By PHK
The diplomatic impasse in the Balkans over Kosovo predicted last summer will soon be upon us. Did anyone really think that a breakthrough would occur when the negotiations between recalcitrant Serbs and equally recalcitrant Kosovars resumed last August – this time under senior EU diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger - over the future status of the fiercely contested region in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula?
Not as far as I know
Will Kosovo again burst into flames if and when the newly elected Kosovar government declares independence as many predict after December 10, the deadline that ends the current stalemated talks, arrives? And then what?
In 1991 when Yugoslavia was fast on its way to becoming the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, US Secretary of State James Baker proclaimed that the US did not have "a dog in that fight." Not long after, wars broke out between Serbs and Slovenes, Serbs and Croats and Serbs and Bosnians as the country broke apart. The Serbian fight with the Slovenes lasted less than a week, but the other struggles were bitterer and far longer lasting. The Europeans at the time had neither the military force nor the will to separate the protagonists effectively.
The Germans and the Austrians recognized Slovenian and Croatian independence several months before the US did and have been blamed ever since for instigating Yugoslavia’s violent unraveling. From what I remember at the time, however, the tinderbox that was Yugoslavia under ultra-Serb nationalist Slobodan Milosevic would have exploded regardless.
Also, from what I remember, the US went out of its way to find a peaceful solution to the recognition issue. The George H. W. Bush administration had no interest in opening this Pandora’s Box. Finally when it did recognize Slovenian and Croatian independence in March 1992 followed in April by recognition of the more problematic Bosnian bid, it did so but reluctantly. By that time Baker was gone from State and Lawrence Eagleburger, a career US diplomat who had served in Belgrade early in his career and if anything saw Yugoslavia through Serbian eyes, was instrumental in that fateful decision. But was there a real alternative? I don’t think so.
As for the Soviet Union, that then spinning apart behemoth, was far too preoccupied with its own future existence and loss of empire to care – or at least do anything about the trouble in the Balkans. Although this had changed by 1999 when the Russian Federation came to Milosevic’s defense for strategic reasons but then ultimately backed down when then President Yeltsin outmaneuvered and replaced Yevgeniy Primakov, his hardline anti-western foreign minister.
That was then and this is now
Is the Serbian government foremost Russia’s surrogate and Kosovo’s that of the US as Humphrey Hawksley of the BBC argued recently? Is this to become another violent skirmish between two small surrogates – pre-Cold War style – in the heart of the Balkans?
Should the international community be worried about potential Albanian irredentism and the possible formation of a “greater Albania” as some have argued, or is this another canard thrown up by the Serbs and their allies to impede the continued, and perhaps, finale of the disintegration of Yugoslavia that began in 1991?
Or wouldn’t - when all is said and done – it be better if the Kosovars relinquished their claims to independence and agreed to join the EU as a part of Serbia because, after all, EU integration mechanisms support substantial regional autonomy making sovereignty increasingly irrelevant while providing entry into a tremendously successful free market that almost guarantees its members wealth, prosperity and subsidies at levels never seen before in the former Yugoslavia? Shouldn’t that be sufficient to meet both protagonists’ needs?
The offer might be persuasive to both Serbs and the Kosovars - although I have my doubts given the virulence of ethnically based nationalism in the Balkans which began in the wake of the French Revolution – but if the EU is to play the membership card successfully, it needs to do so far more astutely than it did with its sadly botched attempt over Cyprus.
Another Move in the Balkan Disintegration Game?
I would be surprised to see the U.S. object to such a settlement in the end. Even the Bush administration can’t be so obtuse as to oppose it - but I could also see the administration support an independent Kosova as a part of a move in a grander Balkan chess game that pits the Putin government at the other end of the board. If recognition of the province's independence is to happen, will the EU, the US and the Kosovars be able to coordinate such a move that will “give NATO time to renew its 15,000-strong troop presence in the province and . . . give a new EU civil and judicial mission in Kosovo time to take over from the existing UN administration” as reported in The Financial Times?
Actually, I wonder, however, more about the Russians. What’s in it for the Russian Federation if Kosovo becomes independent or if Serbia joins the EU?
Right now, Serbia is Russia’s primary surrogate in Europe. I can’t think of another country on the continent that comes as close to being a client state. Would the Russians attempt to block Serbian acceptance of an EU membership offer if it were to be made and would the Serbs prefer to live in semi-isolation from its European neighbors with a faltering economy propped up primarily by Russian oil and gas? Or would a Serbian EU membership be useful to the Russians too since Russians have reportedly been on a buying spree of Serbian firms – as a back way into the European market?
Or will the Russians play a different card? Would, for instance, the Russians attempt to use a “grudging” acceptance of an independent Kosovo as a precedent for pressing for recognition of an independent Trans-Dniestr hived off from Moldova and/or an Abkhazia separate from Georgia?
In the end, how flexible is the Russian position, how wedded is it to its Serbian bride, and if and when a Kosovar declaration of independence comes well before Christmas, will strong enough institutions be in place to stave off an eruption of yet another seemingly endless round of violence in this still troubled corner of Southeast Europe?