Serbia pledges to fight Kosovo independenceFollow

I was wondering how long before central Europe gets exploderated.

I find it curious that the only institution that reportedly called for a "violent" reaction to the incident was the church...



Of course I'm sure it's only part of the story, but according to the statements made in the article, the church seems to be the only group calling for immediate military response.

they don't have any leaders named "Ferdenand" there anymore do they?

Fine. Take away my backhanded insult at religion in general with your sensible responses.

Live and learn?

When East Timor had a referendum on indepedance from Indonesia, I was thinking for months beforehand: But...but...if East Timor votes yes, Indonesia is going to send people in and massacre everyone.

It's still a complete puzzlement to me that Western governments either didn't see something that was glaringly obvious to me, or that they did, and handled it the way that they chose to, for diplomatic or international law reasons.

Timor voted yes, and Indonesia duly massacred everyone, although they did so under the guise of militias, and not uniformed soldiers. The West reacted weeks late, getting peacekeeping forces there months after they were needed.

Of those not killed, a million Timorese were rounded up and hustled over the border into Indonesia into refugee camps, patrolled by armed Indonesian guards, where they remained for years. Packed together in squalid conditions and purposefully kept ignorant that it was safe to return home.

The whole excercise was a valuable warning by the Indonesian government to any other province that dares to think it wants to secede.

Yeah, that's what I meant, I just got confused with my geography - For some reason I thought the Balkans referred to the Baltic Sea region - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.

/brain fart

It's not a panacea, though.

Take Kosovo. Kosovo is considered by Serbians to be the birthplace of Serbia, its heartland. It was populated massively by Albanians in recent history, but it has no historical claim to being a state. It has never been a state. It has simply known a massive influx of Albanian immigrants, which after a while tipped the population balance in favour of Albanians. A bit as if, one day, Texas had a vast majority of Latino population who decided to break away from the US and make their own country. Not even join Mexico, as Kosovo could've done with Albania, but create a state out of nothing.

Of course, the war in the 90s makes the current situation a little bit special. It would've been extremely hard to go back on the promise the West gave to Kosovo after the war. Hard to imagine Kosovo going back to being united to Serbia after all the recent history.

Nevertheless, it does create a precedent in international law. And in some ways, quite a loose one too. You can bet the breakaway regions of Georgia, Armernia, or Ukraine, will use Kosovo as an exemple for next century.

Kosovo is the 193rd country. That's fine, but I'm not convinced a plethora of small countries is necessarily a good thing. Especially if they are not part of a bigger regional union, like the EU. Kosovo should join it, in time, but still. Lots of small hostile countries with competiting interests can lead to incredible instability.

But even if Kosovo joins the EU, that will only serve to heighten tensions with the Orthodox: Russia, Serbia, and to a lesser extent, Greece. It's a nasty sticking point, and its going to stay that way for the forseeable future.

In this particular case, I'm not sure there were many alternatives for the West. Nor for Russia. Since everyone knew it would happen ages ago, you have to think everyone will bark but no one will bite. At least in the short-term.

As for Iraq, I'm not convinced about partition. It's a whole new topic though.