Do you think it is a sui generis event or the dawn of a new era in International Relations?

On 17 February 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence. Whereas Serbia strongly refused to recognize it, the US and some EU Member States did. In our last online poll, you were 58.8% to consider that accepting the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo could constitute a threat to stability. Why? Although the EU will try to speak with one voice, not all EU Member States have recognized the independence of Kosovo. And Russia did not either. Why? These countries, like many others from the European and international communities fear the domino effect Kosovo’s independence could have. Contrasting with the “good luck” wishes from French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Czech President Vaclav Klaus confided "some parties in other states could realise that they do not feel completely at ease within a big state as they are now" (EurActiv, 18 February 2008). Back in March 2007, one could read in the headlines: “Indépendance du Kosovo, une bombe à retardement” – Independence of Kosovo, a time bomb (Le Monde diplomatique, March 2007, pp. 6-7) and in December: “A declaration of independence – or war?” (The Independent, 7 December 2008).

What about the domino effect inside and outside of the EU? May this fuel secessionsist movements around the world?  Not far from the EU, some, together with Russia, have already warned about the separatist tensions in the Southern Caucasus. The leftist Members of the European Parliament expressed: “We urge the leaders of the European Union not to lightly create a dangerous precedent: from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Macedonia and Montenegro; from Moldavia to Georgia and Azerbaijan; from Cyprus to Romania and even Spain, the risks of destabilisation are countless. Do not open this Pandora's Box!" (EurActiv, 18 February 2008)

International organisations are also questioned. Sergueï Bagapch, President of the Separatist Georgian Republic of Abkhazia, exclaimed “There are no bad nations nor bad countries. Yet, there are bad international organisations which […] create impredictable situations.” (in Izvestia, reported in Le Courrier International, 28 February 2008).

The fundamental question is: Is Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence a sui generis event or are we witnessing the beginning of a new era in International Relations leading to the potential balkanization of the world? - Kosovo is Serbia protest in Vienna, Austria on 24 February 2008 -

Some interesting background articles:

• "An independence foretold - and a foregone conclusion" by Antonio Missiroli, at the European Policy Center, 4 March 2008
• “Europe split on Kosovo independence”on EurActiv, 28 February 2008, available in EN, FR, DE
  on the history behind Kosovo’s independence, National Geographic News published an interesting article: “Why Kosovo’s Independence Is Far From Over”, 21 February 2008
• “Die südkaukasische Bredouille” in Die Zeit online, 18 February 2008
• “Independence for Kosovo” by Charles A. Kupchan in Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005

A double-edge sword 

Gaining independence is always a medal with two sides- a good one for those gaining independence and bad one for those losing a part of their territory or sovereignty. Kosovo is not an exception. But what is specific in this case is that Kosovo’s independence can negatively affect the rest of the region. It has already caused unrests in Bosnia and Herzegovina and rumors about separation of the Republic of Srpska. This part of the Balkans has always been a very shaky ground and any change like this one can be a cause of a new crisis.

There have been too many conflicts in the recent history and people want progress and heading towards the future; they are fed up with feeling insecure and afraid of a new conflict. Hopefully, Kosovo’s independence will not be a trigger for other separatists’ tendencies that exist across Europe and this issue will be solved in the best possible way for all the parties involved. Tatjana, Bosnia and Herzegovina

After standoff, stasis?

The cost of Kosovo's independence is the permanent embitterment of its Serb minority. When the tears of joy and despair dry, a fresh diplomatic solution will be needed. After a decade of waiting and months of intense maneuvering, Kosovo's assembly unilaterally declared independence on the afternoon of 17 February 2008. The capital Pristina lit up with celebratory fireworks, reflecting the mood of the Kosovar Albanians who form 90% of the population. The United StatesUnited States, FranceFrance and BritainBritain recognised or announced their intention to recognise the new state on the day after the declaration, and a number of European Union countries will follow. But there are forces adamantly against independence: most immediately, the Serbs living in enclaves within Kosovo where they form a majority, notably around the northern town of Mitrovica; Serbia, which to no one's surprise has declared the assembly's move null and void; and Russia, which is pressuring the United Nations to reject Kosovo's statehood (and which will use its Security Council veto to block Kosovo's membership of the UN).

This bitter dispute is the price of the unilateral path Kosovo's authorities felt compelled to take - even though unilateral independence was nobody's preference. On the first day of this new political reality it is worth asking: how did matters reach this point, and what happens now?  

