Kosovo and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy

Kosovo and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy

by Joseph E. Fallon

The struggle for Kosovo between Christian Serbs and Muslim Albanians dates
back to 1389, when the Serbs were defeated by, and their lands annexed to, the
Ottoman Empire. Muslim rule lasted over four centuries and resulted in several
waves of forced migrations of Serbs from Kosovo. The current Albanian majority
there was achieved more recently—the result of the policies of the Axis
occupation (1941-45), which included the killing of an estimated 10,000 Serbs,
the expulsion of another 100,000, and the introduction of Albanian settlers.
The de-Serbianization of Kosovo continued under Tito’s rule (1945-80), during
which the country acquired many attributes of a separate Albanian
state—borders, a flag, a capital, a supreme court, an education system that
promoted the Albanian language, a university with teachers and textbooks from
Albania, as well as cultural and sporting exchanges with Albania. In 1981,
after Tito’s death, Albanians in Kosovo demanded that the province be elevated
to a republic with the right of secession. This provoked a Serbian reaction
that facilitated the rise of Slobodan Milosevic, which, in turn, was cited by
Albanians as a justification for the activities of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA). A downward spiral of ethnic suspicion and strife ensued,
culminating in the Yugoslav wars.

From 1996 to 1999, the war in Kosovo was an internal conflict between the
secessionist KLA—which, at one time, was designated a terrorist organization by
the U.S. State Department—and the armed forces of the rump Yugoslavia of Serbia
and Montenegro.

Citing an alleged massacre of Albanian civilians by Serbian forces in the
village of Racak in January 1999, the U.S. government and NATO allies officially
intervened. Meeting in Rambouillet, France, that February and March, they
drafted a “peace accord,” which offered the KLA de facto independence for
Kosovo immediately, and de jure independence in three years. During that
interval, Kosovo would be administered as a NATO protectorate. The U.S.
government introduced a military annex to the accord under which NATO personnel
would be immune from all legal actions—civil, criminal, or administrative—and
NATO forces would have unfettered access to any and all parts of Yugoslavia.
And all the costs would be borne by Belgrade. Yugoslavia would have been a
virtual colony of NATO.

When Belgrade refused to sign the accord, NATO attacked. The war lasted from
March 24 to June 10, 1999. Kosovo became a U.N. protectorate (UNMIK), whose
final status—some form of independence from Serbia—would be determined in the
future. That future is now, and it is posing political and strategic problems
for the Bush administration.

U.S. foreign policy toward Kosovo, which culminated in military intervention
in 1999, was a continuation of the policy Washington had pursued in Bosnia and
Croatia in 1995. Each of the three wars contributed to a profound
transformation in U.S. foreign policy. In Washington’s eyes, the end of the
Cold War meant a transition from a bipolar world, which functioned within a set
of political, military, and legal restraints, to a unipolar one. The U.S.
government was now the world’s hyperpower, without rival or limitation. For
Washington, the Yugoslav wars provided an opportunity to demonstrate this to
the rest of the world, thereby accomplishing several key objectives.

First, Washington set out to demonize the Serbs in order to discredit and
suppress not just Serbian ethnicity but any manifestation of ethnic nationalism,
since such nationalism undermines the legitimacy of the dominant ideology of
the virtues of multiethnic states and transnational corporations.

Second, U.S. policymakers sought to dismember an inconvenient state—in this
case, one supported by Russia, thereby establishing a precedent. Later, that
precedent would be applied to the union of Serbia and Montenegro, then Serbia,
and, perhaps, even to Iran. In so doing, Washington hoped to weaken and isolate
Russia, both internationally and in Europe.

It also established another precedent, in promoting ethnic cleansing by
proxy. The Clinton administration covertly armed, trained, supported, and
advised the government of Croatia for the August 1995 military offensive known
as Operation Storm. Though it was aimed at the secessionist Republic of Serbian
Krajina, it resulted in the expulsion of an estimated 300,000 Serbs from
Croatia. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), after
ten years, the Serbs still have not been permitted to return to Croatia. The
precedent was repeated in 1999 when the Red Cross reported that the KLA had
expelled between 200,000 and 250,000 Serbs from Kosovo. It was repeated yet
again in 2001 in Afghanistan, in the wake of the U.S. invasion, when our
“ally,” the Northern Alliance, consisting mostly of ethnic Tajiks, sought to
expel a million ethnic Pash-tuns from northern Afghanistan. According to the
UNHCR, nearly 100,000 Pashtuns fled, becoming refugees either elsewhere in
Afghanistan or in Pakistan. In Iraq, both Kurdish and Shiite militias, whose
political parties are members of the national government—another ally of the
Bush administration—currently engage in ethnic cleansing. In Kirkuk, Kurds are
reversing the process of “Arabization,” while in Baghdad, Shiites are cleansing
Sunni neighborhoods.

