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I have been trying to avoid wasting time
commenting on the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies call for
partition of Kosovo in its ill-considered report ironically entitled
“West Side Story.” But the partition idea never seems to die. Last
week’s “fake news, wishful thinking” is the latest example of the
Belgrade press spinning up the idea. And more than one friend has
suggested to me in private that there must be something cooking.
The CEAS report is a transparent effort to make
the West more palatable to Serbian President Vucic by suggesting
NATO might lead an effort to give him northern Kosovo as
compensation for normalizing relations with Pristina. It fails not
only as a strategic concept but also on the merits.
CEAS proposes “adjustment” of what it considers
the administrative boundary with Kosovo to incorporate Northern
Mitrovica, Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavic into Serbia, without
any exchange for Albanian populated communities in southern Serbia.
This comes (and here I have to quote because the assertion makes no
sense at all)
…as a consequence of the opinion that
neither the West itself nor the UN have managed to clearly determine
the exact amount of punishment Serbia should sustain for the crimes
of Milosevic’s regime in Kosovo…
So far as the West of which I am a part is
concerned, the independence of Kosovo has nothing to do with
punishment for Milosevic’s crimes. The proper venue for that was the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where
Milosevic unfortunately died before the expected guilty verdict was
delivered.
Serbia after the war with NATO had every
opportunity to try to “make unity attractive” (in the Sudanese
phrase) to Kosovo Albanians in anticipation of the decision on final
status foreseen in UN Security Council resolution 1244. It failed to
do anything whatsoever in that direction, and even adopted a new
constitution by not counting Kosovo Albanians on the voters rolls,
because if they were counted the requirement that 50% of voters come
to the polls could not be realized. I won’t pretend Serbia would
likely have been successful in convincing Kosovo’s Albanians that
they could return safely to Serbian sovereignty. The important fact
is that Belgrade after Milosevic never even tried.
After proposing its idea of uncompensated
territorial partition, described as one among “small concessions to
authorities in Belgrade,” CEAS is still vague about what Kosovo
would get in return. It
…could possibly facilitate the process of
achieving a comprehensive agreement on the normalization of Serbia’s
relations with Kosovo…
It doesn’t get much airier than that, and the
subsequent argument against Putin being able to use this
“correction” as an argument helping him to justify the annexation of
Crimea is unintelligible. The fact is he would use it, just as he
has used Kosovo as justification for what he did in the first place.
Later in the report there is mention of a possible
“community of Albanian municipalities in southern Serbia.” That’s
rich, since Belgrade has not regarded such a community of Serbian
municipalities in Kosovo as sufficient for full normalization of
relations. Why would Albanians accept something Serbs have found
inadequate, especially as it is something they haven’t asked for?
The CEAS report simply ignores the obvious
geopolitical risks involved in its partition proposal, claiming they
are “low.” It offers no discussion of
the likelihood that Republika Srpska would try to
follow northern Kosovo into Serbia or declare independence,
the possibility that Albanian nationalists would
take the opportunity to try to chase Serbs from south of the Ibar
river and thereby create conditions for a greater Kosovo or greater
Albania,
the implications in Georgia for South Ossetia and
Abkhazia or in Moldova for Transnistria,
the consequences for Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk
in Ukraine,
I could go further afield to Iraqi Kurdistan and
Tibet, but that’s enough to show why NATO would not want to consider
the West Side Story proposition as anything but an effort to butter
up Vucic. It is a sign of the weakness and desperation of pro-NATO
advocates in Serbia that they come up with this poorly thought
through proposal. So let me help them out:
Only sovereigns can cede territory. Serbia would
have to recognize and establish diplomatic relations with Kosovo
before Pristina could negotiate any change in the border. This is
something Presidents Vucic and Thaci understand. Pristina would not
agree without getting the Albanian communities in southern Serbia in
exchange. Any partition, with or without exchange, would put at risk
the Serb communities and religious sites south of the Ibar. Those
countries that have recognized Kosovo would oppose such an exchange,
because of the risk to Serb communities and religious sites as well
the irredentist implications for Bosnia, Albania, and Macedonia as
well as Russian aggression in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
But we don’t have to go there, because that’s
where we already are. West Side Story is shameful effort to enlist
NATO in a proposal that would benefit Russia, deprive NATO of
cohesion, and reduce the Balkans as well as several countries beyond
once again to ethnic nationalist chaos. No thanks.
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