Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
Maybe Kosovo should become part of Albania?
I don't know how this is going to work out, but i hope it get's worked out before the US Invades.
Haven't we already invaded that part of the world? We're still there afaik.
What to do with Kosovo?
- Thread starter Dida
- Start date
Haven't we already invaded that part of the world? We're still there afaik.
I'm sorry, but the war with Albania was fake.
Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
Pretty sure it was Serbia.
Wag the Dog reference FTW.
EdwardTking
Deity
Once it became clear that relations between Serbians and Islamic Kosovans had irretrievably broken down, it would have been best to partition it (as the Russians suggested with 80% independent 20% (adjacent to Serbia)) incorporated within Serbia, and a peaceful exchange of populations.
Comraddict
C.IV
Then can you explain to me how the population of Serbs in Kosovo was about 25% 50 yrs ago, and now is 5%?
The governing parts created by Tito were artificial in any respect. All countries are split in some way to provinces; this does not mean that each of those provinces has any justified reason to become a country of its own in the future.
Kosovo was another such province. It did become part of Serbia in the medieval era, following the collapse of the Byzantine Empire after the fourth crusade, and the ressurection of the empire saw wars with Serbia and Bulgaria.
Kosovo later on was conquered by the ottomans, and remained under ottoman control until the first balkan war, when it was taken again by Serbia, in 1912, and its status was secured in 1913, in the end of the second balkan war.
Albanian immigration to the region, and the much greater birth rate of albanian families compared to slav ones, lead to a severe change in the ethnic make-up.
Ethnic cleansing definately took place after the bombing campaign, with only a very small number of serbians left, due to killings led by the KLA (Kosovo liberation army, an albanian armed faction). Today the KFOR (nato 'kosovo force' ) is there to ensure that the serbian minority is guarded against such attacks, but documentaries show that it has a very limited role in checking other crime, which has infested the region. Kosovo seems to be the regional center for both drug trafficing and human trafficing (enforced prostitution), and the rise in western europe of the albanian mafia is connected to it.
It was a horrible mistake of the US, under Clinton, to be of the view that they had a serious partner in the Kla. Albania, in some respects, is one century behind the rest of Europe, and unlike the rest of the balkans they did not participate in the nationalistic greater state race in the early 20th century (since their country was created during the balkan wars, as a protectorate of Italy and Austria-Hungary, with the interest of checking greek and serbian expansion in the lower balkans). This resulted both in the Kla in Kosovo, and the analogous MLA in slavo-Macedonia, which resulted in a civil war there a few years back.
And whereas the outcome of the Us-backed Kla was to achieve autonomy (and a US protectorate) in Kosovo, the result of the MLA was to change the slavic macedonian constitution so as to name albanians as a "co-founding ethnicity" in that country as well.
Kosovo was another such province. It did become part of Serbia in the medieval era, following the collapse of the Byzantine Empire after the fourth crusade, and the ressurection of the empire saw wars with Serbia and Bulgaria.
Kosovo later on was conquered by the ottomans, and remained under ottoman control until the first balkan war, when it was taken again by Serbia, in 1912, and its status was secured in 1913, in the end of the second balkan war.
Albanian immigration to the region, and the much greater birth rate of albanian families compared to slav ones, lead to a severe change in the ethnic make-up.
Ethnic cleansing definately took place after the bombing campaign, with only a very small number of serbians left, due to killings led by the KLA (Kosovo liberation army, an albanian armed faction). Today the KFOR (nato 'kosovo force' ) is there to ensure that the serbian minority is guarded against such attacks, but documentaries show that it has a very limited role in checking other crime, which has infested the region. Kosovo seems to be the regional center for both drug trafficing and human trafficing (enforced prostitution), and the rise in western europe of the albanian mafia is connected to it.
It was a horrible mistake of the US, under Clinton, to be of the view that they had a serious partner in the Kla. Albania, in some respects, is one century behind the rest of Europe, and unlike the rest of the balkans they did not participate in the nationalistic greater state race in the early 20th century (since their country was created during the balkan wars, as a protectorate of Italy and Austria-Hungary, with the interest of checking greek and serbian expansion in the lower balkans). This resulted both in the Kla in Kosovo, and the analogous MLA in slavo-Macedonia, which resulted in a civil war there a few years back.
And whereas the outcome of the Us-backed Kla was to achieve autonomy (and a US protectorate) in Kosovo, the result of the MLA was to change the slavic macedonian constitution so as to name albanians as a "co-founding ethnicity" in that country as well.
