Beefing up NGO Sector in CEE

April 2014 _____________________________________________________________________________________ BEEFING UP THE NGO SECTOR IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE: HOW TO LEGITIMIZE A RE-BOOST OF WESTERN GEOPOLITICS WITH CIVILIAN MEANS? _____________________________________________________________________________________ Hristijan Ivanovski Executive Summary

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ince the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Western strategy for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has generally relied on two instruments: NATO and an abundance of civilian means. The latter's use in the post-socialist world has flourished since the early days of transition. However, in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, which now tends to be seen as the hallmark symbol of Western decline, the indispensible reformist role of the Western-abetted NGO sector in CEE began to fade, inter alia, due to revised strategic priorities, funding cuts, and gradual withdrawal by foreign donors (except the EU). The prolonged economic and debt repercussions affecting mostly the West and the US Pacific pivot have gravely exacerbated the situation over the past several years. First, the resultant geopolitical vacuum has been rapidly filled by rising actors, most notably Russia, China, and Turkey, via various types of strategic activities and transactions. Second, whether encouraged by the eastbound distribution of material capabilities or simply attracted by emerging economic opportunities, some CEE societies and their elites have begun suffering from a serious "power-shift syndrome." Third, the greater the local inspiration by the new tendencies, including the Russo-Turkish concept of "managed democracy" through strong, authoritarian-styled leadership, the more marginalized the opposition voices/media and the independent civic action in the entire region.

In light of these developments, the old question of strengthening democracy and the non-for-profit sector in CEE becomes much more than that. Having advanced on the transatlantic agenda as of late, it is ultimately about containing the ongoing penetration of Sino-Russian influence in the region by correcting the mistake of an early civil-military withdrawal and legitimizing a targeted re-boost of Western geopolitics with civilian means. No doubt, if the EU and NATO (US) are to remain in control of a key geopolitical space on the Eurasian chessboard, thoughtful steps are required beyond mere supporting of local pro-Western forces and civic/human rights activism. Based on a profound understanding of the situation on the ground, the civilian dimension of the virtual transatlantic strategy for CEE should urgently include a reinvented set of administrative, policy, financial, investment, and diplomatic measures with far-reaching social effects. 

This report was updated as at July 11, 2014 in order to include hyperlinked references to the latest relevant articles and information.

Centre for Defence and Security Studies University College, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 Canada Phone: 204-474-6606; fax: 204-474-7645 http://umanitoba.ca/centres/cdss/

Background: The Two Instruments of Political Globalization _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island: Who rules the World-Island commands the World."

- Sir Halford J. Mackinder (1861-1947), 19191 "Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world."

- Nicholas J. Spykman (1893–1943), 1943/42 It would be useful to begin this report by challenging the thesis about the recent revival of old-fashioned geopolitics in Eurasia. The promoters of this thesis, including Russians as well, are more or less aware that geopolitics has actually, in practice, never gone out of fashion—not even in the early 1990s when most of the world, driven by the thrilling sense of what Francis Fukuyama had just described as "the end of history," indulged in hope, dreaming of sharing a post-Cold War peace dividend for good. While academic interpretations of geopolitics and geostrategy have varied over the decades and centuries, essentially, little if anything has changed in the politico-ideological exercise of these concepts since Dietrich Heinrich Freiherr von Bülow's times. The academic debate aside, today's "great game" continues, partly in a very traditional way, with some even going as far as to claim that "the Cold War never really ended."3 Once the Iron Curtain totally collapsed in late 1991, the West was set to employ all the instruments at its disposal in order to foment the spreading of Samuel Huntington's third democratic wave across the territory of both the former Warsaw Pact and a dissolving Yugoslavia. In general, the bandied-about globalist forces had two instruments of choice to put the transitional and, in some cases, war-torn societies of the former Eastern bloc on a largely neoliberal track:  NATO, whose primacy was practically unquestionable, though formally reaffirmed in the wake of Europe's quest for ESDI (European Security and Defence Identity); and  an abundance of civilian tools, mainly in the hands of the emerging EU, national development aid agencies, as well as preeminent intergovernmental and quasi-official organizations.

As for the use of military force, Washington and major European capitals were initially reluctant to engage NATO on European soil despite Russia's considerable socio-economic and, to a certain extent, military decline under President Boris Yeltsin. What is more, by getting stuck with Slobodan Milošević's intransigence for more than a decade—namely, due to following the classical interventionist dogma of Halford .J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (London: Constable Publishers, 1919), 194; (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1919), 186; 2nd edition (London: Constable Publishers/New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1942); and (1942; repr. with a new introduction by Stephen V. Mladineo, Washington D.C.: National Defence University Press, 1996), xviii, 106.

2 Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1944), 43, quoted in Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality,1996, xx, as well as in Nicholas J. Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1942; repr. with a new introduction by Francis P. Sempa, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007), xxvii.

3 Notwithstanding the consistent use of the "post-Cold War" expression throughout this report, the author is fully aware of the growing number of analysts who, in light of the deteriorating Russia-West relations, venture to claim that the Cold War— subsequently transformed into a "cold peace"—has never truly ended.

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backing weaker proxies (local "clients") while concurrently pursuing, at least until the early post-Dayton process, instrumental cooperation with the Serb/Yugoslav regime along the lines of the Washington consensus4—the West let itself waste valuable time in moving its focus from the once again bellicose Balkans to more important geostrategic regions and issues in the wake of the 21st century.

To this day, Serbian patriots and radicals, while lamenting for, as they would like to believe, a "temporarily lost" Kosovo, nonetheless pride themselves for having long kept the world's mightiest alliance away from Russia's borders. They do so basically in the same fashion in which they glorify their rediscovered myth of having purportedly saved "the hypocritical and unthankful Europe" from the Ottoman Turks. A bureaucrat in Brussels or Washington may have been looking at this sort of vibrant ethnocentrism, which is all but limited to Slavs, as a pathetic consolation of a defeated party which continues to demonstrate a victim mentality.

Yet, such a superficial Western thinking would hardly rectify NATO's untimely or ill-conceived moves concerning South Eastern Europe (SEE).5 Sadly, some 1990s allied choices relative to CEE in general and the Balkan peninsula in particular are now all the more believed to have contributed to Vladimir Putin's subsequent rise.6 Putin's controversial rise and four terms in power, as suggested by some of the latest speeches and headlines inspired by the Ukraine crisis, have largely been enabled over the past fifteen years of Western hubris and fruitless hope that neo-Tsarist Russia will eventually succumb to the global neoliberal agenda.

Unlike NATO's military strategy and the EU's post-1999 Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the use of foreign diplomatic, financial, technical assistance, development, and democratization tools in postsocialist Europe has flourished since the early days of transition;7 the reason being mainly the seductive, monopolized Western offer, both in ideological and material terms, which has had no real competition until recently.

As is well known, during the unipolar moment, which now, after the Russian march into Crimea, seems to be definitely over even in military terms,8 there was not much of a need for winning local hearts and minds between the Baltic and the Bosphorus—save as, of course, in some openly pro-Russian Orthodox places Various sorts of anti-globalists, from radical leftists, anti-capitalists, and neo-Marxists, to centre democrats and greens, to conservative national patriots, modern populists, and ultranationalists, confidently argue that the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were masterminded by the Western political and financial elite and surgically implemented by its local "puppets," the opportunistic, ex-communist Yugoslav strongmen and secret services which had successfully converted to ethno-nationalism. According to Dave Stratman's interpretation of this widespread opinion, the genuine aim was to crush the unity and anti-liberal resistance of Yugoslavia's working class, to prevent the post-1980 tendency towards an anti-bureaucratic revolution in the country, and to clear the road to a kind of grim transitional capitalism in favour of both Western multinationals and local oligarchs. However, even if one is to uphold this unbalanced view, it is hard to accept a pretentious integral claim that "Milosevic has been the U.S.-IMF man all along," including even after the 1999 NATO strike against the then FR Yugoslavia!

5 The geographical denominations "South Eastern Europe" (SEE) and "the Balkans/Balkan peninsula" are hereinafter used interchangeably.

6 If nothing else, they gave the Western-favoured Yeltsin enough time to find himself an exceptionally strong political successor. Putin has since proved to be—arguably beyond Yeltsin's expectations—capable of resurrecting Russia's national pride and greatness on the international stage by boldly defying the West. Over the past nearly 15 years, he has managed to establish a widely popular firm-hand rule, first, by doing away with the transitional oligarchic chaos of the 1990s and consolidating his country's economy mainly to the benefit of state power, and then, by "politicising" the vast national energy resource base, most notably via Gazprom's and Rosneft's rising empires, and muscling Russia's way to global greatness. Speaking strictly strategically, he has timely and massively ramped up national defence spending, modernizing the Russian military to a decent level. As a result, under the former KGB operative, Russia has demonstrated on at least three separate occasions (Georgia, Syria, and currently Ukraine/Crimea) its diplomatic and military capacity not only to "return" to the "great game" but also to play it fairly successfully.

7 A temporary exception from this general rule were some war-torn, former Yugoslav republics where things had to first settle down through regime change.

8 According to Mr. Putin, unipolarity, while known to world history, "didn't [really] take place" in the post-Cold War period, despite all Western efforts. Regardless, if a unipolar order has truly existed since 1991, it was seriously challenged as early as 2008 when Russia waged an allegedly reactive blitzkrieg against Georgia.

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as well as among working class individuals highly nostalgic of the former real-socialist welfare system.9 Apart from the regional impact of "Transitology" as an academic tool for broader cultural engineering, the individual hope for unrestrained political liberty and the national cravings for overall democratic prosperity were, at one point, so overwhelming among Donald Rumsfeld's "new" Europeans that the Euro(-Atlantic) integrations are nowadays still considered strategic priority No.1 by the great majority of CEE peoples and governments. The West knows it can still count on such a deeply psychological leverage, notwithstanding the fact that (the broader acceptance of) its liberal-democratic idea has been lately compromised by both  its intensified libertarian impositions,10 which are resiliently rejected within and beyond Eastern Europe (EE) as a purportedly insidious enemy of local traditions and stereotypes, family values, and all that is meant by "normal life;"i and  the proven appeal of an authoritarian-fashioned alternative such as the vigorously assailed RussoTurkish concept of "managed democracy."11 Quite importantly, to the extent that the Western elite has been locally perceived to endorse the cardinal political aims of individual CEE nations and intra-ethnic groups, the latter have incubated obedient "leaders" and good interlocutors for the West. Regardless of whether these oft-criticized "pawns" have occasionally been portrayed as rigid nationalists, pragmatic (neo)liberals, or opportunistic ex communists ("red bourgeoisie") poorly disguised as social democrats, they have all proved to be generous in transposing the liberal model domestically. Take for instance the dogmatic reification of the idea of societas civilis as well as of other democratic axioms in transitional societies. As a result, even though the majority in postsocialist Europe—most especially the well-informed and mistrustful "millennials"12—have been genuinely sceptical about the phenomenon of foreign-funded "non-governmental" organizations (NGOs)—frankly, many have taken an immediate dislike to what is largely seen as an imported scheme of political activism, say, by George Soros's Budapest-headquartered Open Society institutes, foundations, and initiatives13—by the late 1990s, a respectable, Western-abetted NGO network had been established throughout the bulk of CEE.14 For some time, this network seemed to be well on its way to becoming an infinitely reliable operational pillar of Western geopolitics in the region.

