Kosovo + Albania + Montenegro + Serbia + North Macedonia
The world is a more complicated, interconnected place than ever before. America cannot succeed by closing the shutters and pretending the rest of the planet does not impact our security and prosperity. We must be present in foreign places, pushing our interests and values.
Our founders did not believe this responsibility should fall only on the executive branch. The Constitution gives co-equal power to the Congress and the President to set and execute foreign policy. That’s why there is a Senate Foreign Relations Committee – historically one of the most powerful congressional committees. And that’s why, as a member of the committee, I travel overseas to represent and advance U.S. priorities.
But both branches are ultimately accountable to the people. So that is also why I have chosen over the years to be radically transparent about my trips abroad. I want you to understand why these efforts are vital to our security. I want to pull back the curtain on U.S. diplomacy, to make it more accessible and digestible. Because I think that is part of how we build more support to activate American engagement in the world and push back against the so-called “America First” isolationists.
So, what follows is a candid, behind-the-scenes look at my recent trip with my colleague Senator Gary Peters of Michigan to the Western Balkans. Five countries – Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia and North Macedonia – in five days.
Monday in Kosovo
This is my sixth trip to the Balkan region as a Senator. A few short decades ago, the U.S. was at war in the Balkans. It is, of course, the place where many world and regional conflicts have started. Building stability here is critical, because when the Balkans are unstable, the United States has a habit of getting dragged into the middle of the resulting conflicts.
There also happens to be a big Balkan diaspora in Connecticut, mostly ethnic Albanians.I cared about the Balkans because the people I represent in Connecticut care about the Balkans. So, when I became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I sought to become a leader on U.S-Balkans policy. I’m not sure if another sitting Senator has been to the region more times than I have. This week, with a few key diplomatic efforts hanging in the balance, I joined up with my long-time friend (who also has a big Albanian-American population in his state), Gary Peters, to head to the region.
On Sunday night we flew to Frankfurt, and then Monday morning picked up a very small State Department plane to take us the rest of the way to Kosovo. America doesn’t have better friends in the region than Kosovo. But more to the point, Kosovo doesn’t have a better friend than America. The U.S. led the global effort to support the people in the largely ethnic Albanian Kosovo who wanted to split off from Serbia, creating a new nation in 2008. Today, hundreds of U.S. troops remain in Kosovo to keep it safe and secure.
I love Kosovo. I believe in Kosovo. But I was there to deliver an uncomfortable message. Kosovo is still not a member of the UN, the EU or NATO, in part because Serbia, still furious about the split, does not recognize Kosovo as a nation and uses all the leverage it has to block their path into these multilateral organizations. It’s in Kosovo’s interest to normalize relations with Serbia, and a series of recent diplomatic agreements have created a path for that normalization.
The problem is that those agreements require Kosovo to do something it really doesn’t want to do – give a small set of devolved powers to a group of cities in the north of the country with majority ethnic Serb populations. In the grand scheme, it’s a very small concession. But the current Kosovo Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, who spent years in a Serbian jail as result of his advocacy for Kosovar independence, does not trust the Serbian intentions in the north, and worries this association of cities will become a camel’s nose under the tent for Serbia to undermine this new, fragile Kosovo state.
I understand his concerns – especially given his personal history – but I don’t share them. I have always believed Kosovo should prioritize normalization with Serbia, and establishing this association is the single most important step Kosovo must take to get this result. And so this is what I told him and Kosovo’s young, dynamic President, Vjosa Osmani. I’ve known Kurti and Osmani for a long time. I consider them friends. But sometimes friends need to hear hard truths. I told them both that their relationship with the United States could suffer if they continue to refuse to establish the association. I told them that they shouldn’t assume U.S. troops will be in Kosovo forever, and that they need to work quickly to decrease tensions with Serbia. I’m not sure they liked my message, but I think it had an impact.