Dida
YHWH
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Such division would be a time bomb, guaranteed to erupt into another bloodbath in the future. Serbs would resent the West and Kosovans for forcing them to give up what they perceive as cradle of the Serbian nation, and the Kosovan would be angry over losing the northern 20% of its territory.
And it's funny to see the term 'peaceful exchange of population'. Sounds more like forced resettlement to me.
TheLastOne36
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2007
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if Kosovo goes so should Vojvodina IMO.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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It wasn't a mistake, it was a calculated policy, one that worked exactly as it was supposed to. It kept the region unstable, the need for a protectorate there, and forced other governments in the region to cooperate with the US and the EU, to avert internal problems. And the current state of Kosovo ensures it will continue to export instability in the region, and thus maintain that situation.
The US administration under Clinton had plenty of information about the KLA. The group was removed from the list of terrorist groups maintained by the Department of State back in 1998, when it became useful...
Lambert Simnel
One across
I suspect the Serbian government was behind the ethnic cleansing of Albanians out of Kosovo, and it was an unacceptable policy. On the other hand, while something like 800,000 Albanians were displaced, it's not clear how many just fled, and how many were driven out. It does appear to be clear that more were driven out after the US and UK signed the Rambouillet Accord (which was always going to be unacceptable to Serbia) and the consequent bombing of the Serbs by NATO. The Serbian military clearly stepped up the ethic cleansing when they were under attack. To put it another way, the West's heavy handed and somewhat simplistic approach to the issues exacerbated the problems. I think your (and Bush's) view to give independence to Kosovo looks awfully similar.
From the point KFOR was put in place to stabilise Kosovo, over 200,000 Serbs have left Kosovo. Again, I doubt if anyone can really tell how many have just fled, and how many were driven out. But if the Serbian governments ethnic cleansing invalidates the rights of their people (and, frankly, I don't agree that it does), then doesn't the Kosovo Albanians' subsequent ethnic cleansing invalidate their rights just as much ?
Lambert Simnel
One across
Indeed, though Varwnos' post outlines why there are quite so few Serbs in the area. Anyway, I don't think there's any debate over the fact that Kosovo needs to maintain some form of autonomy. I don't see that that necessarily equates to becoming an independent nation.
luiz said:
Yes, Croatia had/has the right to be a separate country. But the West's well meaning, but naive, approach of thinking that it was as simple as saying Croatia are the good guys so let's recognise them now, meant that we were encouraging the Croatian treatment of the Serbs in Krajina, and that, in turn, lead to a whole heap of stuff from all sides....
I believe the whole area needs to be treated with a great deal more historical sensitivity than we have shown in the past. Just tossing independence to today's Kosovo is both precipitous and risky.
Greek Stud
Prince
The West Proposal is a British-American divide and conquer tactic. Grab the heart of these Eastern Nations. This policy was mapped out in negotiations well understood by Eastern Christians at the pivotal massacre of Smyrna during the Christian Genocides.
The heart of Greece is Constantinople which effectively lost their dominance in the 1950s during the Istanbul Pogram.
The heart of Armenia was Ani, which sits just at the border of the Turkish-Armenian border.
All of Assyria lost everything after the British promised their independence for their alliance against the Turks. Now the Sunni Muslims and misled Turkish bombs hit Chaldo-Assyrian villages in the Ninveh plains.
Cyprus was divided by actions of the CIA administered Greek Junta. A place where Turks and Greeks got along fine for 400 years, suddenly got mapped as a north and south ethnic divide. And still these Cypriots still do not understand the international perception of their ethnic divide. Greeks and Turks on Cyprus get along fine, it is the puppetmasters that cannot agree to end these theatrics. For if they did, there would no longer be a legitimate reason for the UN force to divert the Cypriot attention away from how there is suddenly 2 British military bases and satelites monitoring the Middle East.
Kosovo's Albanian administration is even crueler than the Communist Albanian Nazi that founded the Albanian nation. Kosovo's Albanians have hosted Osama bin Ladin on their soil. Apparantly, as soon as Clinton begun the bombing campaigns the KLA was taken off the list of being a terrorist organization that is a party to the Al-Queda network. Now with the help of officials from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, they have gained protection from the West to host a divide and conquer landscape. This often boasts the West position against Russia, because the more theatres of conflict we create the more pieces on the chess board we can distract Russia from attacking us at home. If we are to go to war with Russia and China, these theatres act like Iraq in the since of, fight the war somewhere else, but not on our land.
