Author: Xusheng source: Xusheng (official account ID: lxlong20) has been authorized to reprint
Upon waking up, Albania announced that it had severed diplomatic relations with Iran! When both countries are not busy. Iran now has good relations with China. Albania had strong relations with China before.
Albania has sent a note to the Iranian embassy demanding that Iranian diplomats leave the country immediately within 24 hours.
This happened suddenly, which made many old irons in the media a little stunned. It is said that even Iran is very confused.
After all, in today’s society, breaking off diplomatic ties is not common. Lithuania is so disgusting that China has never severed diplomatic relations with Lithuania.
Look at the map. Albania is on the West Bank of the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe, facing the Mediterranean Sea; Iran is in the Middle East near Central Asia, facing the Persian Gulf. It seems that the two sides can’t fight each other.
Geographically speaking, the two countries are not at all compatible, nor do they have direct and irreconcilable gratitude and resentment.
Albania gave the reason that Iran “launched a cyber attack” on it.
This reason is even more confusing.
First of all, Iran has been sanctioned by the United States for so many years, and the Internet technology is not advanced. It is not easy to attack other countries online. On the contrary, Iran itself has often reported that important departments have been attacked by the Internet.
Secondly, if we cut off our diplomatic ties in the face of a “cyber attack”, most countries in the world will basically cut off their diplomatic ties. In particular, the United States and Russia will not have a country that has established diplomatic relations.
Moreover, the Albanian Prime Minister also announced that Iran’s cyber attack had failed and Albania’s losses were limited.
Therefore, Albania broke off diplomatic relations with Iran on the ground of “cyber attack”, which is a little unreasonable. Of course, behind any nonsense, there is a logical line. To dig behind Albania’s senseless break of diplomatic relations, we must first understand that Albania itself is a senseless country.
01 history of contradiction
Geographically, Albania looks good:
It is located in the Balkans, facing the Mediterranean Sea, bordering Greece and facing Italy across the sea.
This location is close to the origin of European civilization.
But this seemingly good location makes Albania very uncomfortable.
Albania in history was very poor and backward. It wanted to recognize ancient Greece as the big brother, but it was once rejected. What is more tragic is that ancient Greece even isolated Albania with its surrounding children. The reason lies in ancient racial discrimination.
In the eyes of the ancient Greeks, the ancestors of Albania were the Illyrians in the Balkan Mountains, so they were excluded. Of course, He Xin said that the Greek civilization was fabricated and did not exist at all. The so-called ancient Greeks were Albanians. So mainstream Westerners don’t like real Albanians very much.
However, no matter what kind of viewpoint, it shows that Albania is not very popular with the mainstream of the West. In fact, the key reason why Albania has become an alternative to Western civilization is still the issue of faith.
In the middle ages, the Ottoman Empire, which believed in Islam, rose and tried to conquer Europe. When the Ottoman army arrived in the Balkans, the Albanian national hero scandepe rose to resist and built a barrier for Western civilization. That was the only highlight in Albania in ancient history.
The black double headed eagle on Albania’s national flag today comes from the seal worn by scandepe, which symbolizes the spirit of never giving in.
After scandepe’s death, the Balkans were conquered by the Ottomans, but only a few countries such as Albania converted to Islam. Today, Eastern Europe and southern Europe still believe in Christianity, while Albania, which believes in Islam, seems out of step. The black double headed eagle has become an alternative symbol of Albania.
It was 1912, on the eve of World War I, that Albania became truly independent. However, World War I and World War II broke out one after another, and Albania was occupied by Austria Hungary, Italy, France and Germany.
Until 1944, the Red Army of the Soviet Union reversed the situation. Stalin commanded the Red Army to cross the border and launch an all-round counter offensive, liberating Eastern Europe. In 1946, Albania finally became a country with independent sovereignty, and the leader of the Communist Party, Enver Hoxha, was elected as the head of government.
That is to say, since then, Albania has begun to perform differently.
02 alternative performance
Countries, like people, also need recognition. However, Albania is too small, only 28000 square kilometers, and now it has a population of less than 3 million (even less in ancient times). Since ancient times, no one has taken it seriously.
In the dangerous international jungle, small countries usually find a big country to be their backer.
Since Albania became independent with the help of the Soviet Union, Hoxha naturally regarded the Soviet Union as his big brother and worshipped Stalin almost blindly. Because Hoxha’s praise was too fierce, Stalin himself felt that he should support his little brother, so he asked Yugoslavia’s head of state Tito to take care of him.
The reason why Stalin asked Tito was that Albania was too small for him to do it himself; Second, Albania is next to Yugoslavia, which is very close and convenient.
Tito also wanted to expand the influence of Yugoslavia at that time. Seeing that Albania was in a good position, he made great efforts to win over Albania and gave it a lot of funds, food and resources; The international community at that time mistook Albania for Yugoslavia’s younger brother.
Hoxha, however, believes that Yugoslavia’s aid was provided in an attempt to annex Albania in order to achieve political and economic ties. On the one hand, he was wary of Yugoslavia, and on the other hand, he accepted all the material assistance to Yugoslavia.
By 1949, there was a contradiction between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Tito did not want to be at the mercy of Stalin. So Stalin encouraged the Eastern European countries to sever relations with Yugoslavia.
Regardless of his past feelings, Hoxha was the first to break with Tito and offend neighboring Yugoslavia.
Stalin was very satisfied with Hoxha’s performance. So Albania finally embraced the Soviet Union and received a lot of assistance.
For Albania, a small country, it seems good to live with the Soviet Union as the superpower.
