Greater Surbiton

In its dealings with Serbia, the EU has never been very competent in balancing the stick and the carrot. Serbia’s signing of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU is facing resistance from the Netherlands and Belgium because of Serbia’s failure to cooperate over the arrest of war-criminals indicted by the UN tribunal in The Hague. It now appears that the Netherlands and Belgium are softening their resistance to the SAA with Serbia, though without ending it altogether. While the Low Countries’ insistence that Serbia must cooperate fully with the Hague Tribunal is commendable, it is also problematic: the anti-Western nationalists grouped around Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica would anyway prefer Serbia not to join the EU and are opposed to signing the SAA even if it is offered, so are likely to view a veto of the agreement as a reward rather than a punishment. Conversely, the pro-EU elements around President Boris Tadic have not the power to arrest war-criminals against the will of the nationalists, however much they might like to. And the longer the impasse over the SAA continues, the more the the anti-Western nationalists strengthen their hand vis-a-vis the pro-Europeans, and the closer Serbia drifts to Russia.

The best elements in Serbian politics are the ones keenest for the SAA to be signed. Yet for all this, there are strong arguments against signing it at the price of Western capitulation on the issue of war-criminals. Serbia has a long way to go before it achieves the political and democratic standards to make it a suitable EU member. Easing the pressure on Serbia would reduce the incentive for it to reform, thereby paradoxically slowing its achievement of these standards. All the evidence, painfully gathered since the early 1990s, overwhelmingly points to the conclusion that Serbian nationalism cannot be appeased: making concessions over the issue of war-criminals will not result in Serbian leaders making concessions in return; rather, it will be perceived as a sign of weakness and an invitation for Serbia to demand further concessions from the EU. This is particularly dangerous for two reasons.

Firstly, even if they perform well in the Serbian parliamentary elections scheduled for 11 May - which is by no means certain - the pro-EU elements around President Tadic and the Democratic Party are far from being model Europeans and democrats; they staunchly align themselves with Kostunica’s faction in opposition to the independence of Kosovo, and have shown themselves to be every bit as pettily and small-mindedly anti-Kosovar as the more anti-Western nationalists over this issue. Tadic has disgracefully stated that Serbia should join the EU in order to prevent Kosovo from joining, showing that he, his party and his country all still have a lot of growing up to do before they are fit for EU membership. Give them a carrot over the war-criminals issue and they are likely to take the whole sack, indeed bite the hand that feeds them. In other words, concessions over the war-criminals issue are likely to encourage Tadic and the Democrats to play a more destabilising role over Kosovo, thereby setting back the Balkans’ Euro-Atlantic integration.

The second reason why we should be wary of giving Serbia concessions over the war-criminals issue is that this could be the thin end of the wedge, given the bad faith with which some of our European allies approach South East Europe. At the NATO summit in Bucharest earlier this month, both France and Germany, in particular, showed themselves ready to sacrifice Europe’s principles and interests, and to let down NATO aspirants Ukraine, Georgia and Macedonia, in order to appease Russia and Greece. The fact that there was absolutely no justice whatsoever in Russia’s objection to a NATO Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgie or to Greece’s opposition to Macedonia’s membership of the alliance, and the fact that keeping Macedonia out of NATO is actively destabilising the Balkans, mattered nothing to our Machiavellian allies. To appease Serbia over the war-criminals issue is an open invitation to France and, in particular, to pro-Russian Germany to offer further concessions to Moscow and to Belgrade at the expense of Balkan stability, British and US interests and the interests of the Western alliance as a whole. So long as we are firm with Serbia, we limit the possible scope of such French and German mischief-making.

How, then, to square the circle: to avoid appeasing Serbia and avoid pushing it away from the West at the same time ?

There is, in fact, a very simple way: to change the stick. Rather than withholding the SAA, which ultimately damages Western interests as much as it punishes Serbia, we should respond to Serbian non-compliance over the arrest of war-criminals by dismantling Bosnia’s Serb Republic (Republika Srpska), something that would serve our interests well and uphold our principles at the same time.

The Republika Srpska is a destabilising factor in the Balkans. It was created by Serbian aggression and genocide against Bosnia in the early 1990s, a genocide that has now been recognised by three different international courts: the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; the International Court of Justice; and the European Court of Human Rights. The Republika Srpska’s existence as a sectarian, apartheid state represents a gross injustice to the nearly 50% of the territory’s population that was made up of Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs at the start of the 1990s - it is because this entity’s territory was nearly half non-Serb until it was ethnically cleansed that it has no legitimate right to secede from Bosnia, or even to exist. The Republika Srpska was recognised by the Dayton Agreement in November 1995, at a time when Western diplomacy was at its most ignominious, Serbian military capability was most grossly overestimated and British policy was determined to appease the insatiable aggressor.

