MICHELLE ENGLISH: Greetings.
I'm Michelle English,
and on behalf
of the MIT Center for
International Studies,
I would like to welcome
you to today's Starr forum.
We're honored to have with us
today Una Hajdari to discuss
NATO, the Balkans, and Ukraine,
the geopolitical implications
of the European periphery.
Ms. Hajdari is a freelance
journalist from Kosovo
and is at CIS as the 2018
Elizabeth Neuffer fellow.
This fellowship sponsored by
the International Women's Media
Foundation and provides
a unique opportunity
to female journalists working
on human rights and justice
issues, allowing them
time away from the field
to do research at MIT and
to report at the Boston
Globe and the New York Times.
In our typical
fashion, today's talk
will begin with our
speaker followed
by a conversation between
our featured speaker
and our discussant.
Followed by that, there will
be Q and A with the audience.
For those asking
questions, I'd like
to remind you to line
up behind the mics
and to please just ask
one question at this time
just so everyone can
get their questions in.
And also because
this talk is offered
as an IAP for MIT
students, I just
wanted to take a quick count of
first all of the MIT graduate
students who are
attending today.
If you could raise your hand?
Any MIT grad students?
OK, two, four.
And if you are a MIT
undergraduate, raise your hand.
OK, thank you.
Now I'd like to
introduce our discussant.
Elizabeth Wood is
Professor of history at MIT
and the author of
three books, Roots
of Russia's War in Ukraine,
Performing Justice, Agitation
Trials in Early Soviet
Union, and The Baba
and the Comrade,
Gender and Politics
in Revolutionary Russia.
I think I got--
OK.
She has also written numerous
scholarly articles on gender
and performance, as well as
blogs and other publications
about Russian history
and current events.
Within MIT,
Professor Wood serves
as co-director of the
Misty Russia program
coordinator of
Russian an adviser
to the Russian language
program, and she also
holds a secondary appointment
in MITs global studies
and language section.
Please join me in
welcoming Professor Wood.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Greetings.
It's great to have
everybody here.
I'm going to be very brief.
I just want to set the stage
for what we're about to do.
First, let me say thanks to
Michelle English and Laura
Kerwin who do an amazing
job with these Starr forums.
They're really,
really extraordinary.
I also want to make
two quick announcements
to say that the MIT Russia
Program in conjunction
with the Center for
International Studies
is going to be bringing
to Russia related speakers
this spring.
One is Brian Taylor who
will be here on February 26
speaking on Putinism,
his new book,
and the second is former
Ambassador Michael
McFaul, who will be here on
March 14 also in a Starr forum.
So if you're on the
Starr forum mailing list,
you'll find out about those--
both of those-- certainly,
the Michael McFaul event.
If you want to find out more
about our MIT Russia events,
[? Kati ?] Zabrovski is
our managing director,
and she is over here in blue
and red, the Russian colors.
And we have a sign up
sheet out in the lobby.
So please feel free to
join our mailing list.
And if you want to be on the
CIS Starr forum mailing list,
talk to my--
to Michelle and Laura.
So obviously, this
is a key moment
to talk about NATO, the
Balkans, and Ukraine,
as you've all
probably been thinking
which is why you're here.
President Donald
Trump has just said
that he is not sure the
US should be part of NATO,
and President--
Russian president, Vladimir
Putin, has just said--
has just yet again lambasted
NATO as he's about to travel
to Belgrade--
to Belgrade.
So what's interesting
is to see why
NATO is becoming the hotspot,
why there's so much insecurity
and uncertainty right
now as to the size
of NATO, what's going
to happen with NATO,
and especially what's going to
happen to NATO in the Balkans.
One of the things that
we know Hajdari and I are
very interested in is how did
the conflict get going in 1999.
What's been
happening since then?
I'll say a few more
words about Una Hajdari.
We're extraordinarily lucky
to have her here this year.
Thanks to the committee that
brought her for the Elizabeth
Neuffer fellow,
she has published
extraordinarily widely
for someone who is still--
I'll say this-- fairly young.
She got her start in Kosovo,
which is where she's from.
So she's from the Balkans.
She's fluent in many
languages, at least four.
She has published-- she
got started in the Balkans
where she wrote
for Balkan insight.
She was the managing editor of
a journal called Kosovo 2.0.
She has contributed to
Agence France-Presse.
She has contributed to German
newspapers, Die Tageszeitung
and Berliner Morgenpost.
She's published
widely in the US press
in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic,
The New Republic, The Nation,
The Guardian, and of
course most recently,
The Boston Globe where she's
been interning this fall.
And what I think
is extraordinary
is that she publishes on
all sides of the spectrum,
both the more conservative
American papers and the--
or news outlets and
the more progressive.
Exactly.
Anyway she's also won
awards for her journalism.
One award was for a study on the
education of minority groups,
and another was on
war criminals who
have maintained a hold on
power in post-war Kosovo.
And at the end of this
month, January 28,
she'll be leaving us to
go to The New York Times
where she'll be interning
at the international desk.
So I'm going to turn
it over to Una Hajdari,
and she can talk
about the Balkans.
We have a couple of slides
if you want to use them.
UNA HAJDARI: Yes.
Hello.
Just a quick check.
Do I speak-- my mic OK?
Whoever I'm looking at.
OK.
Hi everyone.
Thank you so much for your
interest in this topic.
I feel that NATO is only
the subject of scandalous
and sensationalist headlines
and that not very often people
don't--
are not interested in
getting into the meat
of the issue and the
reasons why NATO expansion
is such a big and important
topic in eastern and southeast
Europe.
The fact that it's being
mentioned more than ever
by the current US
president is something
that has brought it to the
foreground of political debate
on a global level,
but most people
don't understand why the
post-socialist East European
and Southeast European societies
have been focusing on NATO so
much over the years.
So just, briefly, to
go back to the history
of NATO for those who might
not know very much about it,
in 1948 and '49
after World War II
and the defeat of
Nazism in Europe,
the European
security situation is
divided between the spheres of
influence of the Soviet Union
and the spheres of influence
of the Western powers,
divided along the lines of where
they advanced during World War
II and where the
world war ended.
For the Western
European countries
that had definitely
collaborated amongst each other
but also with the United States
in World War I and World War
II, it was important to
solidify this relationship
and to make sure that they
could rely on one another
in case they were
threatened by Germany.
This was before West
Germany join NATO.
And in case they were
threatened by the Soviet Union.
And this is an important
element in this
because NATO is, in many
ways, formed to prevent
a possible Soviet threat.
And this is something that
defines the role of NATO
later on in history up until
this day with the successor
state of the Soviet Union,
the Russian Federation.
And so NATO doesn't do
very much, initially.
With the Korean War in 1950,
which is, in many ways, A,
a proxy war, but then develops
in a full first and only
confrontation between the Soviet
Union and the United States,
the signatories of
what was initially
just the North Atlantic Treaty
form the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.
They assign a Supreme
Allied Commander for Europe,
and decide to make this
military alliance a formal thing
and something that dictates
their foreign policy.
And for most of the Cold War,
NATO acts in different ways.
It's more active.
Sometimes they act more
as a unified front.
Sometimes more individually.
This is shown through the
example of, let's say,
France and other
countries that end up
developing their nuclear arsenal
as independent countries,
just in case they have to
fend off for themselves
and not as part of the
total military alliance.
But all of this
changes in '89 or '90
with the fall of the Soviet
Union and the breakup of-- oh,
and, of course,
we need to mention
that in retaliation to
the formation of NATO,
the Soviet Union forms
the Warsaw Pact or signs
the Warsaw Pact, where it
and its satellite states
decide to organize for their
common defense, mainly.
It's much less a
society of equals, which
NATO was considered to be.
But definitely organized
the security situation
in Eastern Europe along the
division line through Germany
and what is referred
to as the Iron Curtain.
This changes in '89 with the
fall of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union, it sets
its satellite states free.
They're independent
countries that
can do their own thing,
militarily and otherwise.
And so NATO does some intense
soul searching, at this point.
What does it do as
an alliance that
was formed to ward off
this other big power?
Is it still necessary?
And, also, this comes at a
time of big, massive euphoria
in Europe and in the world.
Neoliberalism is spreading.
We don't need wars.
We're not going to have wars.
Nuclear arsenals are toned down.
Demilitarization happens in
many, many parts of the world.
And at the same time,
in Europe, specifically,
this new political
alliance was formed,
which existed as an
economic one for a long time
and got transitioned into a
formal political alliance,
officially, with the
Maastricht Treaty
in the '90s, which,
sort of, forms
this new political community
of nations in Europe
where all of these
post-socialist states
were going to become a part of.