The cost of delay

Kosovo's status was supposed to be decided through a negotiated political process. In the first years of the international protectorate following the war of March-June 1999 which led to the removal of Serbian forces from Kosovo, little was done to move beyond strengthening interim institutions. But then the UN's dithering slogan of "standards before status" (i.e., reforms before independence) exploded in deadly communal riots in March 2004, when many Serbian sites were targeted in coordinated attacks and nineteen people killed on both sides. From that point, a new urgency gripped the western powers supporting the UN mission, impelled by the fear that war might break out if fed-up Albanians did not get statehood.

A new process of negotiations between Serbian and Kosovar representatives , however, led nowhere, as there was no common ground between Albanians' insistence on independence and SerbiaSerbia's insistence that independence was the one thing Kosovo couldn't have. Still, at the beginning of 2007, the USUS and European policy establishment confidently assumed that Kosovo's endgame was in place: under UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan, the Serbian province would be independent by summer. There was speculation about RussiaRussia's price for going along - a deal on missile defence? - but that RussiaRussia had a price was not questioned.

Unfortunately, no one checked with MoscowMoscow, which threatened to veto any deal not acceptable to both sides; this stymied western insistence that the only option was what would, after all, be partition of a sovereign state. At the time, US diplomats were so busy announcing that RussiaRussia had no real interest in Kosovo that they forgot to notice: AmericaAmerica doesn't either. The Balkans - an obsession under Bill Clinton's presidency in the 1990s - are today peripheral to President Bush's war on terror; USUS commitment to Kosovo has been running on fumes. RussiaRussia's, on the other hand, has been running on oil (which, at nearly $100 a barrel, buys a lot of commitment). RussiaRussia has played its resourceful hand skillfully, yet political and diplomatic realities meant that ultimately it has had no way to forestall the unilateral option.

This may look like a diplomatic defeat for RussiaRussia, yet it is likely to leave AmericaAmerica and (most of) EuropeEurope unhappy about the high price they may have to pay for their commitment to support Kosovo. For example, Russia will now exploit the "precedent of partition" to give even more open support to the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia which have broken with Georgia only to become Moscow's effective clients. Moreover, unilateralism will lock Serbia and Kosovo in tense conflict; an embittered Serbia's normalisation could be delayed for a generation, foreshadowing instability in the region and derailing reform in neighbouring Bosnia, whose Serbs view events in Kosovo as bolstering their own claims to reverse the progressive surrender of power to the central government.

Even apart from these external costs, independence will not solve the deep structural contradictions within Kosovo. In fact, independence changes very little: the highly qualified form of statehood Kosovo has accepted will leave it under international supervision. The biggest difference might be that it will get a lot darker: Kosovo gets its electricity from SerbiaSerbia.

This points to a problem independence will make worse, or at least clearer. It's one thing for Kosovo to declare its independence, quite another to actually enforce its authority. The Serb-populated north of Kosovo does not recognise Pristina. Western diplomats hope to slowly draw local Serb institutions - which are funded by Belgrade - into accepting the new state, but that will take years, assuming the Serbs even stay.  

The northern option

It is not evident that western governments' current decisions and preferences will help resolve these issues, nor indeed why they should be trying this hard. There are strong arguments for a different stance towards Kosovo: that while Kosovo's Albanians richly deserve independence, there is no good reason the Serb north must be drawn into the new state. On the contrary, allowing it to remain part of SerbiaSerbia would have three concrete benefits.

First, it would give SerbiaSerbia something in exchange for acquiescing in Kosovo's independence. At present, Serbia has no incentive to accept Kosovo's fait accompli: it has already lost the province, and the remaining Serbs (around half of whom live in the Mitrovica area, and half in enclaves dotted around the rest of Kosovo) have extensive protective guarantees - so why should it surrender its formal claim? But if in return SerbiaSerbia could recover the north - more accurately, get recognised title back, since BelgradeBelgrade already exercises more control there than does Pristina - it would have an incentive.

Second, it would simplify the governance of Kosovo. The Ahtisaari plan calls for an incredibly decentralised and fragile model of governance, and the only reason it does this is to placate the Serbs. With the largest, most radicalised Serb area (and the Serbs' only urban centre) no longer part of the state, the remaining Serb minority would be spread out among isolated rural pockets that are more reconciled to living in an Albanian-majority state. For the Albanians, that would make governance simpler - not easy, just easier than the nearly impossible task set for them under Ahtisaari.

Third, there is a humanitarian argument for limiting what is, in effect, the partition of SerbiaSerbia. The reason the leading western states are supporting Kosovo's independence is because Albanians should not have to live under a regime that oppressed them. But if western intervention is protective, why should it extend to areas and people who (like the Serbs in northern Kosovo) neither need nor want such protection?

