For the Love of Kosovo: "Let’s Kick Some Putin Ass"
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For the Love of Kosovo: Let’s Kick Some Putin Ass
By John Laughland
Created 2008-02-20 17:46
On Tuesday morning, 19th February, a man called the Foreign Office in London to express his opposition to London’s decision to recognise Kosovo as an independent state. He was surprised to be put through immediately to the Kosova desk, where an official took the call – just hours after the British envoy in Pristina had been to the government of the newly independent province to present his credentials. He delivered his protest but in vain. The official already had the official arguments well rehearsed, and indeed they were presented to the public on the radio on Monday morning, the day after the proclamation of independence, by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband.
Britain’s position is that United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, passed in June 1999 after NATO ceased its bombardment of Yugoslavia, is silent about the eventual nature of a settlement over Kosovo and that, since negotiations over such a settlement broke down, it is now time to move on to something else. This argument is a lie. UN Security Council Resolution 1244 not once but three time reaffirms “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” and Serbia is the successor state to Yugoslavia in international law.
The resolution is therefore not silent about the independence of Kosovo: it explicitly rejects it. Moreover, the resolution contains within it references to Yugoslavia’s agreement to the terms laid down in it (substantial autonomy for Kosovo) and that agreement would never have been obtained without the guarantees of her sovereignty.
We should not be surprised by this lying. We know how the British government was prepared to lie about the meaning of United Nations Security Council Resolutions over Iraq: it stated, both in March 2003 and in December 1998 (when Operation Desert Fox was launched, a bombardment of Iraq which lasted several days) that Iraq’s failure to fulfil the terms of resolutions voted in the aftermath of the First Iraq War authorised the use of force. In fact, as anyone can see who reads the actual texts, the resolutions did nothing of the kind since none of them linked the use of force to disarmament. (Force was authorised only to repel Iraqi forces from Kuwait.)
But what the anecdote about the man at the Foreign Office shows is that the British government hit the ground running when Kosovo proclaimed independence on Sunday. News reports beforehand, which trailed the announcement for days and weeks in advance, said that everything had been carefully choreographed, and so it proved. The Western powers (especially the United States) had told the Albanians in Kosovo in advance that their independence would be recognised when they proclaimed it.
It was because the Albanians knew this that they had no interest in negotiating with Belgrade. The negotiations which did take place throughout 2007 were just for show; the Kosovo Albanians and their patrons in Washington were in fact aiming at independence all along. It is because the role of America was crucial that the Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Koštunica – whom everyone feted as a democrat when he overthrew Slobodan Milošević in 2000 but who is now dismissed as “a nationalist” – specifically attacked Washington for pursuing Kosovo independence for its own “military” motives. It was also for this reason that the streets of Priština were awash with American flags on Sunday night.
(Note the poster saying, in English, “USA kick some Putin Ass. Serbia Burn in Hell Forever”. You have to go pretty far in the world to find people who still like George W. Bush, but they do exist in Kosovo and Rwanda, where Bush went the day after the declaration.)
The secession of Kosovo from Serbia seems to bring to an end the long break-up of Yugoslavia. Since the overthrow of Milošević in 2000, one former Yugoslav republic, Montenegro, and one autonomous region within a republic, Kosovo, have seceded, following the lead set by Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1991-1992. There are plenty of Albanians in other parts of Serbia, including in the Preševo Valley, where they are very much in the majority, and there are plenty in Western Macedonia too: maybe they will also agitate for independence now.