Now, as all of this is
happening-- and then,
of course, mercifully,
the Soviet Union
breaks apart
peacefully, and there is
no escalations in that aspect.
Of course, one doesn't
think about Chechnya
and other things.
But that's a topic for
Russia experts, not me.
But with all this happy
euphoria in Europe,
there's one part of it,
the southeastern region
of the Western
Balkans that doesn't
seem to want to
transition peacefully
into this neoliberal
European global order.
Yugoslavia was less a big
worry for the Western powers
because having famously
split from Moscow
or split from Stalin
but then maintained
its own form of
socialism after '48,
it had received US aid
for the Marshall Plan
but also formed the non-aligned
movement, which incorporated
other socialist countries
and post-colonial countries
and states through different
parts of the world like India
and Syria and Egypt
and stuff like that.
But, anyway, it wasn't a
big problem for the West
because there were lines of
communication that were open.
And it was, actually,
even considered
to be a place where
a lot of people
who wanted to be involved in
Russian issues from the West
would meet.
The Yugoslavs were
good intermediaries
because they were socialists
so the Soviets were OK
collaborating with them.
That changed a lot but,
again, different topic.
And they also had lines
of communication open
with the West and were a
meeting point of East and West,
which is very
symbolic considering
what happened in the '90s.
So Yugoslavia descends
into, first of all,
crazy nationalist--
I don't know what to call it.
Crazy nationalism, intense
nationalist sentiments
erupt in Yugoslavia,
mainly because most
of its constituents--
it was a federation
of socialist states,
which was made up
of republics that had
different ethnic groups
as the dominant one in
each separate republic.
And every single one
of these republics
wanted to be independent
and felt like now
that the Federation
was falling apart,
they could deal with
all their grievances
they hadn't dealt
with during the time
of the socialist federation,
during World War II,
before World War
II, as has happened
in other places in the world.
And so it started with
the northernmost republic
leaving Yugoslavia.
That's Slovenia.
That's where Melania
is from for people who
might want a reference point.
Oh, now would be a
good time for maps,
since I've gotten to that point.
Is that-- yeah.
So Romania, Bulgaria,
and Greece, and Albania
are, obviously, not
part of Yugoslavia.
But it's from
Slovenia to Macedonia.
So Slovenia is the
first Republic.
There's a pointer here.
I don't know how to use it.
Slovenia leaves
first and we then
see the remaining
republics clash
with each other,
first politically,
and then on an individual
level between groups.
And that escalates into war.
And with the war
properly starting
with various interventions
by the Yugoslav army
and in Croatia, as it
was preparing to secede.
Now, this was a tricky
question because many
believe that Yugoslavia should
survive as a federation.
It did have pluralist
elections in some parts of it,
even when it was a federation.
And its survival, the plan
was to have Yugoslavia
survive as a federation and
be incorporated into the EU
as a whole.
But since some of the republics
wanted to leave and do
their own thing, not
be part of Yugoslavia--
especially because
at this point it
was led by the head of the
Serbian branch of the Yugoslav
Communist League,
Slobodan Milosevic.
Who, many of you might
not know very much about,
but was a Serbian strong
man who definitely believed
that Serbia, that bigger
country there and with the lower
part that's partitioned, as the
biggest republic, as, perhaps,
the republic that
had participated
the most in the
Yugoslav economy,
in the development of
the Yugoslav system,
should get more out of the
country once it was leaving it.
If it were to leave it.
The alternate description
of his policies
would be he wanted to
keep Yugoslavia together.
Again, this is a
completely different topic
that we don't need
to talk about today.
But, basically, these ethnic
groups or nationalist groups
were clashing, and
the Yugoslav army
was being used to intervene and,
first of all, calm things down.
But then ended up becoming a
warring party in this conflict.
So this is happening
while Europe and NATO
are thinking about what
their future role is.
So with the formation of
European Union, NATO becomes--
and this was something that the
US side was very involved in.
But the European
Union wants to form
its own military
structures, mechanisms
for future military
actions and/or financing
and establishing its armies.
This was a big part
of the integration
of the new countries that had--
do we have a wider UK map?
Anyway, new countries
that had left the--
former socialist
countries that were
going to be part of the union.
And we don't know,
exactly, to what extent
these countries were interested,
initially, in the conflict,
mainly because it started
escalating very quickly.
We have the first casualties
in 1991, massive casualties
in 1991 in Croatia.
The war in Croatia, it spills
over to Bosnia very quickly.
In Bosnia things
escalate even more.
There are more civilian
casualties in Bosnia.
All at the same time, in
Kosovo on the other side
we have incidents
breaking out, isolated,
not as many civilian casualties
because the war there
hadn't escalated yet.
And all this is happening while
the situation in the country
is not going very well.
And so now NATO has two options.
It could either choose
to not become involved,
or it could choose to think of
a common response with Russia,
now, because this
was the vacuum that
was created with the
fall of the Warsaw Pact
where Russia was
supposed to have
a new role in the European
security apparatus.
What happens, initially, is that
UN monitors and OSCE monitors
later on, and EU
monitors are sent in.
And the crime keeps escalating.
The incidents keep escalating.
In April of 1995,
UN monitors get
taken hostage by the Bosnian
Serb army in Gorazde.
And this is the first time where
NATO has to actually consider
launching airstrikes
because it has
to protect its
own personnel that
were taken hostage in Gorazde.
This makes the
situation really tricky
because if this conflict
escalates to airstrikes,
what would stop them from
sending more air strikes should
it get worse in eastern Bosnia.
And the Russian side is
involved in all of this.
They're part of
the contact groups.
They're part of the
debate about this.
They end up sending peacekeepers
in Bosnia, not militarily
involved, but peacekeepers.
And then, in July 1995, news
breaks of the large scale
massacre in Srebrenica
on July 11 of 1995,
where around 8,000 civilians
were killed within one day.
And this is the massive
wake up call to the West
where it's like, we have
to actually step in.
We can't have our little liberal
freedom end of history party
in Europe, while this is
going on in the Balkans.
And the security general at this
point, NATO secretary general,
decides to speed up things.
He doesn't go through the
Security Council, which
would actually be needed
to give NATO approval
for airstrikes in Bosnia.
He goes to the UN
military general
and gives him approval to
request airstrikes from NATO.
And NATO launches two weeks of
airstrikes in Bosnia, which,
effectively, end the war.
Then NATO and Russia and
all these other countries
become part of the Dayton
Peace Accords, which end up
setting up the post-war Bosnia.
Peace is restored in
Europe, to some extent.
However, the situation
in Kosovo has still not
been solved because Kosovo,
as the southern province
of Serbia, has this
large Albanian majority.
The Albanians don't want to
be part of Serbia anymore.
On the other hand,
Serbia doesn't
want to grant independence
or any sort of autonomy
to its southern province,
which is also, ironically,
the place where its first
medieval kingdom was set up,
the heart of the Serbian nation.
It's something that they don't
want to relinquish easily.
But all these groups that
were involved in Bosnia
now transfer to Kosovo.
And they are involved in intense
negotiations with Slobodan
Milosevic to use
diplomatic means
to prevent any form of
Western intervention.
And, again, this doesn't
produce very many results
because Milosevic is facing
a big crisis back home.
There are protests going on
in Serbia on a monthly basis.
Inflation is high because
of the many embargoes
that have been imposed on
Yugoslavia at this point.
He has created this network
of criminal organizations
that are propping him up and
making sure he stays in power.
And they also want
him to stay in power.
And also, because, on one hand,
Russia's strong resistance
to air strikes and air
strikes were put on the table
very early on.
But on one hand, because
of the Russian reluctance,
nobody expected for it
to actually escalate
to this point.
And then, to the very
point that in early 1999
as the last attempts were
being made by the US side,
by everyone else to
solve this, airstrikes
were so negatively
perceived in Europe
that even, let's say, a
country like the Czech Republic
that builds a lot of its
modern identity on a failed
revolution, a failed revolution
that was made to liberalize
Czech socialist society,
where it bemoans
the lack of Western
intervention in this revolution
to help keep that
government in power.
Even the Czech
public is like, no.
The German public, the
German political elite
keeps going on TV all the time
to talk about these airstrikes.
We have to intervene.
It's a massive
humanitarian crisis.
We have to get involved.
Germany, especially, since
this will be the first conflict
that Germany or
any military action
that a unified Germany was
involved in since World War II.
At some point the
diplomatic efforts imploded,
and NATO decides to
launch airstrikes
on Yugoslavia, the
interesting thing
being that the
Russian party, which
was involved in the
debate the whole time
does not get notified
until three hours
before the bombing starts.
