Yuri Kim, the American Ambassador who gave birth to Albanian skepticism towards the US

Alfred Lela

No matter when she leaves, in January or June, Yuri Kim will not be remembered for the day she arrived or the month she left. She will be remembered, whenever it is written about the US ambassadors in Albania, their role, influence, and silhouette in Albanian politics, as the diplomat in total animosity with the opposition and 'in bed with the government, in the years when the latter controlled almost 100 percent of power in the country.

This may not be read and understood as anything, but in a country with the specifics of Albania, among which the American predominance in public opinion, the status of a hybrid democracy and the world order, which from 2008 onwards has shifted, if only a little, from Western liberalism and is currently on Search mode, is vital.

Coming under a limelight of which she had heard of but did not know intimately, Mrs. Kim imposed a harshness that, in a country still embedded with (Jungian) codes of masculinity, even coming from a representative of the country with “the biggest dick" in the global arena, in a military and financial sense, is confronted with over two thousand years of civilization… or lack thereof.

Surprisingly, she kept this masculine delineation with the opposition, while with the 'power guys' she was seen as feminine and warm, almost with a kind of coquetry. She knocked on the opposition's doors and came out storming a language of mayhem.  

To the other side, Madame Ambassador extended laurels. In the time spent with the shuttle diplomacy between the two main camps, she was persistently engaged in the formation and strengthening of what was called the 'new opposition', a hodgepodge of characters, the likes of which Mrs. Kim, surely, has encountered in cartoon pages of American newspapers.

Her Manchurian candidates, of the new opposition, failed in 2021, and this should have been enough for a diplomat to not enter the arena of the Albanian elections. Unrelentless in the bail given to the losers and non-representatives, the ambassador has sewn up a schism that has emerged from the Democratic Party, people with mandates but without constituencies, all to enhance the new brand new opposition. Even on March 6 of this year, she publicly supported the candidates of this schism, calling on Albanians to vote for them and not for "those others". We know the results, but we don't see the lessons learned from them in the ambassador's narrative.

The concern here is not with the individual Yuri Kim, but with the ambassador of the United States of America.

Even after knowing that (American) ambassadors are attached to the government of the host country, and also have the main contacts and rapports with it; also that they protect the interests of their country; that they see Albania as a small ally (that deserves the carrot but also the stick), that they are in a country where they are idolized, et cetera, Mrs. Kim bulldozed into the house that has a flag on top, but unfinished floors.

Paradoxically, instead of building, if not a floor, at least a porch in the house of Albania, it acted like the earthquake of November 26, 2020: it scared a part of the Albanians and moved further into the deadly abyss of the empire.

What will her legacy be? The fact that she is leaving as an enemy of both political sides may be a good sign for some. In fact, it is the mark of someone who did not know how to interpret American politics in the most pro-American country in the world. If many other countries hold Ameri-skepticism as a badge of honor, this is not the case with Albania.

The question that remains, in the end, is: to whom is this Ameri-skepticism owed?