Nevertheless, much has changed on the old continent since the mid-2000s. The prolonged US strategic shift and the perceived Western decline, a potentially fatal combination after 2008, have made room for multiple retrograde trends in CEE. These, in return, have undermined the generic social impact of the longterm transatlantic engagement in the region, thus worsening the West's overall standing vis-à-vis rising The said Orthodox places include but are not limited to Serbia, north Kosovo, Republika Srpska (BiH), Belarus, eastern and southern Ukraine, the Russian-speaking areas in the Baltic states, and the disputed separatist parts of Georgia and Moldova.

10 No doubt, the most prominent and media-covered of these perceived impositions is the vehement Western support for the global LGBT community and related "pride parade" attempts in targeted parts of Eastern Europe (e.g. Serbia, Montenegro, Russia/the Sochi Olympics).

11 This recent, mainly Russian-inspired concept of democracy promoting a "legitimate" degree of authoritarianism, purportedly on behalf of national interests, has been interchangeably termed as "managed," "guided," "controlled," "illiberal," "centralist," and "sovereign." Still, whatever the rhetorical label, in Western eyes "managed democracy" is just another oxymoron, an euphemism hiding a content comparable to what was once, in a different epoch, though not so long ago, referred to as democratic socialism, democratic centralism, or socialist democracy.

12 This refers to CEE's share in what David Brooks defines as a "thoroughly globalized and linked [millennial] generation with unprecedentedly low levels of social trust."

13 Ideologically, Soros's post-Cold War neoliberal project has been inspired by Bécs philosopher Karl Popper's vigorous defence of the idea of open society prior to, during, and after World War II. 14 After the war in Bosnia (1992-1995), there emerged a parallel NGO network in SEE composed of foreign-funded Muslim "charities" and faithbased organizations. This suspected Islamist network has since evolved, nurturing strong ties with Turkey and the Middle East. As such, it has been widely denounced for providing logistics to international terrorism and performing dubious activities in the context of both the post-9/11 "war on terror" and the Arab Spring.

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Russia and China. Today, as Washington and Brussels struggle to fix the damage, notably by running covert operations and diplomatically invoking the civil society sentiment in critical parts of CEE, but also by deploying NATO troops and conducting military drills in response to the recent complications in Ukraine, this report is seeking to  point out the flaws with the current transatlantic approach to CEE and to explain when, why, and how things have gone wrong for the Open Society concept and its initially smooth dissemination;  identify, from a strictly transatlantic perspective, the silent and partially overlooked retrograde trends in the region as of the mid-2000s; and  provide plausible guidelines for (the civilian dimension of) the future transatlantic response to the profound challenges confronting the region.

An Open Society Project with a Short-Lived Fame _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

By embracing the comprehensive method in the immediate post-Cold War years, the international community managed to install an asymmetric, mainly pro-Western social life in CEE in less than a decade.

This was made possible by specialized civilian operators as different as IMF, the World Bank (IBRD, IFC), EBRD, UNDP, IOM, the European Agency for Reconstruction and Development, various EU funds and programs, OSCE, the Council of Europe, USAID, the US Peace Corps, IRI, NDI, NED, the German Marshall Fund of the US, the British Council, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, GTZ (now GIZ), Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Fridrich Ebert Stiftung, the Goethe-Institut, Alliance Française (and other French institutes), CIDA,15 Transparency International, a bunch of media freedom and human rights watchdogs, as well as numerous EU Delegations and national embassies. Not only these entities helped trailblaze the path to lively civil societies in CEE, a move crucial to further globalization based on an expedient, remotely controllable pluralism in aspiring sovereign states, but they were also widely welcomed as useful orientation providers in the process of Euro(-Atlantic) integration and a major source of local funding. So long as the money was there in sufficiently large amounts, backing up a budding enthusiasm about Western values amid unipolar constraints, the so-designed NGO sector in CEE stayed on the desired track, being one of the key actors in an important geostrategic region and successfully resisting local retrograde forces (conservative, national-patriotic, populist, autocratic, neo-fascist, fundamentalist) and Russo-Oriental influences. Unfortunately, this was soon going to change, most notably in those non-EU and/or non-allied CEE countries whose Euro(-Atlantic) prospects have remained unclear more or less.

IMF stands for International Monetary Fund. IBRD and IFC refer to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation respectively, both members of the World Bank Group. EBRD is the initialism of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a European near-equivalent of IBRD. IOM is the International Organization for Migration. UNDP, OSCE, and USAID are well-known abbreviations referring, respectively, to the United Nations Development Program, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the United States Agency for International Development. IRI, NDI, NED, GTZ (now GIZ), and CIDA designate, respectively, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, the German Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (now Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), and the Canadian International Development Agency.

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The World Is Changing, so Is CEE: Three Major Tendencies _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Well before the 2008 global financial crisis, which now tends to be seen as the hallmark symbol of Western decline, there were increasingly loud rumours in Balkan government circles that foreign donors were about to start cutting back NGO funding and gradually withdraw from CEE due to revised strategic priorities. The consequent trend of reducing foreign (mostly small, non-EU) grants and shutting down local affiliates of international organizations, albeit only coinciding with the unfolding political, financial, and economic downturn in the West, has been inevitably shaped and reinforced by the new resource-scarce budgetary environment; hence the widespread and somewhat erroneous habit among Penetration analysts of associating the year 2008 with the genuine cause of traditional donors' withdrawal from CEE. Regardless, after all that has happened to the region over the past few years, the budgetary constraints felt by local proof Western and multiculturally-oriented NGOs and, as a result, the latter's relative loss of institutional strength and social influence appear to be only a marginal Rising implication.

Powers

The prolonged economic and debt repercussions affecting mostly the West and the regional impact of the gradual US strategic shift to the Pacific rim via South into CEE West Asia and the Maghreb have jeopardized the future of all major Western interests in CEE, including the once-dominant status of local NGOs highly dependent on Washington and Brussels. Before shifting its strategic focus further afield, the West had failed to ensure sustainable solutions to the main Balkan issues—save as Kosovo to a limited extent—let alone spread the Euro-Atlantic area across the broader EE/Black Sea region (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia). Thus, not only has its early civil-military withdrawal from CEE taken toll on its reputation and influence in a place viewed as the "springboard" of global strategic interests,16 it has also left behind a significant geopolitical hole to be heavily exploited by emerging actors. Three major interrelated tendencies are to be observed in this regard:  First, the resultant geopolitical vacuum in CEE has been rapidly filled by rising actors via various types of strategic activities and transactions. In this context, resurgent Russia, "rejuvenated" China, and allied Turkey, ambitious, retro-inspired, and more or less obsessed with ancient grandeur as they are today, pose a particular challenge.17 Compared to their intensified diplomatic, economic, and military moves in the region, the progressively enhancing cultural and informational component In the civilian realm, this withdrawal continues beyond the NGO sector, affecting even the regional diplomatic presence of Western allies.

The example of Canada is what springs to mind (see recommendation no.5, note 53 below).

17 Speaking of great powers and emerging actors pro-active in the Balkans, one can hardly ignore Israel, India, and some of the richest Gulf states. Israel's growing role in the region, which is all too often simplified as counterbalancing Turkey, is perhaps less relevant to this analysis given the country's special ties with the West (for now). What is noteworthy, however, is that many Jewish individuals and businesses are reported to have recently intensified their contacts and mobility within Serbia (links 1, 2, 3, 4), Republika Srpska (BiH), Montenegro (links 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), Macedonia (links1, 2, 3, 4, 5), Greece (links 1, 2, 3), Bulgaria, Romania, and so forth. India's still limited operations in SEE have mainly involved individual entrepreneurs and corporations and their Western-compatible economic interests (minerals, steel industry, automotive industry, agriculture, livestock, tourism and entertainment, early childhood education).Expectedly, the growing regional engagement of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has provoked a large amount of local controversy. Whereas, on the one hand, "Balkan-minded" Arab sheiks are more than welcomed by Balkan governments as desired investors and potential economic saviours, on the other hand, their constructive intentions are parochially questioned and weighed against concrete deeds. The global stereotype of Middle East actors politically and financially backing Islamist proselytization at Europe's doorstep remains in wide circulation in EE, upgraded by the pejorative geopolitical perception of Gulf states as sub-imperial US/NATO agents. Moreover, according to some, the new image of the enormously rich Arab royalties as "messianic" investors across and beyond Europe has been a good camouflage for their actual quest for profit, securing in advance the necessary imports into their desert economies, and thorough political influence in the West.

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of their CEE/Balkan strategies has been gravely overlooked; despite the fact that when approaching Europe they all share a particular attachment to the coupling of strategic investments and cultural exports.18 Thus, in the backdrop of the single largest strategic investment in SEE, the South Stream gas pipeline (estimated at €17 bn.), the Kremlin, availing itself of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, has been publishing10 localized information products in four to five Balkan languages.

Intended for consumption by the Orthodox and Slavic brethren in the south, these products account for less than 1/4 of the ambitious Russia beyond the Headlines (RBTH) project, a multilingual news and information resource providing global coverage of modern Russia's politics, culture, and social life.19 By the same token, while gradually erecting its "European node" from the shores of the Aegean northwards,20 with a particular interest for economic cooperation and arms trade with Ukraine and the Polish-led Visegrád Group (V4), Beijing has begun reifying the idea of Chinese "cultural expansion" in an apparently unlikely place.21 Since the beginning of 2012, SEE media have successively reported on "the studying of Chinese in Balkan schools" as part of a systematic strategy.22 As for Turkey's grand strategy, reaching for the vast Ottoman and Turkic legacy dispersed across the Balkans/CEE and the Greater Middle East has proved to be a tough challenge—a mission impossible for modern-day Ankara. When it comes to realizing the core neoOttoman goals, neither diplomatic assertiveness, as during the early stages of the Arab Spring), nor a spike in Turkish regional trade and investments could be of sufficient help.23 Mindful of this, the recently shaken Erdoğan government continues to work with the revived Turkish film industry Whereas the US and the EU have been dominating the Balkans via a robust politico-military presence, in their attempt to penetrate the region Russia, China, and Turkey are forced to rely mainly on their growth economies and historical ties with Balkan nations.

19 As posted on its website, since 2007 RBTH has published monthly supplements about modern Russia in leading global media. The project currently maintains 18 websites in 16 different languages and publishes Russia-focused monthly supplements in as many as 28 influential newspapers in 22 countries, with a total audience of about 32 million. Of the 28 monthly supplements, five can be found in some of the most preeminent Balkan dailies and periodicals. These are Η Ρωσία Τώρα (Rosia Tora, 4 pp.) in Ελεύθερος Τύπος (Eleftheros Typos, Greece), Русия и България (Russia and Bulgaria, 8 pp.) in Дума (Duma, Bulgaria), Русија и Србија (Russia and Serbia, 36 pp.) in Геополитика (Geopolitika, Serbia), Руска Реч (Ruska Reč, 8 pp.) in Политика (Politika, Serbia), and another Руска Реч (Ruska Reč, 16 pp.) in Нова Македонија (Νova Makedonija, Macedonia). In addition, five out of 18 RBHT websites offer localized content, respectively, in Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Greek.

20 While unable to boast a flagship Balkan investment as grandiose as Russia’s South Stream, Beijing has begun pouring lots of money into state-backed capital projects, large transport infrastructure, and a range of industries across the peninsula. In the narrowest sense, "the European node" refers to a nascent but fast-growing logistic network in SEE, planned to encompass major ports and maritime approaches in the eastern Mediterranean as well as various sorts of land-based infrastructure, from seaside storage facilities, to gradually acquired airports and/or railways, to newly-sponsored highways, and so forth. The network's southern-most segment is to be built around the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki. The two biggest Greek ports, which are already said to rival Western European and Turkish hubs (Rotterdam, Naples, and Istanbul), have become China's most strategic and, potentially, defence-relevant investment targets in the region.