Where the prime
minister, Primakov
at the time, literally, is
on a flight to Washington,
DC and has to turn
around once he
realized that the bombings on
Yugoslavia have been launched.
Again, the airstrike was
supposed to be short-lived.
It was supposed to be
limited to military targets
and other resources that were
associated with the military.
But Milosevic didn't
want to give up.
And what happened was that the
worst atrocities in the Kosovo
conflict actually happened
during the bombing
because utter chaos erupts.
You have the Yugoslav
army that is now
making use of this
free-for-all to do
what it wanted to do in Kosovo.
The Kosovo side,
which is usually--
so in Kosovo there
was a separation
between the main political
party at the time, which
had a non-violent approach, and
these self-organized guerrillas
called the Kosovo Liberation
Army who were armed
and wanted to take an armed
revolt against the Yugoslav
army.
These were escalating.
The number of casualties were
going up, and most [INAUDIBLE]
didn't want to give up.
There has never been
a bombing like this.
And 11 weeks, NATO keeps looking
for new targets, new places
to bomb, obviously, because
of the difficulty of carrying
on air strikes without--
they didn't have
any ground support.
They did rely on the
Kosovo Liberation Army
as they do in any
other conflicts
that NATO was involved in.
They relied on the
Kosovo Liberation Army
to be the local eyes and ears
for the stuff they were doing.
But, of course,
intelligence was flawed.
And they end up hitting
refugee convoys, buses,
and stuff like that.
Only in June of 1995, he
had been assigned earlier,
but Yeltsin assigns
a special envoy
for this war, Chernomyrdin,
if I'm not mistaken.
And he ends up convincing
Milosevic to sit down and sign
an agreement.
This agreement is signed in
[? Kumanovo ?] in June of 1995,
and it signifies
the end of the war
in Yugoslavia, completely,
because Milosevic--
and Milosevic, sort of, his last
stand because very quickly he
is toppled from power through
elections that occur soon
after that in Serbia.
Anyway, Yugoslav
troops pull out.
Yugoslav political
elite pulls out.
And Kosovo becomes the
first European protectorate
that is completely monitored
and overseen by NATO.
NATO oversees its airspace.
It oversees its borders.
And this pet project of
the West has, to this day,
remained a thorn in the side
of the Russian foreign policy
security efforts in
Europe because it
was seen as an overkill,
too much of an overreaction
to a situation that might have,
at some point, been solved
through diplomatic efforts.
Anyway, fast forward,
this is 1999.
Fast forward nine
years later, in 2008.
In 2008, Kosovo was overseen
by the United Nations Mission
in Kosovo, again, which
is the top political level
of the country.
It does organize
its own elections.
It does have a parliament.
But it functions, effectively,
as a UN and NATO protectorate.
In 2008 there are debates
going on about Kosovo
finally declaring
independence and solving
the political status of Europe.
Because since then,
between 1999 to 2008,
all these countries
end up joining NATO, so
the Czech Republic,
Poland, Hungary, Romania,
Bulgaria, the Baltic States.
NATO has expanded.
The EU has expanded.
Most of these countries
that have joined NATO also
joined the EU, which is why
these two parallel processes
are often referred to as
Euro-Atlantic integration.
And the NATO forces in the
country and the UN forces
in the country have
to come to a decision
as to the future of Kosovo.
2008 is also the
time when escalations
were happening in Georgia.
And there's this
pattern since 1989,
at any given point when there is
a big hurdle, a big achievement
that has to be made
in the solidifying
independence of Kosovo,
the Russian side
has used for either
escalations on its end
or a complete disbanding of
diplomatic communications
or a degradation
in communications
between DC and Moscow.
Kosovo does declare
independence.
And this is seen as the
final straw of any efforts
to re-establish an
international security
system where Russia
and the United States
will be on the same side.
Because even in the Bush years
or the early Obama years--
Obama followed after that.
There was an attempt to
sort of reset the clock,
and be, like, OK.
We can go back and talk
about these things.
And, on the other
hand, NATO was strongly
involved in expanding its
presence in the Balkans.
And to this point
we have, obviously,
Croatia, Slovenia who joined
NATO, Montenegro recently
joined NATO, and Albania,
Macedonia, and Bulgaria,
and Romania before.
And Greece and Turkey,
one of the first
states to join in 1955 after
the initial Western European
expansion.
So Macedonia is set to join.
And so now-- slide.
So these are the countries
that are not part of it.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
Kosovo and Serbia, obviously.
So Bosnia-Herzegovina is
separated into three--
has a political
system, currently,
not to go into
detail about that,
but that is basically
separated along ethnic lines.
You have a Serb, a Croat, and
a Bosnia group representative.
And the Serbian
presidential representative
has often been strongly under
the influence of Belgrade.
And Macedonia is probably
set to join NATO very soon.
Macedonia held a
recent referendum
regarding its name in
October of this year
whereby it went from being
called the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia to being
through a referendum changing
its name to North Macedonia.
Why this is an issue
is because Greece,
which is found in
its southern border
has a northern province
that is also referred
to as Macedonia historically.
Alexander the Great is the
son of Philip of Macedon.
So he's also of Macedonian
descent, claimed
both by Macedonia and Greece.
Nationalism and history,
again, nothing surprising.
So Macedonia is set to
join NATO very soon.
And we have all this
big block of countries
that surround Serbia who
definitely doesn't want
to be part of NATO
at this point,
even though the current
president Alexsandar
Vucic has hinted towards--
he's definitely supported
European integration,
which has often
gone hand-in-hand
with NATO integration.
But the NATO bombing is such
a big scar in Serbian society.
And it ends up
dividing the Kosovar
and the Serbian political elite,
or making it difficult for them
to communicate to this day.
They're now found in a dialogue
that is facilitated by Brussels
and the European Union, which
is set to normalize relations,
which has not being completed
and will probably stretch
on to the next couple of years.
And so the population
in Serbia remembers
the bombing and everything
that occurred around it
in a way that will make it very
difficult for them to integrate
into NATO very soon.
So that's when it
comes to the Balkans.
The big question now--
so the Kosovo bombing or
the Yugoslavia bombing
for Kosovo, if you want
to refer to it as that,
is seen as having set a
precedent that will reverberate
or influence future
decisions of NATO
to intervene in other
parts of the world.
The point where the issue of
NATO intervention is debated
is, of course, the Ukraine
crisis, where we see--
and to be very,
very brief because I
assume there are people
in this room who know
this 10 times better than me.
So in 2013 the Ukrainian
president Viktor Yanukovych
decides to reverse or not go
through with an association
plan with the European Union.
This causes mass
revolt in Ukraine
because it is, on one hand,
seen to be a decision influenced
by Russia, which doesn't
want the EU to get
so close its border.
On the other hand influenced
by other groups within Ukraine
who want to see it
on a more pro-Eastern
path rather than a Western one.
These protests spread
across the country.
Unrest erupts on the
eastern Ukrainian border
region of Donbas and,
to some extent, Crimea.
Russia ends up
supporting, politically,
the eastern Ukrainian
separatists who
formed their own independent
states that supports
the referendum in Crimea.
Ends up absorbing Crimea
into Russia, a decision that
is not accepted by the West.
And so we have
this new big crisis
on Europe's eastern
border that, if we
were to follow the
logic of the '90s,
would definitely require
NATO intervention.
But NATO has been very
reluctant to become
involved because it's
considered to be too close
and too provocative to Russia.
But, on the other hand,
you have a Ukraine,
which sees this as
the European Union
and NATO have invested
endless amounts of money
in setting up Kosovo as
the perfect pet project.
Most of the economy is run--
the economy is very, very small.
And Kosovo sees a
lot of foreign aid
and both economic
affairs, infrastructure
and developmental
affairs, and all that.
And so then Kosovo
gets all of this.
Whereas Ukraine gets a lot
less and nothing in a moment
where it finds itself in crisis.
And how this affects a very
specific sort of mindset
on what is commonly referred
to as the European periphery,
is that the Western
community of nations
only wants to intervene and
get involved in our conflicts
when there is a direct
interest in that.
In the Kosovo scenario,
NATO needed a foothold
in southeast Europe.
They needed to show that
it could become involved
in solving big conflicts.
This is in the '90s when a
lot of the other conflicts
that NATO had been
involved in had subsided.
Whereas Ukraine, which is
a latent and active issue
that they could
become involved in,
does not apparently
require intervention.
This combined with the lack
of a clear EU perspective
is something that has
affected voters and citizens
in a similar way that it
did in the Balkans the '90s,
and it still does.