Tuesday in Albania
Tuesday morning, we boarded our plane for the short, twenty-minute flight to Albania. Our mission here was a pretty simple one – to say thank you. Albania has stepped up to help the United States, over and over, in exceptional ways. Still to this day there are hundreds of Afghan refugees – the interpreters, security professionals, and non-profit workers who supported our mission there – who have been flown to Albania where they are processed and vetted before coming to the United States. Albania didn’t have to take on this burden, but they did it because they love the United States.
We started our day with a meeting with their engaging, enigmatic Prime Minister Edi Rama. As Peters and I stood in his conference room awaiting his arrival wearing our best business suits, our great U.S. Ambassador, Yuri Kim, whispered to us, “Fair warning, he’s likely going to be in a t-shirt.”
As promised, a few minutes later, Rama and his burly 6-foot 7-inch frame sauntered into the room in an untucked brown t-shirt. “At least it’s a long sleeve,” I said to an embassy staffer. “Maybe that’s his formal outfit?”
Rama then entertained us with a 45-minute, near-uninterrupted soliloquy on the region and his suggestions for how to fix all the lingering problems. He assured us that if Kosovo went forward with the association, his close friend Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić would make good on his side of the agreement and stop blocking Kosovo from joining international bodies (implausible, given the historic tensions between Kosovo and Serbia).
That night, we attended a dinner of Albanian luminaries organized by a Detroit-based Albanian-American friend of Senator Peters. It was a who’s who of Tirana, and we stayed until the wee hours trading gossip about Albania and America and reveling in the close political and cultural connections between our two countries.
At one point in the evening, I was speaking with the finance minister and a very tall, bearded gentleman who introduced himself as the general manager of one of Albania’s premier soccer teams. I began to tell them the story of my first trip to the region in 2014, when I arrived on the night of the first soccer match between the Albanian and Serbian national teams in some time. The game set off an international crisis, as in the middle of the match, a drone flew into the stadium, with a provocative pro-Albanian flag intended to incite the Serb crowd. The historic first meeting between Vucic and Rama was immediately postponed (they weren’t yet close friends) and the Serbs accused Edi Rama’s brother, who was at the game, of piloting the drone.
“I think they even locked the brother up for a while,” I told the two guests. “It was wild!”
The finance minister let out a loud chuckle. The tall man patiently waited until I finished talking.
“It was wild,” he said. “But of course, I didn’t do it. I don’t even know how to work a drone.”
My heart dropped into my stomach.
“You’re Olsi Rama, I assume.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, with a kind but mischievous grin.
Wednesday in Albania, Montenegro and Serbia
After a late night, we were back up bright and early Wednesday morning to take the plane to Podgorica, Montenegro. As I got off the hotel elevator with my luggage in hand, I noticed someone strangely familiar standing at the check-in desk.
“Hubert?” I yelled.
“Senator Murphy!” called back Connecticut State Representative Hubert Delany.
The world is a small place, indeed. There, in the lobby of the Tirana Hilton, was Hubert Delany, a state legislator from Stamford, Connecticut. Hubert’s day job is a public relations officer for the U.S. Army, and he has received orders – inconveniently, right in the middle of the Connecticut legislative session – to deploy to the Balkans to work on NATO integration with Albania and other regional partners.
He introduced me to other members of his Army team, and they briefly explained to me the nature of their mission. Hubert snapped a few selfies, and he told me that he’s been keeping up with the votes on the state house floor, asking legislator friends to enter into the record the votes he would have cast had he been in Hartford and not Tirana.
Hubert is an exciting, emerging leader in Connecticut, and it was great to catch up with him. But he is also a reminder that our troops and veterans don’t stop serving when they take off the uniform. So many who have served, currently serve full time, or serve in our National Guard or Reserves, spend their free time serving the community in a variety of other ways.
An hour later, we took off, bound for the small capital city of one of the smallest countries in Europe, Montenegro. With only 620,000 people, Montenegro is smaller than the average U.S. congressional district. But they are a NATO ally, and a constant victim of Russian sabotage. A few years ago, in an attempt to block Montenegro’s efforts to join NATO, Russia tried to organize an unsuccessful coup that envisaged assassinating and replacing the prime minister. Russian agents are no doubt still there, and it’s important for us to show our appreciation for the nation’s commitment to NATO and its defense of Ukraine.
