Kosovo declares independence
Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia over the weekend. This is has been in the works for some time. Already, the US, France, Britain, and several other European nations have recognized Kosovo’s independence. The US has been supportive of the Ahtisaari Plan.
For me, the most interesting consequence of this will be how Russia reacts. Russia has long been a Serbian ally, and has been opposed to Kosovo independence from the get-go. Here is a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry:
On February 17, Kosovo’s Provisional Institutions of Self-Government declared a unilateral proclamation of independence of the province, thus violating the sovereignty of the Republic of Serbia, the Charter of the United Nations, UNSCR 1244, the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, Kosovo’s Constitutional Framework and the high-level Contact Group accords. Russia fully supports the reaction of the Serbian leadership to the events in Kosovo and its just demands to restore the territorial integrity of the country.
We expect the UN Mission in Kosovo and NATO-led Kosovo Force will take immediate action to fulfill their mandates as authorized by the Security Council, including voiding the decisions of Pristina’s self-governing institutions and adopting severe administrative measures against them. Russia calls for the immediate convocation of an emergency UN Security Council meeting to examine the situation and take resolute and effective measures for a return to the political settlement process in accordance with the provisions of UNSCR 1244.
It is impossible not to be aware that the decisions by the Kosovo leadership create the risk of an escalation of tension and inter-ethnic violence in the province and of new conflict in the Balkans. The international community should respond responsibly to this challenge. Those who are considering supporting separatism should understand what dangerous consequences their actions threaten to have for world order, international stability and the authority of the UN Security Council’s decisions that took decades to build.
Russia has threatened that if the West supports independence for Kosovo, it might make mischief by supporting independence in other breakawy regions such as Transdniestr, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, regions of Moldovo and Georgia that have ties to Russia. Indeed, there are already rumblings along these lines. (And these certainly aren’t the only regions on the world that might want to break away from their parent nation.)
The chairman of the breakaway Transdniester region of Moldova, Yevgeny Shevchuk, said: “We believe that a new era started and a new system of international relations was formed the moment part of a country, based on a series of historical developments, decided to live independently, and this country can gain recognition.”
Eduard Kokoity, the leader of Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia, said he intended to petition the United Nations and the CIS for independence from Georgia, arguing that his separatist enclave had “a stronger case” for statehood than Kosovo.
Abkhazia intends to ask Russia to recognize its sovereignty, the president of the de facto independent Georgian republic said on Monday.
Asked whether Abkhazia intended to address Russia on the issue of independence in the wake of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of sovereignty on Sunday, Sergei Bagapsh told journalists: “Yes, we do.”
Also, the Kosovo issue has loomed over the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azerbaijani government is quite opposed to Kosovo being used as a precedent for N-K, which is in Azerbaijan but has a largely Armenian population.
Where things get interesting is if Russia pushes for independence for these regions, what about places like Chechnya. Could they use a Kosovo precedent pushed by Russia to declare independence themselves from Russia? One rather doubts Russia would be just as accepting of a Kosovo precedent in those cases.
Here’s some reactions from around the blogosphere.
Yesterday, thousands of ethnic Albanians were celebrating their independence in the Kosovar capital Pristina, shouting “KLA! KLA!” and waving American flags alongside the Albanian and the new Kosovar national flag. Is America now in league with al-Qa’eda and the Albanian mafia? What is the point of fighting Islamism in Iraq while at the same time one creates a free haven for Islamists on the European continent?
It’s a beautiful place, by the way. Green valleys nestled in the mountains, white stucco chalets with red tile roofs down lanes of poplars, lovely when the tiles aren’t collapsed into the house and the stucco blackened by ethnic cleansing operations. Along with both selective and indiscriminate killing, one of the primary Balkan ethnic cleansing tactics is house burning. Drive them out. In the afternoons, sometimes you’d see a column of grayish smoke rising across town. Go to check it out, ask the locals what’s happening, they’d say it’s a Serb’s house, or an Alb collaborator’s house, someone set it on fire. I asked a Kosovar kid, when he was a refugee in New England, what was the strangest thing you saw here? “Houses made of vood!”
John Bolton said yesterday that an Independent Kosovo will endanger the stability in the Balkans once more.
Still, It will be interesting to see how the Democratic candidates respond to this–given that it was a Democratic president that began our commitment in Kosovo (How would Ned Lamont have responded for that matter, given that the only mention I can find at the Daily Kos is “Serbia is not thrilled.”) Will they summon the courage to acknowledge that the Bush administration–maybe, just maybe–did something right? Don’t hold your breath.
Spain should indeed be worried about Kosovo’s example. There were slightly more than fifty nations at the end of the Second World War. Since then, decolonization and separatism have increased the number of states to 193, 194, or 195—depending on who is doing the counting. Today, the process of division continues. Kosovo, for example, is the sixth state to be formed from Yugoslavia. So the Russians are right to be concerned about separatist movements in Chechnya and Dagestan and the Chinese with minorities in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia.
I’ll quote what smart people have said before me. If Kosovo is to be a precedent, the new norm arising out of this precedent could sound like this. If a specific area is taken under international administration for almost a decade, a new state may come into being in that area, but not on the grounds of ethnic self-determination, and without a fully independent status, under international oversight. Because that is what the Kosovo precedent could also mean. One could say that’s what it has to be – if one were to pretend thinking exclusively in terms of precedents and not politics.
Finally, here’s a bit of video from Reuters.
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