The EU policy in relation to Kosovo claims to be in accordance with its platform of its harmonious transformation. In this document, the central place is the treatment of this transformation and the motives of overcoming classical geopolitics in accordance with the objectives of critical geopolitical shifts.
But a worthy country also has hypotheses as to why the Brussels Agreement [February 27, 2023], after the letter that the Prime Minister of Serbia sends to the EU’s Foreign Service, may go towards nullification, and be archived in the annals of history. In this framework of geopolitical developments, Southeastern Europe is being delineated, moving from the corridors of diplomacy to military battlegrounds.
See for this, I treated the Brussels agreement as a byproduct of the same political mindset that once produced the prototype of Kersten Knipp’s “Fascist Commune”. The same mindset on the eve of World War II had used the combination of many of those contradictory aspects of real life to form a dangerous, mass psychotic populism that could easily be followed by 21st-century missteps in Southeast Europe. which seem to be related to the platform of Serbian-Russian ideologues for the creation of the “Serbian World”.
In the light of these developments, the Brussels Agreement nevertheless gains specific weight.
The UN General Assembly, after an intensive dialogue, on September 10, 2010, approved the resolution that will pave the way for direct talks between Kosovo and Serbia, the first since Kosovo declared independence.
The resolution in question was presented by Serbia itself and co-sponsored by the European Union. Through it, the main role of the European Union in mediation between Serbia and Kosovo was supported.
The resolution was approved by the 192 members of the General Assembly, had accepted the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, which categorically affirmed that the declaration of independence of Kosovo in 2008 does not violate any international law.
The resolution removed Serbia’s earlier illegitimate demands for the reopening of the dialogue on the status of Kosovo.
The resolution in question, amended, recognizes the judgment of the International Court of Justice, which states that the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo was legal. It also welcomed the European Union’s offer to enable dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo, as a path to future membership in the organization.
With this resolution, the path is initially opened for technical dialogue, but over time, it would turn into pure political dialogue.
The policy of the EU in relation to Kosovo, for pure geopolitical interests, investing in the separation of Serbia from the Russian orbit, continued to make concessions to Serbia to the detriment of Kosovo, the product of which was the agreement of April 2013 and that of August 2015, which would degenerate into secret talks for the division of Kosovo in 2018.
[The EU’s] European policy towards Southeast Europe was unlikely to follow the US geopolitical doctrine of creating a “New Democratic Middle East”. To paraphrase Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Brussels cannot make the development of South-Eastern Europe limited only to the development of gardening and clearing the jungle, with the only foresight that the “lava” of the war provoked by the canary of France – Serbia, would not spread over the EU fence and subvert the continent’s security.
The attitude of the Berlin-Paris axis towards Serbia and thus the Brussels Basic Agreement [February 2023] was an attempt to surpass classical geopolitics as the tradition of political realism in international relations. Consequently, the Brussels Agreement appears to us to be the product of a critical geopolitical approach. The latter, as is known, is a link between the free platform of political geography and international relations.
Underlying the Franco-German agreement itself seems to be the basic principle of critical geopolitics, which incorporates the interests of the axis in question. The authors of the Brussels Basic Agreement, with emphasis on its Annex approved in Ohrid [March 18, 2023], transforming Kosovo into experimental laboratory, through the definition of the actual recognition of the Republic of Kosovo, as if they want to demystify the classic Serbian geopolitics, placing it in line with the interests of the EU, fully in the historical context and the perspective of the region as a whole in the EU.
Classical geopolitics mainly focused on four essential elements: space, identity, vision, and statehood.
Critical geopolitics focuses on the social construction of space – the way in which space is more meaningful and accessible to many geopolitical actors and their ideas. Space is central to critical geopolitics. Yet unlike classical geopolitics and its often-implicit materialism, this dismisses any relationship between geographic space and global politics. Instead it investigates the social construction of space – the way in which space is made meaningful by a wide range of geopolitical actors and their ideas. [1]
Critical geopolitics also points out that geopolitics has historically served as an essential foundation of knowledge that remains linked to the birth of the modern state, i.e. the symbols of state-making. See for this, the process of the disintegration of Yugoslavia [1991-1999] should be seen in the light of the transformation of the conception of critical geopolitics for the benefit of the creation of new states, therefore also the Republic of Kosovo, in the process of the complete transformation of Southeast Europe. In this new process in which Southeast Europe is claimed to be incorporated as a whole, critical geopolitics can be strongly encouraged, avoiding attention from classic geopolitical topics and reconceptualizing its entirety and the integration process in the EU and NATO.
As such, critical geopolitics, in this case, trying to transcend classical geopolitics, thus questions the rigid boundaries between territorial identities, bringing into question its own existence.
After the EU-Western Balkans summit, which was held in Brussels in mid-December 2023, a joint declaration was adopted. The statement, among other things, called on all Western Balkan countries to impose sanctions on Russia and work to prevent the evasion of restrictive measures that Brussels imposed on Moscow in response to its aggression against Ukraine.
In the said statement, among other things, it was underlined:
“We expect constructive engagement from both sides in good faith and in a spirit of compromise to make rapid progress in normalizing their relations, which is critical to the security and stability of the entire region and to ensure that the parties can advance in the respective European journeys”, says the statement from Brussels. Kosovo and Serbia were called upon to fully implement the Agreement on Normalization of Relations and its Annex, as well as all previous Agreements “without further delay or preconditions”.[2]
But after its publication, the rage of Belgrade was immediate. Just two days before the elections, Prime Minister Brnabić sends a letter to the EU’s Foreign Service.
“The agreement on the path towards the normalization of relations and the implementation Annex, as referred to in this statement, is considered acceptable only in the context in which it does not include the de facto or de jure recognition of Kosovo”, it is stated in the document where Serbia has expressed its position.
“The Republic of Serbia underlines that this adaptation does not include the acceptance of Kosovo membership in the UN, in the system of UN organizations and agencies, nor the so-called territorial integrity of Kosovo”, it is further stated in the said letter, adding that this declaration is considered legally non-binding and does not have the weight of an international agreement under international law.
Furthermore, Serbia states that “Kosovo is an integral part of the Republic of Serbia under international administration in accordance with UN Security Council resolution 1244”.[3] But weeks have already passed and there is no concrete attitude towards this letter from Brussels!
It was expected that in the second part of January, when the meetings of the EU’s high structures [Commission, Council of the EU…] were held, this letter would at least be treated seriously. The attempt by Borrel’s office to pass it off as unfounded leaves a bitter taste for the spirit that dominates the European Commission.
However, the fact that the Serbian Prime Minister’s letter restores the agreement to zero cannot be avoided by anyone who considers the course of events from September 24, when we had the Serbian military aggression in the north of Kosovo, until the first days of January of this year, when the primary topic is returning to the security of the region.
Everywhere in the EU, in the absence of operational unity for Southeast Europe, it seems that the missionary role of preparing the public for the expected change will be taken in the meantime by the liberal left forces in coordination with the conservative right. The Franco-German project that was then adopted by the EU bloc and supported by Great Britain and the USA, included in the basic plan of February 27, 2023, was the product of this compromise. However, it was not signed by the Serbian president. Meanwhile, the aggressive act of Serbia towards Kosovo on September 24 and the letter of the prime minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabiq, addressed to the Council of the EU on December 13, overturn everything related to the agreement in question. Meanwhile, Serbia, in addition to rejecting the first four points of the agreement in question, constantly insists that it will never accept the independence of Kosovo and that it does not recognize the territorial integrity of Kosovo. In accordance with this attitude was the aggressive act of September 24, but also the........