21 This idea has been around for quite some time, vindicated by Beijing's grand strategists. In late 2012, the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) gave principled support for a sound cultural component to be espoused by Chinese foreign policy so as to allow for, as Sergei Luzyanin puts it, "a massive export of ideas and Chinese cultural values."

22 This has notably included reports on the Serbian Government's implementation of a pilot project for learning Mandarin in elementary and secondary schools, former Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha's bombastic call for the introduction of Chinese as "the language of the future" in Albanian schools, and an extra-curricular Chinese course offered in the small Macedonian municipality of Ilinden. These reports make a fairly solid proof of Beijing seeking to prop up its long-term CEE/Balkan agenda by distributing Chinese cultural values through education. As a less direct method in this context, Chinese embassies in the region occasionally donate to early childhood education facilities, a sector seen as appealing for investment even by Indian entrepreneurs.

23 A few years ago the Erdoğan government revealed its ambition to make Turkey one of the world's top ten economies by 2023. To this end, analysts agree, the country needs both to focus on research, development, and innovation and to steadily increase its regional economic exchange. Regional preconditions for Turkish growth based on bilateral trade increase do exist outside of Turkey’s historical spheres of influence. For instance, Ankara's trade prospects with the Balkans are not limited to its preferred strategic and investment targets, namely Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Sandžak, and the Bosnian Federation. Unsurprisingly, Turkish investors are nowadays welcomed not only by Croatia, but also by the old Ottoman "rival" Serbia. However, there have been serious obstacles to Turkey's regional investment expansion— functional/economic as well as political. Turkish businessmen have shown interest for various Balkan enterprises and industries, yet only certain sectors (e.g. construction, mining, transport, communications, retail, banking, and healthcare) have seen tens to a couple of hundreds of millions of "Turkish" euros per single project. Unlike Russia, China, and the West, Turkey (still) lacks "ten-digit" investments abroad, which is said to be mainly due to the country's insufficient resources to enter and dominate strategic sectors of foreign economies.

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on a synergy between the Istanbul-based hyper-production of pre-ordered, best-selling telenovelas and the national foreign policy goals.24 At least for now, the end product, having been no short of diffuse cultural propaganda, perfectly resonates with target audiences.  Second, whether encouraged by the eastbound distribution of material capabilities or simply attracted by emerging economic opportunities, some CEE societies and their elites have begun suffering from a serious "power-shift syndrome;" Clinging on the classical strategic wisdom regarding the desirability of multiple foreign-policy options, many in the region, from experienced commoners left-leaning by nature to right-wing patriots and Eastern" top-notch opinion makers, disdain practicing a single dogmatic orientation and Magnetism "no-choice" foreign-policy approach. United in their anarchic contempt for what &a they see as a predominant political practice dictated by remote and meddling power hubs, they repeatedly lecture their respective governments that "the EU Regional and NATO [cannot be and] must not be the only [available] option" at the dawn "Powerof full multipolarity. Amid such pressures, all Balkan governments needing "to Shift 'relax' the Gordian knot in their problematic relations with the West" have taken advantage of the momentum by embarking on an eastward quest for political Syndrome" sponsorships and economic (investment) opportunities.ii In some cases (e.g.

Serbia), the quest has gone much beyond attracting foreign direct investments (FDI), basically aiming at full-fledged strategic partnerships with a notable defence component.

While this problem is clearly a déjà vu for the West, there is nonetheless a great irony looming here: In times of Western economic decline and global redistribution of strategic capabilities, some wavering and partly reoriented CEE actors, namely the same ones that are supposed to represent Rumsfeld's bold "New Europe" by following strictly US leadership, have been sporadically advised by authoritative Western voices and institutions to go ahead with processes that fit their economic and political needs, that is to carry on searching for their luck in the East!  Third, amid "epidemics" of nationalism and right-wing populism throughout the European political space, a number of CEE leaders and political parties appear to be emulating the likes of Milorad Dodik, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Hence, one thing is for sure: The greater the local inspiration by the new tendencies, National including the Russo-Turkish concept of "managed democracy" through strong, Populism, authoritarian-styled leadership, the more marginalized the opposition Authoritarivoices/media and the independent civic action in the entire region. The truth is that since the mid-2000s, many of the newly incepted social organizations in anism, CEE have entered the government orbit, thus creating (a) parallel, stateSovereignty controlled NGO realm(s). As a result, the criticized national-populist & Far Right regimes/elites and Russophilic social-democrats in the region can today confidently rely on their own "NGOs," PR agencies, opinion poll centres, think Tendencies tanks, media, and even youth. This evolving parallel world, pitted against declining liberal forces (in a political rather than economic sense) and some weak national oppositions, and thus existing side by side with the once highly reputed, Westernbacked NGO sector, has no doubt overshadowed Soros's Open Society project. While not Expectedly, these private-made soap operas feature popular, easy-to-chew storylines. But when broadcasted via a high-definition (HD) digital technology, they attain maximum propaganda effect either by capturing the exotic beauties and baroque splendour of an embellished Ottoman past or by exposing the viewer to the attraction of a secular and ultra-modern Turkish setting.

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necessarily anti-European and anti-globalist, it nonetheless constitutes a sufficiently sound base for mildly autocratic and less Western-dependent statecraft in "the most infected" CEE countries. Add to this the steady rise of Europe's far right and its growing fondness to Putin's Russia and CEE's future suddenly looks far less predictable.25 How to Legitimize a New Boost of Western Geopolitics with Civilian Means? _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In light of these developments, the old question of strengthening democracy and the non-for-profit sector in CEE becomes much more than that. Having lately advanced on the transatlantic agenda, it is, at a minimum, a hint of the West's regional democratic mission re-intensifying with a view to achieving broader geopolitical effects. That said, nothing in this mission makes an exotic novelty. The NGO sector in the region has never been a target per se. Moreover, from an alternative local perspective, this sector is viewed as sufficiently sound, especially as Western-funded media, analytical centres, and foundations in the region continue to be widely denounced for purportedly holding a privileged social position and performing with impunity politically subversive roles.

However, in these apparently decisive moments, not only for the remnants of post-Cold War unipolarity, but also for the "revived" Bretton Woods international system as a whole, the Western mission in CEE is gaining specific weight. Faced by the greatest geopolitical challenge since the end of the Cold War, many in the West and most especially in NATO (US) are being compelled to think of the unfolding regional situation in terms of a "to-be-or-not-to-be" moment at the centre of gravity. One of the substantive transatlantic questions therefore is, how to remake and instrumentalize the divided civil society in CEE, and primarily its weakened pro-Western component, in order to halt retrograde trends and contain the ongoing penetration of Sino-Russian influence in the region? The answer seems to be self-evident and, indeed, easy on paper: by fostering all genuinely liberal, opposition-minded, and traditionally pro-Western forces which have lately lost on relevance, as well as by converting many others to the Western cause. Here comes a daunting sub-question, though: How to "sell" the range of civilian activities necessary in this regard to some increasingly sceptical cohorts and amid fast-changing regional circumstances?

While mindful that the potentially effective general solution to this set of dilemmas lies in partially reversing its untimely civil-military withdrawal from CEE and legitimizing a re-boost of its regional geopolitics with civilian means, the West appears to be insufficiently apt to deliver a tailored follow-up. First and foremost, it There is no room for misconceptions and false impressions regarding the Kremlin's growing ties with the European far right. Western authors rightfully emphasize the pragmatic, ruble-based dimension of this relationship without completely ignoring the common ideological denominator of the parties involved. What brings Europe's right-wing populists and radicals and Russia's mainstream establishment together, besides financial incentives and specific political goals (e.g. mutual support for and justification of past, current, or planned policies and strategic moves such as a territorial expansion or a push for independence; ensuring greater political legitimacy through joint efforts and thus creating an antiisolationist image of group affiliation; destroying or at least reshaping "the globalist, US-dominated EU"), are basically two things: Euroscepticism and a shared national-populist agenda. The former should be nonetheless taken with reservation, especially with regard to the Russian President who may be considered a Euro-sceptic only conditionally. As noted many times in the past, Mr. Putin and his fellow oligarchs are essentially Europe-minded. They regard the EU and particularly Germany and Italy as an indispensible partner in the potential creation of an ultimate neo-imperial design stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok. It is the implicit European rejection of this overarching grand strategic vision, as well as Putin's realization that, unless reformed (i.e. structurally matured and freed from the perceived Anglo-American claws), the present EU could not be relied upon for accomplishing Russo-European projects of greater magnitude, that has recently forced Moscow to experiment with other foreign-policy options. In that sense, while the Kremlin's choice to connect with controversial right wingers from across Europe should not be looked at as an unprincipled alliance, it is plausible to assume that the conservative leftist with a patriotic drive inside Putin, an orientation somewhat comparable to what was once, outside of the Soviet Stalinist orbit proudly called "national communism," would limit and pragmatically channelize his cooperation with radicals.

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has been recently unable to devise and implement an effective common strategy for Ukraine and Russia let alone for the entire CEE. The coordinated US-EU-G7 action in the context of the ongoing Ukraine crisis, which is now threatening to turn into a full-fledged proxy civil war, has been all but cogent in design, implementation, and short-term effect. Second, one can only imagine a single transatlantic strategy for CEE, mostly as a common denominator of various coordinated and uncoordinated work, projects, measures, and strategies generated at EU, NATO, and national levels. Third, however conceived, the current transatlantic approach to the region is worrisomely flawed. While generally maintaining an adequate civil-military ratio, it chronically suffers from wrong selection of concrete measures.

Take for instance the West's predominant civilian efforts in CEE. Due to apparent problems with perceptual discrimination and deontological nuance, some of them critically lack social compatibility. An effective civilian measure can hardly derive from brainstorming about ways of persuading select national majorities in CEE to stop giving continuous support to their democratically elected rulers who pursue conservative agendas that deviate from EU and NATO interests, and whose legitimacy is therefore questioned by politically significant, pro-Western portions of the respective nations. Likewise, desired strategic outcomes will certainly not emanate from perfidious attempts at double-crossing an entire army of intractable local apologists by vehemently advocating controversial libertarian preferences such as alienating ultraindividualism, gay parades, same-sex marriages, narcotics legalization, and similar "import[s]." The latter remain a priori and largely rejected by the target populations, namely as a malicious, agenda-driven assault on collective identity, traditional values, and social well-being. With their cultural relativism being persistently confounded with a cosmopolitan narrative and their legitimacy problem arbitrarily ignored, their prospects of ever obtaining a broader local endorsement are less then poor.

Obviously, some old lessons from the vast transatlantic experience with CEE are yet to be learned.

