Broken Bosnia needs western attention

Uh-oh! OR Ha-ha?

 

Date: Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 9:25 PM http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bf60a826-f4af-11de-9cba-00144feab49a.html Broken Bosnia needs western attention By William Hague and Paddy Ashdown Published: December 29 2009 20:14 | Last updated: December 29 2009 20:14 The 14th anniversary of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords passed unnoticed in November. The collapse of a US-EU diplomatic initiative in Bosnia-Herzegovina last month went virtually unreported too, as has the fact that Bosnia 's cold peace is under serious threat. Bosnia may seem less significant than it used to be to the US and her allies. Pressing challenges in Afghanistan and beyond need great attention. But the risk of a failed state taking root in Europe cannot be ignored by Europe or in Washington . Brussels struggles with serious Balkan diplomacy – so many capitals to confer with and tactics to co-ordinate, and so little political will to take difficult decisions. The EU hopes that its all-carrots, no-sticks approach linked entirely to the promise of an eventual EU accession process will change the domestic politics of Bosnia and neighbouring Serbia , and produce political co-operation. The US backs this approach, despite the fact that Bosnia is further from EU membership than any other aspirant country. Bosnia's economy has grown with foreign aid, but the state has not grown, and today it does not work. The Bosnian Serbs have exploited the autonomy they were granted at Dayton , relying on stalling tactics to keep the country divided, its government dysfunctional, and their hopes of secession alive, while some Bosniak leaders can be equally rigid. Some resistance has been overcome when the international high representative overseeing Dayton has insisted on it. But even this level of effort has overtaxed the patience and capacity of the EU and US. The high representative's office has been allowed to be demeaned so that none of the parties, particularly the Bosnian Serbs, heed its efforts. It is now proposed to weaken the role further by recasting the high representative as an EU special representative and stripping out real authority – the " Bonn powers". With the election season in Bosnia imminent, nationalist rhetoric will certainly increase in all parts. Even the Bosnian Croats increasingly talk of their own entity and a break with their federation with the Bosniaks. What happens in Europe's backyard matters: the consequences of Bosnia 's disintegration would be catastrophic. The breakdown of the country into independent ethnic statelets would not only reward ethnic cleansing – surely a moral anathema – but would also risk the creation of a failed state in the heart of Europe; a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and crime, and a monstrous betrayal of all those who survived the concentration camps, mass graves and displacement of the 1990s. Bosnia will not solve itself, nor will the prospect of EU integration be enough to pull the country back from the brink. Instead we must recognise that all the countries in the region are linked and cannot be dealt with in isolation. We urge the US and EU to each appoint a special envoy to the region, who would work in lockstep to deliver a united message and drive forward progress. We must impress on Bosnia 's leaders that the sovereignty of the country is unquestionable and its break-up unthinkable. But we must also say to European candidate countries Serbia and Montenegro that they are expected to uphold EU policy towards Bosnia . A robust international approach should focus on a single goal: a central government in Bosnia effective enough to meet the responsibilities of EU and Nato membership. Each Bosnian leader should have to stand for, or against, that simple idea – and face consequences for his or her answer. The international community should be prepared to use sticks as well as carrots. There is a strong argument for the threat of targeted sanctions against politicians who undermine the Bosnian state. Talk of timelines for the closure of the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina is premature. The Office should only be closed once constitutional reform has been achieved. Meanwhile, the high representative must have the solid backing of the EU and US so that all parties know they cannot sit out the international presence in the country. Finally, the EU peacekeeping mission in Bosnia must be retained, and reinforced if necessary, to send a strong signal that neither secession nor violence will be tolerated. Today Radovan Karadzic is finally on trial in The Hague on charges of alleged genocide and war crimes in Bosnia . As he and others are called to account over their part in the horrendous events of the 1990s, it would be a supreme irony if their plans for carving up Bosnia-Herzegovina were to be realized simply because the international community was too busy to care. Mr Hague is UK shadow foreign secretary, Lord Ashdown is a former high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina . This article was co-written by James O'Brien, a former US presidential envoy for the Balkans, Morton Abramowitz, former US ambassador to Turkey and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and Jim Hooper, a managing director of the Public International Law and Policy Group Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others. "FT" and "Financial Times

 

Grim reality of Serbia's EU 'dream'

Federalists bleat buzzwords about Serbia's European ambitions but the EU, like Nato, only wants to force it into neoliberal line

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A blizzard of platitudes has been unleashed by Europe's leaders this week as Serbia formally applies for EU membership. No opportunity to declare the occasion "historic" or to assert that Serbia has a European "vocation" is being passed up.