By supporting Muslim demands for a united Bosnia and an independent Kosovo,
Washington hoped to persuade Muslims, especially in Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi
Arabia, and Turkey—all key U.S. allies—that they are wrong to regard U.S.
foreign policy toward Palestinians, Kashmiris, Moros, and Uighurs as evidence
of any hostility toward Islam on our part.

Washington also sought to encourage Muslims in Albania, Bosnia, and Kosovo
to promote a secularized, individualistic Islam, in which mosque and state are
separate, which would undermine the appeal of traditional Islam, especially in
the West.

With the Cold War ended, Washington sought to justify NATO’s continued
existence by waging war on Bosnia and Kosovo. These wars required a radical
redefinition of NATO’s mission and area of responsibility. These ad hoc
military interventions became official policy after September 11. NATO’s 2002
Prague Summit Declaration stated,

We, the Heads of State and Government of the member countries of the North
Atlantic Alliance, met today to enlarge our Alliance and further strengthen
NATO to meet the grave new threats and profound security challenges of the 21st
century . . . so that NATO can better carry out the full range of its missions
and respond collectively to those challenges, including the threat posed by
terrorism and by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their
means of delivery . . . NATO must be able to field forces that can move quickly
to wherever they are needed . . . to sustain operations over distance and time
. . . to achieve their objectives.

Thus, NATO is no longer a defensive alliance, and its sphere is no longer
restricted to Europe. This enables the U.S. government to maintain, even
increase, its Cold War level of influence in Europe and provides Washington
with a reservoir of bases and troops from NATO countries to help implement its
policy objectives as far away as Afghanistan and Iraq.

In attacking Yugoslavia, Washington also sought to test the ability of the
U.S. government to impose political settlements that advance its interests. The
more contradictory and arbitrary those settlements are—rejecting national
self-determination in Bosnia but championing it in Kosovo—the more our power is
projected.

The final status of Kosovo is to be decided by the U.N. Security Council.
Its special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, is
reportedly recommending independence in all but name. (See www.unosek.org/unosek/index.html.)
The Serbs have rejected this plan, and, while Moscow has stated that it will
veto this recommendation unless both the Serbs and the Albanians agree to it,
Washington favors it. Such a plan, if implemented, would fail to bring peace or
justice to that region of the Balkans.

Any U.N. Security Council decision is expected to reflect “The Guiding
Principles for a Settlement of Kosovo’s Status” set out in 2005 by the United
States, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia—collectively known as the
Contact Group. Principle Six declares that “There will be no changes in the
current territory of Kosovo, i.e. no partition of Kosovo and no union of Kosovo
with any country or part of any country.”

The current proposal for Kosovo independence violates international law
while claiming to uphold it; it institutionalizes ethnic and religious
discrimination and seeks to sanction both in law, denying the Christian Serbs
of Kosovo the legal right to national self-determination, while granting and denying
that right to the Muslim Albanians of Kosovo.

If national self-determination under international law forbids the partition
of a territory, then U.N. member-states Bangladesh, Ireland, Israel, Moldova,
Pakistan, and all the successor states of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are
illegitimate. So, too, are the western borders of U.N. member-states Lithuania,
Poland, and Russia, which were shaped by the post-World War II partition of
Germany.

The plan both allows Albanians in Kosovo the right to secede from Serbia and
denies them the right to unite with Albania. If the U.N. Security Council
insists this restriction is in accordance with international law on the right
to national self-determination, then it should also insist that the
unifications of Germany, Vietnam, and Yemen were illegal, and future
unifications of Ireland or Korea would have to be prohibited as well.
Conversely, it would have to consider the Republic of Somaliland, which seceded
from Somalia, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which seceded from
Cyprus—states the United Nations refuses to recognize—to be, in fact,
legitimate.

The plan advocates multiethnic statehood while dismembering a multiethnic
state. The push for Kosovo independence is predicated upon it being a
multiethnic state. As part of Serbia, however, it is already in one. By
championing the concept of multiethnicity, the proposal undermines not only its
own justification for Kosovo’s independence but the legitimacy of all the
successor states to the former Yugoslavia: Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, and Slovenia—none of which are as multiethnic or as multireligious
as was the former Yugoslavia.

Both Bosnia and Serbia constitute federal republics. Bosnia consists of two
entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Republika Srpska.
Serbia has two autonomous provinces: Kosovo-Metohija and Vojvodina. Both Bosnia
and Kosovo are U.N. protectorates. Yet, Muslim Kosovo is to gain independence,
while Christian Republika Srpska faces abolition and consolidation in a unitary
Bosnian state. Such a policy is nothing short of institutionalized ethnic and
religious discrimination.

