The Foreign Service Journal, March 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2014 35 Is it possible that the various ethnic groups in the Balkans might finally be in the process of overcoming the region’s fractious history? BY JAMES THOMAS SNYDER FEATURE T he late-model Audi, its left rear-view mirror smashed, surged past a put- tering Zastava on a dark, lonely road outside Struga, Macedonia. The driver, a boisterous Serb named Aleksandr, talked loudly and blasted pop music by Ceca, the wife of the Serb war criminal universally known as Arkan (Željko Ražnatovi). It was small comfort to be up front, rather than squashed by the three passengers already in the back seat. Aleksandr boasted that he was taking us to “the best club” in neighboring Ohrid. Fearful it would be a strip bar populated by James Snyder is a former member of the NATO international staff. This article is adapted from his book, The United States and the Challenge of Public Diplomacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Names have been changed to protect the identities of those who spoke with the author. SOMEDREAMERS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM trafficked girls from the region, I had no idea what I had gotten myself into after Aleksandr cornered me halfway to dinner at the hotel and insisted that I join him and his friends. I was relieved to learn that the club was a sedate restaurant with the local equivalent of a mariachi band. Four men (two guitarists, a fiddler and an accordionist) played old Balkan folk songs for hire. An elated Aleksandr quickly ordered a round of potent rakia brandy, and joined the players in the performance. I was happy to see acquaintances from the conference I was attending in Struga: a Bulgarian doctoral student, the Macedo- nian foreign ministry’s chef de cabinet, a Croatian official, an Albanian member of parliament and a Greek brigadier general. I had a couple of brandies with them, relaxed and began to enjoy myself. Most of the patrons knew each other because they had piled onto a bus together on their way to the NATO summit in Istanbul in 2004—an experience they remember fondly if they remember it at all; by most accounts it was well-liquored. In Istanbul they