Yet once these asinine buzzwords have been uttered, there will be no reason to rejoice. Belgrade's treatment by some EU governments has long been characterised by a brazen hypocrisy. Until the beginning of this month, the Netherlands was blocking Serbia's efforts to strengthen its relations with the union over suspicions it was not co-operating fully with the war crimes tribunal in the Hague.

The zeal of Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch foreign minister, in insisting on accountability for offences against humanity would be praiseworthy if it was consistent with his approach to other conflicts. How odd it is, then, that Verhagen has vigorously opposed efforts to probe (never mind prosecute) alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

With just two of the men on its wanted list – Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic – still at large, isn't it time that the Hague tribunal was given a fresh mandate, or even better that an entirely new investigative body is set up? This body should be tasked with finally unearthing the truth about why Nato bombed Serbia in 1999.

None of the alliance's personnel has yet been charged by an international tribunal with crimes relating to that war, even though it was conducted with the use of cluster bombs, weapons that literally slice the limbs of their victims. Nor should it be forgotten that the war lacked UN approval and helped usher in the dubious concept of "humanitarian intervention", under which military action can be taken on the flimsiest of pretexts.

I'm sure that I will soon hear or read some federalist (or should I say fantasist?) trying to wax lyrical about the significance of Serbia embracing countries that were attacking it little over a decade ago. What the fantasists won't acknowledge, though, is that Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's then president, didn't earn his status as a favourite bogeyman of the west purely because he did dreadful things to the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, as the official narrative would have us believe.

The west could probably have tolerated his autocratic streak if he was more favourable to its pervading ideology. But Milosevic's refusal to accept the neoliberal precepts on which the global economy is being run seem to offer a more plausible explanation as to why Bill Clinton and his then cronies in Europe insisted he must go.

Such a conclusion seems to me inescapable when you examine the fine print of what the EU and America have been pressing Serbia to do over the past 10 years. Privatising state-owned industry is now a standard condition of EU accession, as many countries in central and eastern Europe have discovered, often at enormous social cost.

But what makes Serbia unique is that many of the facilities it has been required to sell off were first damaged by Nato bombs, with the result that western firms could snatch some of them up at bargain basement prices. More than 1,800 privatisations have occurred since Milosevic was ousted; much of the country's metal industry is now in the hands of US Steel, which has been busy shedding jobs, while the national car company Zastava has been bought by Fiat.

The European commission's latest "progress report" for Serbia states that finalising privatisation is a priority for the country's "partnership" with the EU. Moreover, it indicates that the welfare state that has provided a lifeline to the country's citizens must be radically altered. It is no exaggeration, then, to say that the austerity budget rubber-stamped in Belgrade, also this week, was to a large extent written in Brussels and Washington, home to the IMF, which has so generously come to Serbia's "rescue".

No doubt, the pensioners whose income has been reduced at the behest of foreign institutions aren't weighed down by the hand of history on their country's shoulder at the moment. Instead, they will face 2010 with the dreaded sensation of a hair shirt on their backs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/22/serbia-eu-dream-neoliberal

Russian New Security Pact (Trifkovic on Russia Profile)

http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=Experts%27+Panel&articleid=a1260553754

 

Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel:

Russia's New European Security Pact

Last week, the Kremlin published its draft of the European Security Treaty, first proposed in June 2008 as President Dmitry Medvedev's first major foreign policy initiative. Moscow has been criticized for offering few specifics of this proposal, and thus failed to move its European partners toward a meaningful discussion of its initiative. It has now taken this step by putting forward a draft treaty, consisting of 14 articles. [...] Is it possible to imagine that this treaty could serve as a viable replacement of or a substitute for the existing security structures, particularly those offering specific security guarantees, like NATO or the Collective Security Treaty? Would it improve the efficiency of the existing conflict resolution mechanisms in Europe? Would it restrict NATO's ability to operate in Europe? Would it increase Russia's influence over security decisions in Europe? Will it receive a broader discussion among European and Transatlantic powers, or will it die the quiet death of many other grand plans for European security?

