Ron,
You said: Provide everyone within your borders the same economic opportunity, guarantee their individual rights, and provide them a political outlet for voicing their frustrations, and ethnic jingoism will usually fade into the background.
Just my humble opinion.
Such an altruistic agenda is a challenge to achieve even for the U.S.A.! You candidly talk about ''same economic opportunity''?? From which planet are you coming from??? Equal opportunities require that a given society accepts to deal with equal people! The Balkans, like many other countries in Europe, Asia,... don't cut it that way: they're still trapped in an Ancien Regime mindset. Serbia, Albania, Greece, Croatia, etc. are much closer to pre-1789 France than to post-1865 (abolition of slavery) America. I think it's partly due to their historical development: it's too hard for the Serbian bourgeoisie to mix and to share its privileges with the Albanian bourgeoisie --the economic basis of the region is just too small! A few State-ran enterprises, the usual military establishment, the export/import commerce, and public offices. There's no other symbolic field available for ethnic minorities like in the U.S. Blacks, for instance, have access to the showbiz podium (Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby,...) or to the sport-biz (Tyson, Air Jordan, Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters...). Asian Americans can make it in the tech/scientific academic track: most of the best graduates from Berkeley, Stanford, MIT,... have an Asian background. Jews have a wild card for Wall Street and the media... etc. Whereas Yugoslav sport stars had to emigrate in Western Europe (soccer, basketball,...). Problem is you just don't have such a wide economical landscape in the Balkans, so what can ethnic groups over there share among them? The soil, the villages, and their historical memories are the only things they can ''mediate'' with. And as they fail to properly mediate with these things, they have to fight for them!
As for the Balkan countries joining Europe, I don't think Albania's odds are good: if Albania's allowed in then why not richer, stronger Turkey? I'm afraid that Europe's attitude towards Albania will be the same as with some remote Central African banana-Republic, that is: Let's airdrop them a couple of foodbags! Let's send'em our French Doctors! Let's Help them --not Take them!
Just my blunt opinion,
Gustave. |
