niSerbia is presented with a new chance for rapid progress
Milan Grujić
32–41 minutes
Serbia is in a fever dream. The malaise that has shaken the country for more than a year now threatens to paralyze even the little life that had only just begun to sprout after the ill-fated 1990s. Two decades of slow, uneven progress brought us to the edge of the abyss into which we were thrown by the hell of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, yet our inability to shape ourselves into a modern and stable political society threatens to drag us back into the pit. There are many reasons, but the most important is the absence of consensus among the elites on what goal we, as a society, should pursue. Quite simply, we do not know where we are going, and that is why all the roads we have taken over the past decades look winding and dark (Oasis). If we knew our destination, perhaps even a wrong road might eventually lead us there. After all, the Earth is round.
Serbia, in fact, persistently refuses to be part of Europe, convinced it is far more than a single puzzle piece on the map of the Old Continent. Deluded into believing it is larger and more significant than it truly is, it is paralyzed by constant attempts to prove its own superiority, despite the lack of even the faintest evidence, let alone anything more substantial. At times it seems the only task of the Serbian intellectual elite is to perpetuate the idea of "higher value," which then easily spills into everyday life, enabling politics to manipulate citizens and the Serbian people, a dynamic that can be, and often is, extremely dangerous.
You Can't Be Everyone's Partner
An obvious manifestation of this unfounded sense of superiority is the so-called "four chairs" or "four pillars" policy, formed almost twenty years ago, which was supposed to lead us, in the footsteps of Josip Broz, toward a bright future. Not only did it lead nowhere, it intensified the spotlight on Serbia's delusions, most of which are now clearer than ever. Small states, historically, have never been able to pursue truly independent policies, and every such attempt ended in failure, stagnation, or the suffering of their citizens. Serbia is "great" only in the fantasies of its elite, and that fantasy easily spreads to the public, while a sober view reveals a largely insignificant country on the global stage, a relevant factor only in the fragmented Western Balkans, a region that is granted importance as a package deal. And precisely because of that fragmentation, and the region's inability to consolidate, the Western Balkans has most often served merely as small change in great-power competition, small change that sometimes slips into a mere tip.
You cannot be good with everyone, and you never could. Balancing is possible only in periods of relatively stable international relations, but every crisis produces polarization in which small states have only one real option: to choose a side, even if it turns out to be the wrong one. Is it fair? No. But that is how it works.
The current geopolitical earthquake points Serbia, more clearly than ever, toward the conclusion that its only viable alternative is drawn on the map itself, and the map says plainly that Serbia is part of Europe, therefore part of the European Union. Serbia can do nothing about that, regardless of all its flailing, which, whatever the trajectory, only increases the number of bruises on its body. This situation does not fit the psychological profile of a self-styled giant, but that brings us back to the core problem: the delusion itself. If we assessed ourselves realistically, it would never occur to us to sneak between the legs of four giant elephants rather than take our place in the basket on the back of one of them.
NIN / Jugoslav Vlahović
NIN / Jugoslav Vlahović
Kalimero
The geopolitical crisis is enormous. The world order is changing before our eyes, once again offering us the intoxicating charms of an excess of history, while we once more shout in confusion: "That's unfair." The West is losing the dominance it built over centuries after the Industrial Revolution for several reasons. Among them is the hard-to-explain desire to further humiliate a defeated opponent, to break it into pieces if possible, something clearly visible in the approach toward Russia and in what unfolded after the Cold War. It did not take much intelligence to understand that constant pressure on Russia would produce a counterstrike, which, as so often with Russia, would be stronger and more brutal than necessary.
The second problem is faith in the mantra that the market and democracy would preserve the West's monopoly. That illusion returned like a boomerang through China's spectacular economic and technological rise, a country that is not a democracy and in which state, that is, planned management of the economy remains essential. In fact, China's ascent is the most important reason behind much of what is happening in the world today. A state that has absorbed a huge share of global manufacturing has become a dominant international power.
The West had no coherent collective response to this reality, so the Americans decided to act alone. The Trump administration began retreating into its own "backyard", which, predictably, extends far beyond U.S. borders, from Greenland, across Canada, to the northern shores of South America. Suddenly, Canada and Europe found themselves in trouble. Yet after initial confusion, they reacted with striking decisiveness to Trump's threats.
Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech in Davos that many analysts immediately described as historic. He said "the old order will not return" and that "we should not mourn it," adding that "from collapse we can build something bigger, better, stronger and fairer." He called on the "middle powers" to cooperate, urging them to "stop invoking the rules-based international order as if it still functions." Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, was also clear, and the doubly clear "no" from Canada and the European Union forced Trump to back down. The next day he reduced his remarks largely to self-praise about strong economic indicators in the first year of his term, spiced with complaints that Americans, allegedly, never asked anything of their NATO allies, and now, the first time they ask for something, something so "small" as Canada and Greenland, these ungrateful partners refuse. A few insults toward Europeans followed, essentially an expression of helplessness after a paper placed on his desk days earlier in which the EU threatened tariffs worth $250 billion, precisely targeted at the so-called swing states that decide who governs America.
PROFIMEDIA / Ognjen Stevanovic / Alamy
PROFIMEDIA / Ognjen Stevanovic / Alamy
The "Serbian World"
In the coming years, perhaps decades, the bloc division into an American, Russian, Chinese and European world is likely to harden into barriers that a state of Serbia's size and weight will not be able to jump. Carney spoke openly about these blocs in Davos. Small states will have their best chance at prosperity if they place their "world" inside one of the larger ones, and understanding that our so-called "Serbian world" can survive only alongside the European one may save us from a dangerous power game that could threaten the survival of both the Serbian nation and the Serbian state. The elephants have begun to dance, and their dance can easily become a trance. No Kalimero-style moralizing, so common in Serbia's public space, and certainly no political shell game, will rescue us if we keep pretending to be clever and pushing on as before.
The real question is what we actually want. Europe remains the best place to live in the world, and a lack of awareness that, in the latest geopolitical reshuffle, we could hardly have landed a better hand cannot be excused by the desire for everyone to be happy, for Serbia to be on good terms with everyone, and for world peace to prevail. There is no rational explanation for Serbia's refusal to accept the fact that it belongs to the European family, that we are where we are, that we are like those around us, neither worse nor any better, and that only together with them can we secure prosperity.
And here we return to the elite, which must lead this people and this state. Yet at least half of it currently revels in the European Union's problems, chuckling from the sidelines at the difficulties European leaders face with Trump and the war in Ukraine, firing off at least one snide quip a day.
The absence of awareness of the essential importance of joint action, of the necessity of a national agreement, even if it took a year to reach, is a sure way to keep languishing at the bottom. Failure to understand that we must have a common goal, however broadly defined, say, a prosperous EU member state capable of meeting most of its citizens' needs, opens space for a cynical game in which politics and the economic and security networks tied to it will always be ready to sacrifice a significant part of the nation and the state for their own interests. If we do not know together who we are and where we are going, why would each of us not pull the rope in our own direction? For more than two and a half millennia Aesop's motif, the immeasurable strength of a bundle compared to a single twig, has appeared in the oral and written traditions of many nations, including the Serbian one. Yet we still do not understand it, not as a national community and, consequently, not at many lower, yet important, levels. The current political opposition is not the topic of this text, but it is a telling example. It is hard to explain the fact that Serbia has twenty opposition parties, the strongest polling at around five percent, while fifteen are below one percent. A functional democratic system requires at least five parties capable of becoming, after elections, either the leading governing party or a credible coalition partner.
In all of this, it is crucial to understand that achieving broad agreement on national goals does not mean imposing the view of any majority faction. Any such attempt would be like jamming a stick into the wheel of the vehicle carrying us through these murky times. Serbia must be plural in order to develop normally. Any attempt to repaint it in a single color will bring new suffering and misfortune and, at the very least, a delay that will be hard to make up for.
People think differently in every society, so it is difficult to understand why only Serbian elites cannot determine the main direction in which the state should move, or at least strive to move. What is it that Bulgarians and Romanians, Czechs and Poles, Croats and Albanians, Slovenes and Portuguese, indeed so many Europeans, know that we Serbs do not? How is it possible that European integration is seriously questioned only in Serbia and the Republika Srpska? That only here do polls show a majority not supporting membership in the Union? Or perhaps we know something no other nation in Europe knows. It is possible, but extraordinarily unlikely.
Serbia must seize the opportunity that will present itself in the coming years. The war in Ukraine and China's economic dominance have pushed European elites toward a partial realization that Europe will have to confront military and political giants that are not well disposed toward it, and U.S. policy since Trump's return has made it clear that Europe will have to do so largely on its own, perhaps with Canada. Politicians and the economic structures behind them, both in Brussels and in European capitals, are beginning to understand that addressing the Union's internal problems is a priority, and the Western Balkans is one of those internal problems. A quick solution would spare Europe unnecessary tension and free resources for dealing with the giants mentioned above. The Union does not need a black hole inside its own space, and that fact will open a new possibility for Serbia to advance rapidly toward membership. We should not miss this chance.
But anyone who knows us also knows we should not celebrate in advance. Wading through the muddy puddles of our own delusions is our favorite national discipline.