Where are these theatres?
Serbia-Kosovo
Moldova
Georgia-Ossetia-Chechnya
Armenia-Azerbaijan
Turkey-North Kurdistan-South Kurdistan
North Cyprus-South Cyprus
[edit] Ethiopia-Eritrea (where as Somalia proper is with Eritrea and Somaliland should essentially be independent) Somaliland is a prime example of when a referendum should be held for indpendence as well as the Puntland. Kosovo's independence is not a legitimate solution, it could actual spark an internation theatre of war the same way the Balkans always has.
Ukraine and Belarus, historically central to Slavic History are being played through theatrics like the Polish-Czech missle sheild against Iran. Because of the Soviet Genocide in Ukraine, the West plays the protector role while Belarus can have leverage with siding with Russia. It's pivotal role that it has over Russia is that it's army is positioned to take Lithuania and Poland.
Lately, the stakes have risen as India and China have supported the Eastern standard that actions taken in Eastern Europe do serve as a precedent to global policy.
[edit] People who understand the political landscape of the Balkans remember how it was the Croats and Muslim minorities that backed Nazi Germany against the Serbian resistance. As the Nazis easily took most of Europe, Serbia and Greece resisted.
Gregory Clark is a former Australian government official and currently vice president of Akita International University. www.gregoryclark.net
The Nazis have said to be impressed by the brutality with which the Croatian forces - the dreaded Ustashi - set out to massacre and cleanse whole villages and towns of Serbian populations. 1 millions Serbs died as a result and many of them in the Croatian death camp at Jasenovac, said to rival some Nazi Holocaust operations in scale and atrocity.
Once the war was over, Serb revenge seemed inevitable. But the Yugoslav resistance leader, Tito, managed to restrain passions by allowing Serbian domination of the central government while dividing the nation into semi-autonomous regions with mixed ethnic populations. There we saw frequent attacks by recalcitrant Ustashi elements on Yugoslav diplomatic missions and the large Serbian immigrant community. We took it for granted that in any breakup of post-communist Yugoslavia it would be insanity to ask the large Serbian minorities in Croatia and Bosnia to accept rule by their former pro-Nazi Croatian and Muslim oppressors. But insanity prevailed, thanks largely to pressure from Germany, Britain and the United States, all seeking to expand influence into yet another Eastern Europe ex-communist nation.
In short, the subsequent fighting was inevitable, as were the atrocities, by all sides. But the Serbs could at least claim they were seeking mainly to recover some of the towns and villages they had lost under the Nazis. Much is made of Serbian revenge killings in the Bosnian district of Srebrenica in 1995. But we see no mention of the wartime and postwar killings of Serbs in that area, which had reduced the Serbian population from a prewar level of over half to less than one third. Nor do we find much mention of the atrocities involved in expelling hundreds of thousands of Serbs from Croatia.
Enter the Kosovo problem.
To assist the Muslim side during the 1992-1995 Bosnian fighting, British and U.S. intelligence organs resorted to the extraordinary recruitment and training of Islamic extremists from Afghanistan's anti-Soviet wars of the 1980s. Help and training was also given to Albanian Muslim extremists setting up their Kosovo Liberation Army to launch guerrilla attacks against isolated Serbian communities. (These long-suspected facts were confirmed by Britain's former environment minister Michael Meacher writing in The Guardian newspaper recently).
Even more extraordinary was the way Serbian attempts to prevent or retaliate against those KLA attacks were denounced as the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo's Albanians (ironically it was the KLA that invented the term, to describe its plan to drive out the Serbian minority). The U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization move to bomb Serbia into submission followed soon after, even though it was the KLA, not Belgrade, that violated a 1998 ceasefire organized by the U.S.
The propaganda war used to justify Western policies over Kosovo was unrelenting. We were told that 500,000 ethnic Albanians had been killed there by the Serbs (miraculously we are now given a figure of around 10,000). Much was made of a 1989 speech by former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic said to call for "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo. But one has only to read the speech to realize it said the exact opposite - that it was a call for moderation in handling ethnic Albanian hostility to a justifiably stronger Serbian political presence there; the idea that the 10 percent Serbian minority there would set out deliberately to expel the large ethnic Albanian majority was patently absurd from the start. Yet that absurdity has regularly been trundled out by allegedly objective Western commentators relying heavily on the 1999 flight of ethnic Albanians to neighboring Macedonia as proof. But that flight was temporary, and came after the U.S./NATO bombing attacks, not before. Some of it was also staged.