We planned to stop in Podgorica for only a few hours, with an explicit purpose. The prior weekend, 36-year-old Jakov Milatović was sworn in as the new President of the country. Because Monday and Tuesday were national holidays, Wednesday would be his first official day on the job, and we thought it would be appropriate for a U.S. delegation to welcome the young President into office.
Milatović was impressive, and we talked about our shared challenge of serving in office while having young children. He told us that he was committed to joining the EU and continuing to implement Russia sanctions (which isn’t easy in Montenegro since many wealthy Russians vacation here and over a quarter of the country’s GDP comes from tourism). I left thinking this was a rising leader with whom it would be important for me to build a relationship.
By mid-afternoon, we were back on the airplane and by 5 pm we were in Belgrade, Serbia. Our ambassador, the legendary American diplomat Chris Hill, met us at the airport and hustled us off to our first meeting with the Serbian Defense Minister. We then went to the Ambassador’s residence for a reception with 50 Serbian political and business leaders, and then went to a late dinner with Hill to prepare for the next day’s meetings.
Breakfast in Albania. Lunch in Montenegro. Dinner in Serbia. I crawled into bed barely able to keep my eyes open.
Thursday in Serbia
Serbia is a country with one foot in the west and one foot in the east. Russia has always been a big presence here, and while President Aleksandar Vučić, who I have gotten to know well over the last ten years, says he wants Serbia to join the EU, the path has been rocky, to say the least. Memories are still fresh of the American and European bombing campaign of Belgrade during the Kosovo War.
Much of our discussion with Vučić and others in Belgrade was about the EU accession process, Serbia’s continued refusal to join U.S./EU sanctions against Russia, and the dialogue with Kosovo. But there was another exceptional topic on the agenda for our meetings: gun violence.
This is not usually an issue I talk about in Europe, except to answer questions about why America refuses to take decisive action to stop our own epidemic of gun violence. But in May, there were two back-to-back mass shootings in Serbia, the first taking the lives of 10 people at a Belgrade school. The first half of our meeting with President Vučić was a dialogue about what Serbia should do to respond to these two tragic events.
Vučić shared his plans with us, which included aggressive proposals to require most Serbians to give up their guns, and for the select individuals who keep them to pass regular mental health and criminal checks. The plan is unthinkable in the United States, but a reminder that not every nation views itself as helpless in the face of mass slaughter.
After our meetings with government officials, Peters and I split up to do meetings with leaders of the political opposition (I took this meeting) and representatives of Serbia’s Albanian minority in the south (Peters took this meeting). Afterward, Peters told me how struck he was by the similarities between how ethnic Serbs describe their treatment in Kosovo, and how ethnic Albanians describe their treatment in Serbia. He noted that despite these similarities, all the international attention is on the Serbs in Kosovo. He and I put a pin in our discussion and decided to talk later about how we could draw more attention to the situation of Serbia’s Albanian community.
Friday in North Macedonia (and an airport bathroom)
Peters had to return to Michigan for a Friday evening commitment, so he took a 5:50 am commercial flight out of Belgrade. I got to sleep a bit later (which was good because I was awake from 3-5 am watching Game 5 of the Celtics-Heat series, which was conveniently on Serbian TV), and I hopped on the plane, bound for Skopje, North Macedonia.
I was especially keen to go to Skopje for a single purpose. My goal is to help settle long standing conflicts in the region. Stability in the Balkans, especially since some of these countries are now NATO partners, is good for the United States. One of those remaining conflicts is between Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Bulgaria’s complaint isn’t terribly meritorious, but it’s a complaint, nonetheless. My sense is that Bulgaria is still sore that North Macedonia used to be part of the old Bulgarian empire, but the explicit conflict isn’t about that history. There are still a handful of ethnic Bulgarians in North Macedonia, and in order to allow North Macedonia to join the EU (of which Bulgaria is a voting member), Bulgaria wants an amendment included in the constitution of North Macedonia to explicitly include ethnic Bulgarians by name.