Kosovo's Albanians deserve to escape their constitutional limbo, but does that require hewing precisely to boundaries Tito drew in 1945, even if that means denationalising 100,000 Serbs? The latter were not subjected to BelgradeBelgrade's policy of ethnic cleansing during the wars of the 1990s; they would prefer to stay citizens of SerbiaSerbia - and to stay in their homes. The west's current policy may sooner or later force them to choose; indeed, there is a possibility that, within a few months or a year after independence, the entire remaining Serb population will have left. It may even be that officials in the USUS state department and European foreign ministries are fully aware of this risk, and simply view it as acceptable. What kind of victory would that be?  

A time to rethink

It's late to be imagining alternatives, but therefore all the more necessary: the current deadlock arose in part because from the outset, the leading players in the international community have refused to consider anything but an all-Kosovo solution. That lack of creative diplomacy has cut off real options - and closed minds to the reality that even though independence is necessary and right, it doesn't solve Kosovo's problems. The root of the conflict is territorial, but the minds that have to be changed are not only in the Balkans, but in BrusselsBrussels and Wshington. Some European diplomats did float the idea of border adjustments, but an Atlanticist orthodoxy rules out territorial revision and with it the possibility of compromise. Yet the lack of a viable plan for the Serb areas just exposes the vacuum at the heart of western policy: even with independence, the best outcome is the status quo of international protection, modelled on Bosnia. But that is no resolution - it's barely a policy - and without one there will be at best a Cypriot-style paralysis, at worst renewed violence. A decade's delay in resolving Kosovo's "final status", followed by the late haste in forcing a decision, mean that time is short. The next opportunity for the supporters of Kosovo's independence to consider their own interests and those of people in the region will come after the moment of recognition. At some stage, the US and Europe will have to come around to the idea that limited border adjustments could ensure that Albanians achieve the full independence they deserve while allowing as many Serbs as possible to remain in the country to which they feel allegiance.

Conflict is not inevitable, and chaos does not keep to schedule. But the same is true of agreement, and neither Kosovo's declaration nor western recognition will solve the territorial dispute inside Kosovo. In the larger perspective of the last decade, the current predicament represents the tail end of a crisis rooted in two overlapping national projects, but whose timing was determined by arbitrary deadlines and a panicked rush from "standards to status". Kosovo's Albanians have finally made their move, and today they are celebrating in Pristina. But after the last firework, they will recognise how little has really changed, how much real work there is to do - and how, if the potential for further conflict is realised, more than fireworks may light up the sky.

The recognition of Kosovo's independence by the United StatesUnited States and many European Union countries is now inevitable, and welcome, but the real question is what these states do next. Until they muster the political courage and imagination to confront the territorial and human dilemma at the heart of this conflict, Kosovo Albanians may find, when their day of joy is over, that they have a new and bitter slogan: after standoff, stasis. Christoforos Pavlakis, Greece

Kosovo's independence: Consequences we have to deal with

Kosovo is the newest independent country in the world. That is the fact we all have to face. On the other hand, it brings us all consequences we have to deal with. From my point of view, the case of Kosovo cannot be identified with all the other separatist movements in the world, because it has its own specific history. During the past it always had special status in Serbia until Milosevic came and took everything from the people from Kosovo. In my opinion, it is his entire fault. Unfortunately now all the people in Serbia have to pay the price for that part of them that was supporting Milosevic and his bad politics.

Concerning other countries in the world and their separatist movements, though I can begin with my own country and so called Republic of Srpska, I don’t think that Kosovo’s independence would and should be the turning point for the future. Because it would lead probably to new conflicts, wars, destructions, and deaths. We all had enough of it. And I think that Europe has grown up and rose above enough not to let this happen. At least I hope… Selma Mezetovic, Bosnia and Herezgovina

A new born in Europe, a new born in the world...

It has been a long way for Kosovo to have the Independence. It is an achievement for that country and a progress on European and global context, like it was the Independence of Montenegro. I am from Albania and I am really pleased about that, not because I am a nationalist, but because I strongly believe that it is time for Balkan countries to start cohabiting and collaborating together. There is a concern for the future of this new country regarding its development and progress. I believe that it will be a cost for the European Union on economical aspect as it will be needed a lot of support for Kosovo to grow up as a country economically and politically. But I see positive the achievement of European policies on a human rights perspective.

On my personal point of view, the meaning of Independence of Kosovo for the future is an investment on respecting human rights and democracy of the nations, especially the small ones. It is an example of supporting objectively the historical justice, but I believe that there are also many reasons that demonstrate that Kosovo's journey to Europe will be a long one. The most important for its future is the development in all aspects. Marsida Cela, Albania 

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