The Current Discussion: Are the U.S. and Europe right to recognize Kosovo and continue to poke Russia with a stick?
The U.S. and European policies on Kosovo and the Balkans have been rare in seeking to protect and stabilize the region. While the idea of independent countries being carved out of the former Yugoslavia is difficult to swallow for federal-minded observers, the fact remains that the ethnic cleansing of the region resulted in the need for a comprehensive solution. Though some may argue that U.S. and European self-interest might well be driving their policy there can be no denying that in Kosovo and others in the Balkans, it was the right thing to do. If there is to be a triumph of U.S. policy, then this is clearly it.
Indeed, Russia would feel that such acts are a poke at its own influence in the region but the current environment indicates that it is highly unlikely that the Russians can do much about it. The U.S. and Europe, along with a number of other countries, are entirely right in their recognition of the new state of Kosovo. Having intervened in the region the U.S. and their European allies have little choice about anything other than bringing stability to Russia's backyard, something the Russians might well want to welcome rather than see as a threat.
Skeptics will question U.S. motives in the region and perhaps ask why a similar approach has not been encouraged in other locations where U.S. policy seems to be bogged down. Iraq and Afghanistan are clearly flash points in this regard and it would be fair to say U.S. policies seem to have failed in finding transitions that are sustainable and more importantly acceptable to the people. In the case of Kosovo one cannot assume that the recognition of Kosovo was designed to 'poke' the Russians with a stick but reflect the realities of the negotiations that were conducted in the spirit of Security Council Resolution 1244. What was surprising, and something the Russians would not have liked, is that the UN Envoy's draft proposal for 'supervised independence', which seemed to have more consensus that any other solutions, was abandoned by the U.S. and Europe on July 20, 2007 and Kosovar independence was consider more unilaterally rather than as a staged approach. When in August an attempt from a 'troika' of negotiators from the European Union, U.S. and Russia tried an alternative which would be accept to Pristina and Belgrade, its progress, while painfully slow, was aimed at a consensus. The departure from this approach, and the declaration of Independence so soon after the Serbian election (Feb. 4), suggest an urgency on the part of the U.S. and Europe to solve this problem.
The hesitancy of some countries in recognizing Kosovo is not because they don't want to, but more because they want to be cautious in dealing with Serb and Russian views on the subject, especially as Resolution 1244 never called for Kosovo sovereign independence but for a staged process to self government within the existing sovereign status of Yugoslavia and now within the context of Serbia. With the end of the war in 1999, it’s not easy to assume that the tensions between the Kosovo Albanians (who are 92% of the population) and the Serbs will just evaporate. While Russia will insist that law must prevail, based on ethnic considerations Kosovo needed to be independent. But then this is a precedent that is politically hard to follow for the U.S. Does this mean that the Kurds can declare independence from both Iraq and Turkey? What about the Tajiks in the North of Afghanistan? A dangerous game indeed, but for the moment Kosovo independence was the right thing to do.
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