The amendment, though technical, is controversial, because many Macedonians simply don’t want to be pushed around by Bulgaria. But it’s what is necessary to get North Macedonia into the EU, and the benefits of EU membership are not up for debate: more jobs, more economic growth, less corruption. I was in town to make a public push for the amendment.
In my joint press conference with Prime Minister Dimitar Kovačevski I made a clear case for the amendment, and I told reporters that it would be a setback for the U.S.-North Macedonia relationship if the amendment didn’t go forward. Russia is pushing against the amendment (because they don’t want the EU to get any bigger or stronger), and a defeat would be seen as a strategic victory for Moscow. As we left the stage, Kovačevski seemed surprised at how blunt I was about the implications of the amendment’s failure. “Well, I think you just made seven days of news!” he whispered to me.
After a quick private meeting with leaders of the political opposition to try to win them over for the amendment, I jumped back on the plane, this time destined for Frankfurt, where I would pick up a commercial flight back to the U.S.
At the airport, I went to a bathroom to change out of my suit and into more comfortable clothes for the long transatlantic flight. Just then, my phone rang with a call from an unfamiliar Washington DC number. Curious, I answered it. After a short delay, a State Department operator told me to hold for an urgent call from Derek Chollet, the State Department Counselor (one of the top State Department officials). I wondered whether I should defer, given that my flight was only a few minutes from departing and I was in the middle of changing. But I was curious about the urgency of the call, so I told the operator I would hold.
A minute later, Chollet got on the phone and described to me a serious situation in North Kosovo. Against international advice, Prime Minister Kurti had gone ahead with local elections in the north, even though the Serbs were boycotting the election pending resolution of the association issue. A measly 3% of citizens turned out, but Kurti had the mayors sworn in anyway (once he decided to have the election, the swearing in was appropriate). But Serbs in the area made clear that they did not want the new Albanian mayors to take control of the local government buildings that traditionally were run and administered by Serbs until the conflict over the election and the association were worked out. Kurti led me and the U.S. Embassy to believe that he wasn’t going to push the mayors to enter the buildings until the broader issues were worked out.
Then, on Friday, he changed his mind. The mayors showed up at the buildings, and crowds of Serbs arrived to keep them out. Kosovar police responded and used tear gas and other violent means to disperse the crowds. Kurti’s decision to go forward with putting the mayors in these buildings was needlessly provocative, and Chollet asked for my help in sending a strong message of de-escalation.
I quickly finished changing, and sat with my foreign policy staffer to hurriedly compose a statement condemning the action. I boarded the plane not knowing how bad the situation in north Kosovo would become. In the days since, almost 40 NATO soldiers and more than 50 protesters were injured in violent clashes at the municipal buildings, and 700 additional NATO troops were deployed to north Kosovo. Serbia mobilized its own troops to the border with Kosovo, raising the specter of a return to the violence of the 1990s. And needless to say, talks between Serbia and Kosovo on the association of Serb-majority municipalities are on hold.
To pull the situation back from the edge, American officials - in lockstep with our EU partners - have engaged in a flurry of high-level diplomacy with Kosovar and Serbian leaders. We’ve presented a clear, three-step plan to de-escalate the situation at the municipal buildings, hold new elections for the mayors in the north, and get back to the table on a lasting solution to the crisis. I hope the two sides accept that proposal, because if Kosovo and Serbia’s leaders don’t step back and lower the temperature, the window we have this year to secure normalization between Serbia and Kosovo may be shut and our strong, historic bilateral relationships will suffer. With hundreds of U.S. troops serving as part of the NATO peacekeeping mission in north Kosovo, we need to see more responsible decisions that don’t unnecessarily put them at risk.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book “The Brothers Karamazov” is about patricide. In it, he writes; “there will be tens of millions of happy babes, and we alone, the 10,000, will know the difference between good and evil.”.
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