Perhaps the most important of them is that, unofficially, far too many Eastern Europeans tend to respond in a hardcore Manichean fashion to what they see as an intrusive liberal internationalism, as well as to Washington's neoconservative Manichean approach. The newest security crisis in Europe offers a train of evidence of such psychological disposition. Thus, for instance, in the lead-up to the violent government takeover in Kyiv this past February, the US Congress's pragmatic decision to give indiscriminate support to all pro-Western and opposition-minded Ukrainian forces struck nothing but a wall of well-nurtured, CEEwide antifascist sentiment.26 Clearly, had they have a bit more appreciation of the region's perplexed history, ideological distinction(s), and cultural self-esteem, and had they avoided or at least refashioned the segment of their integration package that does not fare well among ex communist Slavic Orthodox majorities and other traditionalist Slavs (many Croat/ian, Slovene/ian, and Polish Catholics, as well as Ukrainian Uniates) and non-Slavs (Orthodox Greeks and Georgians), the EU and NATO (US) would have been more successful in realizing their strategic intentions. But, instead of finally developing a more subtle approach to all sensitive issues in CEE, the transatlantic community remains self-destructively conservative about the need for urgent policy changes. In trying to impose its "post-modern" preferences mechanically, based on pressure and rational calculation (pragmatic conformism) rather than emotional acceptance (ideological conformism)—and all the while suppressing the genuine and "more universal" Western acquis—it has lost much of its comparative soft-power advantage (investment scope, informational The Kremlin's neo-Nazi narrative about Ukraine could well be exaggerated in the midst of an ongoing propaganda war. Regardless, Washington knew right from the beginning of the Euromaidan "revolution" that its support for the then Ukrainian opposition, were it to be consistent and successful in bringing about the desired regime change in Kyiv, would require at least indirect cooperation with Ukraine's widely deplored, first-class neo-Nazis. In public, the West has managed to distance itself from Ukrainian extremists, including by letting two antiRussian tycoons take charge of sponsoring the newly established battalions and "special units" of Pravy Sektor and the Svoboda party across Ukraine.

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predominance, the formerly undisputed appeal of Western pop culture). Meanwhile, what the Rest have come to offer has positively intrigued all those in CEE disappointed by the Euro(-Atlantic) integrations more or less. Dictated outside of London. Washington, Brussels, Berlin, and Paris, the new trend consists of forging strategic partnerships that appear to put the partners on equal footing, with a particular emphasis on mutual economic growth and a lack of explicit intent for one's cultural hegemony.

On a military note, what the world witnesses today is an incoherent West struggling to advance its geostrategic interests in CEE less painfully. With Mr. Putin carrying on asserting himself as the personification of both the world's conservative patriots and a whole host of anti-neoliberal leftist forces, it is apparently hard for some Western allies to think of a less offensive military strategy let alone totally forgo military response to Russia's regional interference and territorial encroachments. As a result, the Atlantic Alliance recently acts as though it has no idea how to keep its soldiers and assets in Europe, and even augment their number if necessary, without raising too much tension and heading towards brinkmanship with Moscow.

Both the CSDP and NATO have thus far failed to capitalize on the Ukraine crisis properly, albeit the latter much less so than the former. The EU's security and defence apparatus remains largely elusive despite recurring calamities in its top priority region, the so-called "Eastern and Southern Neighbourhood." Looking at the interval since the Yugoslav wars (1991-2001) which gave strong impetus to the concept of common European defence, today's Ukraine comes to be the fourth relevant security challenge beyond the CSDP's politico-military capacity.27 This is not to suggest that the energy-dependent Europeans should immediately check their powerful eastern neighbour and putative strategic partner by sending EU troops into Ukraine.

Such move, even if possible, would not be a smart choice. However, the least Brussels could have done by now is make use of the evolving security environment for a maximal boost of its own defences. The problem with Europe's readiness for demanding military contingencies transcends the transient Ukrainian context and always comes back to a single theme: political will and "thinking strategically." In this sense, whereas the absence of CSDP military operation in Ukraine has been anticipated ahead of time, 28 Europe's dropping defence budgets and preconceived lethargy in developing and rationalizing defence capabilities are deemed unacceptable. Unfortunately, the tiresome polemics about these long-standing issues continues to irritate the transatlantic community even after the promising EU defence summit this past December.

Unlike the EU, the US-led NATO has expectedly demonstrated poise and ability to use Russia's regional ambitions and national security interests for bolstering its own raison d'ĂŞtre. Washington is clearly unprepared to give up on Europe despite the latter's "lessened" strategic importance. However, NATO's standard way of doing business, quite opposite to the temporary delusion about "America's geopolitical taper," has been highly debatable; and it is lately becoming even more so. First, it is unclear whether the current allied manoeuvres along Russia's western frontiers could possibly pay long-term dividends as desired by Washington, Ottawa, and most EU leaders. With its latest deployments to Poland, Estonia, As is well known, the previous three security challenges within CSDP's nominal reach, the 2008 Russo-Georgian conflict, the 2011 Libyan crisis, and the 2012/3 culmination of the protracted civil war in Syria, have gone militarily unanswered by the EU. 28 First, Europe is decades away from an effective common defence despite the recently strengthened centralization efforts by the continental Europeanist elite. Amid a number of parallel anti-EU trends, it will take time for the defence capability commitments (power projection, spacebased systems and unmanned aerial vehicles, pooling and sharing initiatives, strategic transports etc.) reaffirmed by the December 2013 European Council to bring new quality to EU forces. Second, it is extremely hard to imagine an intrinsically incoherent, German-led Union confronting Russia militarily, not least in near-abroad places regarded by Moscow as its historical bastions and "natural" sphere of influence.

Third, contrary to what might have been suggested by Europe's "lessened" strategic importance, Washington is unwilling to give up on the old continent and will most likely use every opportunity to extend NATO's lifespan as much as possible.

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Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania, aimed inter alia at permanent ("persistent") rotational presence of US (EUCOM/SOCEUR) special operations forces and other allied assets in CEE,29 and a wide range of envisaged military drills in the Baltic and the eastern Mediterranean, NATO continues what Moscow sees as exerting excessive pressure for further militarization of both allied and non-allied territories encircling Russia. The Kremlin's answer to the perceived mega-envelopment strategy is not hard to predict, at least for so long as Putin remains in power.

Second but not less important, in recent years the allies have consciously been repeating a major strategic mistake, focusing almost exclusively on priority events such as Georgia, Iraq, the Arab Spring, Afghanistan, Syria, or currently the Ukrainian crisis which is thought to be the only way to stop Russia from rebuilding its empire. Instead of seeking an express mode of filling the hole in the midst of NATO's donut-shaped south flank, the North Atlantic Council (NAC) has been waiting and calculating its steps relative to the integration of the remainder of the Western Balkans. In the process, enlargement has become victim to rigid traditional interpretations of the national interest—more tangibly since 2008 onwards—with some allies persistently obstructing NATO's broader geopolitical goals. Of course, in this context one cannot but recognize the fact that not only is the imperfect allied calculus regarding CEE determined by higher priorities (e.g. Kosovo, Ukraine, the Baltic region, and other near-abroad lands), but it has also been plagued by serious concerns about certain continental and local variables. These concerns, while shared within NATO for the most part, could also be seen as distinctly national. Simply, when contemplating enlargement different allies pay different amount of attention to Europe's need for decent relations with Russia, the traditional influence of Russian politics and intelligence in the Balkans, the "silent occupation" of Montenegro by Russian individuals and businesses, and so forth. The thing is, however, that most of these allied considerations are not going to disappear with an enlargement status-quo. Indeed, the latter could help improve EU-Russia ties but mainly in favour of the Kremlin's long-term vision of greater Eurasia.30 As for SEE, NATO's (US) problems there will only grow bigger unless the NAC's calculative waiting is soon swapped for a resolute admission of the most prepared NATO candidates geographically distant from Moscow. Therefore, for the sake of the transatlantic community it is desirable that the US-pushed enlargement continue, yet with one important distinction that needs to be better comprehended in the White House and Pentagon: Insisting on an ambitious and costly expansion to Russia's delicate near abroad (e.g. Georgia, Ukraine) rather than grabbing the long-standing opportunity for formalizing de facto allied ties in SEE (e.g. Macedonia and partly Montenegro) seems to be well over NATO's capacity at the moment. As a matter of fact, it might end up being a disastrous policy since it also ignores the need for a greater geostrategic compactness of the Alliance.

Then, why have decision makers in Washington, and particularly in Europe, been continuously making such a "necessary" strategic error relative to the Western Balkans? Is their reluctance all due to them being cautious about the substantive lack of pro-Western mood in certain Balkan states,31 as well as to the US EUCOM stands for United States European Command, currently the oldest strategic-level command under the US Department of Defence (DoD). SOCEUR or Special Operations Command Europe is subordinate to EUCOM. 30 Pulling the reins on NATO's eastern expansion in favour of Putin's greater Eurasia plan could also benefit Germany and other European countries, yet in a totally different constellation.

31 In Serbia and Montenegro there are still deep intra-social divisions to be accounted for. Local pro-Western elements, which mainly include students, civic activists, state officials, and businesses, continue to be overwhelmed by strong pro-Russian social forces spearheaded by highly regarded journalists and intellectuals, opposition parties with more or less nationalist agendas, as well as popular movements (e.g. Dveri, NaĹĄi). This is particularly true for Serbia whose people largely dismiss NATO membership suggestions. As for Macedonia, a combination of transatlantic blackmail and region-wide retrograde processes have lately forced the government in Skopje into despair and dangerous policy experiments. Stuck at the door of NATO and the EU in a time of emerging "out-of-area" opportunities, the segmented Macedonian society has once again begun displaying nearly insurmountable political and inter-ethnic differences. Today, as the transatlantic blockade continues, the traditionally high survey scores on Macedonia's fondness for EU and NATO membership are rather nominal and steadily dropping.

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Russian factor inevitably slipping into the equation and now increasingly gaining on importance? Of course, not. As a perfect example, the main reason for obstructing Macedonia's NATO membership has nothing to do with (an immediate) Russian influence, but with an apparently bizarre issue (name dispute), highly politicized by the allies themselves, ironically, at the expense of Western geopolitical interests.

One possible explanation for the debatable transatlantic attitude towards the Western Balkans comes from recent EU perceptions and activities relative to enlargement and CFSP/CSDP. On the one hand, it is well known that the West has regarded the region as its own sphere of influence since long before the EU and NATO (US) took direct, hands-on control of it in the early 1990s.32 Also, it is crystal clear that the federalist EU has been taking care of virtually all Balkan lands as its future integral territory. Still, on the other hand, being a colourful mix of Robert Cooper's "post-modern" oasis and "the jungle" of two other world zones, the pre-modern and the modern,33 "the Balkans are not yet fully [and unconditionally] perceived as 'inside' by all [EU] Member States." What is more, recent pessimistic scenarios casting doubts over the peninsula's full integration into the Western structures suggest quite the opposite to what has hitherto been implied by its post-2001 strategic de-prioritization.iii Torn between the West, Russia, and other actors, non-EU and non-allied SEE states are facing an uncertain future rather than immediate Western prospects—at least such is the "optimistic" prophecy of pro-Russia observers who duly reiterate the Kremlin's official position that Balkan and other CEE governments should not be compelled to choose between the EU and close cooperation with Moscow.34 As far as Brussels is concerned, the Western Balkans minus Croatia and, perhaps, allied Albania, are both technically and practically part of a volatile neighbourhood; thus, they cannot be strategically ignored until their complete absorption into the Western structures. An implicit proof that the Union's south-eastern neighbourhood has lately been de-prioritized mainly in terms of enlargement, while again stoking higher security concerns among Euro-bureaucrats, can be found in the latest CSDP report drafted in the lead-up to the December 2013 European Council. In it, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR for FASP) Catherine Ashton correctly notes that "unfinished business remains" in the Balkans. " But, can this old observation be, as many would think, a harbinger of upcoming resolute attempts at completing the transatlantic success in the region? What is truly intriguing about it is not the assertive phraseology used, but rather the context in which it appears. Placed in the introductory part of the said report along with other CSDP priorities and considered in the context of the EU's strategic military ambition for power projection "through direct intervention" and "strategic autonomy" which "must materialize first in the EU's neighbourhood,"35 Ashton's remark on the Balkans is not the best During the Cold War, only one of today's Western Balkan statelets could not have been considered part of the broader Western orbit. Even so, the secluded communist Albania aligned with Western interests on a couple of prominent occasions—the first time, by supporting China in the early phase of the Sino-Soviet schism, and then, in the late 1980s, by slowly opening to the West.

