[R-G] Johnstone: The Next Kosovo War

[Anthony Fenton]

December 12, 2007
Dreaming of Diplomacy, Waiting for War
The Next Kosovo War
http://counterpunch.org/johnstone12122007.html
By DIANA JOHNSTONE

The United States and its European allies have announced that  
diplomacy has failed to solve the Kosovo problem. When diplomacy  
fails, that means war. Especially in so serious a matter as  
unilaterally declaring the independence of a part of another  
country's territory.

But the next Kosovo war is supposed to be such a small, muted,  
insignificant war that nobody will notice. NATO is occupying the  
potential battlefield with over 16,000 men, backed by air power, and  
is poised, it says, to "avoid violence". The overwhelming military  
advantage of NATO may indeed prevent any eventual violence from  
reaching the status of a "war". The confidence that comes of wielding  
decisive military force has allowed the United States and its NATO  
allies to pursue a policy that normally would be a sure-fire formula  
for war.

War results when the opposing parties have totally conflicting views  
of reality. The Albanians and Serbs have totally opposing views of  
the very history of the disputed province of Kosovo. The role of  
diplomacy is to take such conflicting views of reality into account.  
It means avoiding pushing one party to a dispute into a humiliating  
corner. It involves seeking to promote mutual respect and  
understanding, at least enough to accept compromise.

Instead, the United States, followed by its irresponsible European  
allies, has from the start endorsed the extreme Albanian nationalist  
view, treating Serbia as a "rogue state" that does not deserve the  
normal protection of international law. Washington has orchestrated  
two rounds of totally sham "negotiations", whose conclusions it  
dictated from the start, on behalf of its Albanian clients. The first  
round took place at Rambouillet, leading to the 1999 NATO bombing of  
Serbia and occupation of Kosovo. The second round took place this  
year, leading to what could be another, more muted but longer,  
unpredictable conflict.

Long and short sham negotiations

At the end of the 1990s, the Clinton administration was not really  
concerned with solving the Kosovo problem. It wanted to solve its own  
NATO problem. Its NATO problem was this: What is the use of this  
military alliance, now that the Communist bloc, which it was created  
to deter, no longer exists? To preserve NATO, a new raison d'être had  
to be found. This was "humanitarian intervention". From now on, NATO  
would exist in order to rescue oppressed minorities in foreign  
countries--especially those with some geostrategic or economic value,  
of course. The deep-rooted Kosovo conflict between the Serbian State  
and an Albanian secessionist movement, marked by spasmodic violence  
on both sides, provided the experimental terrain for this new policy.  
The Kosovo problem was proclaimed to be a crisis, requiring  
international intervention, only weeks before NATO's 50th anniversary  
meeting, when this U.S.-designed policy was officially adopted.

To provide a casus belli, the Clinton administration orchestrated  
sham negotiations at the French château in Rambouillet. The U.S.  
abruptly promoted Hashim Thaqi, the head of the armed "Kosovo  
Liberation Army", to head the Kosovo Albanian delegation, shoving  
aside more reputable Albanian leaders such as Ibrahim Rugova. No  
direct encounters between the Serbian and Albanian delegations were  
even allowed. Both were ordered to accept a comprehensive plan  
drafted by the United States, allowing for NATO occupation of Kosovo.  
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright bullied Thaqi into reluctantly  
accepting the ultimatum, with back-stage assurances that he would  
eventually get his own "independent Kosova". The Serbs had agreed to  
the principle of autonomy of Kosovo, and their parliament had drafted  
a proposal--totally ignored at Rambouillet. But the Serbian  
delegation rejected the ultimatum, which included an annex that would  
have allowed NATO occupation of the whole of Serbia. This rejection  
was the result Ms Albright sought. On the pretext that Serbia had  
"refused to negotiate", NATO could wage its victorious little  
"humanitarian" war.

This year, the world has been provided with the spectacle of much  
more prolonged sham negotiations. For weeks and months, the West's  
semi-official media have put out "news" reports that the negotiations  
to settle the Kosovo problem were not getting anywhere. This was not  
news because the negotiations were framed in such a way that they  
could not possibly succeed.

"The Serbian and Albanian sides can't agree", the pseudo-diplomats  
say of their pseudo-diplomacy. They mean, the Serbian side has not  
agreed to the Albanian demand for an independent Kosovo. This was the  
only proposal with U.S. support. It amounted to yet another ultimatum  
to the Serbs. The Albanians knew they had the support of the United  
States and NATO, who are occupying Kosovo militarily. They had no  
incentive to bargain. They could just wait for the negotiations to  
fail, sure they would be given what they want by occupying Great Powers.

Russia supports diplomacy and international law

The West is putting the blame for this failure on Vladimir Putin. The  
servile press is puffing up Putin's status as the latest world class  
bad guy, motivated by "power" and a perverse desire to annoy the  
virtuous Americans. Since the Americans back the Albanian demand for  
independence, the Russians, out of contrariness, back the Serbian  
position.