Almost nowhere do we see any mention of the hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and moderate ethnic Albanians since expelled permanently from Kosovo by the now dominant extremists. Meanwhile we are supposed to be annoyed by Belgrade's and Moscow's resistance to a Kosovo independence that would almost certainly see the remaining ethnic minorities even further victimized.
The implications for the future are frightening. The propaganda victory over Kosovo seems to have convinced our Western policymakers that they can say anything they like on any issue and rely on spin, black information and a lazy or compliant media to get away with it.
The 1999 ultimatum given Belgrade over Kosovo was pure blackmail: Either you agree to our demands, no matter how unreasonable (including the demand to put not only Kosovo but also Serbia under NATO military occupation), or we use our dominant air power to wreck your economic and social infrastructure. The subsequent destruction of Serbia's industries, including its only car factory, was pure vandalism.
Even Belgrade's willingness to accept a Kosovo under the control of moderate ethnic Albanians was rejected, in favor of the KLA Muslim extremists the U.S. had long supported. Ironically some of those extremists have now joined al-Qaida's anti-U.S. jihad.
On the 50th anniversary of their original unification, the EU powers congratulated themselves on the way they had kept Europe free of war ever since 1945. They did not seem even to notice how they had just gone to war with a European nation called Serbia. Serbia was the one European nation to resist Nazi German domination (the others either surrendered or collaborated). Its capital, Belgrade, was viciously bombed as a result. The next time it was bombed was by a NATO that included Germany and many of the other former collaborator nations, this time to force it to submit over Kosovo. Little wonder the Serbs remain angry.
The heart of Greece is Constantinople which effectively lost their dominance in the 1950s during the Istanbul Pogram.
The heart of Armenia was Ani, which sits just at the border of the Turkish-Armenian border.
All of Assyria lost everything after the British promised their independence for their alliance against the Turks. Now the Sunni Muslims and misled Turkish bombs hit Chaldo-Assyrian villages in the Ninveh plains.
Cyprus was divided by actions of the CIA administered Greek Junta. A place where Turks and Greeks got along fine for 400 years, suddenly got mapped as a north and south ethnic divide. And still these Cypriots still do not understand the international perception of their ethnic divide. Greeks and Turks on Cyprus get along fine, it is the puppetmasters that cannot agree to end these theatrics. For if they did, there would no longer be a legitimate reason for the UN force to divert the Cypriot attention away from how there is suddenly 2 British military bases and satelites monitoring the Middle East.
Kosovo's Albanian administration is even crueler than the Communist Albanian Nazi that founded the Albanian nation. Kosovo's Albanians have hosted Osama bin Ladin on their soil. Apparantly, as soon as Clinton begun the bombing campaigns the KLA was taken off the list of being a terrorist organization that is a party to the Al-Queda network. Now with the help of officials from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, they have gained protection from the West to host a divide and conquer landscape. This often boasts the West position against Russia, because the more theatres of conflict we create the more pieces on the chess board we can distract Russia from attacking us at home. If we are to go to war with Russia and China, these theatres act like Iraq in the since of, fight the war somewhere else, but not on our land.
Where are these theatres?
Serbia-Kosovo
Moldova
Georgia-Ossetia-Chechnya
Armenia-Azerbaijan
Turkey-North Kurdistan-South Kurdistan
North Cyprus-South Cyprus
[edit] Ethiopia-Eritrea (where as Somalia proper is with Eritrea and Somaliland should essentially be independent) Somaliland is a prime example of when a referendum should be held for indpendence as well as the Puntland. Kosovo's independence is not a legitimate solution, it could actual spark an internation theatre of war the same way the Balkans always has.
Ukraine and Belarus, historically central to Slavic History are being played through theatrics like the Polish-Czech missle sheild against Iran. Because of the Soviet Genocide in Ukraine, the West plays the protector role while Belarus can have leverage with siding with Russia. It's pivotal role that it has over Russia is that it's army is positioned to take Lithuania and Poland.
Lately, the stakes have risen as India and China have supported the Eastern standard that actions taken in Eastern Europe do serve as a precedent to global policy.
[edit] People who understand the political landscape of the Balkans remember how it was the Croats and Muslim minorities that backed Nazi Germany against the Serbian resistance. As the Nazis easily took most of Europe, Serbia and Greece resisted.
