suffer the emotional strain of constantly worrying over the “risk” of overextension and a popular rejection of the much-vaunted EU “Constitution,” while still somehow summoning up the strength to  save the Balkanians from themselves.

The Guardian article indicates yet again that imperialism remains stubbornly  rooted deep within the British mindset. The author fawns over the  grand strategy  announced by a  ”…new independent commission, chaired by the former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato,” one which prescribes solutions for every problem in the Balkans (don’t they all?). Ash  delights in recounting Amato’s belief in Bosnian viability for the union and above all his “ingenious” imperial plans  for making Kosovo independent without actually being independent. This kind of sleight-of-head is of course nothing new for these characters, though it becomes really unbearable in the following sentence:

“…according to the Amato commission, the EU’s choice is simple: enlargement or empire. Either we in the EU accept that we will have virtual colonies in our Balkan backyard for decades to come, or we start preparing the conditions in which the Balkans can join the European Union.”

Enlargement or empire? Don’t they mean enlargement and empire? Or was Brussels merely doing charity work by ordering the woefully unprepared Bulgaria and Romania to be rushed into the club by 2007, rather than eyeing a huge new market for cheap labor with good  outsourcing potential, not to mention all the spoils of peace for huge Western corporations there? Don’t think that this is not fundamentally the same motive driving the EU with all the other Balkan states.

Of course, they never present it as such. Europe is always lending a helping hand, ever the good Samaritan, patient but firm, and we should just be grateful. Yet it is so typical of Eurocrat and Euroapologist doctrine to present things in their own version of George Bush’s black-and-white, “with us or against us” logic, a version that is rather appropriate for an aspiring empire that wants to  pass itself off as the world’s first peaceful empire: the doctrine that the people of the Balkans can only choose “Europe or war.”

Are people really that boring? Are there really no other choices? Alas, we will never find out, because the people of the Balkans will never be allowed to make them for themselves.

The main problem is not that the Balkanians can’t be trusted: the main problem is the people to whose fate they themselves are entrusted.  The past  15 years has seen the crafting, through the works of sundry NGOs, foreign aid organizations and governments, etc., of  new, young elite populations in each of the countries involved, people who have learned to parrot the rhetoric of their masters and who will do and say anything in order to keep their jobs.  Slowly but surely,  this  flexible, supranational  class  comes to have  more in common with others of its ilk than with the people of their own country, the people they allegedly represent, until their will becomes as one with the power brokers in Brussels. This is the formula that has always been underlying the European Union itself, and by which flourish the Eurocrats who run the show.

The Euroskeptic Czech president Vaclav Klaus, who defends that old-fashioned concept of the nation-state and who believes a “supranational” organization such as the EU bodes  ill for the actual people who live there, attacked the Eurocrat royalty in a recent interview.

“…For these people who breakfast in Venice, lunch in Dublin and dine in Stockholm,” Klaus says,  employing a good old Czech reference, “there is Kundera’s ‘unbearable lightness of being.’ For them it [the  EU] is a paradise which they must defend” – that is, a paradise of limitles free travel, bloated sal
aries and endless perks, of the comfortable anonymity of not being a truly public figure, thus no threat of an accountability moment,  but of truly spending the public’s money.

Indeed, says Klaus, “…unfortunately the EU and the debate about the Constitution are in the hands of people, eurofederalists, who have bound their own future to the EU [emphasis added]. These people need supranational powers like the EU. [T]hat is the ideal forum for people like them – where they see personal prospects for work, salary, profession and reputation.”

That said, it is not so hard to understand what compels the alleged urgency behind EU propaganda as in the case of Macedonia, with the dire threat of Europe- Now or Never! Hey, people’s careers depend on this stuff!

In the end, how such a revolting article as that of Ash can resonate with so many is because the EU’s yes-men (in government and  especially in  the media)  have done such an excellent job of conflating concepts: for them, “Europe” is the European Union. In order to become truly European, a non-unionized country in Europe must join up – or face the eternal ignominy of not  living according to  ”European values,” a stark choice which in the end ironically enough ends up sounding pretty much like Bush’s: join us or die.

But that only gets you so far. While mongering fear of proxy wars might suffice to get Balkan countries into the club, once they’re in things become a little different. What if a non-member state was to attack a member state or, worse, what if two member states were to come to blows? As a Greek cynic recently pointed out, “when it comes down to it, no one is willing to die for the flag with 12 stars” (or, presumably, for its postmodern variant).

In the end, this might just be the biggest blow to the Eurofederalists. If push comes to shove, the Euro rhetoric will evaporate like a lot of hot air in the acute absence of anything resembling patriotic allegiance to Brussels from its member citizens.