A pity for the lucidity of princely diplomacy

It is known that Prince Miloš, in the ancient times, was addressed as knjaz, was an illiterate man. It is also known that he tried to become literate at the persuasion of his learned officials, but he quickly gave up, convinced that it was hard, tedious and boring. It is much better known that he brought about an epochal change for Serbia because, first, he found the courage to launch the Second Serbian Uprising after the collapse of the First and successfully end it, through long and complicated negotiation processes and diplomatic maneuvers; he won independence and freedom for Serbia after four centuries of slavery.

There are a small number of people who properly understood and interpreted the magnitude of his feat: illiterate and uneducated, yet skilled and incredibly dexterous in his interactions with the powerful statesmen of the time. Prince Miloš is a paradigmatic example and irrefutable proof that education and wisdom, some would say Pamet, are not equivalent to the fact that it is possible to be wise despite being factually uneducated, just as it is obviously possible to be educated and not be wise at all. For the first variant, which is incomparably rarer and requires authentic clarity, it is difficult to find examples, and there are many examples of the second variant, they are not enough to live normally.

This text will deal with the problems and pains associated with this second combination of often encountered human characteristics. Political wisdom consists primarily in the fact that, first, understand that you should take different positions towards different actors of international events, and that it is especially important not to antagonize those on whom the big things in your program of action strongly depend and who are clearly far stronger than you. It has to be understood as well second important thing, which is that what you do in politics does not concern only you and that the entire area of ​​your activity is interwoven with a dense weave of international interests, among which the most visible and the most important interests of the great powers. Not fitting in with those interests, and especially opposing them, is a paradigmatic example absence of wisdom and a ready-made recipe for failure anything of importance among the undertakings you are engaged in.

THE ASTONISHING WEAKNESS OF SERBIA IN KOSOVO

Year by year, the world is becoming more and more complex and more and more densely covered with an increasingly strong tangle of connections and interdependencies. This is the reason for the aforementioned important fact of the intertwining of interests, for the inescapable circumstance that what we do even in our own backyard concerns others, and among them the inevitable great powers. From this follows the elementary and vitally important fact that the interests of the big and powerful should never be ignored and that, in mathematical jargon, they should be treated as limitations within which the best solution for oneself is sought. Smart policy is, formally speaking, always a search for the optimum with carefully identified and seriously understood limitations. In this sense, a wise folk proverb arose: Whom to pray, do not be angry with him. The wise prince Miloš understood this well, and he carried or sent piles of ducats to Istanbul, and when it was necessary, he did not hesitate to kiss the sultan's slipper. He did not act bravely where it could have given him and Serbia a severe headache.

Our President of the Republic (PR) has long and very angrily lamented the injustices that, as he says, are being inflicted on us by those with Those lamentations are always loud and heartbreaking, but those that were produced on a daily basis during the last ten days of April 2023 fit especially deeply into the memory. There is no point in reproducing them verbatim, but for the sake of example, one can cite the bitter resentment due to the inconsistency of the international community (MZ), which took away Kosovo from us while steadfastly defending the integrity of Ukraine, or the ten-year delay in the formation of the Union of Serbian Municipalities, i.e. tolerating Kosovo's insistence that it is never formed, even though the European Union is no less than the guarantor of that obligation. Lamentations are frequent, in fact regular, both regarding the cruel pressures that our negotiating team constantly endures in Brussels and regarding the difficult times that are surely awaiting us due to these pressures and their probable increase.

Milos Obrenovic, author: Moric M. Dufinger, National Museum, Belgrade

The most striking episodes in this obviously extremely dysfunctional antagonism of the West are those in which PR addresses the most powerful actors from that group - the so-called Quintus - in words bordering on vulgar profanity: Shame on you; Shame on you... and the like. It is hard to even believe that a head of state would resort to such a vocabulary that reminds one of a temperamental quarrel between two uneducated housewives. It is unnecessary, but let it be said - such vocabulary and tone are harmful to the user of those startling exclamations and to Serbia itself. At the same time, they reveal the astonishing impotence of Serbia to do anything effective in Kosovo in terms of protecting the Serbs there. It is as much an indicator particularly worrying the weakness of Belgrade's politics as much as the fact that it is unable to finally establish the Union of Serbian Municipalities, i.e. to ensure the implementation of what was mutually signed and even guaranteed by the EU. Isn't there anyone in that party of his who is bloated in numbers who would advise him that he can only expect failure and damage from those negative verbal outbursts?!

It is difficult to logically reconcile those vehement performances with Serbia's strategic orientation towards the EU and with the goal of joining that organization, which has been emphasized so many times. Does PR have in mind such strong emotional and aggressive outpourings that we have not yet given up our determination to become a member of the EU? How can one not remember the wise and wisely pragmatic prince Miloš and how much his "kissing the sultan's slipper" is in contrast with this boyish eruption of unmitigated and uncontrolled anger? Apparently, such excesses happen to PR only on the domestic stage, he probably only relieves his anger-impregnated soul there.