33 Cooper distinguishes three world zones. First, there is the "pre-modern world...of failed states" reflecting the tribal and feudal, the Hobbesian and anarchic, and hence, the terror-prone and criminal. Aside from this, well-organized modern societies fond of operating the old-fashioned way, namely "by the principles of empire and the supremacy of national interest," are depicted as inherently less liberal and more (mutually) aggressive compared to "the postmodern world." The latter is purportedly comprised of "the postmodern continent of Europe," the "postmodern state" of Canada, Japan as "a postmodern state" "by inclination," part of the US as a "more doubtful case," and postmodern "aspirations" within "ASEAN, NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and even OAU." 34 For instance, in defending the case of Russia-aided military reincarnation of Serbia, Miroslav Lazanski, a celebrity war reporter and politicomilitary commentator for the Belgrade daily Politika, does not invoke only his routine arguments on cost-effectiveness and time saving (a purchase of comparatively cheaper weapons systems, plus the fact of the Serbian Air Force and Air Defence personnel having been used to Russian military equipment). At his pro-Western intellectual opponents, some of whom define the national interest as if they are Serbia’s own Franz Oppenheimers, Lazanski shoots poison arrows as follows: "…those saying we are surrounded by NATO countries (and thus arguing for our purportedly inevitable membership in the Atlantic Alliance) have no clue about geostrategy. Neither Macedonia nor BiH is in NATO, and nor even Montenegro is in NATO. That’s one thing, and the second is: Austria is encircled by NATO countries, and Switzerland too, but they do not seem to raise the question what they are going to do about it. We threaten no one, we have no offensive military doctrine."

35 In the introduction to her 2013 CSDP report, Baroness Ashton outlines a high level of strategic military ambition for the EU: 32

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reassurance for the fragile western part of the region, especially as it could be readily interpreted as compliant with the US intelligence community's recently aggravating prognoses (see note 40 for a concrete example).

Unable to rapidly implement its federalist vision even in a largely conducive strategic environment36 and, indeed, currently challenged by the growing Sino-Russian presence in the predominantly Slavic CEE, the EU elite may be thinking they have no better midterm option but to continue using the Western Balkans as both a test ground for the steadily evolving CSDP and a source of rationale for utilitarian prolongation of enlargement as "the most successful EU policy." Like others in NATO, they may also assess that the region should keep playing the role of quasi buffer zone, thus inviting even the interreligious, Islamist vs. Christian pattern of cleavage, until perhaps more favourable policy and integration outcomes become feasible. This is playing with fire in the classical sense. Ultimately, hawks in the West ought to realize that a Western military intervention, whether classic or proxy, in Ukraine or elsewhere in EE, would solve nothing essential in a history-loving region unless such use of force led to a morally unacceptable change in demographics.

Then again, pushing for essential changes in EE, consecutively and in a more conventional way, risks activating the worst-case scenario—an open military confrontation with the awaken "Russian bear," something that the world wants no part of.

In late 2013, a Berlin-based conference dedicated to the social impact of the European crisis on SEE touched upon the regional retrograde trends identified in this report. Speaking on the occasion, a preeminent Balkan professor and political analyst raised concerns about certain "Collateral Damages of the Social Crisis" and suggested that EU and NATO decision makers did not quite understand what was going on in some parts of CEE such as the Balkans, where a sophisticated authoritarian-populist trend had been at play, elaborated nationally, often with a misuse of EU funds, and supported systematically to the tiniest detail.37 The same voice has since bluntly criticized "the foreigners" (the EU and NATO) for their "flawed perception/analysis of the situation," and considering the official support that Brussels and Washington continue to give to perceived "regimes" in the region. While this is a highly provocative point, it is nonetheless hard to imagine that the world's leading security providers, with all their 24/7 SITCENs/INTCENs and crisis rooms,38 can possibly make a major oversight regarding a region that has been, largely, in their control. The West's problem with the incompletely assimilated CEE is not one of analytical nature but rather conceptual (doctrinal) and empirical:  Conceptually, the civilian dimension of the virtual transatlantic strategy for CEE has always lacked three things: maximal socio-economic broadness, effectiveness-driven innovation, and an improved social compatibility. A Western cultural supremacy over multi-centennial local traditions in CEE is not just unacceptable to the majority of the target Slavic populations; it is also totally "The Union must be able to act decisively as a security provider, in partnership when possible but autonomously when necessary, in its neighbourhood, including through direct intervention. Strategic autonomy must materialize first in the EU's neighbourhood."

In this sense, it is very important for CSDP to be able to "to engage with partners" "all 5 environments (land, air, maritime, space and cyber)" and "to protect its interests by...projecting power."

36 The EU's more or less federal finality will take time to realize amid internal retrograde trends, including various forms of nationalism in the first place. As already seen, these nationalist forms range from a relatively benign right-wing populism, to calls for the return of sovereignty, to separatist and independence movements, and furthermore, to a bluntly racist and xenophobic radicalism contaminating the cradles of democracy.

37 Ljubomir Danailov FrÄ?koski, presentation, "Autocracy or Democracy? Role of Political Parties, Trade Unions and Civil Society," International Conference "Social Impact of the European Crisis on the Western Balkans / South Eastern Europe" (Representation of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg to the Federation in Berlin, Berlin, Friday, 29 November, 2013).

38 SITCEN stands for Situation Centre and INTCEN for Intelligence Centre.

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unattainable without a maximal socio-economic presence and innovative approaches. In addition, whenever the region is struck by a more serious crisis, the West seems all too poised to act militarily and/or via intelligence channels and coercive diplomacy. Today, a closely related issue that prevents the EU and NATO (US) from pursuing due policy changes in this regard is the fact that, unlike most commoners and open-minded academics, Western officials and mainstream media refuse to unambiguously acknowledge the growing Sino-Russian role in world affairs. This, among other things, deprives Westerners of the possibility to learn from recent didactic manifestations of "softer" power by those who are often said to lack such power. Some comfort, however, comes from the fact that this obstinate, counter-productive attitude on the part of the West has been largely deliberate, that is corrigible.  As a result, on the ground, Western entities and agents have been struggling to legitimize their civil-military activities more broadly, among the many suspicious, cynical, and disproving locals.

There is a truly critical issue at stake here: Having been early unveiled, some basic Western operations in CEE have gradually become an object of local derision. Given the present degree of penetration of Russo-Oriental influences into the region, it may be too late for corrections in the pertinent transatlantic policies.

Evidently, in order to be able to (re)claim the entire CEE, the West needs to work on its once enviable PR image. The latter has been severely damaged, not merely as a by-product of controversial military interventions such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On a more substantial level, the EU and NATO have to fully understand the situation on the ground, including the subtle tectonic changes that are slowly stealing the region away from them.

In this yet unclear prelude to multipolarity, the West's operations and NGO aces in CEE have been facing tenacious conservative forces and their cultural and geo-economic resistance rather than existential political enemies in a renewed strategic competition. Still, given that such resistance has been spearheaded by a mighty, self-confident oligarchic structure, which is one formidable blend of a proven state security apparatus (KGB), a brand new plutocratic elite, and a contemporary populist muse (e.g. "cultural communism") for conservatives and new leftists across the "shadow world," there have been legitimate concerns about the prospects of Western dominance within and beyond CEE. The surreptitious inter-oligarchic battle behind "the US-Russia-China strategic triangle" is only to become more entangled as Chinese rulers are further engaged by both the Russians and the West. Therefore, if the EU and NATO (US) are to remain in control of a key geopolitical space on the Eurasian chessboard over the long term, thoughtful steps are required beyond mere supporting of local pro-Western forces and civic/human rights activism.

The sterile solutions proposed last month by some Atlantic Community members (Memo 47), such as increased youth involvement with CEE's NGO sector, the latter's unlikely ties with business in favour of fiscal independence from (inter)governmental actors, and furthermore, informal civic engagement, innovation, and transparency, are no pipedreams whatsoever (except perhaps for "fiscal independence").

But they could hardly change anything over the mid-term. Experts on both sides of the Atlantic, and especially EU and NATO brass, need to understand that creating a strong, Western-modeled civil society, in CEE or elsewhere, is impossible without a comprehensive set of measures that exceeds manifold the sheer NGO theme. Such measures, if intended to be efficient, should be legitimacy-oriented in the first place. In this sense, they should not be unnecessarily polarizing CEE populations, as is the case, for instance, with the current joke sanctions against Putin's inner circle, as well as with many uninventive CDSS

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transatlantic steps in the past. On the other hand, an effective set of solutions cannot entirely exclude intrusive elements such as socio-cultural engineering. With the rise of non-Western influences among some "awaken" majorities in CEE and the credibility of the Western model becoming increasingly debatable, the transatlantic approach to the region desperately needs a balance of intrusive influence and local endorsement.

Concluding Remarks: On the Verge of Recognizing Multipolarity _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Unless immediate and balanced steps are taken, the US-led Western alliance may soon be compelled to do what it has staunchly refused all these years—namely, to start adapting its ideological narrative about exceptionalism-based global leadership to the demands of the new multipolar setting. As the things stand today, after the remarkable "return" of power politics on European soil, such unlikely, yet possible adaptation could begin in CEE, the central of the world regions where great-power interests prominently clash.39 Should this hypothetically happen, it would not be only a process towards political modesty. On the contrary, it would eventually require discursive elimination of the omnipresent concept of US/NATO primacy as insisted by Russia, China, India, Iran, Brazil, and other rising powers.

That said, having a pro-Western, citizen-oriented (rather than group-focused, collectivist, and stateminded), dynamic, and powerful NGO base in CEE is of key importance to Brussels and Washington, and the rationale for boosting Western geopolitics in the region with civilian means is currently huge. But one cannot possibly expect to beef up a dying or stagnant NGO realm mainly by fostering civic/human rights activism and using traditional methods for building civil societies. Most such methods tend to be rejected as interference with a state's sovereign affairs, particularly at this stage, when the transatlantic approach to CEE is confronted by that of rising powers, having an even harder time legitimizing its civil-military manoeuvres.

Since the failure of the international community to address the Syrian crisis in a satisfactory fashion, multiple latent issues around the world—the processes in Ukraine are no coincidence whatsoever—have become central to the question of sustaining the post-Cold War order. Thus, as suggested by analysts who are currently preoccupied with the Crimean precedent's domino implications for Europe, oncoming developments beyond southeastern Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Transnistria, notably in the eastern Black Sea belt (e.g. Azerbaijan, Armenia), the Middle East, Central Asia (e.g. Uzbekistan), Western Europe, Latin America, Turkey, Bosnia, and potentially Macedonia and other "candidates" for "'a new Kosovo' in the Balkans,"40 are about to give a clearer picture as to where the current international system is heading. Ironically, after years of overlooking the unfinished Western business in key parts of EE and, as a result, of believing in a ludicrous cliché about the old continent's purportedly "diminished" geostrategic importance, the world is now zealously commenting on "the return of geopolitics" to its historical cradle. For some, mainly in the West, the ongoing reconstruction of a Cold War ambient is pushing Russia into Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya notes five regions of East-West antagonism (the Balkans, East Africa, the Middle East, Indo-China, and the Korean Peninsula), thus missing at least one more, the Arctic as an emerging arena. Central Asia and parts of Latin America are also legitimate topics in this context.

