Can Selling Weapons to Serbia Create Peace in the Balkans?
The ensuing unsettled conditions that stem from Russian arms sales and leverage upon Serbia work directly against American and European interests and if not mastered, could lead to more Balkan conflicts and crises in the future.
As in the Turkish case, the United States would then be dealing with a failure of diplomacy that translates into a much greater foreign policy failure with wider repercussions. Surely tenacious diplomacy should be able to find a solution that works to the mutual benefit of Belgrade and Washington. For if the United States does fail again, it cannot say that it was unaware of what the repercussions of that failure would be. This failure might make moralists across the political spectrum happy temporarily but it will not enhance either the causes of peace, democracy, or security in the Balkans and likely elsewhere. Surely, the United States can do better than that.
Dr. Stephen Blank is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, former director of Russian studies at the U.S. Army War College, and a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Institute.
Image: Reuters