Page 17 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

“We used to be Europe’s best-kept secret. I’m afraid our tourism office is doing too good of a job these days.”

“Lots of tourists?”

“The euro goes a long way here, if you have a lot of euros.”

“You joined the EU in 2004. How’s that worked out?”

Struna smiled cautiously, uncertain if he should be completely honest with the American analyst.

“For me, and people like me, it’s great. We have complete access to markets from here to the Atlantic.”

“But if you have access to them, they have access to you, right?”

Struna nodded. “And therein lies the problem. Big European companies, especially the Germans, have moved in, and the euro is strong relative to our economy. Some of us are doing pretty well, but others are falling behind. It’s hard to become middle class in a globalist environment unless you’re very entrepreneurial.”

“Same in the States,” Jack said. Too many American companies were chasing cheap labor overseas and importing cheapgoods. High-wage blue-collar jobs had been lost in the process, and too many blue-collar folks never made the transition to high-tech, high-wage jobs.

“Overall, it’s been a net benefit. But at a cost. Foreign companies coming in, young Slovenes emigrating out to find better work. As a European, it’s a good thing. But as a Slovenian, well, I sometimes wonder.”

“Can’t you be both Slovenian and European?”

“In theory, yes. But the reality is that European money and culture are overpowering. Small states like ours will have a hard time maintaining their national identities, which I suppose was the reason the EU was created in the first place.”

“Hence Brexit.”

“Exactly. Don’t get me wrong. I still think we gain more than we lose, but the EU must adapt or it might not survive in its current form. The idea of ‘Europe’ is just that—an idea, beautiful and vague. But identity is deeply personal, specific, and concrete.”

The rain lightened up. The automatic windshield wipers slowed.

“Do I sound like some crazy nationalist to you?”

“You sound like a man who loves his country, or, at least, his new country.”

“I have dual citizenship, actually, and I still do love America and all that it did for me. But I have several hundred years of family history rooted in these mountains and valleys. That’s hard to let go of. A man’s identity is his destiny, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, for sure.” Jack scratched his chin. He wondered what that meant for his own country, when the definition of being an American was changing so rapidly.

“What do people think about Tito these days?”

“My grandparents—really, anybody who remembers the Tito days—wish they lived in the old Yugoslavia again.”

“Communism is that strong here?”

Struna laughed. “Well, not communism like Stalin and those crazies. It was more like a really progressive social democracy. We could own land, vacation overseas, and had other freedoms that the Soviets didn’t enjoy.”

“But it was still a dictatorship.”

“Sure, but a benign one. What my grandparents say is that everybody had a job, everybody got a long vacation, everybody had a relatively good life without having to work eighty hours a week. Nobody was too rich—well, except for Tito and the elites, of course—but nobody was starving. I’m not saying they’re right, but it is a nearly universal longing among the older generation.”

“A lot of American millennials think socialism is a good idea, too, mostly because they don’t really know what it is. They just know it’s really hard to make it in the current system, and they’re looking for alternatives.”

“You know Yugoslavia’s history?”

“Only the rough outline. It was a communist state under Tito, and then he died in, what, 1980? Then the wars started in 1991 and didn’t end until 2001.”

“Very good. Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics and two autonomous regions, including Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. We declared independence on June 25, 1991, along with Croatia. The Yugoslav Army, which was really the army of Serbia, controlled by Miloševic, attacked us, and we defeated them in ten days and earned our freedom. TheCroatians had it worse, but in the end they won their independence, too. It was the Bosnians that suffered the most.”

“I read over a hundred and forty thousand Yugoslavians died in the wars.”