The Guardian's warning: Balkans ahead of a major crisis

The Second World War has ended, but World War I is still not.” These were the words of a Turkish official I recently met in Ankara. He was talking about the Middle East, but it was the kind of comment I could have heard in Moscow, in Kev, or in the Balkans, about the state of things on the European continent.

A place where I could not have heard something like that was Brussels. This is because the European Union is still unprepared to live in a world where geopoliticalism has been restored in which governments, like most of the public, are obsessed with borders and territories, and tend to define success less by economic development than national pride.

This is the drama currently being played in the Western Balkans, where the EU's capacities for thinking and acting as a geopolitical player are being seriously tested. Early this month, the EU has presented the new strategy for the Western Balkans. The stated goal is to encourage reforms in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania, from the recovery of membership. Those institutions in Brussels, which find their way amid an increase in populism by infecting most EU countries, now seem to have the courage to re-say that the promise of membership is not a small miracle.

A Balkan joke better captures the mentality of people who feel they have been left in wait for a long time: when it comes to EU membership, the difference between pessimists and optimists is that optimists believe Turkey will become a member over the time how long Albania will have the presidency, while pessimists believe Albania will enter the EU when the presidency will have Turkey. The significance of this: they will never be joined.

Brussels has the right to clarify that the status quo is unstable. But without any continuation, the announcement risks producing instability in the region. What the EU has to fear the most is the repetition of a scenario like that of Ukraine, in which government support for European aspirations caused clashes by extended opponents [for which, read Russia], instead of gathering Europe governments around that project.

Many factors have restored the Balkans to central news not only the last refugee crisis, which is deeply shaking the region. There is already an increasing moment for extensive integration, following a period in which the EU became known as an organisation given little money.

An encouraging development, although a little noticed, has been the latest relationship between Bulgaria and Macedonia, two countries whose long-standing relations have been tense, mainly in minority issues. The achievement of this extraordinary thing has signaled from both countries that the time has come for solutions to some of the region's wounds.

But for the EU to succeed in its ambitions to transform the region, it had to be aware of the current geopolitical changes taking place. In 2003, when the EU initially promised membership, there was little doubt that the future of the region would be the European future. Russia was first looking into the Balkans as a transit zone to export its energy to Western European markets. Moscow's ambitions were then to maintain the level of influence more than racing with Brussels.

Fifteen years ago, Turkey was enthusiastic about EU accession prospects. As a result, this shaped Balkan policies as long as it demonstrated the strategic values of European values. Then, nobody talked about China in the Balkans.

Today, geopolitical competition is everywhere. China is determined to become the biggest foreign investor in Serbia this year. Plans to build a highway between the Greek port of Piraeus and Budapest, through Belgrade, are of great value to China as described by the trade route as “a belt, a” road between Asia and Europe. Chinese hopes that the Western Balkans will integrate into a single European market, though China is not in a hurry for its infrastructure projects to adhere to EU regulations.

That raises many questions. Should the EU start to push Balkan countries to adopt prosecutorial rules now, or later? And is the EU ready to offer compensation if these states lose Chinese investments as the consensus of EU integration? Russia's effort has changed too. Brussels does not have to have any spies in the Kremlin to know that Russia will do everything it can to prevent Macedonia from entering Nato ʹ not the cause of its strategical meaning, but the cause of symbolic value.

And European policymakers should be aware that if the long-standing clash between Greece and Macedonia [cause of the name] is not resolved before the next EU summit in the Western Balkans in May, then it should be a double defence: Macedonia's ambitions would be linked and Brussels' efforts should be taken seriously in the region would fall to the ground.

The Balkan region is the place where Russia can work to destabilise the EU with very little political cost to itself, even more economic terms and the risk of confronting the US. European diplomacy must convince Moscow that escalating tensions will not be in its best interest. Is the EU ready for this?

But here is Turkey, a country whose relations with the EU stand at the lowest historic point. It is still unclear how its president, Recep Tayip Erdogan, will play her letters in the Western Balkans. While Ankara is trying to build its influence among Muslim communities in the Balkans. Moscow is using its advantage in Orthodox Christians. Can Russia and Turkey co-ordinate their policies, as they tried to do in Syria?

If the EU is slow to wake up from these geopolitical realities, its strategy for the Western Balkans will end in defeat.

He's from Guardian, Periscope.