There is no reason why we should feel bound to honour our earlier, disastrous mistake. Dayton was an agreement, and the simple truth is that the leaders of the Republika Srpska have not honoured their side of the bargain. War criminals have not been arrested. Muslim and Croat refugees have, for the most part, not been allowed to return. Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik responded to the ICJ’s recognition of the Srebrenica genocide by rejecting its verdict, revealing his contempt for international law. He attended the anti-Western, Serb-nationalist rally held under Kostunica’s leadership in Belgrade following the recognition of Kosovo’s independence, when the US embassy was set on fire, and publicly mooted a Republika Srpska  UDI. The Republika Srpska, meanwhile, obstructs the functioning of Bosnia-Hercegovina as a state, hindering its Euro-Atlantic integration and economic reconstruction.

Responding to the Serb failure to arrest war-criminals by dismantling the Republika Srpska, instead of by withholding the SAA from Serbia, would serve our interests in every respect. It would allow us to punish the Serb nationalists for their behaviour while holding the EU door open to Serbia. It would serve Belgrade notice that Serb nationalism will pay a very real penalty for each and every act of obstruction, while rewarding the loyal, pro-European Bosnian (Muslim-Croat) Federation. It would remove a major element of instability and bridgehead of Russian influence in the Balkans, strengthen Bosnia-Hercegovina as a reliable pillar of the European order and reverse the Western alliance’s earlier disgrace in allowing the country to be emasculated in the first place.

Decoupling Serbia’s EU accession from the war-criminals issue would simplify future EU relations with Serbia, whose EU accession could be more straightforwardly linked to its good behaviour over Kosovo. We could then set before Tadic and his pro-EU faction in Serbia a set of conditions for the signing of the SAA that they could reasonably be expected to fulfill: an end to all instability and violence on the Serbia-Kosovo border and among the Kosovo Serbs; an end to all Serbian obstruction and destabilisation of Kosovo as a self-governing entity; and a commitment that Serbia’s dispute with Kosovo will be resolved only through peaceful, consensual means. This would pave the way toward a de facto acceptance of Kosovo’s independence on Serbia’s part, while the final, formal Serbian recognition of Kosovo would be a precondition for Serbia’s final, full membership of the EU.

It might be objected that dismantling the Republika Srpska would provoke Bosnian Serb resistance, therefore instability. The Western alliance has spent much of the last two decades flinching before the Serb-nationalist paper-tiger, and there is no reason for it to continue to do so. The dismantling need not take the form of a formal abolition of the Bosnian Serb entity, but of its transformation into a shadow entity which would continue to exist on paper, with its own administrative borders and flag - helping to mollify Serb popular sentiment - while all real power would be transferred to the central Bosnian institutions. Republika Srpska politicians would be likely to resist, but only up to a point: their refusal to participate in the reconstituted Bosnian state would leave all power in Bosnia in Muslim and Croat hands, while economic sanctions would make prolongued obstruction extremely costly to them. In fact, there is a precedent for this: Bosnian Croat nationalist politicians have repeatedly attempted to rebel against the Bosnian constitutional order, and each time the international community has successfully faced them down. The firmness that worked with the Bosnian Croat nationalists can equally work with their Bosnian Serb counterparts.

A second objection might be that dismantling the Republika Srpska would be ‘anti-Serb’; i.e., objectively unjust. This is true only if one views treating the Serbs exactly the same as every other Balkan nation to be ‘anti-Serb’. In Bosnia, the Croats were deprived of their own sectarian, ethnically pure, self-proclaimed ‘republic’ by the terms of the Dayton Agreement, while the Serbs were allowed to keep theirs. This application of double-standards, to the benefit of the Serb nationalists and at the expense of the Croat nationalists, did not produce any qualms among Western politicians. Likewise, the Ohrid Agreement that brought an end to fighting between the Macedonian government and Albanian rebels in 2001 granted the large Albanian minority in Macedonia very reasonable, substantial rights that fell short of territorial autonomy, thanks to which Macedonia has enjoyed seven years of internal peace and functions as a state much better than Bosnia does. Alone in the Balkans, it is the Serb nationalists who have been allowed to carve out a sectarian entity, where none previously existed, from a multiethnic, unitary republic, on territory - it is worth repeating - that was barely more than 50% Serb prior to the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s.