40 Sandžak (medieval: Raška). Vojvodina, the Preševo Valley, and Çamëria are all seen as "candidates" for "'a new Kosovo' in the Balkans."

Regarding Macedonia in particular, there has been a concerning change in the US National Intelligence Council's (NIC) annually delivered global threat assessment. In only a year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's congressional testimony has pivoted from predicting "more polarized" "disputes between Albanian and Macedonian communities" (2013) to suggesting "that ethnic tensions [in the country] will increase" (2014).

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isolation and decline. For many others, however, the world has been steadily moving towards recognizing a politico-military rather than just economic multipolarity. One can only hope that it will not take more than low-intensity proxy conflicts, whether in CEE or elsewhere, before such recognition finally comes true or is once again resolutely withheld.

10 Key Recommendations41 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

G

iven the above, if the EU and NATO (US) are to remain in control of a key geopolitical space on the Eurasian chessboard over the long term, thoughtful steps are required beyond mere supporting of local pro-Western forces and civic/human rights activism. Based on a profound understanding of the situation on the ground, the civilian dimension of the virtual transatlantic strategy for CEE should urgently include a reinvented set of administrative, policy, financial, investment, and diplomatic measures with farreaching social effects. Such prompt and mainly curative solutions can be reasonably sought along the following lines:  No further downplaying of Sino-Russian power or "perception of power" by way of invoking inherently deficient realist arguments. Even if technically correct, statements, speeches, and lecturing remarks that Russia "is [only] a regional power" and "not a superpower" are not of much help—except for limited public relations (PR) purposes—in what has already become a tight geopolitical game. The underlying Western attempts at halting the Kremlin's independent policy course and aggressive geo-economic expansion followed by a threatening fortune-piling process, as well as at making Russia, at best, a Western-modelled regional actor on the Eurasian plate, are obviously not producing the expected results. As a matter of fact, they are failing in view of their basic mission, even though Moscow has apparently taken the Ukrainian bait and started building a new "Berlin Wall" of self-isolation. What the Western strategy currently needs is a "smart" regional action in CEE based on full recognition of the fast-changing strategic reality. The sooner this is realized, especially by the neoconservative establishment criticizing President Barack Obama and urging for a tougher US/NATO/G7 response, including with military means, the better for Western interests.  Regional approach to beefing up the NGO sector in CEE. While the challenges facing CEE's NGOs vary depending on the state in question, those having geostrategic implications are not country-specific. Hence, the proper set of transatlantic solutions for CEE ought to include a comprehensive regional strategy for the promotion of civil society, discussed on both sides of the Atlantic but preferably adopted at EU level where thematic and region-specific documents have become a CFSP/CSDP standard.42  Increased, sustained, and diversified NGO funding. The Western financial decline has brought into the spotlight the concept of "smart" defence (NATO), also referred to as "pooling and sharing" (EU). Regardless, at this point the Western allies cannot afford their civilian efforts in CEE to be treated as just another collateral damage. NGOs in the region, especially those traditionally Presented here are only recommendations regarding, in the author's opinion, the most pressing issues facing the transatlantic community in the context of promoting CEE's NGO sector. The list is otherwise much longer, including also guidelines on NATO's (US) military presence in Europe.

42 CFSP stands for Common Foreign and Security Policy. CSDP is the core of the EU's CFSP. 41

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supported by Western donors, should not be left imploring for more money amid a tough, statebacked competition. To this aim, US and EU agencies on the ground (development aid offices, embassies) must avoid the controversial practice of announcing ad hoc grant opportunities in preelectoral and crisis intervals in favour of providing subtler, more stable, and continuous backing in targeted countries.

Still, money is not the only consideration when it comes to preserving the social status and influence of the pro-Western NGO sector in CEE. Over the years, a clutch of offensive pejoratives, such as "sorosoid(s)," "foreign mercenary/ies," "grand traitor(s)," and "fifth column(ist/s)," have become a powerful PR tool in the mouths of local national-patriotic structures, highly effective in the latter's attempts at delegitimizing their Western-backed political opponents.43 This politicoinformational trend is quite concerning because Mr. Putin is only the most prominent Eastern European to have endorsed a transparent legislative sanction of foreign-funded NGOs as "foreign agents." Analogous demands for "licensing" and thereby legally stigmatizing individual journalists as "foreign lobbyists-propagandists" have recently emerged within the heated political discourse in the Balkans. As a summary, with the foreign involvement in CEE generally drawn into the focus of a continuing and fairly popular anti-globalist, anti-Atlanticist, and anti-fascist criticism, there is a clear need for the West to employ more diverse funding sources and methods. Increased and sustained NGO funds funnelled from multiple sources in a versatile fashion might help relief the domestic pressure on certain non-profit organizations and projects in the region.  Re-establishing informational predominance in the region. Frankly, this is almost impossible at this stage. All rising powers have wisely embraced the latest technological advent and superior business solutions in the realm of mass media and mass communications, thus melting down the West's formerly sizable comparative advantage. As a result, the fourth pillar of Western neointerventionism is nowadays at serious risk of becoming a paper concept in certain regions.44 That said, finding an effective way of investing in local media and think tanks in CEE, despite the oversaturated regional market, is of existential importance to the Open Society project. Without a firmly rather than nominally pro-Western public opinion in the region, the entire NGO support provided by the West would be in vain. Just as an illustration, Russia Today (RT) has become one of the preferred news channels in EE,45 growing to the point that now many around the globe think of it as a more objective source of information compared to Western mainstream media. On the other hand, the MI6-, CIA-, and Mossad-controlled Al Jazeera Balkans project, run from Sarajevo, with regular broadcasts from former Yugoslav capitals, remains elusive to its target audience, most of whom presumably confound the project's complex political mission with a discreet fundamentalist influence emanating from the Middle East. In this context, the latest initiative for a CNN-backed TV channel (Adria News N1) to air a 24-hour news program all across former Yugoslavia is promising but hardly sufficient.

There is both irony and paradox in the sort of Westernophobic criticism displayed by nationalists and centre-right governments in CEE. For it is the convenient ideology of the world's right-wing scene, and not some party's political liberalism, idealism, or leftist populism, that is genuinely and predominantly supported by Western corporate interests.

44 Informational predominance aside, the other three pillars of contemporary Western military intervention are as follows: the principle of securing the West's economic and energy interests; a broader political, normative, and rationalization framework, basically consisted of the liberal-democratic idea and the R2P (Responsibility to Protect)/human security concept; and finally, a superior, RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs)-based military strategy aimed at rapidly turning political goals into reality.

45 Today, RT is invariably offered by local cable operators within and beyond EE. 43

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Hence, the transatlantic community must, sooner rather than later, admit to itself that it has been largely impotent before a plethora of silent and potentially decisive (informational) developments in the broader CEE region. For instance, the rapidly growing role of new social media in CEE's media space has proved to work in favour of non-Atlanticist and anti-Atlanticist narratives. Mindful of the changing political mood and informational environment, most especially in SEE, Moscow and Beijing have been quick to establish regional outposts of RISS/RISI and university-based Confucius Institutes respectively.46 On top of all that, an alternative think-tank network focusing on Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has been erected within the EU, coordinated, inter alia, from Poland, Washington's intended special ally.47 Implicit irony is, however, not the most dispiriting thing about these processes, especially when weighed against the Obama administration's defeatist response to the ongoing propaganda war on a global scale. Building on its recent sequestration cuts and annual language service reviews (LSRs),48 the US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is now pursuing "elimination," as from fiscal year 2015, of the remaining Balkan services of both Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).49 Strangely and quite indicatively as well, in a time of culminating East-West tensions over the heart of CEE, and moreover, of global media expansion in the form of "state-sponsored broadcasting from China, Russia, and Qatar," the BBG's mismanagement of America's premier public diplomacy tool, apparently, in an attempt to accurately follow the US government's Asia-Pacific and Africa pivots, leaves the observer with a debatable impression: Has Washington actually given up on its partners and interests in SEE, aside from its proven Albanian allies?50 Seen from a pure Euro-Atlantic perspective, as hard as it is to admit, the neocons rightfully warn that "America must not retreat from Russia's information war."  Expanding the Western investment portfolio by occupying the vacant room in CEE's market and industry sectors of more strategic importance. While this might sound overly pretentious, especially to those who see nothing but a corporate, neocolonial invasion of post-socialist Europe after 1991, the truth is that US and EU investors have done far from enough to secure the West a long-term RISS/RISI (Russian Institute for Strategic Studies; Russian: Российский институт стратегических исследований) is a leading government think tank established within Russia's presidential administration. It has recently inaugurated its Belgrade branch which is said to have been tasked to prop Russia's presence in the Balkans, most especially in Serbia and Bulgaria as "the two most important countries" for Russian foreign policy towards the region. Similarly, the Confucius Institutes are non-profit public entities formally linked to the Ministry of Education in Beijing and promoting Chinese culture worldwide.

47 Mateusz Piskorski's European Centre for Geopolitical Analysis (ECGA; Polish: Europejskiego Centrum Analiz Geopolitycznych - ECAG) takes a prominent spot in this anti-globalist intellectual network.

48 Based on its 2012 Strategic Plan, in early 2013 the BBG announced "deep cuts" in its international services, including "elimination of medium-wave and shortwave broadcasting in Albanian..." VOA's service in Croatian had been cancelled two years earlier.

49 In its detailed Fiscal Year 2015 Congressional Budget Request, the BBG offers the following explanation: "Media environments in the Balkans are increasingly diverse, sophisticated, and crowded. Abundant indigenous channels provide continuous local and national coverage. Other Western broadcasters, such as the BBC, have already withdrawn. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania all improved their standing in the latest Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, and the Balkan countries are undertaking the reforms necessary to gain membership in the European Union and NATO. While VOA has been extremely successful in the Balkans over the course of many years, in a difficult budget environment, the BBG can no longer sustain broadcasting to this region while also adequately funding broadcasting to regions of growing importance to U.S. national security, such as Asia and Africa.

This reduction will eliminate the following VOA Balkan services: Serbian (eight positions, $0.5 million), Albanian (nine positions, $1.14 million), Bosnian (five positions, $0.41 million), and Macedonian (two positions, $0.2 million)."

50 The BBG's image as "a broken institution" unable "to handle the U.S. government’s most important public diplomacy tool" is reported to have been harshly criticized by top officials in the Obama administration such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Today, many expect the regulator "to give U.S. international broadcasting a leadership with the proper priorities."

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strategic predominance in this part of the world. Their politically-driven underinvestment in some parts of CEE has recently become more palpable as virtually the whole of Europe, including even Germany, has actively engaged in attracting FDI amid an extraordinary economic downturn. Isn't it a real pity nowadays to see CEE governments with exemplary laisser-faire policies and hardly built "tax heavens" struggling to secure a larger volume of Western FDI for their national economies?

Needless to say, the void has been rapidly filled by growth economies. Limited by the Western politico-military hegemony within and beyond Europe, the Rest have astutely chosen to operate on the principle of combining geo-economic expansion and cultural exports. Thus, they have turned their current geopolitical weaknesses into a fairly defendable material and spiritual advantage and have even managed to mobilize governments to follow them, at least economically.

