Once an isolated and authoritarian Marxist country, Albania has tried to inch closer to Europe and the West. Like many countries in the Balkans, it is caught between competing worldviews.
As Albanians go to the polls on May 14 in local elections in a region that many experts and policymakers consider a tinderbox in Europe’s tumultuous Balkans region, critics worry that the Biden administration has retreated from the former communist county.
"Historically, it’s been the United States that has shown leadership in the Balkans, and corralled the rest of Europe towards resolving the conflicts of the region and setting the current political and security architecture in the region," former Albanian Ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations, Agim Nesho, told Fox News Digital."This was especially the case during the Clinton and Bush 43 administrations.
"The Open Balkans initiative seeks to redraw everything from borders to economic, political and military interest in the Balkans, by bringing in the influence of Russia and non-Western actors like Turkey and China into play, and risks renewed conflict in the region," Ambassador Nesho warned. Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama waves as he addresses his supporters in the central square of Tirana, following his Socialist Party election victory on April 27, 2021.
This aerial photograph taken on April 24, 2021, shows Tirana's main boulevard"Deshmoret e Kombit." Albania held its general election in 2021, with the centre-left sitting Prime Minister of the Socialist Party winning a third mandate, after facing a challenge from a dozen parties united behind the main opposition Democratic Party. International election observers from the U.S. and EU will be closely monitoring the vote.
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