In the Balkan case,
Serbian nationalist groups
see the Balkans as
the Western playground
where they get to do
whatever they want,
intervene wherever they want,
intervene in internal affairs
because in the Kosovo scenario
Kosovo was part of, officially,
the southern province of Serbia.
So was part of the country.
And so now we have
a situation where--
the biggest irony of all of this
being that Kosovo was neither
a NATO member, and not even
close to becoming an EU member,
because it has functioned as
a protectorate for so long.
It needed the West to be part of
every segment of its existence
to the point where it
didn't manage to establish
democratic institutions.
It didn't establish elections
are relatively fair.
You have the dominance of the
political party that came out
of the KLA, the
guerrilla movement I
mentioned there was fighting
the Yugoslav forces in the '90s.
And it has not been able
to get on its own feet
and form an effective
and functioning country.
So the failures of
Kosovo and the successes
often reflect the way NATO
chooses to act and expand
in Eastern Europe.
And, again, in this
discussion with Elizabeth,
what should be mentioned
about the NATO bombing
as well is that this year
marks the 20th anniversary
of the bombing.
And in no way have
the problems that
were present in the '90s
been solved in the Balkans.
It is still an example
of extreme nationalism,
ethnic divisions, escalations,
not war, not military
because NATO
peacekeepers are present
in Kosovo and, to some
extent, in Bosnia.
But this region has definitely
not recovered from its breakup.
And so people who were
against the NATO bombing
would say that this should
have been handled, yes,
supported diplomatically,
but handled by the people
on the ground.
Others who support the
NATO bombing insist
that these arguments
shouldn't be
had because the moral
debate about preventing
casualties and
actually saving lives
is the one that trumps
everything else.
So, that's all for me.
And I look forward
to your questions.
This was more of a
background, and I really
hope that in the
discussion we can hash out
the intricacies of this issue.
Thank you.
ELIZABETH WOOD: So, following
the Starr Forum format
that many of you have enjoyed
every other time, what we'll
do now is we'll have about
10, 15 minutes of discussion
in front of you.
I have some questions
for Una that I
think will be interesting.
And then we'll open it up for
everybody else's questions.
There's water right here.
So, Una, it sounds
like what you're saying
is that if we compare the
Kosovo situation and the Ukraine
situation, NATO has acted
really quite in different ways.
That in Kosovo the situation has
been NATO, a complete takeover,
extensive bombing.
I looked up the numbers and
there were 38,000 sorties
in that four month period.
There were 700 US planes.
There were just huge numbers
of violence and so on.
Ukraine, the opposite.
Luhansk, Donetsk
are sitting there.
Huge debates in
Congress, whether even
to give the Javelin fighters.
Why do you think that the two
situations are so different?
What is it about Kosovo?
Partly, you've said
it's geography.
Perhaps, the geography of
being closer to Russia,
being closer Europe, say more.
What makes these two
situations so different?
UNA HAJDARI: So the main
difference is the setting.
And that's why I
spent so much time
setting up the setting in the
'90s and the setting right now.
So in the '90s, NATO and the
EU and the OSCE, which was then
being set up, all of them
wanted to incorporate
Russia and the former socialist
countries of Eastern Europe
into its security structures.
And Yugoslavia was
seen as just a hitch.
We needed to intervene to get
rid of this little problem,
and then we would
incorporate everyone
in the same structures.
And then we won't have to worry
about the way we'll intervene
in future conflicts because
we're all going to be part
of a wider security structure.
This doesn't, necessarily,
mean that they actually--
even though this was often
discussed-- planned for Russia,
itself, to be part of the EU.
Definitely not,
but NATO, as well.
But it was seen as
the small problem
that can be solved easily.
At this point in a
process that was started
by the bombing in Kosovo, the
relationship between Russia
and the EU and NATO when
it comes to security issues
has gotten--
the divide has grown
so big that now we're
talking about opposed side,
which wasn't the case.
The NATO bombing resets
the East West divide
that was sort of overcome
with the end of the Cold War,
in many ways.
Not to the same extent, of
course, not to that size,
but we're talking about
a different world order
where it's not as bipolar.
Where it's not as divisive.
And where there is
more consultation
from the US and Russia
on issues of security.
And the fact that
Russia's opinion regarding
the intervention in Serbia
was not taken seriously or not
incorporated a lot--
so Russia was part
of the contact group,
was part of the negotiations,
the diplomatic efforts and all
that.
But the airstrikes were always
something that was a no-go.
And so that's very
different with the Ukraine
because now we're
talking about a NATO that
is most likely not going to
expand into Ukraine anytime
soon.
And they know that this would
be an escalation on the borders.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Yeah.
I mean, certainly, from
the Russian perspective
you're absolutely right that
in '97 there was discussion
of NATO Russian charter.
That they would be
working together,
that there would be harmony.
'99 from the US
issue as the US press
covered it was, oh, the
human rights violations, what
the Kosovar Albanians could
be doing to the Serbians, what
the Serbians could be doing
to the Albanians, and so on.
Whereas in Russia, this led
to a whole set of resentments
and frustrations.
And at one point
Alexander Lebed,
who was trying to
position himself
as a potential presidential
candidate in Russia,
referred to Russia as a
humiliated and offended nation.
August of '99 Putin
is brought in.
And I remember myself
thinking during that period
of the bombings that
while everyone here
was busy talking about
the human rights issues,
they were ignoring
the bludgeoning,
I would call it Neanderthal use
of force that was so extensive.
And I predicted,
and it seems, alas,
that I was right that it
would give rise to strongman
politics in the region.
As local nations decided
we have to have a strongman
politics because the US and
NATO are going to use this.
And I'm wondering whether
you think that's true.
Do you think there's been a
kind of strongman politics
that comes out of this?
Putin positions himself from the
beginning as a war president.
He has to solve Chechnya first.
But then he can position
himself as he's not
going to be kicked
around by the West.
Vucic does the same.
Dodik, we should
explain who they are.
But do you feel that
in the Balkan context
that the local leaders
are also trying
to play a strongman
politics both vis-a-vis
each other and, potentially,
vis-a-vis Europe?
UNA HAJDARI: So, with
Kosovo there's a big client
state that's basically created.
I mean, the [INAUDIBLE] of
our government does not only
consult with the
west, it literally--
their press releases are
handed over to them directly
from the Western embassy.
And this is fine
because those people
who were elected
in power after 1999
were not very efficient leaders.
So from all these
scenarios, that
might not be the worst one.
So it's separated.
It's strongly separated.
And Serbia is also humiliated.
And this has made it really
hard for this Serbian society
to recover.
The current Serbian prime
minister denies, openly--
she did that on Deutsche
Welle a couple of months ago--
denies that there was
genocide in Srebrenica
because the way Serbia
dealt with the bombing.
It's different when you have
combatants on the field.
And you have one army, and
then you have another army.
And it's equal.
And they felt there was
this big Western power that
just came in and--
for reasons and I talked
about some of them,
reasons that might
have been legitimate.
But there's this
big Western power
that comes in and just
rains down bombs on us.
And, especially
amongst the population,
because Serbia, again, unlike
other parts of the Balkans,
had been spared
from war directly.
People in Belgrade
hadn't seen any war.
Novi Sad hadn't seen any war.
These are different
parts of Serbia.
The south north
hadn't seen any war.
And then all of a sudden there's
these bombs that come in.
Of course, just like the Russian
situation with Chechnya and all
that, the Serbian public
was handed strong--
only had access
to intense Serbian
TV propaganda, which
made their awareness
about what was going on in
the rest of the Balkans very,
very low.
And so this has made it so hard
for the Serbian politicians,
even the reformist prime
minister, Zorin Dindic, who
was killed after getting power.
He was probably the
most progressive force
the country has seen since
1989 or since Milosevic.
Made it even for him and then
Boris Tadic as well later.
All of them have had a hard
time dealing, A, with the Kosovo
issue, talking
about Kosovo openly,
and, B, getting the country out
of this wartime fatigue that
was created in the '90s
because of its implications
in the Yugoslav wars.
If that makes sense.
ELIZABETH WOOD: That
makes a lot of sense.
So as a Russia
watcher, I see a lot
of connection between both
Vucic in Serbia and also Dodik
in Banjaluka and
Republika Srpska.
So just quick
background, and thank you
for all this background.
Bosnia, itself, is
divided into two parts.
One is as Bosnia
and Herzegovina,
and the other part is
Republika Srpska, which
is still Serbian dominated.
Putin has been to
Belgrade four--
he's about to-- his coming
will be the fourth time.
