Kosovo’s false independence
by Brenda Kay • Mar 4th, 2008 at 3:14 pm •
I know it’s hard for many of you to pay attention to things happening in the Balkans with this fascinating election season, but whoever gets elected will absolutely have to deal with Kosovo’s recent independence and Serbia’s resulting fury.
Andrew Mason at the DI kindly allowed me the opportunity to do this guest column on Kosovo, and why their recently declared [and acknowledged by Western powers] independence is unfair, historically absurd and without a doubt the precursor to yet more international instability.
Comment by Brian on 4 March 2008 at 4:17 pm:
Hey, awesome. Funnily enough, I’ve been meaning to ask you your thoughts on this. And skimming through the comments on the DI, I can see you’ve stirred up some trouble.
I think you probably come down a little too hard on Kosovo - it’s not like there is no basis in international law for states to establish themselves as independent, and the historical peculiarities in Yugoslavia, along with Milosevic’s behavior, allow them to make a decent case.
But at the same time, I agree that the United States and most of the EU has been way too cavalier about all this, and that we need to more seriously consider the precedent we’re setting by recognizing Kosovo. I would have liked to see a more prominent expression that this is a very particularized set of circumstances that doesn’t apply to the Basques or the Kurds or the Chechnyans and so on.
It’s a prickly situation, though, and good to hear your thoughts on it.
Comment by Brenda Kay on 5 March 2008 at 3:57 pm:
Brian,
I was attempting to come down less on Kosovo and more on the Western powers who’ve enabled this behavior. If I were a Kosovar, I’m sure I would want the big bad US to swoop in and save the day too, but that doesn’t mean the US/EU should acquiesce.
I also don’t think Milosevic’s decade of tyranny erases over 1000 years of Serbia’s right to this area. You’re right that it’s not hard to find *some* basis for self-determination in this manner, and yeah, Yugoslavia is peculiar, to say the least. But the grievances of the Kosovars are quite recent in the spectrum of history and just because the demography of a region changes so significantly over one century does not therefore imply the rightful secession of that region.
The problem in saying this is a special set of circumstances is that it’s really hard to draw the line at what isn’t a special set of circumstances. Most of the other provinces who are fighting for this right now could make at least as good a case as Kosovo [which wasn't even set apart as an autonomous province until after WWII], but since Taiwan, South Ossetia, Basque were never able to drum up the support to be a trendy international cause the way Kosovo managed to in the 90s, the world will continue to ignore them. Furthermore, Serbia is significantly easier to bully than China, Russia, Spain.
Almost every person with whom I’ve spoken on this matter knows nothing about Kosovo and doesn’t care to but it matters. It’s another example of US/EU interventionism, soon to be another failed example of said interventionism. It has implications for the debate concerning the increasing friction between Muslim and Wester/Christian countries. International norms and practices are realigning as globalization shifts our world but the increases in technology have done nothing to facilitate increases in understanding or compromise. This is just a bad path to go down and I’m certain the region is more unstable than before.