As this excerpt from The Scotsman shows, our insane determination to create yet another Muslim bridgehead on the doorstep of Europe has led to an extremely strong Russian reaction. A verbal one, thank goodness. So far:
"The Kosovo precedent is a terrifying precedent," said Russian president Vladimir Putin, who lambasted the western nations that have recognised Kosovo.Judging from these statements from the very highest levels of the Russian government, it is by no means certain that UN recognition of an independent Kosovo is in the stars. If the EU or NATO "conflict with the United Nations," say the Russians, they "will proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force."
"It is breaking open the entire system of international relations that have prevailed not just for decades but for centuries. And it without a doubt will bring on itself an entire chain of unforeseen consequences. (Those who have recognised Kosovo] are miscalculating what they are doing. In the end, this is a stick with two ends and that other end will come back to knock them on the head."
That explosion followed inflammatory statements made by Russia's envoy to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, who warned the alliance against overstepping its mandate in Kosovo and made it clear Russia will stop recognition at the UN.
"If the European Union works out a single position or Nato goes beyond its current mandate in Kosovo, these organisations will conflict with the United Nations," said Rogozin.
"If that happens, Russia will proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force. (Nations that recognise Kosovo had made] a strategic mistake, similar to the invasion of Iraq.[1]"
What crystal ball reliably informs the Secretary of State that this can be dismissed as mere saber rattling? Does anyone think these guys are just kidding about "brute military force"?
What the Russians want is to be respected so far as their strategic interests are concerned, not just to see some abstract principle of international law vindicated in a not-so-out-of-the-way place. They have a strategic interest in upholding the principle that ethnic composition is not the sole determining factor of whether certain areas can declare themselves independent of the sovereign entity of which they are a part.
Condaleezza Rice, Secretary of State, reveals U.S. thinking on this question, as well as no small amount of fealty to complete nonsense:
QUESTION: The Kosovo talks seemed to not go terribly well the last round and I'm wondering if you would advise the Kosovars to put off any independence move until the diplomatic situation can be resolved a bit?Just how it will be "stabilizing" to the Balkans is not immediately clear to me, given that we are acting in such a way as to (1) enrage the Serbs and Russians, (2) leave the Serb-majority part of "Kosovo" subject to Albanian Serb terrorism, and (3) give encouragement to all Albanian dreams of Great Albania encompassing Albanian populations in Greece and Macedonia for starters.
SECRETARY RICE: I think we have -- the United States believes that after the Troika effort -- which I think was a very good faith effort and frankly, produced more than many of us thought it might because it got the parties talking to each other one last time [to try to get the Serbs to capitulate]. But that effort is at an end [because they wouldn't] and I -- over the next several weeks, it's going to be important to take decisions because not taking decisions about the status of Kosovo is not -- it will not be stabilizing for the Balkans. It'll be destabilizing for the Balkans.
And so we're working with -- very closely with our European allies. They are having a series of discussions within the European Union about a way forward [so we can stick it to the Christians in the Balkans]. They're also -- we're all trying to reach out to the Kosovars to make certain that they are attentive to the responsibilities that they would get from the Ahtisaari plan. ["Reaching out" will ensure the Albanians, in between destroying Christian churches and murdering Serbs, are "attentive" to those responsibilities."] And we're reaching out to the Serbs to make sure that they understand that there is a European perspective for them. [While I've got you all here, let me just ask how you Serb bastards like the European "perspective" that is dismembering your nation?]
But the fact is that Kosovo and Serbia are never going to be a part of the same state again. [We think this is the perfect case where we should expend a great deal of our political capital for nothing and risk serious Russian enmity to upset the stabilizing principle that borders are inviolate.] I think that's quite clear. [We're practically suicidal on this point.] It was the logic, really, even of [United Nations Security Council Irresolution] 1244 that the special status accorded Kosovo as a result of the war [would . . . ?]. And the important thing is for these two peoples to get on with their futures [as we mathed it out for them]. But we will be consulting very closely with the Europeans [to figure out how to pull this off]. We'll be working through it [to, please God Almighty, get us out of this untenable position Bill got us into if everyone will now just cooperate and shut . . . the . . . ___ . . . up]. We'll be talking to the Kosovars. [To prove to them that there are no lengths to which we will not go to ensure that there are now 53 Muslim-majority states instead of just 52.] We'll be talking to the Serbs. [To tell them to just kiss our grits if they don't like it.] And we will talk to all parties and this includes the Russians [to tell them what we're going to do], because it is really incumbent on all of us to make sure that we [sic] take actions in the Balkans that are stabilizing [as only we know how to define the term], that allow us to bring to an end the tragic chapters and the tragic circumstances of the . . . Balkan states [that exist nowhere else on earth] so that the European construction can finally be completed some 17 years after the end of the Cold War. [And believe me, I have no idea what "European construction" means either.] [2]
Does that sound like a foundation for stability to you?
And as always we see the celebration of talk: we've been talking to the parties, working closely with our European allies, having discussions with them over "ways forward," and talking to the Russians. It's all just nonsense about attempting to validate a pathetic exercise in one-of-a-kind diplomacy. "It's such a special case," doesn't seem to amuse the Russians much. U.S. foreign policy, with regiments of highly educated people in the State Department to backstop the decision makers with real, like, principles and legal precedents and stuff, comes down to "let's make an exception in this case."
