MSNBC, USA
Jan 13 2008

Balkan unrest remains a recipe for disaster

By Anatol Lieven
FT

In their dealings over Kosovo’s independence, the European Union and
Russia need to take their points of departure from reality and common
responsibility for the stability of the European continent, not from
legalism or self-righteousness.

The Russians must recognise that, whether they and the Serbs like it
or not, Kosovo will soon become independent and will be recognised as
such by the US, the EU and many Muslim states. If this is not granted
soon, the Kosovo Albanians will revolt.

By vetoing United Nations recognition and giving moral support to
Serbian intransigence, Russia can help keep Kosovo unstable and
spread in – stability across the region. In the worst case, it could
help produce a war that would destabilise not just the Balkans but
Europe and deal a terrible blow to Russia’s relations with the west;
but Moscow needs to ask itself how it can be in Russia’s interest to
do this and take actions that will drive western Europe closer to the
hardline anti-Russian positions in the US.

EU governments also need to recognise two realities. First, that just
as trying to keep Kosovo in Serbia would lead to Albanian revolt, so
too trying to force Mitrovica, the remaining Serbian area of Kosovo,
into an independent Albanian state would lead to Serbian revolt.
Given the de facto "ethnic cleansing" by Albanians since the Kosovo
war, to ask the Serbs to accept either Albanian or western guarantees
of their future safety is absurd.

There have been veiled threats from the Albanian side that if
Mitrovica is separated and joins Serbia, this will lead to revolt by
local Albanian minorities not just in Serbia proper but also in
Macedonia. To this there should be a very firm western response. The
EU and Nato have rested their moral right to hegemony in the Balkans
on the claim to guarantee stability and prevent conflict. They have
also given promises to defend the stability and territorial integrity
of Macedonia.

The other reality the west needs to recognise is that, just as it is
impossible to force Kosovo back into Serbia, so it is impossible to
force Abkhazia and South Ossetia into Georgia. Quite apart from the
backing of Moscow and co-ethnics in the Russian north Caucasus for
these republics, it should be obvious from recent history that their
indigenous peoples can no more trust the Georgian state than Kosovo
Albanians can trust the Serbian state.

Kosovo’s independence will inevitably have repercussions for the
Georgian separatist regions and Nagorno- Karabakh and Trans Dnestr.
For the west to say Kosovo is a unique case is empty, given the
obvious parallels.

To resolve these issues and restore elementary consistency to its own
position, the west does not need to recognise Abkhaz and South
Ossetian independence – something for which Moscow is in any case not
asking, given the obvious lessons for some of Russia’s own restive
minorities.

Rather, the west should extend to these republics the same solution
that leading western countries have sought for nearby
Nagorno-Karabakh (though so far without success): namely a "common
state", in which Azerbaijan – or, in this case, Georgia – will retain
de jure sovereignty, and therefore the theoretical possibility of
future reunification by consent, while formally acceding to de facto
independence, including most notably, full control over local armed
forces and external borders. In all these cases, as in Kosovo, this
would have to be accompanied by limited partitions, in which certain
regions (such as Mitrovica, or the ethnically Georgian Gali and Svan
districts of Abkhazia) would remain with the former sovereign.

Before they go any further with their existing policies, the big
powers should remember this: the catastrophic first world war began
with a dispute over the status of Bosnia-Herzegovina, an area of no
interest to the vast majority of the Europeans who died.

The risk today from the Balkans and Caucasian conflicts is far less –
but none of the territories concerned is worth any serious risk to
the international system. What is more, the governments of 1914 could
not imagine the dreadful use to which Hitler and Stalin would put the
consequences of the first world war. Today, we do not have that
excuse. We know very well the uses to which Osama bin Laden and his
Chechen allies would put a serious clash between the west and Russia.

The writer is a professor at King’s College London and a senior
fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington. His book, Ethical
Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World, co-authored with
John Hulsman, has just been published in paperback by Vintage