Gregory Clark is a former Australian government official and currently vice president of Akita International University. www.gregoryclark.net
The Nazis have said to be impressed by the brutality with which the Croatian forces - the dreaded Ustashi - set out to massacre and cleanse whole villages and towns of Serbian populations. 1 millions Serbs died as a result and many of them in the Croatian death camp at Jasenovac, said to rival some Nazi Holocaust operations in scale and atrocity.
Once the war was over, Serb revenge seemed inevitable. But the Yugoslav resistance leader, Tito, managed to restrain passions by allowing Serbian domination of the central government while dividing the nation into semi-autonomous regions with mixed ethnic populations. There we saw frequent attacks by recalcitrant Ustashi elements on Yugoslav diplomatic missions and the large Serbian immigrant community. We took it for granted that in any breakup of post-communist Yugoslavia it would be insanity to ask the large Serbian minorities in Croatia and Bosnia to accept rule by their former pro-Nazi Croatian and Muslim oppressors. But insanity prevailed, thanks largely to pressure from Germany, Britain and the United States, all seeking to expand influence into yet another Eastern Europe ex-communist nation.
In short, the subsequent fighting was inevitable, as were the atrocities, by all sides. But the Serbs could at least claim they were seeking mainly to recover some of the towns and villages they had lost under the Nazis. Much is made of Serbian revenge killings in the Bosnian district of Srebrenica in 1995. But we see no mention of the wartime and postwar killings of Serbs in that area, which had reduced the Serbian population from a prewar level of over half to less than one third. Nor do we find much mention of the atrocities involved in expelling hundreds of thousands of Serbs from Croatia.
Enter the Kosovo problem.
To assist the Muslim side during the 1992-1995 Bosnian fighting, British and U.S. intelligence organs resorted to the extraordinary recruitment and training of Islamic extremists from Afghanistan's anti-Soviet wars of the 1980s. Help and training was also given to Albanian Muslim extremists setting up their Kosovo Liberation Army to launch guerrilla attacks against isolated Serbian communities. (These long-suspected facts were confirmed by Britain's former environment minister Michael Meacher writing in The Guardian newspaper recently).
Even more extraordinary was the way Serbian attempts to prevent or retaliate against those KLA attacks were denounced as the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo's Albanians (ironically it was the KLA that invented the term, to describe its plan to drive out the Serbian minority). The U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization move to bomb Serbia into submission followed soon after, even though it was the KLA, not Belgrade, that violated a 1998 ceasefire organized by the U.S.
The propaganda war used to justify Western policies over Kosovo was unrelenting. We were told that 500,000 ethnic Albanians had been killed there by the Serbs (miraculously we are now given a figure of around 10,000). Much was made of a 1989 speech by former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic said to call for "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo. But one has only to read the speech to realize it said the exact opposite - that it was a call for moderation in handling ethnic Albanian hostility to a justifiably stronger Serbian political presence there; the idea that the 10 percent Serbian minority there would set out deliberately to expel the large ethnic Albanian majority was patently absurd from the start. Yet that absurdity has regularly been trundled out by allegedly objective Western commentators relying heavily on the 1999 flight of ethnic Albanians to neighboring Macedonia as proof. But that flight was temporary, and came after the U.S./NATO bombing attacks, not before. Some of it was also staged.
Almost nowhere do we see any mention of the hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and moderate ethnic Albanians since expelled permanently from Kosovo by the now dominant extremists. Meanwhile we are supposed to be annoyed by Belgrade's and Moscow's resistance to a Kosovo independence that would almost certainly see the remaining ethnic minorities even further victimized.
The implications for the future are frightening. The propaganda victory over Kosovo seems to have convinced our Western policymakers that they can say anything they like on any issue and rely on spin, black information and a lazy or compliant media to get away with it.
The 1999 ultimatum given Belgrade over Kosovo was pure blackmail: Either you agree to our demands, no matter how unreasonable (including the demand to put not only Kosovo but also Serbia under NATO military occupation), or we use our dominant air power to wreck your economic and social infrastructure. The subsequent destruction of Serbia's industries, including its only car factory, was pure vandalism.
Even Belgrade's willingness to accept a Kosovo under the control of moderate ethnic Albanians was rejected, in favor of the KLA Muslim extremists the U.S. had long supported. Ironically some of those extremists have now joined al-Qaida's anti-U.S. jihad.