And what is this "special status accorded Kosovo as a result of the war"? What "special status" gets accorded to a place because there's was a war there? Do Iraq and Afghanistan have the same kind of "special status"? Did Grenada and Panama acquire it as a result of our military intervention there? What is this seemingly new principle of international law? "Special Sauce," I heard of; "special status," I didn't.
Is this really a good idea? Is this unseemly contortion on our part all sanctified and sanitized by the supposed unique moral failings of the Serbs?
This Serbs-as-broke-the-mold bastards claim is simply not convincing. (Clue. Clue. Clue.)
The fact that the Serbs are considered one-off in the human depravity department is a strange state of affairs indeed. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were responsible for the deaths of million upon million of people but highly educated people in the West couldn't keep that simple fact in mind as took their measure of the U.S.S.R. and China. Rough estimate: 45,000,000 to 100,000,000 murders. The Serbs allegedly (and I do mean allegedly) kill under 3,000 people and it's the Polaris of U.S. policy toward Serbia. The "Let No Sparrow Fall" school of Realpolitik.
In the "angels fear to tread" department, if anyone were to say that it would be a great idea for us to go back to Vietnam for a rematch, people would say that person has lost his mind. But let George say "let's stir the pot in the Balkans," everyone thinks, "How reasonable."
Think about it. This is the Balkans. The B-A-L-K-A-N-S.
An Englishman once wrote about his five years in the French Foreign Legion. A friend of his, an officer in the British Army, remarked on the matter of troops' enjoying the pleasures of "the ville" on Saturday night. It never ceased to amaze him, he said, that some men would stick their most precious possession into places where he would not venture to insert the ferrule of his umbrella.
Such caution did not commend itself to the Boy Statesman, William Jefferson Clinton, alas, and into the historic Balkan swamp we jumped to right all wrongs and clarify all moral ambiguities.
Our desperation to get out at any cost now is obvious. You can tell we are when the Secretary of State of the United States of America says with a straight face that she welcomes "Kosovo's" commitment to "embrace multi-ethnicity as a fundamental principle of good governance."
This is Romper Room statescraft, friends.
What more perfect formula for hostility, suspicion, and communal violence can be found than to jam two different and mutually hostile peoples together — one of them Muslim — and then hand the police and military apparatus over to the Muslims?
And this is not to delve too deeply into the drugs, white slavery, and terrorism that can justly be laid at the feet of the current "Kosovar" leadership.
And, if "Kosovo" just has to be blithely peeled off and handed to the Muslims, do you think is there some tinnnnyyyy bit of fine tuning that could be done to avoid the invariably intractable problems of ethnic hostility? Apparently Ms. Rice has been unable to think of a minor adjustment in the new "nation" that could avoid a whole lot of heartburn, if not outright arson and murder. I speak of course of detaching the Serb-majority areas of "Kosovo" (for the moment) from Kosovo and expanding the boundary of Serbia around those areas.
But no such luck. To Bush and Rice there is something magic, something sacred about the borders of the new "Kosovo." While considering the interests of Serbia, these two see the borders of Serbia as being as flexible and soft as wet spaghetti. But . . . when considering the borders of "Kosovo," they see borders as eternal as two-foot-thick encircling Christo ramparts of titanium. Those borders must be inviolate. (This is for connoisseurs of irony.)
How shocking they must find the argument that the Albanians — who are being rewarded for their own terror and never ending migration into Kosovo — should also have to eat a few worms on the issue of the final borders of Kosovo.
To sum up, the formula for stabilization in this part of the Balkans is the following:
- celebrate multi-ethnicity as a fundamental principle of good governance;
- chant the mantra of discussions as the path to rationality, good will, and asset;
- make crazy unprincipled exceptions to time-honored international practice;
- treat international boundaries as elastic one day and sacrosanct the next;
- encourage Albanian dreams of Greater Albania;
- demonstrate yet one more time to the Muslims that we will fall over ourselves trying to please them;
- humiliate the Serbs by holding them all responsible for the actions of their 1999 leaders;
- give the Kosovo Albanians every last thing they could hope for as though they are free of any kind of past or present moral taint;
- reward KLA terrorists and organized crime;
- facilitate the entrance of drugs and jihadis into Europe; and
- alarm or infuriate the Greeks, Macedonians, Chinese, Spanish, Rumanians, nations of the African Union, Iraqis, Lebanese, Argentines, and the Russians.
And no need to sweat the Russian response, right? Who do those Russian clowns think they are anyway?
There are many Balkan realities of which I'm doubtless unaware. From what I read about how the experts are handling this, however, I see not one bit of evidence that Kosovo is a place where we should have gotten involved, where the risks are negligible, where we should play around with sophomoric solutions like this, or where we should put so many markers on the table.
This is a useless and dangerous waste of our political capital and a very great injustice to inflict on the Serbs. Now is the time to study history carefully and take care of people with whom we share a common culture and religious and philosophical heritage.
Also, take a look at the allegations of bribery that have been made against Mr. Ahtisaari, to whom Ms. Rice refers in her press conference. Consider, if these are true, the significance of who it was who paid him that money and the fact that his plan is an integral part of Mr. Bush's and Ms. Rice's "solution."
H/t to Julia Gorin for the 52/53 nations idea.
Notes
[1] "Battle lines drawn over Kosovo." By Dan Bilefsky, Scotsman.com, 2/24/08 (emphasis and link added).
[2] Press Conference by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Washington, DC, 12/21/07.
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