Far from being a violation of Bosnian Serb self-determination, the ideal of a unitary, self-governing Bosnia-Hercegovina as the common homeland of Serbs, Croats and Muslims was one that successive generations of Bosnian Serb politicians upheld. When the Bosnian republic originally came into being in 1944-46, its president and prime-minister were both Serbs, and both champions of Bosnian unity and self-rule. Conversely, the goal of dismembering Bosnia is one that Serb nationalists have begun to follow, consistently and openly, only more recently. As late as 1990, when the Communist regime in Bosnia fell, the Bosnian Serb nationalists who campaigned successfully for the Bosnian Serb popular vote did so without ever saying that their goal was the dismemberment of Bosnia - the war of destruction they launched against the Bosnian republic in 1991-92 had no democratic mandate from the Bosnian Serb people. Of course, the traditional Bosnian Serb support for a united, self-governing Bosnia always presupposed a close link with Serbia - a desire that was satisfied so long as the Yugoslav Federation existed. But in this respect, we can satisfy Bosnian Serb national feeling: as fellow members of the EU, Bosnia and Serbia will be as closely linked as they ever were within Yugoslavia.

The present author is not the only one to favour a reform of the Bosnian state along such lines. On 25 September 2007, Republican Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey, supported by Democratic Representatives Russ Carnahan and John Olver of Missouri and Massachussetts respectively, sponsored a resolution in the US House of Representatives (H.Res. 679) for Bosnia’s reorganisation on a basis similar to that which I have suggested here.

For the past two decades, the Balkans have suffered the effects of Western policies that were ad hoc, short-termist and reflected the lack of will of their initiators. With Russia increasingly aggressive and assertive in the region, Serbia on a knife-edge between democracy and a reversion to nationalist extremism and authoritarianism, and Kosovo and Macedonia fragile and vulnerable, such dilettantism can no longer be afforded. It is time for both a stick and a carrot that are worthy of the names.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

Hat tip: Domagoj Margetic, Necenzurirano.com.

Image posted on the BNP’s website, 20 February 2008

The British National Party (BNP), Britain’s largest and best-known fascist party, has been running a series of articles denouncing the international recognition of Kosova’s independence from Serbia. On the day Kosova declared independence, 17 February, the BNP’s website ran an article entitled ‘Kosovo - the EU and USA get their way !’, claiming that the move represented

the successful takeover of part of a Christian country by a bunch of Islamic terrorists, and Albanian thugs. Aided and abetted by useful dupes who are themselves being manipulated by their puppet masters, pulling strings as ever behind the scenes! What we are left with is an embryonic Islamic state in the Balkans. It will cause destabilisation throughout the region.

Furthermore,

After today, the future balkanisation of other countries, including Britain, is no longer a flight of fancy. It will happen, unless you turn to the BNP: The last remaining political party willing to stand up to the growing Islamic threat within this country!

Playing on an ‘anti-imperialist’ theme, the BNP also claimed that Kosovo’s independence

wouldn’t have been possible without the full backing and support of America and the European Union.

The BNP condemns Kosova’s independence because most Kosova Albanians are Muslims, and because it identifies them with the Muslim immigrants in Britain. On 14 February, the BNP website published an article citing Kosova as an example of

What happens when a government loses control of immigration and gives special preference to immigrants for political reasons.

On 24 February, the BNP website ran an article accusing British church leaders of being determined to ‘appease Islam’, and linking the alleged Islamic threat in Kosova to that in Britain:

It seems incredible to us that those leaders of the Christian Church here in Britain so determined to appease Islam in our country, appear so apparently ignorant of the suffering of their co-religionists in the Serbian province of Kosovo!

Are they not aware, for instance, that since KFOR took responsibility for the province that around two hundred Christian churches, monasteries, shrines and other sites of worship have been systematically destroyed or otherwise desecrate, in what can only be seen as an organised campaign of cultural cleansing?

Can they really be unaware that quite apart from the great many Christians who have been murdered, raped, robbed and mutilated over the last nine years, that hundreds of thousands more have been driven from their homes and forced to flee for their lives by the adherents of the very religion that they go to such lengths to defend? Many would regard this as ethnic cleansing!

Do they seriously believe that Kosovo marks the end of Islamic expansion in Europe and are truly ignorant of Islamicist designs on adjoining areas of Serbia and Macedonia – both having very significant Islamic communities?