Srdja Trifkovic, Director, Center for International Affairs, the Rockford Institute, Rockford, IL:

Quite apart from its details and nuances, Moscow's proposal can be taken seriously because it comes after a notable shift in U.S. rhetoric and behavior over the past year. This shift reflects U.S. President Barack Obama's evolving strategic priorities caused in part by the ongoing crisis in Pakistan and the escalation of fighting in Afghanistan. The two key elements are his U-turn on missile defense deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, and the quiet acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic that there will be no NATO expansion along the Black Sea coast anytime soon.

The problem is still what to do about NATO, and the Russian proposal offers ambiguous guidance. The alliance has morphed into something it was never intended to be: a vehicle for the attainment of American ideological and geopolitical objectives outside the core area. It is necessary to halt and reverse NATO's recently invented mission as a self-appointed promoter of democracy and humanitarian intervention and guardian against instability in strange and faraway places.

Bill Clinton's air war against the Serbs marked a decisive shift in that mutation. The trusty keeper of the gate of 1949 had morphed into a roaming vigilante in 1999. This event had a profound effect on Russian thinking. A decade later, the National Security Strategy approved by President Medvedev last May identified the two gravest threats facing Russia as Ukrainian accession to NATO and predatory Western designs on its energy and other natural resources. The paper explicitly called the United States a major threat to Russian national security.

Such a conclusion was unsurprising. By virtue of its location, Russia controls the crossroads of Eurasia and therefore access to its fabulous natural resource wealth. Washington craves cheap and easy access to that wealth, and under the presidency of George Bush, the United States had developed an ideology to complement such geo-strategic ambitions. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described it succinctly 18 months ago: in U.S. foreign policy there is no distinction between ideals and self-interest. U.S. foreign policy is its values, and America will stop at nothing to ensure that its values prevail. The world is divided into two camps: one is made up of states that share U.S. values; the other of states (implicitly Russia and China) which were consigned to a lesser status because their relations with the United States are rooted more in common interests than in common values. Washington has changed its tone since, and that change appears to be for the better. Obama now has an opportunity to execute a paradigm shift and inaugurate a process in which the East-West Security Pact would be just the first step on a long journey, not its conclusion.

In principle the Russian proposal is not ranged against NATO, but it could help the United States sort out the incoherent mess NATO has become by restoring the alliance's proper legal mission as defender of the territory of its member states. The proposal's shortcoming, however, is that it neglects the potential scope in Europe for a robust and independent EU defense capability under the auspices of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP).

To devise a more inclusive European security architecture - one that includes NATO, but more than just NATO - would require the establishment of an organization that would replace the moribund OSCE. A new security architecture embracing the main parts of North America, Russia and Europe, would allow for the collective reallocation of forces so as to counter threats emanating from outside: cross-border terrorism, drug trafficking, sex slavery, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and - most importantly - efforts to export jihad.

These threats, unconventional yet real, are a factor for unity from Vancouver to Vladivostok. That vast region is united above all by the moral, spiritual and intellectual values derived from the Judeo-Christian and Greek tradition, values that are far deeper than any issues which divide it. The real threat to the security of pan-Europa thus defined comes from Jihad, from the deluge of inassimilable immigrants, and from collapsing birthrates. All three are caused by the moral decrepitude and cultural decline, not by any shortage of soldiers and weaponry.

Strategy is the art of winning wars, and grand strategy is the philosophy of maintaining an acceptable peace. In considering Moscow's proposals in good faith, Western powers would display an aptitude for grand strategy, an inspired grasp of the essential requirements of the moment which has been sadly lacking in Washington for the past two decades.

The Nonexistent "Serbian Lobby"

 

http://www.novireporter.com/look/reporter/nr_article.tpl?IdLanguage=11&IdPublication=2&NrIssue=352&NrSection=5&NrArticle=4488

NOVI REPORTER, Banja Luka, No. 352, December 9, 2009.

Interview: Srdja Trifkovic

THE "SERBIAN LOBBY" IN THE UNITED STATES DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL

 

At a hearing before the Helsinki Committee of the House of Representatives last spring, at which Ivo Banac, Paddy Ashdown and others opened fire from all weapons on the Republika Srpska and [its prime minister Milorad] Dodik, demanding the abolition of the entities and the appointment of an American envoy to the Balkans, they were not countered by a single Congressman, or a representative of the [Serbian] Diaspora, or a lobbyist, or a visitor from the Republika Srpska, although they would not have been denied the platform had they asked for it.