However, the situation changed in 1953. Khrushchev came to power and fundamentally denied Stalin. This matter touched the scales of Hoxha.
Hoxha believed that the Soviet Union, which had abandoned Stalinism, was tantamount to betraying socialism. As a blind supporter of Stalinism, Hoxha frequently denounced Khrushchev in public.
At this time, we found that Albania was not loyal to the Soviet Union, but to Stalin. In this way, Hoxha offended the superpower Soviet Union.
Angry Khrushchev withdrew all material assistance, the Soviet Albanian relations were completely broken, and Albania once again became the poorest country in Europe.
Seeing the conflicts between Albania and the Soviet Union, the United States extended an olive branch. However, Hoxha did not give the United States any face at all, openly claiming that he would never have dealings with capitalist countries, which made the United States a boon and offended the superpower United States.
At the same time, Albania also gained a high light moment by offending the two superpowers.
At that time, because the United States and the Soviet Union were not friendly to China, China offered an olive branch to Albania. Albania recognized China and received a large amount of assistance.
At that time, China was not rich, but it still gave Albania a lot, from fighter planes (J-5, j-jiao-5 and J-6) to grain, from mechanical equipment to pesticides and fertilizers.
Since Albania has a small population, it can live without food and clothing only with China’s assistance.
Albania has also reciprocated China by playing an active role in China’s return to the United Nations. At that time, Albania could be called “Albania Railway”. The leader described the relationship between the two countries as “there are bosom friends in the sea, and the horizon is like a neighbor”.
However, in the face of the China issue, Albania has not escaped the stereotype of “self righteousness”.
Later, due to the ice breaking of Sino US relations and China’s reform and opening up, Huo looked at China and began to point fingers at China.
Due to Albania’s inability to put itself in a proper position, China Albania relations began to cool down and fell into a low ebb.
From these relations, we can see that Albania is a small country, and it also has the intention of finding a supporter. However, from Yugoslavia to the Soviet Union and then to China, it has gained a lot of benefits, but it has never put itself in a correct position. Hoxha, in particular, could not recognize himself at all many times, but he worked for a long time (until 1985).
After the end of the cold war, Albania also turned to the west, and joined NATO in 2009 to become an ally of the United States.
After learning about Albania’s behavior, we will explain its severance of diplomatic relations with Iran.
03 causal logic
Albania is a small country. Once it stands in which camp, it will jump high and attract attention.
As the relationship between the United States and Iran is not good, the relationship between Albania and Iran is also deteriorating after joining NATO. For example, the headquarters of the Iranian opposition “Iranian people’s Jihad Organization” is in Albania. The organization, with about 3000 people, is based in Albania and carries out various activities against Iran.
According to Iranian media reports, the “Iranian people’s Jihad Organization” often launches cyber attacks on Iran’s infrastructure. It is estimated that Iran will also counterattack, which is probably the reason why Albania claims to have suffered from Iran’s “cyber attack” this time.
In fact, as early as 2018 (the worst moment of us Iran relations in the trump era), Albania expelled many Iranian diplomats, including the Iranian ambassador. In early 2020, when the United States attacked suleymani, the Iranian leader, in addition to scolding the United States, claimed that “a small and insidious country” was also trying to overthrow the Iranian government (that is, Albania).
After Albania announced that it had severed diplomatic relations with Iran, the United States immediately expressed solidarity. “The United States strongly condemns Iran’s cyber attack on Albania, our NATO ally. We, like prime minister Rama, call on Iran to be responsible for this unprecedented cyber incident. The United States will take further action to hold Iran responsible for acts threatening the security of US allies and setting disturbing precedents in cyberspace.”
——What the United States said is really a bit of a thief shouting to catch a thief. The United States has definitely launched more and deeper cyber attacks on Iran.
On the other hand, the pressure from the United States alone is not enough to make Albania break diplomatic relations with Iran. There are more profound reasons for this.
Let’s review a little history again: the advantage of Albania’s subordination to the Ottoman is that it gradually occupied Kosovo, the prosperous place of the Serbs (after the defeat of the kingdom of Serbia, the Serbs moved to the north in large numbers). This foreshadowed the end of diplomatic relations with Iran.
Today’s Kosovo is mainly composed of Albanians.
Albania was also one of the potential beneficiaries of NATO’s bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
In other words, Albania is the main supporter of Kosovo.
Now the situation in Kosovo is tense again.
Before the Ukraine war, the West could support Kosovo against Serbia.
However, due to the war in Ukraine, the west is fighting with Russia to spare too much energy to help Kosovo for the time being.
Albania’s support alone is not enough to confront Serbia. We should know that Albania in history always received aid from other places and asked it to help others. It also has no strength.
Therefore, at this time, Albania needs to frantically make good to the United States and the European Union. In addition, Albania itself is also applying to join the EU, so it can only seize every opportunity to show kindness to the West.
Severing diplomatic ties with Iran is only one of Albania’s moves to show goodwill to the West. But to tell the truth, I’m afraid the effect of this move is limited. Now winter is coming, and the EU is facing an energy crisis.
For the EU, Iran is also one of the energy spare wheels.
At this time, it can only be said that Albania’s political wisdom is limited when it breaks diplomatic relations with Iran to show goodwill to the EU. On the other hand, Albania’s small size has been greatly aided by Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and China in history, and it can also become one of the poorest countries in Europe. This shows that Albania’s political wisdom is not very good.
Political wisdom may be common in large countries, but it is really scarce in small countries that lack cultural heritage.
Albania, it’s better not to be in such a hurry to be in the limelight. It’s the king’s way to continue to cultivate internal skills.
