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The West in the Balkans - Part III

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 7/29/2006

Excerpts from an interview granted to www.serbianna.com, May 2004
There isn't a single country in the Balkan - Serbia included - whose political elite, past and present, is not thoroughly criminalized. Crime, business, and politics are inextricable in this part of the world. Kosovo is no different. But people's past lives are less important than their future actions. The early histories of many nations - perhaps all nations - are studded with rogues, terrorists, criminals, slave traders, eccentrics, and worse. Robber barons, gunslingers, outcasts, slavers, and criminals established both the United States and Australia, for instance.

Serbia has sold its soul to the "liberal-capitalistic" dream of Western-style prosperity and "civil society" (which is, in reality, uncivil and asocial). It is now a de facto economic protectorate of the United States and its long arms, the IMF and the World Bank. Militarily, it is completely defanged. And its corrupt politicians and businessmen are addicted to Western payouts and handouts. The population is fatigued, bombed into submission, and "pacified" by the twin drugs of American "culture" and rampant consumerism and materialism. Serbia has been atomized and suffers from malignant individualism. Patriotism is a four letter word and national solidarity is taboo.

Club membership is the most thorough form of control. NATO's numerous "partnerships" and "programs" go hand in hand with the EU's equally multitudinous "associations", "stabilizations", "agreements", and "candidacies". The aim is to micromanage the unruly nation-states of the wild southeast by dragging them through interminable and resource-guzzling processes of applications and reviews.

Both Belgrade and the Euro-Atlantic structures are self-delusional when they pretend to have a say in the future of Kosovo. The province is lost to Serbia (at this stage of history, at least). This deranged game of Euro inanity goes like this: Belgrade makes a "concession", suggests a "compromise", or comes up with a "plan". The Europeans reward Belgrade by luring it into yet another of their pointless plans, programs, and partnerships. The Kosovars - amused and enraged in equal measure - go on doing their thing: intimidating the remaining Serbs and preparing for independence.

After Milosevic, the West is terrified by even the slightest and most innocuous whiff of Serb nationalism. The West confuses national pride and true patriotism (essential to rebuilding a devastated Serbia) with virulent, belligerent, xenophobic, and exclusionary nationalism. Kostunica's earlier pronouncement and Arkan-like snapshots taken in Kosovo and elsewhere do not help his case either.

The most urgent economic measure would be to lock two dozens grubby politicians behind bars and throw away the key. Actual corruption and the perception of ubiquitous venality are the biggest single obstacles to investment - both domestic and foreign - and to job creation.
Second step:

Establish a separate judiciary for foreign investors. Lethargic and crooked judges deter outsiders from plunging their money, time, knowledge, and technology into the local economies.

Third step:

Immediately and utterly disengage from the IMF's disastrous recipes for economic "revival" and "stability". What is known as "The Washington Consensus" has proved to be an unmitigated failure in dozens of countries throughout the world. Those who defied the IMF and yet implemented prudent expansionary policies - such as Malaysia - fared far better than their IMF-addicted brethren.

Why are these steps not taken? No prizes for the guessers. Vested - interlocking and colluding - interests: local politicians, local "businessmen", American interests in keeping as many countries under its thumb as possible.

END