However, he should be reminded that the domestic stage is not isolated from the world and that the network of various foreign representations, from embassies onwards, transmits verbatim everything that is directed verbally and in all other ways from official circles; it is transmitted not only to the West but also Urbi et orbi. Is it possible that PR believes that these explosions of his frustration only reach the domestic public and that they miraculously disappear at its borders?

Described behavior towards the powerful that is beg and not scold has its analogue in the behavior towards the authorities in Kosovo and towards the ordinary world in that "our southern province". First, we need to carefully weigh whether that province is really ours. If the PR can't go to Gazivode because the "temporary" government there prevents it, and if the patriarch can't visit the Patriarchate of Pec for the same reasons, how much is that province really "ours"? Is what it is after the war conflict ripped off from Serbia, and by far stronger than it, really "ours"? The possessive pronoun "our" implies ownership, and what of the three defining attributes of ownership - friends, enter, abutendi - can we achieve in Kosovo? Nothing!

DYSFUNCTIONAL LINES OF POLICY

It is high time that the Belgrade group, but also the Serbs in Kosovo, understand that there is no safe and peaceful survival of the Serbs in Kosovo without reconciliation and securing a permanent basis for coexistence with the Kosovo Albanians. And Belgrade is doing everything to make the entire Albanian population its sworn enemies and, of course, the enemies of the Kosovo Serbs themselves. Belgrade's policy does everything to maximize hostility towards Kosovo Albanians: there is not a single act of goodwill that has been done towards that people. Numerous concessions, the Brussels Agreement as well as those achieved before and after it, were made under pressure from the West, and by no means as an act of goodwill on the part of the local authorities. Such a repulsive and destructive policy towards the Kosovo authorities cannot help but spill over to a large extent on the population, so it is one of the key factors continuous deterioration of the position of Serbs in Kosovo. It is high time that Kosovo Serbs rest and start recovering from that policy. All the more so and all the more important that the Belgrade government can do absolutely nothing in terms of their protection. How would she be able to when PR itself cannot go to Gazivode?

There is no known case of a Serb from Kosovo being saved from local violence by local authorities. When relations were more strained recently, permission was requested for those thousand armed Serbs to cross over to Kosovo, but the permission was not obtained and nothing would come of that crossing. The summary of all this is short and simple: the policy towards Kosovo has no instruments and no power to do anything to those suffering specifically and effectively help, but with its empty aggressive rhetoric, it permanently and systematically worsens relations with the Albanian majority. That policy, persistently deepening tensions and hostility between the two communities, generates damage without benefit and, by making reconciliation impossible, permanently complicates the position of Kosovo Serbs and makes their survival in Kosovo more than questionable in the long term. It is high time that the Kosovo Serbs also come to their senses and send a message to Belgrade: Don't, for heaven's sake, more to protect us, we can't take that protection anymore!

The reason is that this policy is simply contraindicated - it deepens the already too deep gap of mistrust between the two ethnic communities, thereby constantly increasing the risks of local violence against the Serbs remaining in Kosovo, and there is no power and no instruments to protect them from disastrous ethnically inspired excesses. It is worth reinterpreting: this policy did nothing to bring the two communities together; nothing similar to Pašić's prescription was even applied - to use at least part of the funds that are wasted around Kosovo to establish and strengthen a the Albanian pro-Serbian party, which would be the protagonist and mainstay of the rapprochement of the two communities, and also a factor in the long-term survival of the Serbian minority in that province. Nothing that would be in the spirit of rational and wise long-term action was undertaken in that policy. Everything that would be on that line would, according to the logic of things, also have to be on the line of building sustainable and perhaps even friendly relations with the Albanian population. But that policy - all in the name of insulting remarks by a local minister who refers to Albanians only as Shiptara, marked with an indelible seal interest only in the territory, and not for the population. It should be left to the creators of that policy to measure the degree to which it has found itself on the other side of the permissible ethical standards.

There is much in our politics that is irrational and contraindicated. This fact reveals the typical weakness of an authoritarian government structure. The dysfunctional features of the policy were revealed, so to speak, at both ends. In the segment of interactions with the West, contradictory and emotionally provoked - instead of rationally shaped - statements were discovered that are on the very border of offensiveness. They evidently harm the country and, in particular, make it difficult or even impossible to have an effective policy towards Kosovo. They are particularly harmful in terms of protecting and ensuring the long-term sustainable survival of Serbs in Kosovo. On the level of relations with the local Kosovo population, the absence of efforts to build peaceful and sustainable cooperative relations with the Albanian population in Kosovo was identified. Instead, as just pointed out, an antagonistic policy towards the Kosovo government and the Albanian people prevails. With such a policy of permanent and growing hostility, the survival of the Serbs in Kosovo is unlikely and, one would say, permanently unsustainable.