This is not exactly accurate. The Serbian position is to offer very  
comprehensive autonomy to Kosovo, a self-government just short of  
formal independence. The Russian position is to be ready to support  
any agreement reached between the two sides.

Western reporters and commentators refuse to grasp what this means.  
It means that the Russians are insisting on genuine negotiations,  
between the two parties, the Serbian government and Kosovo Albanian  
separatists. They are not saying what the outcome of such genuine  
negotiations would be. They might reach some sort of compromise  
providing for some sort of independence. The point is that such an  
agreement, reached by both parties, would be legal under  
international law. Independence proclaimed unilaterally by Kosovo  
Albanians, without negotiated agreement with Serbia, would constitute  
a clear violation of international law. Russian Foreign Minister  
Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly warned that a unilateral proclamation of  
independence could provoke further interethnic violence in the region  
and set a dangerous precedent for many other countries with ethnic  
minorities.

In the level of principles, the contrast is not between the U.S.  
backing Albanian Kosovo independence and Russia backing Serbia. It is  
between Russia backing diplomacy and the United States backing force.

A "NATO State"

But how much "independence" will Kosovo really enjoy? In private,  
European governments know that Kosovo is not a viable independent  
state. This has been demonstrated during eight years of international  
protectorate. Kosovo's economy is almost entirely dependent on  
remittances from emigrés to their families, international aid  
(including Saudia Arabian mosque building projects) and flourishing  
crime (drug and sex trafficking in particular).

Since official international endorsement of unilateral Serbian guilt  
has made reconciliation between Serb and Albanian inhabitants  
impossible, NATO forces, under the guise of the European Union, are  
expected to stay on "to protect the human rights of minorities". In  
terms of security, the "independent" Kosovo will be a NATO satellite.  
Formal independence from Serbia, following eight years of de facto  
independence from Serbia, will do nothing to improve the miserable  
state of the economy. The huge number of unemployed young Albanians  
like to hope independence will bring jobs and prosperity. But it is  
hard to see how closed borders with a hostile Serbia will do more for  
Kosovo's economy than decades of preferential Yugoslav development  
funds. Some sources of income may even diminish, notably foreign aid,  
as "humanitarian" NGOs move elsewhere. Even foreign remittances may  
be cut back if certain European governments decide to send their  
Albanian guest workers back to their "liberated" homeland. Only  
organized crime seems certain to prosper.

Last August, as the long round of sham negotiations got underway,  
Slobodan Samardzic, the Serbian minister for Kosovo, said that a  
Kosovo state created with the U.S. support "would only serve the  
interests of America and the local mafia clans." Samardzic belongs to  
the younger, pro-Western generation that tended to attribute the  
West's hostility to Serbia to Slobodan Milosevic. But Milosevic has  
been gone for years, and Western policy remains unchanged.

Samardzic said that NATO plans to make Kosovo virtually its own  
territory, "a satellite, an army barracks state on foreign  
territory". The main source of power in Kosovo would be the huge U.S.  
military base, Camp Bondsteel, built immediately after NATO occupied  
the territory in June 1999, without asking permission from anyone.

As the latest round of sham negotiations ended, Serbian prime  
minister Vojislav Kostunica said events prove that the real reason  
NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 was in order to conquer Kosovo as a "NATO  
puppet state".

And what has Serbia been offered in return for loss of its historic  
territory? Merely a vague suggestion that, if it behaves, it may  
eventually obtain EU membership. In short, in return for losing  
sovereignty over Kosovo, it may be allowed to give up more of its  
sovereignty to the European Union. But even this is a hazy prospect.

It is quite possible that Serbia could manage better economically  
without Kosovo, which was always the poorest and least developed part  
of Yugoslavia, despite massive development funds from the rest of the  
country. But Serbia's reasons for wanting to retain Kosovo are not  
economic, but moral. The West has refused to take these into account,  
brushing them all aside with the single argument that Serbia "lost  
its right" to the territory because of Milosevic's repression of  
Albanian separatists. More realistically, NATO "won its right" to  
dispose of Kosovo by bombing Serbia. The Western argument comes down  
to might makes right, or rather, superior might makes right.

Serbia's case

The Serbian reasons to reject Kosovo's secession are legal and moral:

1. International law. Even after NATO bombed Serbia into allowing  
Kosovo to be occupied, its sovereignty over the province was  
officially confirmed under international law. As the one-sided war  
ended, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1244  
which reaffirmed "the commitment of all Member States to the  
sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia  
is the successor State. Resolution 1244, which remains the existing  
basis for the legal status of Kosovo, also speaks of "substantial  
autonomy and meaningful self-administration"--which is what Serbia  
has agreed to and proposed. It does not speak of independence.

