Whether or not Serbs and Albanians could work out a “peace of the brave”, in mutual respect, has been reduced to an academic question by US meddling. Some ten years ago, a few people in Europe were ready to try that peaceful method. Danielle Mitterrand, the wife of the French President, sponsored round table talks in Paris between respected Albanian and Serb intellectuals. Such initiatives never enjoyed the support of the United States, which preferred to promote Albanian gangsters and Serbian flatterers — both eager for the favors of the NATO.
The United States and its “International Community” have done everything to preclude an accord based on mutual respect. The inevitable result is mutual hatred.
It used to be that conquerors grabbed the top spots but left certain essential structures in place, such as police and courts, so as to keep order. The humanitarian conquerors are different: in Kosovo they abolish the police and courts as tainted by whoever it is they overthrew, and attempt to start from scratch. The result is chaos: large-scale chaos in Iraq and small-scale chaos in Kosovo. The province is known as a hub of drug trafficking, transit for prostitutes bought and sold from desperately poor Eastern European areas, notably Moldova, and various other forms of illegal trade. Trash
accumulates uncollected. The local police and courts are described as corrupt and indulgent toward the criminal activities of their Albanian brothers, and neither NATO nor the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) are able to bring order.
In the midst of this mess, the United States operates the huge, self-contained strategic military base, Camp Bondsteel, that it built the moment US forces entered Kosovo — the very symbol of the autistic empire. Revolution could happen in Cuba, but the US military hung onto Guantanamo. Never mind what happens in Kosovo, Bondsteel can remain.
Other, less protected occupiers are more nervous. Already, in March 2004, some of them clashed with huge Albanian mobs that went on a rampage against Serbs and Serbian churches. Everyone knows that this could easily happen again, on a larger scale, and it will be very embarrassing to have to shoot at “the victims” in NATO’s Manichean reality show.
Emissaries of the IC have announced that Serbia “lost its right to govern Kosovo” because of Milosevic’s treatment of the province. But what gave the United States and its satellites the right to dispose of it as they see fit? The answer: 78 days of NATO bombing of Serbian bridges, homes, factories, schools and hospitals, brought to an end when the faithful IC emissary Ahtisaari conveyed to Milosevic the message that if he did not give in, Belgrade would be razed to the ground.
Many Serbs might agree that the burden of trying to govern a violently hostile Albanian population would be too much for Serbia. Perhaps more than Kosovo, Serbs want to keep their sense of honor. Their whole nation has been slandered for close to twenty years by enemies intent on grabbing off pieces of the former Yugoslavia for themselves, on the pretext that they were “oppressed” by the Serbs. In their (successful) effort to curry favor with Western Great Powers, a number of Serbian politicians and journalists have eagerly spread lies about their own country in order to demonstrate that “we are better than Milosevic”. The most significant of these lies is that the Albanians of Kosovo had to be rescued by NATO because they were “threatened with genocide” – a “genocide” no more real than the “weapons of mass destruction” that served as pretext for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The Kosovo issue has been used to punish and humiliate Serbia in a way that no nation could be expected to accept. Serbia cannot resist Great Power dictates, but it can refuse to endorse them. This is not “nationalism” but elementary dignity.
I find it a sad irony that America supports Kosovo’s right of secession while on the other hand has a long established precedent that states cannot secede from the Union. (Texas v. White for starters)
So, the US recognizes a state’s right to secede from a country, so long as it’s not a state of the US. Replace Kosovo with Vermont and we’d see a much different response, I’m sure.
Oh, of course. The hypocrisy is abundant on both sides of the Atlantic. I very much doubt the Brits would countance Northern Ireland voting itself free, nor do I think France would happily see Martinique go their own way.
“Self-determination” is right up there along with “freedom” in the Bullshit Lip Service Department each state proudly operates
