President Biden restores American authority to Balkans, or Kosovo died

♪ P ERISCOPI of NATIONAL INTEREST 

It was a major step towards peace and prosperity in the Balkans after a decade-long American lack of American intervention that supported Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence, clearly the only successful US nation-building project in the last thirty years.

Over the past decade, under the so-called European Union's ériddership, relations between states in the region deteriorated and, during the Biden presidency, the US authority in the region has been devastated.

The Washington agreement is the first and only signed between Kosovo and Serbia. It included economic co-operation, demarcation of borders, and plans to build transport links between the two countries. The execution of the agreement seemed to be a clear sign that America had returned to the Balkans; it was an indicator that Washington was taking control of the peace process that had been neglected by European authorities, which did little to advance positive relations between nations.

Although Serbia claimed signing that agreement did not mean that they were recognising Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state, it was meant by that signing. Nobody signs an agreement with a state that doesn't exist.

The important American presence of the past waned; European influence arose.

Today, Serbia, an aggressor, has restored troops to the border between independent states and patrols the border from the sky with aircraft produced in Russia.

If Serbia's border provocations were insufficient to raise tensions, a Kosovo government building in an ethnic Serb part in Kosovo was deliberately fired with hand grenade grenades.

Even more disturbing is that European influence has filled the vacuum of power resulting from America's full interest in the region.

European oversight has proved to be an inconsistent mess for order and law in Kosovo. And an increasingly large European animation towards Serbia that is like a more and more authoritarian state every day can be expected to erode and undermine Kosovo's multiparty independent democracy in the years to come.

How far Europeans are willing to go with Kosovo's governance becomes clear when we follow those events that followed the Washington Agreement.

In The Hague of Holland, where the EU finances international courts, the first hearings of the so-called “Specialised Chamber of Kosovo” have been launched [ KSC.

The charges were brought against Hashim Thaci, the hero of the liberation of Kosovo and its former president, and against others for alleged war crimes. In another case, two KLA veterans were accused of publicising confidential documents stemming from the Secial Prosecutor's Office in The Hague.

There was no investigation of why, since, or who discovered sensitive information. Former KLA veterans who were being prosecuted received these resulting documents. The wind is coming of something devised.

The situation is counterproductive when we consider that the EU has serious internal challenges to the order and its law; perhaps it cannot manage normal legal practices in the international court that finances.

But this has nothing to do with the law; it has to do with EU influence in the Balkans. This was made clear to us by the Bulgarian president of the Kosovo Court at a meeting with EU ambassadors when she explained not only when the charges were expected but also when sentences were expected. To put it straight: The EU appears to be using the Special Court to eliminate its leaders of liberation from its national policy.

Europeans give no reason why they should be trusted in the Balkans, and the Benden administration is not displaying any sign of re-agement in the region, but American officials must engage again.

What American officials need to understand is that America not only introduced Kosovo into existence but also brought multi-party democracy into the region without having history of it.

By re-angering themselves in the Balkans, the United States can save the only successful statehood project in the past thirty years.

Professor Ivan Sascha Sheehan is executive director of the Public School and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore.
The text was translated from Periscope.