Moscow versus Brussels: Rival Integration Projects in the Balkans

Many see the western Balkans as the back yard of Europe. As the promise and reality of regional economic integration has weakened, however, Russia has returned to the area to play its historically important regional role. In the Balkans, a Russian or Russifying project competes against a European Union project, while Washington has shown little interest in the Balkans during the Barack Obama administration. The instruments of this rivalry are not only, or even primarily, armies but rather economic-political forces: control of energy pipelines and production, the use of that control for political objectives, and the attraction of competing political models.