Unfortunately, as CEE governments begin to focus ever more closely on economic and cultural diplomacy, inspired by the so-called "geo-profit philosophy" championed by rising powers, the West appears to have little to offer. In particular, US foreign policy towards SEE continues to be deprived of a stronger material component, still relying on sharp reprimands and old glory.51 Other allies have demonstrated a somewhat inverse, yet similarly ineffective approach. For instance, instead of following the lead of Canadian-based companies and multinationals which have entered important industry sectors (e.g. minerals, gold, IT) in the Balkans,52 Ottawa has compromised its modest political influence in the region by purposefully reducing diplomatic presence.53 No doubt, a more complete socio-economic presence by the West in CEE has always been within reach, but now that the opportunity has been underutilized for years and, moreover, becomes unsustainable at the dawn of a multipolar age, what has been missed out must not be hastily pursued or compensated via indirect methods (e.g. by employing military means).54  Showing greater sensibility (if not empathy) towards the primordial goals of individual groups and societies in EE rather than seemingly working against them, their majorities, and/or their core traditions and values. Whether it is about Russia's own cultural exceptionalism and, As suggested by Gordon Bardos, America's predominantly neoconservative, Manichean approach to SEE is long past due for a change. In practice, the US government should start refashioning its diplomatic approach, which is seen as mainly coercive and short of economic incentives, by working more comprehensively towards a NATO- and EU-absorbed Balkans. This inter alia implies that Secretary of State John Kerry, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Phillip Reeker, and US ambassadors in the region should not be travelling around "with empty pockets," "disciplining" local leaders by means of "strident lecturing."

52 Among the Canadian investors in SEE one can find the following brands and operators: Envidity Inc., a Calgary-based multinational chaired

by General (Ret.) Wesley Clarke and pursuing clean energy projects in Kosovo and EE (production of synthetic fuel by using underground coal gasification [UCG] and gas-to-liquid [GTL] technologies), Euromax Resources, a mining, exploration, and development company running one of the largest gold mines in the region and steadily "evolving into the premier European gold producer," Balkan Resources Inc., a Toronto/Tiranabased mining company exploring copper, nickel, chrome, and gold in Albania, Cosmic Development, a minor web development firm, and so forth.

53 Due to revised strategic priorities and deficit reduction cuts, Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) has recently been under pressure to review the number, scope, and personnel of its diplomatic representations abroad..This process, which has sparked a debate in academic and policy-making circles, should be viewed apart from the latest trend of temporarily shutting down Canadian embassies in hot spots "for security reasons." In the past decade, Ottawa closed some of its diplomatic missions, consular services, and/or aid offices in the Balkans (e.g. Skopje, Belgrade).

54 In recent years CEE has been struck by a series of apparently irregular fires, floods, earthquakes, and snow storms. It has been easier and more exciting for local observers to explain these natural disasters by factoring in a possible human intervention rather than by acknowledging the extreme manifestations of climate change anticipated by (most) scientists. As a result, there have been growing concerns throughout the region, and indeed, across the entire world, regarding the dual use of the Pentagon's elusive and yet-to-be dismantled HAARP program (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), as well as of similar European-based research projects. Amid global suspicion fostered by conspiracy adepts a new buzzword is being coined—"haarping" (on) the world. It follows without saying that the potential use of "non-deadly" geophysical and psychotropic weapons, under the guise of "useful" experiments, and for the purpose of rapidly gaining economic and strategic advantage, must be maximally avoided.

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hence, cemented majoritarian will to fight back attempts at its transformation according to a Western recipe, Ukraine's historical disposition to close(r) ties with Moscow, the Bosnian "triangle," the Serb spiritual cradle in Kosovo, "the higher imperative of Macedonian identity" vis-à-vis the Greek and other national interests, or similar, Washington and Brussels should have thus far found a balanced modus operandi, heeding all these ethnocentric needs, however trivial, along with their pragmatic interests. Sticking to this principle would help the West get off the wrong marketing track on which it has been for years. In addition, if the US and the EU are serious about ever winning the allegiance of "problematic" majorities and government circles in EE, they better de-emphasize their controversial libertarian impositions. Promoting locally acceptable values while doing universal deeds is the West's only chance to get closer to the hearts of all wavering and mildly Euro-sceptical cohorts in the region, and arguably, the only way to plausibly refute the regional stereotype whereby Western dominance is predicated on the demise of Orthodoxy.  Putting an end to what is widely seen as a crypto-fascist flirt with neo-Nazism, ultra-right movements, and suspicious oppositions. Before recommending a pragmatic interventionist response to a crisis in CEE along with instrumental media framing of "new Hitlers," Western planners ought to demonstrate awareness of the deeply rooted anti-fascist sentiment in the region.

Whatever the by-products of transition, post-communist Europe remains historically sensitive to a resurgent fascism and radicalism. In this sense, terminating even the slightest opportunistic cooperation with well-known neo-Nazis and other illegitimate, aggressive, and violent groups in CEE is one of the basic preconditions for substantial transatlantic success in the region.  Working instead more closely with the perceived authoritarian leaders in the region. This is not to suggest that the West should eventually come to terms with the recent trend of autocratic personification of the popular will within CEE. Nor is this to hint that Western allies could draw on previous experience with endorsing dictatorial rules elsewhere. However, were the EU and NATO (US) to try harder to engage the perceived autocrats in CEE in a smart, collaborative fashion, they would probably do good to their primary (short- and mid-term) interests in the region. Offering CEE's political intransigents and their majority electorates better material incentives (e.g. tangible investments) rather than arrogant power politics—coercive diplomacy is typically received with indignation, thus only creating more enemies—is both desirable and feasible.

First, of the CEE leaders routinely labelled as "pro-Russian," many have explored pragmatic policy routes. As seen in the (Viktor) Yanukovych case, these essential opportunists or compelled pragmatists, while generally following the traditional sentiment of their own electorates, have not closed the door on the West. Thus, instead of endlessly bashing them in mainstream media for being "nationalists" or "dictators" and having turned down foreign agendas—while, at the same time, backing suspicious insurgents and "colourful revolutions"55—the West ought to focus its time and energy on more prolific efforts. It ought to come up with attractive association and integration "packages," much better than those recently coming from Moscow, Beijing, and even from Arab sheiks. Second, if the US and NATO are to improve their distorted image among CEE sceptics and non-Westerners, they have to refrain from continuous regime change preferences, a translucent and widely detested element of the Bush doctrine.

Having some of the worst social elements (e.g. Jihadists, terrorists, neo-Nazis, and hard-core thugs) as "allies" and surrogate ground troops during interventions has become too much of a political and PR burden for the West in recent years.

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 Filling up the remainder of the geopolitical void in the Balkans. Within the current regional constellation, this means maximizing (rather than completing) the Euro-Atlantic area, presumably without the full membership of Serbia and Republika Srpska. Drawing on the NAC's latest reaffirmation of NATO's open door policy, the West can and should immediately accelerate the integration of all NATO candidates outside of Russia's near abroad. Montenegro's prospective allied status aside,56 what urgently needs a catalyst are the efforts to address the long-standing issue of Macedonian NATO membership. It is beyond doubt that over the years multiple transatlantic (f)actors have contributed to this frustrating problem, dragging it to date. Provided that there is sufficient political will, this single problem is easy to convert into an allied asset, and this could potentially happen as soon as the upcoming NATO summit in Wales. The bad news, however, is that the Balkan battlefield of great-power interests has lately become a plane of "fluid," overlapping spheres of influence, and unless the EU and NATO (US) start "deleting" unnecessary items in their Balkan agenda really soon, both the region itself and all the related Western interests will be facing a dim future.

As the West continues to be plagued by dilemmas as to when and how to absorb the remainder of the Balkans, experimenting lately with non-operational ideas of a reborn, mini Yugoslavia plus Albania, new or reinvented plans for a Russia-led pan-Slavism and transient hybrid alliances countering the Western strategy are in execution phase.57 The least the Balkans need today is to become an ever more divided ground for proxy conflicts where an uncontained Russia would be trying to attain, together with its Orthodox brethren, what seems impossible at present; the West would be forced into a defensive mode, resorting to calculations and engaging the region, once again, as a useful buffer zone; and the currently disturbed Turkey would be given yet another chance as an indispensible Euro-Atlantic (f)actor, taking advantage of a new regional mess.  Demonstrating US-EU unity based on mutual confidence. A lesson that should have been learned long before the Ukrainian crisis is that individual emerging powers enjoy a comparative advantage vis-à-vis the incoherent West. Centralized and internally compact to a varying degree, and hence, comparatively more efficient in formulating and implementing their national security policies, Russia, China, and Iran would do everything they can, not just to stir dissent among NATO/EU allies, but more importantly, to separate America from Europe and vice versa. As arguably the last real stronghold of Western primacy, coherence ought to be, as in the case of the long awaited Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the all-purpose guiding credo of Brussels and Washington in today's fast-changing world.

Despite its pragmatic government led by Prime Minister Milo Djukanović and its very much improved relations with the West as of late, Montenegro remains socially and politically unprepared for NATO membership. From a Western perspective, the country's historical and profound ties with Serbia and Russia are too great of a burden. Thus, before taking the final step—giving Podgorica a seat in the NAC—the allies are rightfully concerned about several key issues: the dominant status of Russian capital in Montenegro and Djukanović's apparent recourse to the post-2009 "Bulgarian formula" in dealing with Russian investors; the country's political and inter-ethnic divide resembling Ukraine's inherently perilous demographics and thus persistently reflected as insufficient national support for NATO membership; its partly reformed yet "unreliable" national security apparatus which is believed to have maintained strong ties with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSS/FSB), the suspected covert (maritime surveillance) role of Russian-owned "civilian" yachts along the Montenegrin coast, and finally, the traditional Russo-Montenegrin strategic-military relations dating back to the Russo-Japanese war if not earlier.

57 Select developments in CEE might seem to contradict what the Kremlin strategists have been prophesying for quite some time, namely that, compared to modern Russia's vision of national revival, geo-economic rise, and establishing a broader Eurasian union, pan-Slavism and the protection of "Orthodox brothers" is a limited and hence insufficiently attractive grand-strategic concept. But no such contradiction exists in reality since Russia's contemporary grand-strategic visions are highly complementary.

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Hence, whatever their actual differences, the US and its European allies should strive to avoid conflict of approach and public(ized) clashes in addressing the challenges of today. Recent spy scandals, from the WikiLeaks-revealed US diplomatic cables, to the Guardian-exposed saga of Edward Snowden and NSA's unrestrained interception of global communications, to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's tapped conversation with Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and their ignominious revelation of trivia about the West's direct involvement in Ukraine, have been absolutely unnecessary and potentially avoidable. Having caught the attention of billions thanks to uncensored internet resources, these have done perhaps irredeemable damage to the Western democratic narrative. At the moment, in the background of the Rest's mocking of such narrative, an ominous disintegrative process is taking shape; the unprecedented and yet growing US-Germany divide is threatening to scuffle the multi-decennial transatlantic link.

Strategic Outlook 2030: Who Wins World War III or "World War IV"? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Only after following through these and similar recommendations and having some success in bridging the geopolitical gap in CEE could the EU and NATO (US) hope for a stronger, Western-modeled civil society in the entire region. Alternatively, if the compartmentalized and incoherent transatlantic strategy for CEE were to remain essentially unchanged, say, by giving precedence, as numerous times in the past, to highly controversial civilian efforts, coercive diplomacy, intelligence involvement, and military assistance, the transatlantic future could indeed become "dismal." In this sense, it would be helpful if the most ardent neocons internalized the fact that a NATO-Russia confrontation cannot be won by any conventional means let alone by military action.