On the 50th anniversary of their original unification, the EU powers congratulated themselves on the way they had kept Europe free of war ever since 1945. They did not seem even to notice how they had just gone to war with a European nation called Serbia. Serbia was the one European nation to resist Nazi German domination (the others either surrendered or collaborated). Its capital, Belgrade, was viciously bombed as a result. The next time it was bombed was by a NATO that included Germany and many of the other former collaborator nations, this time to force it to submit over Kosovo. Little wonder the Serbs remain angry.
Lambert Simnel
One across
Interesting post, Greek Stud. It's quite a pro-Serbian view, I hope you don't mind me saying, but well worth posting as we get that viewpoint so rarely. Also, since much of the war time commentary in the West now appears to have been little better in content than if it had been propaganda (the good old BBC, eh ?), it's good to see some of what became accepted as truths being challenged. And I think it's a useful insight to link back to the Ustasha (indeed, some of the Croatian military at war with Serbia in the '90s seems to have described itself as Ustasha).
I hope that your post gets proper consideration and response from the pro-independence lobby here.
I hope that your post gets proper consideration and response from the pro-independence lobby here.
Verbose
Deity
Kosovo is a UN protectorate, and a mess. The hot potato is scheduled to be handed over to the EU for safe-keeping presently.
Some recent reading (recommended).
By Maciej Zaremba, Swedish daily "Dagens Nyheter":
Part 1. Report from Unmikistan, Land of the Future
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=664639
Part 2. The UN State and the Seven Robbers
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=664657
Part 3. Complain in Azerbaijan
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=664659
Part 4. Prowess, Courage and Plastic Socks
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=664670
As for a long term solution, take them both into the EU eventually. At worst it might turn out like a Ireland-N. Ireland situation.
Short term, the UN centrally needs a serious boost of resources if it's going to be able to handle a situation like this.
Some will no doubt think the situation calls for scrapping the UN. But the conclusion in the series of articles above is that the UN needs the resources to develop its own, professional police force. That will cost a pretty penny, and won't happen as it would mean the UN member states would have to pay for it. Which they won't at present.
Some recent reading (recommended).
By Maciej Zaremba, Swedish daily "Dagens Nyheter":
Part 1. Report from Unmikistan, Land of the Future
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=664639
Part 2. The UN State and the Seven Robbers
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=664657
Part 3. Complain in Azerbaijan
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=664659
Part 4. Prowess, Courage and Plastic Socks
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=664670
As for a long term solution, take them both into the EU eventually. At worst it might turn out like a Ireland-N. Ireland situation.
Short term, the UN centrally needs a serious boost of resources if it's going to be able to handle a situation like this.
Some will no doubt think the situation calls for scrapping the UN. But the conclusion in the series of articles above is that the UN needs the resources to develop its own, professional police force. That will cost a pretty penny, and won't happen as it would mean the UN member states would have to pay for it. Which they won't at present.
Dida
YHWH
- Joined
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- Messages
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I don't see this happening mainly because it is not in US interest to let UN has its own military.
In fact, I suspect the very purpose of Kosovo War was to set a precedent of NATO military involvement in international conflicts, bypassing the need to go through UN where Russia and China has veto power. This strategy was further tested in Iraq and Afghanistan. Looks like the US is embracing a strategy of militarily exporting its ideology.
Rossiya
Fridge Magnet Porn
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2006
- Messages
- 6,981
Makes a change that they are British military bases though, and not American ones. Do the Ikeas in America sell flat-packed military bases by any chance?
To put it in EU2 terms, you don't lose a core simply because of an act you've done.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Over my cold lifeless body.
Today's Kosovo is a hellhole - half or more of the people there are unemployed and the only thing it exports are gangsters (since the heroic "liberation" of Kosovo, the number of Albanian gangs in Czech rep. tripled). The whole place is now little more than a criminal hub used to smuggle drugs to Europe. Its government has no agenda, they just yell "independence, independence!", but they have no idea what to do next.
In other words, independent Kosovo would be a disaster, a failed state on the EU's southern border.
I'd turn it into an EU/NATO/UN protectorate, force them to behave like civilized people and then, I'd talk with them about AUTONOMY. Independence should be completely out of question.
Kosovo has historically been an integral part of Serbia. Taking it away from it would be extremelly painful, since most of Serbian history and culture is somehow connected to this place. Moreover, I think Serbia lost too much in recent years, so perhaps we should stop kicking them when they're down.
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