The Security Council claims that Kosovo is an exception in international
law. The legal principles announced for it are deemed to have no applicability
to other disputes. This maneuver is an attempt to deny the protection of
international law to parties in three specific conflicts—Transnistria in
Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. Such an arbitrary claim of
exceptionality undermines the moral authority of international law, making it
nothing more than a law of the jungle defined and enforced for the benefit of
the more powerful states.

A just and enduring political settlement for Kosovo requires that Bosnia be
treated in an identical manner. If Kosovo has the right to secede from Serbia,
then the Republika Srpska must have the right to secede from Bosnia.

An independent Kosovo must have the right to unite with Albania. Similarly,
an independent Republika Srpska must have the right to unite with Serbia.

To resolve the Serbian refugee crisis, there should be a population exchange
between Serbia and Montenegro, on the one hand, and Kosovo and Albania, on the
other. Serbian refugees would agree not to return to Kosovo, while the Serbs
still there would agree to relocate to Serbia. In exchange, Albanians in Serbia
and Montenegro would relocate to Kosovo and Albania. There is a legal precedent
for this in the “Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish
Populations” (1923). With the approval of the international community, it
successfully transferred over a million Greeks from Turkey to Greece and
400,000 Turks from Greece to Turkey. Other examples of successful population
transfers include those between Bulgaria and Turkey in 1913 and 1950-89;
Bulgaria and Greece in 1919; Poland and the Soviet Union in 1945; and
Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1946.

The Bush administration favors the current proposal for Kosovo’s independence
without appreciating the problems, political and strategic, it presents to U.S.
foreign policy. Indeed, the White House is behaving as if the United States, as
the world’s hyperpower, can overcome any problems that may arise—a notion that
Afghanistan and Iraq should have dispelled.

The immediate problem is that Kosovo, perhaps more than Bosnia, has become a
haven for Islamic militants and for organized crime. Both pose direct threats
to Europe, and independence will only make it worse—for Europe and for the “War
on Terror.”

If the Security Council proposal is implemented, the secessionist regimes of
Transnistria in Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, will demand
international recognition of their independence. Such official recognition
would likely begin with Russia and then snowball. Since the Bush administration
opposed independence for these regions, this would be viewed by many, including
many Americans, as a political victory for Moscow and a political defeat for
Washington.

Next would be Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenians there will also insist on
international recognition of their independence from Azerbaijan—something that
both Turkey and Azerbaijan oppose. Armenian-Americans, however, support it, and
they constitute an influential ethnic lobbying group. The Bush administration
would be caught in the middle, and any decision would displease an important
ally.

The strategic prize, however, is the Crimea, which has been part of Russia
since 1783. With the Bolshevik Revolution, it became an autonomous republic,
then an oblast of the Russian SFSR. In 1954, jurisdiction was transferred to
the Ukrainian SSR as a symbolic gesture honoring the historic unity of the two
Slavic peoples. When the Soviet Union fell, the Crimea reluctantly agreed to
remain part of the Ukraine, but as an autonomous republic. Ethnically,
linguistically, and culturally, the Crimea is Russian. It is home to the
Russian Black Sea Fleet. If the U.N. Security Council votes on independence for
Kosovo, the government of the Crimea would likely call for a vote on Crimean
independence, which would easily pass, then demand international recognition.
This would be followed by a vote on union with Russia. And Moscow would
certainly accept the return of the Crimea to Russia.

This would be a major defeat for U.S. foreign policy. Since the Yugoslav
wars of the 90’s, Washington has assumed that Russia, because of her size,
natural resources, and nuclear weapons, has the potential to reemerge as a
rival. To prevent this, the U.S. government has pursued a policy of
containment. It supported the expansion of NATO eastward to include former
Soviet republics, in violation of promises made to Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev. The anticipated impact of NATO enlargement, however, was trumped by
Russia’s emergence as a principal supplier of oil and natural gas to Europe.
Washington used the war in Afghanistan to displace Russia from the former
Soviet Central Asian republics. After its initial success, which culminated in
Kyrgyzstan’s “Tulip Revolution,” the U.S. government has seen its influence
decline, while Russia’s has grown. In the Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution,”
Washington supported the overthrow of a pro-Russian government and its
replacement with a pro-American one. The new government soon announced its
intention to join NATO and to expel Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea—to
humiliate Moscow and disrupt its naval operations. Then, a general election
replaced that government with another pro-Russian one. If independence for
Kosovo results in the return of the Crimea to Russia, U.S. foreign policy will
have come full circle since the Yugoslav wars. The world would no longer be
unipolar, and the U.S. government would no longer be the world’s hyperpower.

Joseph
E. Fallon writes from Rye, New York.

This article first appeared in the July 2007 issue of
Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=168

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