YOUR TAB I THINK
The precipitate and reckless rush to recognise Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence by the US and the majority of EU states was always going to have implications far outside that province. In a world dotted, like a bad case of acne with would be breakaway provinces and embryonic nation states, the precedent did not go unnoticed. The world became a little more unstable.
Now the expulsion of Milosevic’s army from Kosovo represented a real progress in the struggle against the bloody processes of ethnic nationalism. Moreover those, usually characterising themselves as being on the left, who opposed the NATO intervention would have left Kosovo to the mercy of Milosevic entailing further ethnic cleansing and a brutal and bloody long term guerrilla war.
However the status of Kosovo represented a complex problem with a variety of possible solutions and timetables for those solutions, outright independence at this time probably the least desirable. The Russians with a long history of support for the Slav Serbs where furious, however they did take note as did other provinces incorporated unhappily into other states for whom the implications were both clear and unambiguous, not least in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Any Western call now for the Russians to respect Georgian geographical integrity can only but sound hollow now in Moscow; whilst George Bush’s complaint of a disproportional response by Russia must surely create some hollow laughter for the Lebanese who watched whilst their country’s infrastructure was destroyed by the Israeli’s on the flimsiest of pretexts whilst the US and UK blocked attempts to create a ceasefire.
Russia now will take the opportunity to so degrade Georgian military capability as to render it defenceless, in a region, the Caucasus, where it does not do to be seen to be too weak.
There is they say no such thing as a free lunch, in this instance it would appear that the Georgians may well have picked up the tab created by Kosovo.
Now the expulsion of Milosevic’s army from Kosovo represented a real progress in the struggle against the bloody processes of ethnic nationalism. Moreover those, usually characterising themselves as being on the left, who opposed the NATO intervention would have left Kosovo to the mercy of Milosevic entailing further ethnic cleansing and a brutal and bloody long term guerrilla war.
However the status of Kosovo represented a complex problem with a variety of possible solutions and timetables for those solutions, outright independence at this time probably the least desirable. The Russians with a long history of support for the Slav Serbs where furious, however they did take note as did other provinces incorporated unhappily into other states for whom the implications were both clear and unambiguous, not least in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Any Western call now for the Russians to respect Georgian geographical integrity can only but sound hollow now in Moscow; whilst George Bush’s complaint of a disproportional response by Russia must surely create some hollow laughter for the Lebanese who watched whilst their country’s infrastructure was destroyed by the Israeli’s on the flimsiest of pretexts whilst the US and UK blocked attempts to create a ceasefire.
Russia now will take the opportunity to so degrade Georgian military capability as to render it defenceless, in a region, the Caucasus, where it does not do to be seen to be too weak.
There is they say no such thing as a free lunch, in this instance it would appear that the Georgians may well have picked up the tab created by Kosovo.