UNA HAJDARI: I think
three or four times, yeah.
ELIZABETH WOOD: And he's come on
the liberation of the Red Army
day at the end of World
War II from October '44--
UNA HAJDARI: To set up
a statue of Nikolai II.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Exactly.
He came.
I guess he sent Lavrov
for the Nikolai II.
He had Tsereteli, this
famous Georgian sculptor who
made the Peter the
Great in Moscow, which
is an absurd statue, make a
Nicholas II, the last Russian
Romanov Tsar in Banjaluka.
What do you make of
all these connections?
Are they just
fraternal relations
of two orthodox powers?
Is there more going on?
What do you think?
UNA HAJDARI: It's
very interesting
because what the
bombing also did--
so Serbian society, of course,
with the fall of socialism
you have this initial sort
of re-traditionalization
of these societies in
the sense that they
become more religious.
They become more
nativist, they are
more focused on their ethnic
and national identity.
This happens to the
Croats, the Bosniaks,
or the Catholic ethnic group,
the Muslim ethnic group,
the Serbian Orthodox
ethnic group.
And so, in that
sense, yes, there
is a re-establishment of
relations with Russia.
I say re-establishment
because even while there were
sentimental ties between the
Yugoslav Serbs and the Russians
before, Yugoslavia
maintained a policy of not--
even as a socialist country it
didn't favoritize the Russian
Federation or the
Soviet Union and even
was very open to
mocking and criticizing
its form of socialism.
And we met with one of the
later US ambassadors to Russia,
and he remembers during a
trip in the '90s in Belgrade,
where he jokingly referred
to one of his friends,
oh, you're acting
like a Russian.
You got offended
because it was, like--
not that that's a good
thing to be offended for.
But I'm just saying,
in terms of context,
that's what the situation
was in the '90s, which
isn't the case now.
You have Putin coming
to Belgrade tomorrow
and the Serbian press has
been going out of it's way
to show how happy they are
that they have him there.
And how they want
people to come in
and to organize a grand parade
around his visit and all that.
ELIZABETH WOOD: I
know you've actually
been writing about the
protests in Belgrade right now,
and I'd be curious.
What do you think
is going to happen
when Putin comes tomorrow?
There's going to be these
pro-Putin demonstrations.
What about the
protesters on the ground?
Maybe say a few
words about that?
UNA HAJDARI: There have been
opposition protests going on
in Serbia for a couple of weeks.
They began in early December
after an opposition politician
was beaten up in a South
Serbian city before a debate.
And so they launched
these protests.
But very quickly they expanded.
And people of all different
kinds of backgrounds and they
didn't necessarily have
a party affiliation
when they joined the
protests, started protesting
in Belgrade every week.
And the protests
keep getting bigger.
Vucic downplayed them mainly
because the opposition
in Serbia is so fragile
and disorganized and unable
to present a credible
threat to his power.
But people who've been
involved in protests
have announced that
they're going to be
gathering in Belgrade tomorrow.
However, knowing
Vucic, I believe
that there are security
measures set in place to not let
them interfere with the parade.
Because there were
protests announced in 2014
when Putin visited
the last time.
ELIZABETH WOOD: I think
I'll ask one more question,
and then we'll open it up.
I'm very curious.
Kosovo has announced
that they're
going to create an army.
And it seems to me that
there's much symbolic meaning
for Kosovo as not quite its own
nation developing its own army.
But I'm so curious if you
could spell out for us,
what are the symbolic issues?
Why upgrade their
security force to an army?
And, also, what might
be the repercussions
if other powers in
the area say, whoa,
we're not comfortable with
Kosovo having an army?
UNA HAJDARI: So
after the bombing,
NATO was the
peacekeeping force there.
And having the world's
best trained military
be your peacekeeping force
made it clearly unnecessary
for there be an army,
as well as the fact
that the agreement that
led to the capitulation
of the Yugoslav army in Kosovo
or their removal from Kosovo,
clearly listed the
demilitarization of the Kosovo
Liberation Army as
one of its conditions.
And so, for a long time,
it had this security force
that would intervene.
And, I don't mean
to offend anyone,
but in humanitarian events
didn't do very much.
But that was fine.
For the symbolics of
having someone parade
around on Independence
Day, they had
an army or a security force.
It was not allowed
to be called an army.
And that's set up in
Kosovo's constitution
in order to not inflame
relations with Serbia
because Kosovo still
exists internationally
through Resolution 1244, which
was the UN resolution that
was passed in 1999 after the end
of the bombing, which, again,
saw a strong Russian
hand in its setting up.
Why it's, since then, made it
so difficult for this Kosovo
situation to be solved is
because Russia made sure
that the political
status of Kosovo
would go through the
Security Council.
And it knew that once it
went to the Security Council
it could exercise its veto.
And China has not been favorable
towards the Kosovo independence
issue, either.
So in UN Resolution
1244, the longer from
the resolution says that should
the political status change,
it would be subject to
Security Council approval.
So Kosovo was not set up as
an independent country fully.
The president, Hashim
Thaci, he's been in power--
he was prime minister first and
became president, as they do.
And he's been getting a lot of
resentment from the population
because he hasn't
managed to deliver.
His government has not
delivered on EU integration,
on any form of
integration of Kosovo
into the regional
situation in the Balkans.
It isn't part of Interpol.
It isn't part of any
international body that
would make it easier
for its citizens
to travel around the world or
be part of the global society.
And, as such, he chooses
a nationalist measure,
an entirely insignificant one.
Even if the Kosovo army were
to be set up tomorrow morning,
it would never be more efficient
than the NATO peacekeepers who
were there.
But it's a move to sort of
quell the dissident voices
in the country.
So that's what happened.
And, of course, it's seen as
a major provocation by Serbia,
and a direct violation
of UN SC Resolution 1244.
ELIZABETH WOOD: I can't
resist one more question.
UNA HAJDARI: OK.
ELIZABETH WOOD: What
about Montenegro?
So Montenegro is
now part of NATO.
Is that--
UNA HAJDARI: You
should ask Manafort.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Ah, yes.
Tell us, what do you think
about the American connection
on that one?
But, also, how is that viewed
in the rest of the Balkans?
I mean, you're creating this
patchwork of NATO, not NATO.
How do people view that?
UNA HAJDARI: So
Montenegro is tricky
because when all these other
Yugoslav republics left,
the only republic that remained
loyal to Serbia was Montenegro.
They share the same
faith, more or less
a lot of a similar history.
But Montenegro chooses, because
of the political constellations
of the time, and
because, like all
these other Balkan
republics, it felt
it had somewhat more
of a distinct ethnic
and national identity.
This is where the term
balkanization comes from.
These countries separating
into smaller units
so that every little
village can be independent.
So Montenegro,
through a referendum,
declares independence--
or after referendum
declares independence in 2006.
And it is staunchly
pro-European very early on.
They decide to get
on their NATO path,
at some point
because Montenegro is
seen to be a country
that could be
susceptible to
Russian influence.
Now, this is seen
for different ways.
Montenegro has a very
active tourist industry.
It's a coastal country,
so that's pretty and nice.
But, also, a lot
of its industries
right after the
fall of Yugoslavia
were bought up by
Russian oligarchs.
And has a big Russian
immigrant community,
one of the biggest
in the region,
ranging from oligarchs to
political émigrés who live
and work there.
So it was always seen
as a country that
was very susceptible to Russian
influences either directly
or through Serbia,
which is why NATO pushed
so hard for its inclusion into
NATO, unlike with other states
in the region.
Right now it is seen as a
relatively stable example
compared to Macedonia, who has
yet to become a NATO member.
Macedonia was one of the
countries in the region that
did so well in its
reform processes
that it was thought to be
able to join the European
Union together with
Croatia in 2013,
but ended up not doing
this because it got
an authoritarian leader
who, for different reasons,
decided to play up
its national history.
He built a lot of monuments all
over Macedonia with Alexander
the Great and Philip of Macedon,
which got Greece really angry.
And so they backtracked
a lot on the progress
that was made initially.
And now with the name
referendum, and the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of Russia
did put up a statement
the other day
condemning the fact
that Macedonia was forced--
because the
Macedonian parliament
approved the resolution
that would change its name.
We should now refer to
it as North Macedonia.
I'm trying to get
the hang of it.
But North Macedonia becoming an
official thing a couple of days
ago probed the Russian
Foreign Ministry
commenting on it
in a way that NATO
forced Macedonian to
change its name so
that it could be a part of it.
Which, technically, is true.
One of the reasons that
Macedonia could not join NATO
is because Greece opposed
its joining of NATO
with the name Macedonia.
