Back Home

---

Technically, I went back to America today. Gotta love embassies. The US Embassy in Belgrade is, like the one in Sarajevo, a legitimate complex that overshadows every other embassy. Once again, I know where I'd go if anything ever went bad here.

Unlike Sarajevo, this was a fairly comprehensive meeting at the Embassy. We started it off with Ambassador Kirby himself, followed by a Human Rights employee, an economist, and a representative of USAID, all hosted by a member of the Public Affairs team. The perspectives were, obviously, diverse and profound, but it all tied together quite well with what we've been learning.



Some interesting tidbits for you: the only country with a slower railroad system than Serbia is North Korea. Japanese rarely, if ever, say "no," but rather "yes" and you're left to interpret the meaning. Serbia's foreign debt is 83% of its GDP (for reference, the US's is about 108%). Serbia has more than 10,000 court cases that have been waiting for more than a decade for judgement. The Serbian government owns and runs 160 different companies which are losing money. The US has approximately a 20% approval rating of its world leadership capabilities, which we should be excited about because it didn't fall this year. The US Embassy in Serbia has the most active Facebook page of US Embassies in Europe.



There were, of course, plenty of other interesting facts and figures and discussions had, including plenty on economics. One of the major issues here is how to do reformations: everyone agrees they need to happen, but no one wants to because they're hugely unpopular. Understandably so -- one measure proposed laying off 160,000 public sector employees (this is a country of 7.2 million, so that's a slightly larger percentage than if the US were to lay off 160,000). There's also lots of red tape, and starting or expanding businesses to Serbia is notoriously difficult, so foreign investors aren't keen to come in, either.



This afternoon, we had a meeting that was equally, if not more interesting. We met with CIRSD -- the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development -- an NGO started last November. It's a budding think tank to rebuild economies world over, with an all-star cast. The man we met with -- the president of CIRSD -- is Vuk Jeremić, whose name you may recognize as the former President of the UN General Assembly. His employees include former Prime Ministers of Switzerland, Pakistan, and other countries; current and former Foreign Ministers from Spain, China, et. al.; the former EU Commissioner from Cyprus, and a handful of other bigwigs who I didn't have time to write down.



We talked at length about Serbia and its redevelopment after WWII and the more recent wars, especially important since today was the 100th anniversary of the official start of WWII, when Austria-Hungary formally declared war on Yugoslavia. Serbia lost a third of their male population in that war.



We also discussed general welfare in this and similar countries, such as the difference between GDP and GDP per capita (i.e. the US and China have similar GDPs but very different standards of living). He noted how it's hard to develop any country without considering social, economic, and environmental issues. However, he also pointed out that it's tough, since Western countries are telling developing countries that they have to stick to environmental standards in development, while the Western world went ahead and destroyed the environment for faster development. The question of education was also brought up: for example, it's great that more students go to school every year, but how's the quality of education? Are they prepared for the world -- do they, for example, know how to use a computer? He brought about questions that many people tend to overlook, which provided for a great perspective that we hadn't seen before.



After that meeting, we came back to the tune of thunderstorms rocking the area. I took advantage, and, at long last, completed my entire itinerary for Europe (anyone who wants to see the full list of where I'm going and staying, feel free to email me for the link!). My team then went out for a working dinner, where we conglomerated our research on the Serbia-Kosovo-EU question to start preparing our arguments for the disputation in 4 days. It's hard to believe it's almost over here; I fly to Milan in a week! I'm looking forward to the next 4 weeks, but I know I'll miss it with this group. It's been quite the experience.

---