EU is failing again in the Western Balkans

If I could draw a cartoon it would be the statelets of the western Balkans fighting in a furious 2020 dustball of fists and boots whilst an EU President as shamefaced as a labrador who has copiously fouled the bedroom rug looks on, with the caption "You had one job ..."

The EU's foreign policy is a litany of failure, yet these hubristic Federasts want their own army to reinforce that failure; whilst they poke Putin in Ukraine, the Western Balkans are being lost to Russian expansion and Salafist pollution, corrupted through Turkish influence with Saudi money into a hotbed of radical Islamism. Reports in both the Republican American Interest and the Lefty Der Spiegel  catalogue the loss of interest by the EU in further Balkans accessions and the loss of interest by the Balks (if they can be so termed) in the EU; latest polls indicate that just 18% of Serbians really want to join the Federation. As Russia protects Christian orthodox nations, newly groomed Islamist statelets throw up new Saudi-funded mosques staffed by Saudi-supplied imams, to radicalise a new generation of Islamist terrorists. 

The Washington Post thinks it is a failure of democracy, that Balkans statelets are 'halfway democracies' and offers reasons for this. The paper misses the biggest reason of all. That the EU has the role of democracy mentor and monitor, and that the EU is in itself the most profoundly anti-democratic of regimes. It's like giving the job of Civics teacher to Pol Pot. What sort of lesson do the Balkans get from a corrupt Brussels EU regime that believes that the secret ballot and universal suffrage are obstacles to be over-ridden, that plebiscites can be repudiated and overturned, that solemn treaties can be broken for political ends and that threats, bullying and hubristic posturing are equated with statesmanship?

We should not forget that the Balkans are exporting their violent men who return even more skilled in crime and violence; Islamists fight for ISIS and pass back and forwards through a complicit Turkey, Albanian cocaine gangs dominate Europe, Serb people traffickers cross Europe in trucks filled with Afghan migrants. The reason why Austria can't put cigarette prices up to over €4,50 a pack is the ease with which white brands are smuggled from Balkans factories. Now that Croatia is part of the EU, there are a quarter million more Croatian passport holders than there are Croatians; well, who speaks enough Serbo-Croat to know? 

I have little doubt that the western Balkans will blow up again, and the dirty EU labrador whose fault it will be will wring its paws and ask for British peacekeepers and US ground attack aircraft to clear their shit up.