But what the events of last Sunday remind us is that the West had micro-managed the break-up of this country created at Versailles ever since the troubles started in the summer of 1991. At every stage, the EU and the Americans have held the hands of the various Yugoslav leaders. The EU talked out of both sides of its mouth as it brokered a series of agreements between the Yugoslav republics, from the Brioni agreement signed in July 1991, while simultaneously telling the secessionist states that they could rely on recognition if they declared independence. Croatia and Slovenia duly obtained it, under German pressure, at the Maastricht summit in December 1991. As with Kosovo in 2008, support from the international community was the crucial factor in pushing these states to act as they did. It encouraged the secessionists to look outside of Yugoslavia, and it effectively stamped on any chance that the institutions of the Yugoslav state might produce a solution. In particular, the US ambassador, Warren Zimmerman, pushed the Muslim president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović, to rescind his signature on the Cutileiro agreement of 18 March 1992 to which he and the Croats and Serbs had agreed.
This decision, and the concomitant insistence by the West that Bosnia remained united as a state, was directly responsible for the fact that the Bosnian war was so protracted. Bosnia had been elevated by Yugo-nostalgics and their allies in the West to the level of an icon of multiculturalism, and it became a symbol for the sort of post-national future which Europe wanted for itself and the whole world. Yet the insistence that it be maintained as a state was absurd in view of the fact that the West was also supporting the break-up of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. This basic incoherence in Western policy meant that the Bosnian civil war lasted for three years, whereas if Bosnia had been allowed to fall apart, as it should have been once Yugoslavia itself was destroyed, it might have ended in a few months. Tens of thousands of Bosnians died for multiculturalism, just as millions died for Bolshevism.
At no stage, however, has the West’s role in the break-up of Yugoslavia ever been critically examined, still less admitted. On the contrary, the “narrative” (to use a trendy expression) peddled in the West is that the West’s interventions are well-meaning and high-minded, stymied only by the atavistic nationalism of the people on the ground (mainly the Serbs). This narrative continues to be peddled by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which prosecutes only crimes committed by citizens of the former Yugoslavia and whitewashes those committed by NATO.
Western policy in the Balkans is the political equivalent of Münchhausen’s Syndrome by proxy. The only difference is that it actual inflicts physical pain on the patient (as opposed to simulating it) with a view to then being able to present itself as the carer. Like an arsonist who sets fire to a building in order to then come and heroically put it out, the West’s policy in the Balkans is the result of a special pathology, the desire to be loved. And as with individuals who suffer from this disorder, the result is that it is hated.
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For the Love of Kosovo: Let’s Kick Some Putin Ass | The Brussels Journal
This comment below the article was priceless. I wish the US had more amateur diplomats like him posting on the Brussels Journal.
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Typical European view of international law
Submitted by Rob the Ugly American on Thu, 2008-02-21 02:57.
is that it means whatever they want to believe. Generally, when someone claims that international law definitively says something, they usually don't know what they're talking about.
First, the boundaries are not well-defined, especially when it comes to international relations or war, as opposed to contract law and trade, where you have a body to arbitrate disputes in the WTO. International law is literally the easiest body of law to come up with contrary opinions or interpretations, because it so ill-defined.
Second, it's questionable whether international law as the author wants to define it is law at all (this is probably blasphemy to many Europeans). Consider the jurisprudence 101 definition of law: an order or rule that must be both enforced and enforceable. If an order or rule fails either prongs of the definition of law, it cannot be law. Can one seriously claim that the orders or rules that originate from the UNSC (or the UN in general) are both enforced and enforceable more often than not, much less all the time?
And yes, sadly, many Western Europeans favor Putin over Bush. But many Europeans also believed that communism and fascism were going to bring them to the promised land (and God forbid you should upset your energy supplier), but many Americans are still waiting for Europeans to get their heads out of their asses when it comes to their political beliefs. (Or, at least, to stop trying to bring about a 2nd Holocaust by supporting Iran's nuclear weapons programs; sadly, the two biggest European sponsors of Iran's nuclear weapons program are Germany and Austria; considering their history toward the Jews, it's reasonable to ask whether Europeans are capable of learning...)
And, in the end, of course, the joke's on you; in 10 months, Bush will be gone, and Putin will still be around indefinitely, commanding Europeans to bend over so he can kick their ass. And when he does that, try calling your lawyer and see how well
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Thursday, February 21st, 2008
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