What has Serbia done since the fall of Milosevic to merit worse  
treatment than was prescribed in 1999?

2. The impossibility of abandoning the Serbian minority to almost  
certain persecution and expulsion. Nor can Serbia abandon its  
historic monuments, the precious medieval monasteries of Decani,  
Gracanica, Pec and many others.

3. The deep, truly painful sense of injustice and humiliation at the  
manner in which the Great Powers are orchestrating the amputation of  
this most cherished part of Serbia's historic territory. Serbs are  
blamed for something they never did, something even Milosevic never  
did: the attempted "genocide" or at least "expulsion" of Albanians  
from Kosovo. This is no more than wartime propaganda, which by now is  
probably believed by most Albanians, since the Great Powers endorse  
it. The official line, criminalizing Serbia, echoed daily by more or  
less ignorant, but well-coached, editorialists and commentators,  
heaps unbearable insult on injury. Sometimes insult is harder to take  
than injury.

This last reason, which may be the strongest of all, is virtually  
invisible to Americans and Europeans who have swallowed whole the  
official line of wicked Serbs persecuting innocent Albanians, in  
willful ignorance of the complexities of history and culture of the  
region.

If these perfectly legitimate Serb concerns were taken into  
consideration, patient diplomacy could in all probability achieve a  
compromise settlement that would differ from the initial negotiating  
positions of both sides, but which, with international guarantees and  
incentives, could satisfy at least part of the demands of both sides.

Dreaming of what might have been

Even after the disaster of NATO bombing and occupation of Kosovo made  
the situation far worse, by exacerbating hostility between the  
Albanian and Serbian communities to the boiling point, diplomacy  
might have been able to play a constructive role. That would simply  
require a bit of good will and constructive imagination--qualities to  
which current U.S. leaders do not even aspire, preferring to rely on  
the iron fist.

Let us imagine that the United States had not managed to subvert the  
peace-making functions of international organizations such as the  
OSCE and the United Nations. Let us imagine the existence of a real  
"international community", which could give serious backing to  
diplomatic efforts to find a compromise solution for Kosovo. Instead  
of uniting a "Troika" made up of the United States, the European  
Union and Russia, let us suppose that India, China and Brazil could  
appoint a group of diplomats, for instance, former ambassadors to  
Yugoslavia (including, perhaps, both the former East and West German  
ambassadors to pre-disintegration Yugoslavia, former Canadian  
ambassador James Bissett and former British ambassador Ivor Roberts,  
as well as former ambassadors from non-European countries) to  
facilitate open-ended negotiations between Serbs and Albanians. There  
would be no preconditions except one: the negotiations would last  
until the two parties agreed to a compromise solution.

My own personal belief is that genuine, patient negotiations could  
arrive at some sort of overall agreement involving border changes and  
partition, as well as some sort of union between the secessionist  
Albanian part of Kosovo and Albania itself. The arguments for such a  
solution are overwhelming, and have been stated most convincingly by  
Dobrica Cosic, Serbia's most distinguished novelist and a former  
President of Yugoslavia, well before the Kosovo problem exploded into  
armed conflict in 1998-99.

It is true that both the Albanian and Serbian sides reject partition,  
more or less vehemently. But that is natural at the start of  
negotiations. The Albanians adamantly demand all of Kosovo within its  
present borders. This demand is supported by the United States, which  
also insists that there be no union between Kosovo and Albania. This  
is the point on which some compromise could be worked out.

Serbia's position has been to offer a degree of autonomy that would  
in fact be tantamount to total internal independence. This is  
understandable as a bargaining position, but it is hard to see how it  
would be favorable to Serbia itself. Serbia would risk bearing a  
financial burden for a territory over which it exercises no control.

On the other hand, the Albanians' expectations for independence, and  
most of all, the hatred they foster for Serbia, makes a return to  
Serbian rule impossible in practical terms. Moreover, Serbia has one  
of Europe's lowest birth rates, while Kosovo Albanians have the  
highest. After being outnumbered by Albanians in Kosovo, Serbs might  
eventually be outnumbered by Albanians in Serbia.

The welfare of both Serbs and Albanians could be ensured best by an  
overall agreement to end the hostilities between the two populations,  
something that clearly has not been accomplished in eight years of  
U.N.-NATO protectorate. This should involve some territorial  
rearrangements, as well as economic and cultural agreements between  
the parties concerned. Neighboring countries should also be brought  
into the negotiations. Agreements should be made on the basis of  
practical realities, not on presumptions of "guilt" and "innocence".

Finally, identity needs to be detached from particular territories  
and particular events. Future generations of Serbs and Albanians must  
be able to live their lives freed from the burdens of past  
resentments and ancestral vendettas.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and  
Western Delusions, Monthly Review Press. She can be reached at  
diana.josto at yahoo.fr