It's always a treat to get in a real policy throwdown with Larison, especially over a disgruntled, high-profile statelet. En garde:
As for the exceptional nature of Kosovo, I respectfully submit to my learned colleague [moi] that its situation is all together too typical of the post-Cold War period. The independence of Eritrea springs to mind as a good example of a case where the rest of the world unwisely said, “Oh, what’s the harm? There will be one more independent nation to enrich the display of flags on First Avenue! What could go wrong?” Tens of thousands of Eritrean-Ethiopian war dead later, Eritrean independence doesn’t seem like a very bright idea. As the two states’ recent fishing in troubled Somali waters shows, recognising the independence of a state that will inevitably be a persistent rival and enemy of a neighbour is a good way to make sure that there are more regional conflicts and crises rather than fewer.
This graf is as good an entrypoint as any onto the uncharacteristic series of errors and omissions with which Daniel tries to argue Kosovo from coming into existence as an Independent State. Because he is so rarely wrong, forgive me if I try to score as many points as one can. For starters, I'm stunned to see the death of tens of thousands of foreigners caught up in an internecine battle billed by Larison as something suspiciously close to the concern of us Americans. One would have thought that whether or not it was a "bright idea" for Eritrea to secede made as much difference to foreign governments including ours, in terms of judgment, as whether or not Finland were a part of Russia or Slovakia a Sovereign Nation. Wars might always be lamentable, but what business is it of any good paleocon's to tell Eritreans what and what not's the smart stopping point for national satisfaction?
But the issue of course is broader than Bolivia Syndrome in Addis Ababa. Larison recognizes that the "base precedent" that Kosovo "would" set has already been set by East Timor, but declares nonetheless that
This is the sort of real danger that independence for territories or provinces of existing states has for international stability: the recent success of small, basically non-viable states to become independent will encourage more of the same in that country’s own region.
There's a distinction to be drawn between cases where this is really true and cases where it's only national stability that's on the line. The pedantic point could be scored that secession always creates an "international" situation, at least until resolved, but the point is that the nightmare scenario of Something Kosovolike Happening to Kashmir and Something Kosovolike Happening to Kosovo are cut from quite different cloths. I say this advisedly: the Serbs may truly be unwilling to go down in this regard without a fight, and however much the US owes Kosovo stand-up support for independence, the US does not owe Kosovo another war, and only a fool would want to start a war with Serbia for the benefit of Kosovo, which would immediately be brought to ruin just in time for the US Air Force two weeks later to bring Serbia to ruin. But there are better ways than Bush's (shock, surprise) of telling the Serbs that the Pearly Gates of Europe will open wide to them if they give Kosovo due formality. And were Serbia truly isolated -- that is, if Russia and China were somehow persuaded that the world, particularly the portions of Asia north of India, would not break out immediately into a contagion of insurrectionist hives -- then Europe's most put-upon state might let this last one go and resign itself to a fate which, admittedly, I would not want were I a Serb.
But the issue is not what the US ought to do, having, Atticus Finchlike, put itself in the Shoes of Serbia. The issue is what the US ought to do having put itself in the shoes it now wears. One can step more or less slowly out of them but one cannot deny those shoes are indeed on one's feet pending. And so:
Independence for Kosovo will have definite destabilising effects in the Balkans (to say nothing of the playground for narco- and human traffickers and worse that such a mini-state will become). From the perspective of European law enforcement and security, European support for Kosovo independence is insane. If stability in the Balkans is supposed to be an American goal, undermining that stability seems unwise.
Fair enough. I haven't forgotten about Abkhazia, even for a moment, since before my academic days, precisely because of the Narco-And-Slave-Terror Yikesness (N.A.S.T.Y.) on option there for people looking for good lacunae in the laws of nations. Just the sort provided by a Kosovo that's a bubbling mudpie of UN pimps, Serb hit squads, Albanian pyromaniacs, and international 'agreements' designed to prove to Faithful and Infidel alike that Purgatory is just another word for Pristina. A Kosovar state, formally recognized as such, ushers that unfortunate corner of the world into the regimen of international law in its old, humble, durable sense -- a map of clearly demarcated official sovereigns -- precisely where someone concerned with stability would want it to be. Or is independence just the "putting myself through college" phase on the path to professional promiscuity?
In Kosovo’s case, independence will be one step towards either joining Albania or a move to agitate for the “liberation” of their fellow Albanians inside Greece and Macedonia.
Certainly if Kosovo joined Albania the ghost of Richard Rorty would come flying through the world's windows passing out shrugs. Horrors! Greater Albania! I can almost picture columns of the vaunted Albanian Army marching into what we will cringingly and wistfully call the Former Macedonian Republic of Macedonia (F.M.R.O.M.). The Albanian diaspora seems about as in a hurry to plunge Macedonia and Greece into chaos as the Jewish diaspora in, well, Ethiopia. Especially given that the Greater New Motherland would be a whole twenty paces to patriotic freedom. Independence gets you an afternoon off work in the streets, followed by two nights of extra drunkenness and even gunplay, but that's often about it. So sure enough,
Even if they should acquire nominal independence they will effectively be dependencies of the United Nations, regional powers and the relevant regional organisations for years and perhaps decades to come. Independence does not solve the problem, nor does it put the question behind us, but instead makes it the business of the major powers for the foreseeable future.
Independence for Kosovo causes the issue at once to cease being the business of Russia for the foreseeable future -- Russia which ought to be out of Transnistria and Abkhazia by the same 1999 treaty it presently clouts the West about the head for having the gall not to ratify. Kosovo is none of China's business anyway, except that Tibet might get sexy again, and if any clump of land is worth a little 'international' instability it's unquestionably Tibet. And don't worry -- Taiwan won't take one look at Kosovo and declare independence. Along with North Korea and a few other anomalies, Taiwan is one of those "planetary aberrations" that everyone knows fits no known pattern and must be dealt with on its own unique terms.
Separatist and rebel causes all over the world, especially in India (Kashmiris, Nagas, Naxalites, etc.) and Sri Lanka (Tamil Tigers), can only be encouraged by the international recognition of Kosovo. The point is not that any of these separatists will receive the support of major powers to gain independence, but that they will take the example of Kosovo as a model and will act in such a way to try to achieve the same result. This means an increase in violence and the undermining of any political solution for these various rebellions.
Because the Sri Lankan Civil War is so close to a resolution otherwise. I finally am just not persuaded that the Oppressed of the World will rise up to the banner of Kosovar Independence, or at least those Oppressed who aren't yet already in a state of agitation. I hardly think the Ossetians -- or even the Kashmiris, whoever exactly they are -- will suddenly gain colossal new clout, or even moxie. And if the Kurds think Kosovo is their ship coming in -- or if anyone else does -- they've got another thing coming, of course. Because the auspices under which we all got into the situation called Kosovo are so outlandish, illegal, outdated, and worthy that the only reason why Kosovo will ever be independent is its uncategorizable recent history, and the utter inadequacy of the impasse that seems to be the lone alternative to independence. And just as independence isn't all it's cracked up to be, so will an 'independent' Kosovo fall under the auspices and rubrics of any number of international support groups, transnational European entities, and American cash-agents. All of which might be a weird and questionable future for a part of the world dedicated mostly to beautiful houses of worship and the memory of a battle lost hundreds of years ago, but none of which strikes this blogger as measurably worse than the stillborn and squalid alternative.
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