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Serbia is threatening to intervene in Kosovo if
its parliament votes to create an army. NATO is backing Belgrade.
This is ridiculous. The Alliance should be telling
Belgrade to stuff it. NATO-led forces in Kosovo should be put on
alert to underline the point.
Kosovo has been without an army since the 1999
NATO intervention that saved it from Serbian President Milosevic’s
efforts to reduce its Albanian population by force and its 2008
declaration of independence. NATO has provided the country’s
territorial defense, though it governs itself and has been
recognized as sovereign by about 110 countries.
Pristina now wants to convert its security forces,
which are only lightly armed, into an army. The US, UK and NATO have
been thoroughly consulted. The process will take 10 years or more.
If NATO forces are ever to be removed from Kosovo and sent on to
higher priority missions, the country will have to have the means to
defend itself at least for a few days. NATO should be supporting
those who want to lighten its burdens, not those who threaten
aggression.
Belgrade’s agenda has nothing to do with any
threat from a Kosovo army, which is non-existent, now and in the
future. What Serbia is trying to do is deprive Pristina of one of
the vital elements of sovereignty. It is also trying to find an
excuse to intervene and occupy the Serb-majority portion of Kosovo’s
north, where organized crime figures aligned with Belgrade’s ruling
authorities reign supreme.
NATO backing for these objectives is a serious
mistake. So too is Europe’s refusal to give Kosovo a visa waiver
program, despite its assiduous and successful efforts to meet the
criteria that the European Commission set. Citing domestic political
pressures, France and others are saying Kosovo will need to wait
until at least 2020. While the EU has consistently lowered the bar
for Serbia’s progress on its EU agenda, Brussels seems determined to
raise the bar for Kosovo.
Kosovo makes its mistakes too. The 100% tariffs it
recently imposed on Serbian imports is a violation of its
international obligations under the Central European Free Trade
Agreement (CEFTA), so far as I can tell. But that mistake will be
corrected through the normal CEFTA process. The NATO and EU mistakes
are far harder to correct and will leave serious scars on their
relationship with an admittedly small country with no near-term
prospects of accession.
But that is precisely the reason the EU and NATO
should rethink what they are doing. Kosovo as much as Serbia needs
Euro-Atlantic prospects if the two countries are to escape the
negative spiral they are currently locked in. A visa waiver program
for Kosovo, a strong NATO warning to Serbia, initiation under NATO
guidance of the evolution of its security forces into an army
designed mainly for international deployments, and an end to
prohibitive tariffs on Serbian goods are the medicine that can cure
the current fever.
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