So it was constantly referred
to as the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia
and had difficulties
in joining many other
organizations because of that.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Wow.
So we see quite
a patchwork here.
I think we're going to
open it up for questions.
I have many more questions if
we somehow-- but let me see.
I'll take the first hand I see.
Come down to the mic, and
be sure to ask questions.
You may have a small
comment, but let's keep
the dialogue going.
AUDIENCE: Is Russia still
holding three Ukrainian Navy
vessels?
And, if so, what's going
to be the outcome of that?
UNA HAJDARI: That's a question
for Elizabeth, actually.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Yes, they are.
And I'm not sure
what's going to happen.
So, yeah.
AUDIENCE: I recall
during the bombings
the Chinese embassy was hit.
And NATO and the American
forces said it was an accident,
and China said it
was intentional.
And I knew several
American Chinese people
who sided with China and
thought it was intentional.
Do you have any thoughts on--
obviously, the
intention, it seemed
like the message was
trying to say to China,
don't be involved with this.
Were they secretly behind
the scenes creating chaos
to escalate the problem?
So your thoughts on that.
UNA HAJDARI: China was very
supportive of Milosevic
throughout the
'90s, as was Russia.
But actually,
China was even more
vocal in its support than
Russia because Russia
was trying to democratize, was
getting all this Western aid,
and didn't want to send
out this image of being--
and I mentioned this
briefly, but Milosevic
played between wanting to--
with the ideas of forming a
big Serbian state and keeping
communism alive.
And that's the thread
that China got.
China got involved in the
keeping communism alive
rhetoric.
And so they were
very big on wanting
to see Milosevic stay in power.
Official accounts, to this day,
are that it was an accident.
But yeah.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Can we
take one from this side.
AUDIENCE: So I have
a question after all.
So I've worked at the war
crimes tribunal in the Hague.
And I'm curious.
Many of my colleagues went
on to the new tribunal
having to do with
Kosovo questions.
UNA HAJDARI: Excellent question.
AUDIENCE: And I was wondering,
because that's coming from
an international body-- in
fact, I'm not quite sure who was
behind it, but I think
it's European Union--
If you could untangle a little
bit of the relationships
between the pending
Kosovo trials
and the attitude towards
them in the Kosovo political
ranks and also in the
Mitrovica community
and also the NATO
relationships to those things.
I mean, in a sentence--
UNA HAJDARI: That's
an excellent question.
Do I answer that,
or are we taking--
ELIZABETH WOOD: No, take it.
Take it.
Go ahead.
It's a good question.
UNA HAJDARI: So that's a
great question because--
and I didn't mention
it in my presentation,
but one of the reasons why, by
the time other things had come
around to the '99
bombing, Milosevic
had such a bad
reputation in the West
was because, in the meantime,
the ICTY was set up.
And a lot of the
involvement of the Yugoslav
army with or without
direct involvement
and/or bolstering from
Milosevic in Bosnia
was starting to surface.
So--
ELIZABETH WOOD: Explain
ICTY real quick.
UNA HAJDARI: The International
Criminal Tribunal
for the former
Yugoslavia was, sort of,
a landmark tribunal much
like the one in Rwanda.
The namesake of the
fellowship that I'm here with,
Elizabeth Neuffer, covered
the ICTY and the Rewanda
tribunals extensively.
It was seen as this big--
it was an international
court organized
for the first time since
the Nuremberg trials,
where war crimes
were going to be
put on trial by an
unbiased international body
of legal experts and
prosecutors and judges
and so on and so forth.
Ellen, having worked there,
might have a better explanation
for it.
But that's basically it.
And so they ICTY did cover the
Kosovo war, but a lot less.
This was the end of its mandate.
It's mandate ends,
and a lot of people
are going to write
back to me if I'm not
right about this, but with
the end of the bombing.
So the end of the bombing
is the end of the mandate.
It's stuff that
happened afterwards,
a lot of the attacks by
Albanians on the Serbs
who were leaving Kosovo
after the bombing.
All that kind of stuff at
the time was not included.
And so Ellen
mentions a court that
is being set up now, which
will focus exclusively
on the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Why it relates to
our debate about NATO
is because the US was very
strongly opposed to the court.
And it decided to play a big
role in setting up the court,
just so it could help
define its parameters.
Why this was important is
because the Kosovo Liberation
Army were the eyes and the
ears of NATO on the ground.
They were not accepted as
a legitimate military force
or a legitimate
army in the conflict
until NATO got
involved and, sort of,
gave them the legitimacy
that they had lacked so far.
And the Kosovo
Liberation Army had
people who defended their
communities from the assault
of the Yugoslav army
and so on and so forth,
but also committed
war crimes for which
they were not prosecuted.
And it's different
when the war crimes
are committed by the army of
one of the Balkan countries.
And it's different when they're
committed by an army that
has such strong US support.
And so the court was set up
after a report by a Swiss
prosecutor, which found out
that there had been organ
trafficking-- apparently,
organ trafficking--
this isn't [INAUDIBLE] so
we have to be careful--
conducted by some
members of the KLA,
kidnappings and torture
and ethnic cleansing
and so on and so forth.
And the court will deal
specifically with these things
once it's set up, in order to
deal with the unresolved issues
from the war in 1999
that haven't been
dealt with, mainly because--
I mean, this is,
again, we have to be
careful with these
classifications,
but a lot of the people
who were in the KLA
ended up being in power
afterwards in governments
that were supported strongly by
the EU, by NATO, and by the US.
So these people
were in government,
including the current president.
And they might be
indicted by the court.
And that's the background
into why it ties into NATO.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Uh huh.
That answers your question?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Great.
Fascinating.
Let's take one one more.
Fabulous.
AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.
My name is Seth Johnston.
I'm from the Center for
European Studies at Harvard.
Thanks for your remarks today.
I want to ask you a question
about the tension that
is sometimes drawn in
NATO between security
interests on the one hand
and democratic values
on the other hand.
And allow me to put
the question this way
in terms of what the NATO
treaty text actually says.
The most frequently cited
passage from the NATO treaty
is the mutual defense
clause, a so-called Article 5
that everyone's familiar with.
Less frequently cited is
the specific articulation
in the treaty that NATO
stands for democracy,
individual liberty,
and the rule of law.
And even in the passage
of the treaty that
talks about the openness
of the alliance to bringing
in new members, there's a phrase
in there about new members
have to be able to further the
principles of the alliance,
these democratic values.
UNA HAJDARI: So why aren't
they involved in Ukraine?
AUDIENCE: Sorry?
UNA HAJDARI: So why aren't
they involved in Ukraine?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, so, I
suppose my question to you
is, what do you think is the
record of NATO in this regard,
in Ukraine, but
also specifically
to those countries
that have joined
the alliance in the Balkans?
Do you see NATO's impact
on domestic politics
having been constructive
to its stated aims?
UNA HAJDARI: So Article
5 is cited a lot, again,
which plays into our big debate
about Eastern European security
and issues with
stuff like that is
the fact that the first big
intervention that NATO had
was in a non-member country
and in a foreign conflict.
And so you think,
how can this not make
non-NATO members scared
about the prospect of them
being involved.
They know they can't
attack Poland now.
Or they know they
can't attack Germany
without having everyone
else become involved.
But these were countries
that were not part of it.
Again, so that ties in with
you, I guess, the fact--
the official stance
of NATO when it
chose to launch
airstrikes in Yugoslavia
without getting the
Security Council approval
was, we are becoming involved
in a humanitarian issue.
And, I mean, this is
such a difficult debate
to have because it's
not easy for anyone
to say they shouldn't
have gotten involved
because, obviously, more
people would've died.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Well,
let me try to tackle it.
I've thought about this
question for a long time.
And I, obviously,
don't have an answer,
but it seems to me an
interesting question
to ask whether more people--
so let me relate a conversation
I had with Bill Hill
who was here in the
fall as a speaker.
William Hill is
a former diplomat
who has had postings in
Moscow, in Transnistria--
UNA HAJDARI: Yugoslavia.
ELIZABETH WOOD: --in
former Yugoslavia.
And he was very, very involved
in the offense of the OSCE,
the Office of Security
and Cooperation in Europe.
And what he said, and
he says it in his book
No Place for Russia, that OSCE
had its largest concentration
of monitors that they had
ever put anywhere in Kosovo
in June of 1999.
Or, not June, in March of 1999
before the bombing started.
And he and I have had
interesting conversations
about, what is the
role of monitors
on the ground versus military
responses to human rights
abuses?
And I think it's still
an open question whether,
in fact, if you just--
at least we can put
a thought experiment.
