Reinhard Priebe, responsible for the western Balkans in the European commission's external relations directorate, wagged his finger at a group of visiting MPs from the Balkans. "We will forgive you," he growled, "but we will not forget."
The Brussels bureaucracy is making itself clear-it resents those Balkan governments that signed or might sign an agreement with the US, exempting American nationals from deportation if served with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court.
But the message from Washington is equally unambiguous. If you want to get ahead in Nato, then you need to share some of the US's strategic values. By the time Lawrence Rossin finished his term as US ambassador to Zagreb earlier this summer, most Croat politicians refused to see him. "His hectoring about Croatia's signature on the ICC exemption treaty had exhausted us," a senior member of the governing coalition told me.
There is a quiet, proxy conflict under way in the Balkans. It is a war of diplomacy between the US and the EU, two familiars whose friendship has become crotchety with age. It has attracted little attention in the wider world, though the outcome may have a real impact on the long-term strategic relationship between Europe and the US. The short-term costs are being borne by the Balkan states themselves.
After the fall of Milosevic in October 2000, an assumption prevailed on both sides of the Atlantic that Europe would assume primary financial and political responsibility for the future prosperity of southeastern Europe (the closest we have come to a politically-correct moniker for the Balkans). Furthermore, the region itself placed eventual EU membership at the very top of its priority list. This prospect has already proved a powerful incentive in forcing Albanians, Bosnians, Croats, Macedonians and Serbs to overcome their differences and develop policies of regional co-operation.
However EU member states and the European commission moved very slowly. They encouraged reform and co-operation but also created an elaborate new entry procedure for the western Balkans (that is, the former Yugoslavia minus Slovenia but plus Albania). This "stabilisation and association process," requires the would-be Eurostates to jump through various bureaucratic hoops but with no guarantee of membership at the end. Still, with Milosevic gone it was at least acknowledged that eventually the Balkans would be part of Europe.
Initially, the Bush administration appeared to confirm this division of labour. Condoleezza Rice went further, suggesting that Washington might withdraw its troops from Kosovo. Moreover, after 9/11, and faced with a new slew of security issues, the last thing the US wanted were complications in the Balkans.
One smouldering irritant from the Kosovo conflict of 1999 did have an impact on US policy as the Pentagon focused its sights on Afghanistan. After the destruction of the twin towers, Nato famously invoked article five of its treaty, deeming 9/11 to be an attack on all its members. It was ready to play a key role in the war against the Taleban. But Washington's bad memories of running the Kosovo war by 19-member committee meant that Nato was allotted the role of junior water carrier.
Nato had apparently lost its attraction as a military instrument for the Americans. But its political significance has far from diminished. Until this point, the US had urged caution on the issue of Nato expansion into eastern Europe. During the first round of enlargement in 1999, when Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were admitted as new members, the US indicated that the doors should be closed for some time thereafter. The Europeans, notably the French, had shown much greater enthusiasm for transforming Nato into a much larger (and hence unwieldy) operation.
By the end of 2001, however, Bruce Jackson, a former military intelligence officer and vice-president of Lockheed with close connections to the White House, had launched a campaign in support of a "big bang" expansion of Nato that would embrace another seven states. For the first time, the Americans backed an enlargement into the Balkans through membership for Romania and Bulgaria. Europe's role in this process remains peripheral.
The Romanian and Bulgarian governments have been making an exceptional effort to meet the Nato criteria because membership would offer concrete proof to their impoverished and sceptical electorates that their countries were involved in a policy of real Euro-Atlantic integration. Moreover, the Americans are dropping strong hints that their future operations in the middle east may well require bases (and thus money) in the Black sea area.
The signals from Washington on security issues were much more welcoming than the EU on economic ones. Warsaw, for example, had to suffer considerable indignities in its negotiation of EU membership. Most significantly, the French insisted that Poland's huge agricultural sector would not be allowed to cream off billions from Brussels in the way that French agriculture can, while Berlin demanded that Poles be denied access to Germany's labour market for up to seven years after Poland joined the EU.
One result of this was that soon after wrapping up its EU negotiations, Poland decided to upgrade its airforce with the purchase of F-16s from Lockheed instead of a European consortium. The French were furious but helpless. The idea of "new" Europe had been implanted in American minds.
Jackson's whirlwind strategy on Nato reinforced the sense throughout the Balkans that America delivers. EU membership in contrast often looked (and still looks) like a mirage. Seers from Euroland visit regularly with fables of an opulent and fabulously welcoming city that lies somewhere in the distance. But for the Balkans there is no hard evidence that it really exists.
Now Jackson, congress and the White House have backed a campaign which is arguing for Nato membership to be extended to Macedonia, Albania and Croatia, as well as fast-tracking Serbia and Montenegro to Nato's waiting room, Partnership for Peace.
The standard Nato new members' package includes a tricky caveat. Congress will take a dim view of any prospective allies who are prepared to hand over American nationals to the international criminal court, Europe's great institution of global justice.
A few weeks ago, Croatia and Bulgaria were told that they will lose $19m and $20m respectively for refusing to sign the exemption treaty. The Croat government said it was impossible to sign when the US was simultaneously demanding that Croatia hands over indictees to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague.
The US will not block Nato membership merely if a country refuses to sign the exemption treaty, but the withdrawal of aid will make it more difficult for those countries to modernise their armies to meet Nato entry criteria.
Still, Nato membership gives them desperately needed credibility-proof that the misery which reform inflicts on their electorates is worthwhile. Just as the US seized on Poland's resentment towards France and Germany, so can it play on Balkan frustrations as they try to persuade the EU to take their candidacies more seriously.
What has been the EU response? The Greek government had intended to crown its EU presidency in Thessaloniki at the end of June by transforming rhetoric into a concrete commitment. Their aim was to shift the region from the directorate for external relations to the directorate for enlargement. This bureaucratic switch would have had far-reaching consequences for the western Balkans, making them eligible for funds of roughly e4bn that had been earmarked but not used for the current round of enlargement. It would also have made them eligible for different forms of technical assistance that would accelerate their ability to reach EU standards throughout most sectors of the economy and public administration.
Greece tried but failed. Only Italy and Austria supported the idea and the commission was unmoved. As a consequence, disillusionment with the EU is growing once again in the Balkans and the US is exploiting it by stepping up its Nato enlargement campaign. Europe's ability to stabilise difficult countries and regions through its use of soft power has been proved many times since the early 1970s. If Europe were to apply its mind, it could quickly do the same in the Balkans. If it does not do so soon, it may find that the US has a much stronger political purchase in Europe than it deems desirable..