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For the past two decades the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia have been subjected to a hostile treatment by the Western power centers. In Serbia and the Republika Srpska alike, the attempts to correct or even reverse such trends in the U.S. and the European Union have often relied on the impact of the Serbian diaspora in the United States and in the leading countries of the EU. Such expectations and the reality are in a chronic discord, however.

 

Dr. Srdja Trifkovic debunks many flawed assumptions in the Old Country about the political potential of our kin in America... He points out the remarkable inertness of the official Belgrade and Banja Luka vis-a-vis the Serbian diaspora and also regarding attempts to convince the influential Western interlocutors of the validity of arguments advanced by Serbia and by the Republika Srpska in the ongoing Balkan unravellings:

"The Serbian diaspora has no influence on the formulation of the U.S. policy. It is the least well organized among all ethnic groups of comparable size. A concrete example: when an appeal went out, some ten years ago, for the survival of Serbian studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago, barely $30,000 was collected and the chair was extinguished. On the other hand, the Lithuanian community in Chicago - far smaller than the Serbian one - threw a benefit dinner for a similar purpose and collected a million dollars in a few hours. The Serbian community has no excuse for this state of affairs. The diaspora has neither the money nor the will to work for the defense and promotion of the Serbian-American community's interests - and money as the precondition of all activity. As Mark Twain pointed out 150 years ago, America has "the best Congress money can buy!" It is naive to assume that Bob Dole, Joe Biden, the late Tom Lantos, Joe Lieberman and other Serb-haters have acted for so many years in the manner well known to us out of purely moral principles and deepest conviction. Someone had to approach them, to present the specific views to them, to motivate them to accept those views - which means money - and to promt them to act accordingly - again money! Those four steps represent the essence of lobbying. The principle is the same, regardless of whether you are advocating a centralized Bosnia-Herzegovina or Federal subsidies to dairy farmers in Wisconsin.

Novi Reporter: How do you explain the fact that, nevertheless, encouraging news has reached Serbia and the Republika Srpska of certain successes of the lobbying in the US?

 

Trifkovic: There are people in the Diaspora who are sparing no effort to project, on the Serbian public scene, an image of themselves as very influential players closely connected with various Congressmen and Senators. Having paid a few hundred dollars to their journalist contacts to write suitably intoned fairytales in some Belgrade tabloids, they flaunt those cuttings back home to prove that they are influential in Serbia’s public and political life and that they should be taken into due account in some future combinations. This reflects the infantile vanity of some diaspora leaders with bombastic-sounding titles and negligible influence, and the syndrome is well known to the American Serbs. It is noteworthy, however, that the U.S. Administration is not interested in nurturing the ambitions of any potential Serbian B-Team, because the Americans find the present government in Belgrade perfectly suited to their interests.  

 

To this very day there is no Serbian Lobby in the U.S.  it simply does not exist. The Serbian Congressional Caucus is a Potemkin's Village, which is in any event in the state of deep hibernation. The members of the Caucus merely express some interest in the Balkans, but they do not necessarily support Serbian positions on The Hague, Kosovo, Dayton... To give you but one example, at a hearing before the Helsinki Committee of the House of Representatives last spring, at which Ivo Banac, Paddy Ashdown and others opened fire from all weapons on the Republika Srpska and [its prime minister Milorad] Dodik, demanding the abolition of [the Dayton-provided] entities and the appointment of an American envoy to the Balkans, they were not countered by a single Congressman, or a representative of the [Serbian] Diaspora, or a lobbyist, or a visitor from the Republika Srpska, although they would not have been denied the platform had they asked for it.

 

Are there within the Serbian diaspora in the U.S. persons and institutions which do not act under the patronage of the well known organizations, but which nevertheless make a respectable contribution and are worthy of attention?

 

There are, but the less they act under the Serbian banner, the more effective they are. The ability to act independently is the precondition of success.

 

How would you define the key common objectives which could unite the Serbs in North America? What are the realistic, and what are the optimal potential results of their work?

