Mini-Me

President of the Republic Borut Pahor gave a solid speech at the recent session of the UN General Assembly in New York. He expressed clear support for a multilateral world order as the only way to ensure lasting peace and security in the world. He also stressed the importance of respecting human rights, without which, in his view, there can be neither peace nor development. We heard the message of a responsible statesman defending, from the rostrum, principles threatened by nationalist populism, or the “ideology of patriotism,” as Pahor’s counterpart Donald Trump put it in his speech the following day.

In Slovenia, some noticed above all what was left out of the President’s speech, namely the arbitration agreement. They wondered why the President had not used the opportunity to complain to the world about the injustice being done to us. Pahor had an answer to this question too, and it deserves praise. He avoided mentioning the arbitration agreement, he said, because everyone interested in it already knows about it, and at the same time he does not want Slovenia to become a “one-issue” country.

Slovenia has had problems with “one-issue” politics and with a diplomacy that cannot tear itself away from navel-gazing since the first years after independence. I remember the early nineties, when, as a young diplomat in the team of the first Slovenian ambassador in Brussels, Dr Boris Cizelj, I helped pave Slovenia’s first steps towards Europe. One after another, senior representatives of the young Slovenian state came to the Belgian capital, and every single one of them opened every conversation with European officials with the same sentence: “Slovenia is a young Central European and Mediterranean country that has nothing to do with the war in the Balkans.” From a purely human point of view, the message was understandable. The war had grazed Slovenia only a few years earlier. But from the foreign-policy point of view of presenting Slovenia as a reliable member of the international community, it was a shot in the foot. European Commissioner Hans van den Broek constantly, and not at all discreetly, rolled his eyes at the Slovenian lamenting. His reaction was understandable too. While blue helmets from Ghana, Nepal and Finland were risking their lives in our immediate neighborhood, he had to listen to how Slovenia had, and wanted to have, nothing whatsoever to do with a war raging just a few kilometers from its borders.

After one of these meetings, I suggested a different approach to the envoys from Ljubljana: “Listen, Hans, we are part of this story; we know the people, the mentality and the language. Bringing Slovenia closer to Europe rewards the option that chose democracy, human rights and the rule of law at independence; a European Slovenia can be part of the solution for the Balkans.” My naive initiative was, to put it mildly, not well received, and the Europeans went on rolling their eyes for some time.

This example illustrates a problem that dogs Slovenian diplomacy to this day. We have a foreign policy that is directed inwards. The message of a non-Balkan Slovenia was never meant for van den Broek, only for the domestic public. Of course, foreign policy is part of domestic political reality and must not ignore public opinion, but at the same time it must be able, in the long term, to build the international position and influence with which a state can defend its strategic interests. We have always been worse at the second part of the equation.

Small states are always weaker and more vulnerable in international relations, which makes the Slovenian President’s emphasis on multilateralism all the more appropriate, since it alone offers a framework for asserting and protecting the interests of states like Slovenia. But even in a multilateral world, influence and the protection of interests do not come by themselves; they require investment that is long-term, strategic and intelligent. That has never interested us much. In international politics we usually prefer to be quiet and without ideas; the exceptions are more the result of the efforts and talent of individuals than the fruit of strategic planning. Instead of being active, we prefer to be servile. Instead of having clear positions on important issues that would bring us visibility and standing, we shuffle our feet and wait to see which way the wind blows. When you try to please too many people, in the end no one respects you. And as everywhere, in foreign policy half the battle is showing up. We are not good at that either. As was recently reported, Slovenia is at the very bottom when it comes to ministers’ attendance at meetings in Brussels.

Slovenia is not as small as we make it ourselves, small and insignificant. You simply cannot successfully defend your interests with a foreign policy that does not reach beyond the state border. It is too late to wake up only when an arbitration agreement happens to you. And it doesn’t help at all if we then use every opportunity to whine and moan about the injustice being done to us. We can expect as much understanding, sympathy and support as a man at a party who tells everyone that his wife cheated on him with the neighbor. This does not mean that we must not or cannot work to have the arbitration agreement implemented, but it would be useful to approach this and other foreign-policy challenges more intelligently, more professionally and with a longer-term view than we do today. It would be wise for Slovenia to entrust the handling of the arbitration procedures to someone with international legal and foreign-policy experience, knowledge and standing, not to someone saddled with a record of racist boorishness.

For small states without any particular economic, political or military power, reputation is a very important and sometimes decisive asset in international relations. That is another reason why President Pahor’s speech in New York was certainly more useful to Slovenia, including for the future of the arbitration agreement, than if he had used the General Assembly rostrum to lament our fate and the injustice done to us. In his speech, he presented himself as a responsible, principled statesman concerned about the future of the world. That is how standing and influence are gained internationally. Imagine how much more could be achieved if the President maintained his statesmanlike posture and principles a little longer than the queue in which Eastern Europeans waited for a chance to take a selfie with Donald and Melania Trump.