Without the EU, old demons will return to the Balkans
The British are
not alone in their
distaste for the European project. Europeans in many
EU countries are
uncertain what Europe is for, whether it is working for them and whether it was a good idea to join in the first place
Faisal Al Yafai
In just over a week, the UK will vote on whether to leave the European Union. What started as a family dispute within the Conservative party has spilled out into a vote that could irrevocably change the country.
The British are not alone in their distaste for the European project. Europeans in many EU countries are uncertain what Europe is for, whether it is working for them and whether it was a good idea to join in the first place.
In European political circles, it is called enlargement fatigue, the belief that the union needs to adjust to the shock of 2004, when ten countries joined in the largest enlargement in the EUs history. The continent was still wrestling with the consequences of that, when the financial crisis of 2008 hit, throwing many of the southern European members into turmoil.
The result has been that the countries waiting to enter the EU, mainly the western Balkan countries of Albania, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, have had their discussions stalled. Hanging over the British discussion around Brexit, as it hangs over the discussion of the EU in other countries, is the possibility of more countries coming in. The implicit suggestion, sometimes made explicitly, is that Europe is full.
Yet Europe has forgotten the real reason for enlargement. It is not a favour or reward for poorer countries. It is a security imperative. The EU has helped to tame the political demons on the continent. Continuing to exclude the Balkans makes it more likely that some of those demons will return.
Patience is running out
The leaders of both Serbia and Albania have warned the EU about this. Albanias prime minister Edi Rama has often returned to his theme that the region has patience fatigue and that if patience is over, the Balkans will become identified with bloodshed.
Too many in Europe have taken those warnings as threats. Rather, they are a recognition of the political realities of a complex and intertwined continent. More than once, serious conflict has engulfed the Balkans and involved Europe. If further conflict occurs, borders and walls will not keep that conflict from Europe as the Syrian refugee crisis, on a different continent, cannot be kept out.
Indeed, refusing entry to the Balkan countries will not make Europe safer. It will actually bring about the very problems it is seeking to avoid.
Heres why. Countries are built on ideas, especially ideas about who they are and where they are going. In the Balkans, so often riven by conflicts and ethnic faultlines, those divisions have not gone away. They have been calmed and constrained by hope in a better future inside the EU. But if that future does not materialise, the old enmities will reappear.
Sarajevo was the largest city of Bosnia. In 1992, as Serb forces sought to carve out parts of Bosnian territory for a Serbian state, the city was besieged. For four years, it was encircled: the residents lived in fear of snipers and were shelled constantly. It was only after the Dayton Agreement was signed at the end of 1995 that the siege finally came to an end. When it concluded, it had lasted longer than the siege of Leningrad, the worst of the Second World War.
Europeans in the EU should understand this better than most. The Union was a response to a bloody history of competing nationalisms and xenophobia. That history has not gone away, it has merely been constrained by the peace and prosperity that the EU has helped bring about. Even today, as the economies of the continent fray, the old nationalisms are reappearing. The European project was really about creating a new, more useful set of ideas. Replacing the old ideas of competition with a belief in progress through cooperation. The European Union was a vehicle for a political idea.
Europeans who believe old enmities can vanish are mistaken. They have not left Europe and have not left the Balkans. In many cases, these enmities cannot be eradicated. They can only be constrained. If the people of the Balkans no longer believe in the political vehicle of the EU and its ideas, they will seek other ideas about who they are and where they are going, with devastating results. Look across the Bosphorus and it is clear what happens when belief in the future collapses. Racism has not historically been such a problem for the Arab world as for Europe, but sectarianism has been. Ive written before about my belief that the sectarianism the region is living through is not genuinely based in ancient hatreds but in modern politics. Yet those fault lines are there.
For a long time, they were constrained by political ideas whether the nationalism of Iraq or the enforced secularism of Syria. But once those ideas collapsed, along with the states that were the political vehicles for them, the old fault lines reappeared. The people in the Middle East began to look for new political ideas, new ways of defining who they were and where they were going. And, as with the Balkans, as with the rest of Europe, as with every part of this cramped planet, there were plenty of ugly enmities lying in wait.
The wars in the Middle East should be a warning to the European Union. When political ideas fail, the demons of the past can return. And then, walls are little use.
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