 

The key objective is to articulate the interests of the Serbian community and to present it competently through the prism of American interests. The theme of the Balkans as the weak link in the war against terrorism is essential, as it may be related to American concerns. However, more than eight years after September 11, there is no “White Book” which would contain a consolidated dossier of the Sarajevan political establishments Jihadist connections. All kinds of terrorist attacks since that time, from Riyadh to Casablanca to Madrid or Bali, indicate that there is a Bosnian Connection. This remains an unused capital.

 

How do you see the relations of the Serbian diaspora in the U.S. with the political instances in Serbia and the Republika Srpska?

 

The biggest problem of the Serbian diaspora in the U.S. is the absence of legitimate authority and hierarchy. The split within the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1963 undermined its role of the moral pillar, and there is no leadership from the old country. On the other hand, it is unrealistic to expect the diaspora to achieve that which neither Belgrade nor Banja Luka are doing. Let us face the facts: official Serbian guests often come to Washington, not in order to make a serious impact on the political decision-making process relevant to the Serbian people and its interests, but to create back home a convincing illusion of the alleged results of their visit. A textbook example of this we have seen recently, in early November, with a frankly futile Republika Srpska mission to the capital of the United States. The visit was effectively a fiasco, yet it was presented in the Republika Srpska media as a success.

 

How do you evaluate the results of that visit?

 

Who are those people trying to hoodwink, or are they deluded themselves, and cherish ungrounded illusions about such visits? Who is enriching their scant itineraries with the meetings with political lightweights, or else with antagonists who only receive them in order to give them a stern dressing-down? Is the goal simply to fill in the slots, to justify expenses? Why do they deceive themselves, and others, talking of a successful mission crowned with a half-hours visit to the deputy under-secretarys aide in a windowless office? Or visits with those few members of Congress who are already known as friendly to the Serbs, but who have no influence on the formulation of policy? I am inclined to think that they are simply not up to the task, rather than mendacious. They do not defend Serbian national interests adequately, because they are not attuned to the Washingtonian discourse and therefore unable to articulate those interests in the manner that may have some operational value in the perception of their U.S. interlocutors.

 

With the current setup of the Serbian diplomacy and lobbying structure in Washington, things will not get any better. The same applies to Serbia’s foreign and every other policy. Almost two decades since the beginning of Yugoslavia’s disintegration nothing has been learned, things merely change in order to remain the same. There is an old Jewish proverb, to the effect that if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you ll keep getting what you are currently getting. What the Serbs have got over all these years we know very well, and there should be no illusions that the slicing of the Serbian salami is by any means over. Quite the contrary!

 

What are the main causes for the lack of adequate response of the diaspora to the anti-Serb trend which is still largely present in the Western political, media, and academic elite?

 

There are three key elements of failure. The first is in the lack of strategy for defending the image and identity of the community, based on a clear methodology for the attainment of such goals. The second is the short-sighted focus of many Serbs on the reactive critique of the Western policy and its media presentation, without any strategic elaboration of alternative positions and constant advancement of new concrete solutions as an alternative to the current flawed policy.

 

And finally, the attempts to influence foreign media and political circles are characterized by complete amateurism of the leadership of organizations with impressive names which nevertheless lack true legitimacy within the Serbian diaspora community. This undermines their credibility among the policy makers and public opinion creators. The consequence is clear: the views and decisions detrimental to the Serbs could be advocated in the Western media, approved in legislative bodies, applied by governments, and verified by the academic and analytical institutions. There was a visible change of tone after October 5, 2000, but it was short lived.

Kosovo - partitioning what from what?