We're in a major university.
We can use our minds
to think about this.
What if the monitors
had been allowed
to increase their footprint
so that any atrocities that
happened could have been
caught at the moment?
What he says one of the
reasons NATO was called in
was that the American who was
in charge of that region who
was working somewhat with OSCE
but also somewhat with the US
command, was a guy, and I'm
sorry I've forgotten his name.
UNA HAJDARI: Richard Holbrooke.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Yeah.
UNA HAJDARI: Holbrooke?
ELIZABETH WOOD: No,
wasn't Holbrooke
who had been in El
Salvador in 1980
when, for those of us who
are older, we remember this.
1980 had seen horrific violence
against four Maryknoll sisters
and some church members,
Maryknoll sisters
being Americans.
And the US did not respond.
And this guy who was--
I don't think it was Holbrooke.
UNA HAJDARI: OK,
yes, you're right.
ELIZABETH WOOD:
Although Holbrooke
was, of course, there.
And Holbrooke was
a major player.
Thought this was a minor player.
But he said, wait,
we didn't respond
when atrocities were committed.
We have to respond now.
And of course, we
also have to remember
one thing you haven't
mentioned is--
I mean, that you have mentioned,
but that Rwanda had happened.
Srebrenica had happened.
Everybody was totally paranoid
about more human rights
violations happening.
So the climate was do something,
do something, do something.
But I still find
myself wondering,
what about the
long term effects,
something that our
questioner asked.
This was such a great question,
but Seth didn't bring up
is what about the
long term effects
of the munitions that fell,
the mines that were planted.
You know, they were
using cluster bombs,
which were actually illegal.
Where is our
discussion about that?
I think that's also an
important piece of the--
and also the long term.
What I'm really
worried about and why
this topic is so
important and I'm so glad
you agreed to speak on it, is
the continued fragmentation
of the Balkans.
I was just in Sarajevo
where in Bosnia you
have three different
sets of education.
The Bosniaks, the Croats in
Herzegovina, and the Serbians
literally have different
education systems
for their children.
They talk about the massacres
in the siege of Sarajevo,
which was one of the
world's longest sieges ever.
It was four years.
It was longer, even, than
the siege of Leningrad,
which is hard to believe.
And people are still
not even able to talk
to each other
about these things.
Has NATO solved
anything by creating
the protectorate of Kosovo?
I think it's an
interesting question.
UNA HAJDARI: Wow.
I was going to circle back to
an answer to that question,
and, I guess, answers
yours as well.
Well, the interesting
thing, and this
comes from covering North
Kosovo on the ground.
So within Kosovo
the northern part
is Serb majority, which is
found on the Serbian border.
And that's where a
lot of the incidents
happen nowadays because of
the clashes with the Albanian
majority population
in all of Kosovo
in the Serb majority region.
And this was, for
me, so surprising.
And this of course isn't
everyone, but a lot of them
are so open to having NATO
there because they see them
as a neutral arbiter.
They don't trust the EU--
no, NATO and the EU, sorry.
They like NATO as it's referred
to in its Kosovo version
as KFOR, the Kosovo Forces
and the EU who are there.
And they don't trust
other political options,
stuff like that, when
there's an escalation.
Because they know NATO
is going to come in,
isolate whatever's
going on, the people,
the groups that are involved,
and not do anything else.
This strategy is a little
difficult because--
so NATO's not
allowed to directly
be involved in
conflicts in Kosovo.
It's only peacekeeping.
It's not allowed to
shoot at civilians
unless shot at directly,
and so on and so forth.
And in 2004 there was a massive
escalation of unrest in Kosovo
whereby a big part of
the Albanian population
went into Serbian communities,
burned down churches, houses.
A lot of people--
in certain parts of
Kosovo, the last pockets
of Serbs who were
still living there
left the country and
all that kind of stuff.
And NATO was not able
to stop any of this.
You'd think with the biggest
military alliance there,
this stuff wouldn't
happened, but it
was because it could only
stand in front of them
to some extent.
And then when it escalated--
because they were also fearful
that if they shot at
the local population
they would turn against
them at some point.
So very limited in terms
of democratization.
It is only-- and
this was actually
part of the whole
debate about this
because I also
don't really agree
with people who talk about
NATO as this big force that
is involved in every
pore of society.
It had the CIA, FBI,
and everyone else
that's involved in
making sure that NATO
expands to the last
little corner of Europe.
It is limited in its
scope in many ways.
But on the other hand
it's this very powerful
military alliance.
So we should also just place
it where it should be, and not
make a boogey man out
of NATO on one hand,
and on the other hand have
open conversations about what
it should do in eastern Europe.
ELIZABETH WOOD: That's good.
Other questions?
AUDIENCE: About a month ago NATO
approved a membership action
plan for Bosnia.
And at the same time you
see the Serbian nationalists
in Bosnia, the strongest
[INAUDIBLE] action of Russia
in Bosnia,
[? Izetbegovic ?] declaring,
how do you call it, the Bosnian
Serb [INAUDIBLE] independent.
They don't clearly
want to join that.
How do you see the
future of that?
UNA HAJDARI: So this is
one of the big problems
because, again, it circles
back to the democracy element.
So the president in Montenegro
who delivered the NATO
membership, made
Montenegro part of NATO,
is someone who's been
in power for 25 years.
He has not encouraged
democracy in Montenegro.
Is part of a wide group of--
and this has been documented.
I'm not making it up.
Supports certain criminal
groups in the country
who might not make profit
for him, but at least
he oversees the way
the economic activity
is done in the country.
He oversees the
foreign investment.
He's involved in all of
these ports of society,
so he's not a very
democratic president,
even though he delivered
all these big accession
agreements into Montenegro.
On the other hand, the
Montenegrin opposition,
as mentioned by the gentleman,
is extremely pro-Russian
and extremely nationalist.
And an average
Montenegrin citizen
is caught between the decision
of having a very pro-Russian
and nationalist
opposition come to power.
Not all of them are pro-Russian,
but the biggest factors
in the opposition, the ones who
could actually win elections
are.
--or keeping this guy who's
been in power for 25 years.
And so it's very tricky.
And on the other hand,
you have in Bosnia,
but in the Serbian
entity of Bosnia
that Elizabeth mentioned
earlier, you have
Dodik who is the president of--
one of the three
presidents of Bosnia.
Bosnia has three
presidents, on president
for each ethnic group.
Bosnia is the really complicated
country in the Balkans.
And so he has officially
been elected as president.
And he says, well, Bosnia
is just my place of work.
I really am a Serb.
And I feel I belong to Serbia,
and Serbia's my real country.
And he insists on forging
strong ties with Russia
and making this a big part
of his foreign policy,
the ironic thing being that
Russia hasn't delivered.
It is involved in Bosnia,
but it hasn't always
delivered on Dodik's
nationalist rhetoric.
So when Lavrov was
recently in Banjaluka
he said, I support the
Bosnian constitution.
And I support the
existence of Bosnia
as a state, which goes
directly against what
Dodik says in other ways.
And so it's more complex.
And it's definitely too complex
for a region that's so small
and has such a
high concentration
of different ethnic
groups, countries,
and so on and so forth.
Which is why doesn't get covered
by the foreign press as much
as, let's say, Ukraine does.
But in the context
of these debates
it's definitely interesting.
ELIZABETH WOOD: But Bosnia
does have a member action
plan to join NATO.
UNA HAJDARI: Yes.
It doesn't have EU--
ELIZABETH WOOD: Do you have
any sense of whether that's
likely to happen?
UNA HAJDARI: It's tricky because
the reason why it has three
presidents is because the
agreement that was overseen
by the United States in 1995,
'96, the Dayton agreement
signed in Dayton, Ohio, set
up a country that was so--
they wanted to make sure that
ethnic violence would never
happen again.
So there is an ethnic quota
for every single official
institutional position
from the village
council to the presidency,
which makes it extremely
hard to run that country.
And it's stalled reform.
It's stalled progress.
It's stalled all
these kinds of things
that would make
it a country that
would be in a successful
EU member state.
So it's not happening
any time soon.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Do you
think Serbia would ever
join a Russian alliance?
Would it ever be asked?
I haven't heard
anything of it doing,
but Russia has tried
to set up its parallel
with the Eurasian economic
union as a, kind of,
counterweight to
the European Union.
UNA HAJDARI: See, this is
what's really important
about the whole debate
because we often--
there's Russian
influence in Serbia,
but it isn't as intense to
lead to that sort of thing
because Serbia knows
that it has so many more
benefits from joining the EU.
Just like Ukraine knows it has
so many benefits from joining
the EU.
