[Marcus Marulus]

And, as far as Kosovo is concerned, the whole Kosovo military action in 1999 was one of the classical examples of the international banditry of USA-UK, in the glorious tradition that started with the Opium Wars (1839) and has been going on until the day of today. Kosovo Albanians were not the stake in the whole game, but it was about blackmailing Serbia to dance along the tunes played by the Western powers and to detach itself from the Russian influence. Kosovo Albanians were just means to achieve an end, not the purpose itself of the whole military adventure.

One must not forget that Slobodan Milošević wasn't always considered villain by the "West". In the period between 1995 (Dayton Agreement that brought peace, but also shaped the present-day inviable Bosnia) and 1998 (beginning of the Kosovo crisis) Milošević was hailed by the West as the biggest peace-maker and a constructive element in the Balkans. Serbia was courted by the West, it was promised that she would become part of the euro-atlantic integrations, on conditions that she accepts the modern Western rules of the play and changes her internal policy in order to please the criteria of the human rights and similar. Milošević understood all this courtship and lurings as an unacceptable meddling with the internal affairs of his country and declined to comply wuth the Western demands, and rightfully so, in my opinion.

Then, in 1998, the so-called Kosovo insurgency started (KLA) and the pressure was repeatedly exerted on Milošević to accept foreign troops into his country, which he always staunchly refused, clinging to the "old-fashioned" idea of the national sovereignity. It was after this categorical refusal that he once again became the "butcher of the Balkans" in the eyes of the "international community" (whatever that means) and of the Western media.

You all know what ensued: the bombing campaign and the forceful occupation of the province (1999), which was put under the UN protectorate, with NATO troops securing it militarily, with one of the biggest US military bases in Europe (Bondsteel) established there.

I personally don't believe in the "independence" of Kosovo. Even if something like that would ever be enforced, you know what kind of independence it will be. A laughing stock that will erode the very notion of independence in general. Anyway, the independence of too many Eastern European post-Communist countries is a highly problematic and questionable category (due to the political elites of those countries giving up all sovereignity and trading it for some imagined protection by the USA), but this would be an extreme example, unseen so far.

But I don't believe it will be enforced. The issue of the status of Kosovo is, in my opinion, just a means to blackmail Serbia. The message is: lest you don't play by our rules, we will take Kosovo from you. A kind of eternal threat. There are attempts of the USA to make Serbia their most reliable ally in the Balkans, a puppet state, but Serbs are still unwilling to accept that role and that's why this comedy with Kosovo lasts for so much time.