- partitioning what from what? Though partition is far from the best way to resolve the Kosovo question, it is a political option for Kosovo as part of a final status resolution and has been used by one side already. By Gerard Gallucci Keywords: Serbia, Kosovo, EULEX, Ahtisaari, partition Talk about partitioning Kosovo remains taboo. Almost everyone officially rejects the idea - the Albanians, the Serbs (in both Serbia and Kosovo), and the EU and U.S. However, only the Albanians probably really mean it and only if it applies to carving out pieces of "their" Kosovo and not so much as it might apply to the partitioning of Kosovo from Serbia. The Western Europeans and U.S. stand against partition arguing that Kosovo is a unique case and maintaining that Kosovo is and can be a flourishing multi-ethnic democracy. (Some EU members, and perhaps some in EU Brussels, may actually prefer partition as the neatest way to get rid of the lingering Kosovo status issue and get out of the morass into which their EULEX mission has fallen. Perhaps prematurely, EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger even put partition on the negotiating table in August 2007.) The U.S. supports the official EU position because this keeps it off the Kosovo hook and because it has its own reasons – think Caucasus and Russia – to reject ethnic partition. The Serbs in southern Kosovo might support partition if somehow they could remain attached to Serbia. As this is unlikely, they do not. Kosovo Serbs north of the Ibar would probably welcome partition – remaining in Serbia – but, as it is not yet Serbian state policy, cannot say so. Belgrade may accept partition at some point but cannot say so while still making a case against losing Kosovo. Russia stands ready to pick up the pieces however it goes. So, partition is the elephant in the room. Everyone pretends it is not there as they try to look busy finding other ways to finish determining Kosovo's final status. The arguments against partition appear serious. 1) It could lead to renewed pressure for partitioning along ethnic lines including elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. 2) It would seem to abandon the principle and possibility of truly multi-ethnic democracy, which everyone agrees is better than mono-ethnic mini-states. 3) Kosovo enjoyed autonomy as a province (though not a republic) under Tito until later simply revoked by Milošević. It is worth considering these arguments one by one. The issue of Kosovo's partition establishing a precedent or somehow encouraging further such actions elsewhere begs the central question of Kosovo's very partition from Serbia. Serbia was and remains a sovereign state and member of the United Nations. Dismembering it, arbitrarily changing its state borders through military occupation, sets a huge precedent with implications in many places around the globe. To argue that a state loses the right over some part of its territory or population because of the way a particular government treats its people raises the issue of who decides, when and by what standard. Answers to these questions would be pertinent to many other situations, such as the treatment of native people by Australia, Brazil and the United States as well as the cases of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Congo, Macedonia, Georgia, Iraq, and Spain, to name a few. The plain fact is that with Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence – recognized by leading members of the international community – partition is already a fact. One cannot argue credibly that Kosovo's partition from Serbia is not along ethnic lines. To do so, one would have to make the case that Kosovo is in fact a flourishing multi-ethnic society or can become one. But Kosovo is essentially a mono-ethnic Albanian state. According to the CIA Factbook, 88 percent of its 1.8 million people are Albanians. Seven percent are Serbs and five percent others. Take out the 40-60,000 Serbs living in the north and the Albanian majority is over 90 percent. The Pristina institutions are Albanian institutions and non-Albanians' role will be – if they are lucky – to have some say in how they are governed in their own communities and to play the occasional window-dressing role. Keeping Kosovo whole to support the case for multi-ethnic democracy is hypocrisy masquerading as high policy. Kosovo's history can support almost any conclusion one wishes to draw. One hundred years ago Kosovo was part of the Ottoman Empire so perhaps it should now be part of Turkey? Tito practiced ethnic gerrymandering – manipulating boundaries and legalities – on a grand scale to keep the truly multi-ethnic Yugoslavia balanced and more or less stable. The only thing perhaps we can learn from him is that in the end, ethnic loyalties prevail. Western Europe lost the opportunity to preserve multi-ethnicity in the Balkans when it rushed into the recognition of Yugoslavia's break-up rather than finding a way to help it to a soft landing. In any case, Kosovo cannot now argue the sanctity of its borders based upon precedent from Yugoslavia having itself thrown over the boundaries of the successor state, Serbia. None of this is to argue that partition is the best way to resolve the Kosovo question. But it may at some point have to be part of the final package. The Ahtisaari Plan remains the best option [sic] for southern Kosovo, where non-Albanians remain with little choice but to accept the reality that surrounds them. But the north? Why should people there born in one country be forced to accept now living in another? Some will say, what about the Albanians living in Serbia or Macedonia. Indeed. Irredentism is a danger. But it should not be allowed to become the basis of geopolitical blackmail. In the end, partition is a political option for Kosovo as part of a final status resolution and has been used by one side already.   Gerard M. Gallucci is a retired US diplomat. He served as UN Regional Representative in Mitrovica, Kosovo from July 2005 until October 2008. The views expressed in this piece are his own and do not represent the position of any organization. http://www.transconflict.com/News/2009/December/Kosovo_partitioning_what_from_what.php