A much more stable community
of nations economically,
internationally accepted,
and so on and so forth,
than going back to anything
that would be led by Russia,
unfortunately, I guess.
But it knows that it has
this wild card, which
is anytime it feels like the
EU is clamping down too hard
or being too difficult with
the ongoing accession process
with Serbia, it can go and can
mention its ties with Russia.
It can have Putin
fly in for a day.
They can go to visit him
and do other things that
would encourage this.
ELIZABETH WOOD: So are they
actually trying to join the EU?
UNA HAJDARI: Yes.
Serbia is actively
trying to join the EU,
but Serbia has a
province in the South
that it doesn't recognize.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Called Kosovo.
UNA HAJDARI: Called Kosovo.
Because one of the EU,
one of the basic tenants
of any state in the world,
but a basic parameter
of any country, one of the
rules that you have to follow
is to have clearly
defined borders.
Serbia, obviously,
does not have clearly
defined borders at this point.
So it would be something
that they have to deal with.
And it is part of
the EU accession plan
as Chapter 3 defines it.
ELIZABETH WOOD: And,
actually, that's
one of the arguments about why
Russia intervened in Ukraine
was to make it so that Ukraine
couldn't join NATO or the EU
because the borders
wouldn't be clearly defined.
Do you buy that argument?
UNA HAJDARI: I don't
know about the argument,
but it's for sure
made it harder.
It definitely made it harder.
ELIZABETH WOOD: It's a factor.
UNA HAJDARI: The ironic thing
is, though, that Kosovo--
so visa liberalization is
part of the early stages of EU
accession because a country--
so when members of the EU and
some of the EU's periphery
can travel within the EU because
of the Schengen agreement,
which allows for open
borders and easy travel.
The EU, of course,
members get this, but also
countries in the region, most
of them, actually, all of them
have Schengen--
ELIZABETH WOOD: Oh,
they have Schengen.
UNA HAJDARI: --have
Schengen except for Kosovo.
And Kosovo was supposed to
join a couple of years ago.
There were political agreements
and things that stopped it,
but it's very
ironic because it's
this country that has
so much EU presence,
but can't travel to
any country in Europe
or almost any country in
Europe without a visa.
That's what I have
to put up with.
And then Ukraine
joined recently,
even though the reason
why Kosovo couldn't join
was because it didn't have its
northern border with Montenegro
and Serbia defined entirely.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Huh.
Makes me wonder.
UNA HAJDARI: That's what
makes the EU-- that's
what makes it an easy target of
the Russian propaganda machine,
because it bends and
changes its rules.
And it's, like, you
think this Copenhagen
criteria is so strict.
It's such a big part
of the accession rules,
and then you change it.
You have fast track countries
like Romania and Bulgaria
that joined very quickly
to make sure to secure
the sphere of influence that was
on the Western and the Eastern
Balkans.
You made it easy for all
these other countries to join.
And then you make it
so hard for others.
And this is something that
people in Serbia [INAUDIBLE]..
Sorry.
ELIZABETH WOOD: So we
have another question.
UNA HAJDARI: Questions.
AUDIENCE: This sounds so
messy and entangled that this
might be a naive question.
Is there any possibility of
NATO looking at the situation,
taking another look at
the situation, and saying,
our involvement in Kosovo
is costing too much.
Withdraw, and Serbia
takes it over again.
UNA HAJDARI: Oh, there
are many, many debates
going on about NATO
being too expensive,
the mission there
being too expensive.
The NATO troops in Kosovo are
organized into Mixed Battle
Group East, I believe,
a wider battalion
that's called Mixed
Battle Group East, which
means that there are different
contributing nations that
are part of it.
The German parliament,
for example,
has had many, many debates
about how costly it
is to keep sending all these
people there, having them
there at all, other
countries as well.
And there has been a reduction
of peacekeepers in Kosovo
over the years.
Would that lead to Serbia--
hmm.
I think not.
But it would definitely--
I think that
assuming that having
just the NATO
peacekeepers there until
the final political
instability in Kosovo is solved
would be great.
But a lot of the
other missions can--
and they have scaled them down.
The EU had a big
rule of law mission
there because it was
supporting the local judiciary
so it had this biggest civilian
mission in its history, which
is called EULEX the EU Rule
of Law Mission in Kosovo.
And did not manage to put any
of the big criminals in jail,
but it did manage to
put a lot of them.
By criminals I mean both
war crimes and corruption,
everything else.
To not get into more
complex debates,
I don't think that
Serbia, at this point,
has an interest in
going back into Kosovo.
This is just like,
again, with Ukraine.
I don't think Russia actually
considers having to--
obviously, not the
entirety of it because it's
an independent country.
But it is enough
of an issue that it
can be used in political debates
spreading nationalist rhetoric
on a daily basis.
But I don't think that there's
a real possibility of Serbia
coming in.
Yeah.
And I hope I'm right.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
The question is regarding
Kazakhstan and Central Asia,
so the longest border
between two countries
is between Russia
and Kazakhstan.
And what do you think?
Now it's very good relationship
between Kazakhstan and Russia,
but what do you think?
What is the chance and
possibilities that Russia
would intervene in Kazakhstan?
UNA HAJDARI: If it
does, guess what it's
going to name as a precedent?
AUDIENCE: Sorry?
UNA HAJDARI: If
it does intervene,
guess what it's going
to name as a precedent?
So when Russia became
involved after the Crimea
referendum and the absorption
of Crimea into Russia--
Is absorption the word?
Is that annexation?
ELIZABETH WOOD:
Yeah, [INAUDIBLE]..
UNA HAJDARI: --because
I don't want to--
And so the issue
the could constantly
be mentioned as a
precedent was Kosovo.
So if self-determination was a
valid concept in international
political, legal, in the
setting up of a country that
sought international
recognition,
why couldn't Crimea do it?
If Kosovo could do it,
why couldn't Crimea do it?
Again, with Donetsk and Luhansk.
If Kosovo couldn't do it,
why can't Donetsk and Luhansk
do it?
And this is the case for
all the other regions found
on the Russian
periphery near or broad
or territory of the
Russian Federation itself
that might be
seeking independence.
They constantly refer back
to the Kosovo example.
That's why we had
this whole talk.
Kosovo, in itself, is completely
insignificant as a country.
1.8 million people
that don't affect
the regional economy of the
Balkans and/or anything else.
But it's an interesting
political example.
And I do not think that
NATO won't get involved.
NATO has made it.
The Balkans is as close as
it's going to go at this point,
in terms of becoming involved.
I mean, it's not going to
become involved in the Balkans
anymore.
It did in the '90s.
But it's the closest
it's going to get
in terms of sending troops
and all that kind of stuff,
and Poland.
ELIZABETH WOOD: Certainly, I
think that's exactly right.
That Russia has,
on the one hand,
at the time was
furious about Kosovo,
but then uses the Kosovo as
the precedent for saying,
well, Crimea had a referendum
and Kosovo had a referendum.
UNA HAJDARI: It
didn't, actually.
ELIZABETH WOOD: It
didn't, actually.
UNA HAJDARI: But Kosovo--
ELIZABETH WOOD: It was the
myth of the referendum.
UNA HAJDARI: Yes, yes, Kosovo--
ELIZABETH WOOD: Whether Russia
will intervene in Kazakhstan
may depend a lot on what happens
with Nazarbayev when Nazarbayev
steps down.
My understanding,
and then we probably
have to stop because
it's 1:30, is
that Russia tends to
intervene when there's already
a civil conflict going on.
So they intervened
in Georgia when
Georgia was not that strong.
They intervened, but
especially in Crimea.
The minute Yanukovych leaves
power in Kiev, then, oh,
we can take Crimea.
They say, we had to, because
Yanukovych was out of power.
But I argue that they could.
They had the opportunity
because-- and Syria, too.
They don't intervene until
the war gets messy enough
that it's very weak.
Northern Kazakhstan does have a
very large Russian population.
I think people in
Kazakhstan are very worried
about the situation.
You probably can tell us more.
I'm actually wearing
a Kazakh scarf.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
ELIZABETH WOOD: What?
AUDIENCE: I think one
of your sons is Kazach.
AUDIENCE: Yes, my
child is Kazach.
Yes.
I have very strong
ties to Kazakhstan.
You have a good memory.
But in any event, so we'll
see if they decide to use the,
oh, we have to
protect our neighbors.
In the 19th century
that was the argument
they typically used with what
we now call the Balkan region.
So what a great discussion.
Thank you, everybody,
for coming.
Thank you for all
of your questions.
We'll be around for
a few more minutes.