The ongoing "war" has been and will be rather covert, highly contingent on efficient intelligence and special operations forces, relatively controlled through proxies and local agents of influence, and predominantly expanded into the financial, economic, energy, informational (cyber), and cultural realms. This new, hybrid warfare, though different from the Cold War, not least structurally and ideologically, features psychological operations (PSYOPS) at its core. As was the case with the Cold War, its informational and cultural component is most likely to be decisive. Thus, only the most observant, equally and comprehensively active in all key strategic regions and mobilizing the support of third parties in an apparently genuine quest for a more just world, could eventually come out as some sort of winners. Only the most masterful in combining hard power with non-military warfare technologies and a principled respect for international law could hope to lead the world. Patient, calculative, and adaptable as they have been, China and Post-Soviet Russia are in a better position today than at any time before, despite their comparative lack of soft-power appeal. Meanwhile, what they and many others love to portray as "a decadent, hypocritical, morally rotten, and declining West" continues here and there to opt for misguided moves, thus giving them a chance to build up their popularity as leaders of the quintessentially conservative, anti-globalist world.

Let's be realistic. Recent inferences that Putin's actions have revived the divide between "Old" and "New Europe" cannot be more than a superficial assessment alluding to the distinction between the preserved continental European ties with Russia and the active, pro-American attitude of many CEE governments.

Such assessment, while partly correct, lays far from a nuanced truth. Apart from the Baltic states and some other NATO allies (e.g. Poland, Romania), there is little fear in CEE (e.g. Moldova, Georgia), especially on a sub-governmental level, after Russia's bullet-free invasion of Crimea. Moreover, as clearly shown in this

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report, many in the region, including significant portions of the so-called former Soviet Russophobic nations, are being genuinely encouraged by the new regional developments.58 As a global crossroad and a historically proven marching ground for great powers, CEE cannot bury its rich Russo-Oriental legacy much less hide its sentimental ties to what is increasingly seen as an emerging alternative to Western hegemony. Having lately been ineffective in keeping Europe whole, united, and at peace, the post-Cold War transatlantic approach to the region warrants immediate adaptation. Further doctrinal blindness and policy status-quo on the part of the West would be costly. Under one of the least desired scenarios, the ongoing great-power game could easily plunge the region into a whole new cycle of conflict and uncertainty, thus even compelling some of the local actors to reconsider their transatlantic prospects. Should NATO (US) and the EU let that happen, pro-Russia circles would have a strong reason to interpret the new strategic reality as yet another blow to the Western expansionist and fragmentation strategy inspired by Sir Halford Mackinder's century-old geopolitical vision of the "Heartland." *** About the Author ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hristijan Ivanovski is Research Fellow at the University of Manitoba Centre for Defence and Security Studies (CDSS) and a former coordination officer with the Secretariat for European Affairs of the Government of the Republic of Macedonia. Information on his recent work is available at http://umanitoba.ca/centres/cdss/associates/1461.html.

Make no mistake, there is a new, popular adage that perfectly reflects the current mental state of many CEE citizens, politicians, and governments: "Whereas reason tells them 'go/stay with the EU, NATO, and the West,' their heart lies with Putin and the Rest."

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___________________________ __ Explanatory Note on the Conservative Resistance in EE to Certain Political Liberties and Human Rights i Criticizing

the Eastern European rejection of some trendy displays of anarchic individualism as an outright denial of liberal democracy cannot be farther from the truth. Russia—and not merely its oligarchs, urban forces, and student youth—has adopted much of the Western acquis. A conditionally pro-European Putin, who, on the one hand, dislikes an Anglo-American world, but on the other hand, seems to enjoy a Hollywood lifestyle, has been surrounded by a hedonistic elite poised to building strategic and business relations with the West on equal footing. Similarly, many in China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and the Arab-Muslim world, while indulging in what they have accepted from the West over the decades, cannot imagine their societies adopting the so-called "Western model" to the fullest.

Freedom is clearly, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau puts it, an immanent trait of human nature. Its universal essence, which can be either a source of political leverage or a heavy burden in the application of restrictive ideologies and concepts, is what puts the concept of liberal democracy ahead of all other axiological and government systems known to human kind. Eastern Europeans are no exception in this regard. Not so long ago, they proved they wanted to try some or more of what is considered "the least bad political system in history." Nonetheless, in a de facto limited democratic system widely felt as "predatory capitalism," most of them would rather have their physical security and socio-economic rights guaranteed first than enjoy, in their opinion, superfluous, aggressive, and totally meaningless political liberties intended merely to break their ancient cultural matrices by creating individualistically driven and externally controllable societies. In this sense, even Croatia, an EU "freshman" and a historically proven Catholic sanctuary, has recently voted in favour of erecting a constitutional "wall" against single-sex marriages, of course, with explicit support from Vatican.

Hence, it would be plausible to generalize that tradition-minded societies and older cultures linked to the West in multiple ways tend to pursue a cautious, eclectic approach to liberal democracy, largely rejecting what they see as progressively extreme Western interpretations of individualism and political liberty. In the case of CEE, this approach can also be seen as ironic, quasi-eclectic so to speak, for some of the worst "Western" phenomena (e.g. materialism, consumerism, and organized crime) have been embraced domestically in the worst possible way, particularly in the early days of transition. More recently, however, in response to the Western model's considerable penetration worldwide, numerous national-patriotic forces in the region have stood up in defence of their countries' unique traditions and values, with Vladimir Putin seeking to present himself as the leader of the whole conservative world, the "last bastion of order and traditional values."

That said, in determining the correct diagnosis for the evolving political constellations in CEE, some analysts have all too easily embarked on using the concept of "embedded, defective, or semi-consolidated democracy," thereby pretentiously expanding the latter's genuine meaning.

An example of prudent use of this concept, which was originally developed by Wolfgang Merkel and the members of the Defective Democracies Project, is Alfio Cerami's 2006 paper on the socio-economic risks to CEE democracies. In the said paper, Cerami draws attention to the socio-economic deficiencies of the nascent CEE democracies, that is to the lack of the third "ring of external embeddedness (the ring concerning the social and economic requisites of democracy)" in post-socialist Europe, stressing the importance of "welfare state efficiency" as both an indispensible democratic benchmark and a highly desired practice in the region.

Note on the Balkan "Power-Shift Syndrome" This quest should not be looked at narrow-mindedly, say, as some sort of anti-Western policy course. Today's world is delicately interconnected and there is no room for fatalist, a priori conclusions, especially since similar pragmatic "quests" towards the rising East are seen in Western Europe, the EU as a whole, and Canada. CEE's recent rapprochement with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and other growth economies does not imply that NATO allies and candidates from post-socialist Europe have given up on their transatlantic priorities and integration; nor does it mean that EU members, candidates, and aspirants from the region have forgone their European future. ii

In principle, the majority of EE societies and governments have no dilemmas as to what their strategic priorities and ultimate goals should be.

They know perfectly well they belong to Europe and gravitate to Brussels and Washington rather than to Moscow and Beijing. What is more, seen from a general, meta-cultural perspective, virtually all Eastern Europeans, including many Russians, consider themselves part of the Western civilization in a broader sense.

Unfortunately, when it comes to making stark political choices between the US-dominated West and a Russia-led geopolitical grouping, as is once again the case in CEE today, things get more than complicated. The main reason being the complex historical background, social structure, and political sentiment of the nations compelled to make such choices. Second, while supportive of the West to a varying degree, all CEE nations and ethnic groups are internally divided to a certain extent and in eternal love with their origins, emotional histories, and cultural uniqueness. As such, they are all too ethnocentric and more or less tradition-minded. This shared collectivist trait makes them automatically averse to controversial items on the global neoliberal agenda, thus pushing them closer to Putin's conservative Russia in spite of the fact that some of them currently serve as a dam against the Kremlin's hegemonic instincts. Finally, as clearly shown in the Ukrainian case, Russia has been essential part of many national histories in CEE no matter how and by whom such bonds are being interpreted under the light of the present. Given all this, it is no surprise that some Orthodox nations in the region are particularly sensitive to Western pragmatism, always ready

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to raise their shield of sovereignty and communal pride and show solidarity with Russia. Serbia still makes the most prominent case. Driven by a mix of historical memory, an intrinsically anti-globalist Orthodox sentiment, and a nuanced forward-looking approach, the country (about 4050% of the total population) is apparently poised to join a US-backed EU but would rather avoid dealing with a US-led NATO. This cautious, balancing attitude, while understandable—despite being easily (mis)perceived as wavering, disingenuous, pro-Russian, and/or opportunistic— obviously downplays realist arguments that both the EU and NATO are heavily influenced by Washington and that expecting "lucrative" EU membership while ignoring the Atlantic Alliance and its burdensome obligations is an unviable policy in the post-communist world (in this context, a future, EU-integrated and militarily neutral Ukraine would be a special case).

In summary, none of the CEE tendencies identified in this report is to be taken lightly. The future of the region and that of the West as a whole depend on the specific transatlantic response to the growing geopolitical challenges. The quality and credibility of such response will depend on the West's ability to recover economically, to act in the key strategic regions coherently and more realistically, and to re-establish itself, if possible, as a global reference model.

Note on the Post-Cold War Trend of Strategic De-Prioritization of Europe in General and the Balkans in Particular Albeit never short of higher security concerns, the Balkans have been subject to strategic de-prioritization ever since 2001. After the bloody 1990s and the short wars subsequently waged by ethnic Albanian extremists in southern Serbia and northwestern Macedonia (1999-2001), reflections upon the region's well-crafted Hobbesian image have been shunned in favour of the predominant Euro(-Atlantic) discourse.

Meanwhile, virtually all transatlantic experts have come to consensus that "renewed military conflict [in the region] is no longer an urgent concern"—just as if they have factored out the abundance of foreign-influenced local remnants of (pre)modernity. For their part, some unorthodox European security thinkers close to the CSDP have developed, using existing international relations (IR) concepts, a not-soconvincing "constructivist" narrative on the so-called "securitization." According to such narrative, given the changing perceptions and pervasive notions of security all over the world, and particularly with regard to the Western Balkans, the EU's regional attention has moved from the strict realm of "high" military security threats to a plethora of "low" political and societal security concerns. As Eva Gross specifically points out, the EU today does not have to worry that much about nation-state security and preserving its internal order; instead, issues such as corruption, organized crime, and illegal immigration have become the primary concern in the context of its border security as well as in maintaining the political stability of its partners and aspirants in the neighbourhood. iii

Even though this theoretical bubble has just exploded in the heat of the Russian march on Crimea, the underlying trend of strategic deprioritization of Europe in general and SEE in particular does not seem to be reversing significantly. While it may be unlikely for the Western Balkans to witness a larger-scale conflict in the years ahead, tensions in the region related to its domino-like security puzzle remain essentially invariable. Thus, however generally calm and viewed as strategically less important, the region has hardly ever been about "low(er)" politics and security. "Historically and strategically," advises Loretta Napoleoni, "the Balkans are today as important for the future of Europe as they were a century ago, when an anarchic fanatic in Sarajevo offered the casus belli for World War I."

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Drafted in critical times for the future of the Euro-Atlantic project, this ad hoc CDSS policy report offers provocative food for thought in the lead-up to the September 2014 NATO summit in Newport, South Wales, UK. The views presented in this report are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies, its established staff, and the rest of its research associates.

Centre for Defence and Security Studies University College, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 Canada Phone: 204-474-6606; fax: 204-474-7645 http://umanitoba.ca/centres/cdss/