For those of you who haven't been following the news recently, earlier this week a tiny little region of Serbia (which you may remember from a little bombing a few years back) named Kosovo declared its independence. The announcement, coming after 9 years of UN/NATO administration (which hasn't stopped, by the way), was welcomed by all of the usual suspects in the "West," including the U.S, and openly disdained by the various Slavic Nations in the "East," most notably, of course, Russia. Indeed, with separatist rebels of their own to worry about in Chechnya, Putin's men have been out and about condemning the independence declaration and promising to veto any sort of international recognition for Kosovo that might come up for a vote at the U.N.
In other words, Russia is doing what Russia does best, obstructing Western interests - and the scary thing is that, for once, I agree with them.
Kosovo should not be an independent state and the most important reason for this is precisely the one that the Russians have been giving in all of the Pressers they've been holding the last 3 days; namely, the potential snowball effect that Kosovo's independence can have on all of the various ethnic minority regions in Europe and Central Asia. Indeed, given all the various ethnic minorities that live in countries throughout the Balkans and Central Asia, from the Checheyens, right on across the board, the declaration of Kosovoian (?) Independence has far greater ramifications than just the writing of an additional chapter to the tumultuous story of Albanian-Serb relations.
But come now, you insist, who are we to step in and try to prevent these folks from having their Democratic rights? Indeed, you might have an argument, if it weren't for the fact that this declaration is motivated largely by a desire for some kind of ethnically pure (a.k.a non-Serbian) country. Oh sure, they'll probably talk about things like the principle of self-determination; but at the end of the day, Kosovo wants independence because it's full of Albanians and they don't want to be under a government that's largely made up of, and run by, Serbs. I mean, let's face it, like most other ethnic groups in the Balkans, the Serbs and Albanians hate each other, and have killed enough of each other over the last decade or so make that obvious even to the most ardent of peace-loving Hippies. But them hating each others' guts to the point of killing each other is not, in this case, a very good justification for independence. Here's why: you see, the dirty little secret of territorial-ethnic conflicts like this is that, no matter how hard the do-gooders at the EU, UN, and NATO try, the problem of ethnic minorities can never be fully resolved. There's always some ethnic group who gets left behind after the partition, and ends up becoming the new dissatisfied minority.
And, alas, such is the case in an independent Kosovo; where not all of the population is, in fact, Albanian. Oh, sure, 90% of it is - but, uh, that other 10% is still Serbs; which means that all the creation of this new country does is turn the tables around by making the Serbs the ethnic minority.
In other words, the Albanian Kosovars aren't really solving the problem; they're just making sure that they have a better hand to play when the game re-starts. Indeed, unless these people want to keep dividing up their part of the world until it's in small, Medieval-style fiefdoms, they will continue to have this same problem - if on a somewhat smaller scale.
Here, of course, is where we encounter a second problem with the new nation of Kosovo: its size. Because, as these various 'rebel' regions in Europe and Central Asia try to (or do) break away from their mother countries, they become smaller and smaller; and thus, by extension, weaker and weaker. Now, certainly there are countries like Luxembourg, Monaco, and Switzerland who fare quite well despite their size; but those guys have something that neither Kosovo nor any of these other new-nation wannabes do - money. This means that these are small, essentially defenseless countries who, in addition to coming from countries that weren't particularly wealthy to being with, have the added bonus of being dirt poor.
In other words, we're allowing the creation of new, additional countries that we're going to have to help finance the security and basic economy of. To put it another way, we're basically taxpayers sitting around watching welfare recipients breed, and actively encouraging the process.
Thus, at the end of the day, Kosovo's declaration of independence will just make the Balkan situation that much more complex, and, perhaps not surprisingly, create a good deal more problems than it solves.
It's kind of depressing when you think about it.