HOW LONG WILL BELGRADE SEESAW BETWEEN NATO AND RUSSIA?

“We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply.  They need some bombing and that’s what they are going to get.”  This was how then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described the draft peace agreement during a break at the conference in Rambouillet (February 1999).  At the time the Yugoslav delegation had stated its willingness to concede many points, with the exception of independence for Kosovo (which was nonnegotiable for the Albanians).  But the Yugoslavs did not see the final draft of the accord until the last day of the talks, and as it turned out, two-thirds of that document was entirely new to them (and they were presented with it literally only a few hours before the signing deadline).  In particular, one of the newly introduced chapters (no. 7, appendix B, p.79) called for NATO troops to be deployed not only in Kosovo but throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  Moreover, alliance personnel would, in this case, “be immune from the Parties’ jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal, or disciplinary offenses” and would “enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters.” (para.6-8)

HYBRID WARS 5. BREAKING THE BALKANS (III)

(Please read Part I and Part II before this article)

Thus far in the research, it’s been established that an intense New Cold War competition is taking place in the Balkans between the unipolar and multipolar worlds, with the latter vehemently working to bring their transnational connective projects to the region, whereas the former is ready to do whatever it takes to stop them. This situational context sets the stage for investigating the socio-political vulnerabilities of each of the Balkan states prior to commencing a detailed examination of their most probable Hybrid War scenarios.

Both Balkan Stream and the Balkan Silk Road are envisioned to run straight through the Central Balkans (with China’s multipolar megaproject presently being the only politically feasible of the two), thus making this corridor of states the geostrategic focus of Hybrid War, with specific attention being paid to the Republic of Macedonia and Serbia. On the contrary, scarcely any destabilizing attention is directed towards the Eastern Balkan states of Romania and Bulgaria, mostly owing to their relative insulation from regionally disruptive factors such as the “refugee” crisis (which will be discussed in this section at length).