The BNP identifies the Kosova Albanians not only with the Islamic threat, but also with organised crime - as it does with ethnic minorities in the UK. On 8 March, it republished an article entitled ‘Kosovo - just one step in the Islamification of Europe’, which claimed:

Albanians are spread all over Europe and especially in the criminal underworld. They are notorious for their effectiveness, unpredictability and incredible cruelty. Their main advantage to the other organized crime is the fact that they speak language nobody understands, their organization is based on family ties and if someone dares to speak out that person is being brutally murdered. In Europe, today the Albanian mafia is the main engine of traffic of drugs and humans, theft and falsification of passports, weapons and human organs trade, abductions, extortions and executions. In London these people control the entire network of prostitution, in Italy and Greece they deal with weapons and drugs’ smuggling. There are entire towns in Italy where the business is controlled by Albanians. In the US there are more than 150,000 Albanian immigrants from Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania.

The article concludes:

I am just trying to explain why independent Kosovo is so dangerous for the cultural and social integrity of Europe. The Albanians and other Muslims for that matter have been refusing for years to integrate in the European society. The problems they have created in the UK, Italy, France, Germany, the Balkans and many other places are countless.

In its agitation against Kosova’s independence, the BNP has unambiguously adopted the ‘anti-imperialist discourse’ of the ‘radical left’, as in this article of 23 February, warning of the danger of a conflict with Russia over Kosova:

The blood thirsty warmongers of Washington, along with the self serving bureaucrats, and politicians of Brussels, and elsewhere, have now brought us closer to the brink of a major conflict, centred upon the Balkans, than at any time since the days of the cold war!

On 27 February, I wrote here at Greater Surbiton how right-wing anti-Muslim bigots were aligning themselves with the West’s enemies in opposition to Kosova’s independence. I cited articles by Melanie Phillips and Julia Gorin. Both of these articles have been reproduced on the BNP’s website, in support of its line on Kosova.

Interestingly, the BNP has also adopted the entire ‘anti-imperialist’ narrative of alleged Western victimisation and demonisation of Serbia, promoted by publications such as Counterpunch and Living Marxism.

On the alleged Western demonisation of Serbia:

Showing any sympathy for the present plight of Serbia is swimming against the tide of received opinion, which was largely generated by the successful propaganda of the West, particularly concerning Bosnia and Kosovo. The demonization of Serbia was taken to grotesque proportions and, in general, faithfully and uncritically repeated in the mainstream media.

Concerning the alleged German engineering of the break-up of Yugoslavia:

So, a clerico-fascist [Croatia's Franjo Tudjman] and an Islamic extremist [Bosnia's Alija Izetbegovic] were supported by Western intelligence agencies, governments and armed forces as bearers of “European values” to the benighted Balkans. To do this, the EU member states broke their obligations under the UN charter and the Helsinki Accords by which they had guaranteed to accept existing national borders in Europe. They recognized Slovenia and Croatia diplomatically. This was done principally at Germany’s instigation and the German government regarded this sudden about turn by the other EU states as a triumph. The Foreign Minister was cock-a-hoop “By this, Germany has regained diplomatically everything lost in Eastern Europe as a result of two world wars”. It opened the way for the new “Drang nach Osten”.

Note the reference to Western imperialism’s supposed violation of international law - a popular theme of the ‘anti-war’ left.

And concerning the alleged ‘invention of a genocide’ in the Balkans by Western propaganda, a favourite theme of John Pilger, Richard ‘Lenin’ Seymour and others:

Wartime “information” from NATO told us that at least 100,000 young Albanian men from Kosovo were missing, presumed murdered. Yet the Spanish forensic team, sent to look for mass graves was gravely embarrassed. In late 1999 its leader complained that he and his colleagues had become part of “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machine because we did not find one, not one mass grave”. The Wall Street Journal concluded that NATO stepped up its claims when it saw “a fatigued press corps drifting towards the contrary story – civilians killed by NATO bombs… The war in Kosovo was cruel, bitter, savage. Genocide it wasn’t.” The Spanish forensic team found 2108 bodies in 1999.

The BNP’s rhetoric over Kosova and the Balkans is therefore in line with that of both the ‘anti-imperialist’ left and the anti-Islamic conservative right. One would have been surprised if it were otherwise.

Image posted on the BNP’s website, 14 February.

An old joke goes, Q: What’s the first thing you learn in French military academy ? A: How to say ‘I surrender’ in German.

Now that France, Germany, Britain and the best part of Europe are united in the NATO alliance, however, it’s probably time we adopted a more uniform military system, and all learned how to say ‘I surrender’ in Russian simultaneously. At this week’s NATO summit in Bucharest, the leaders of France, Germany and other NATO countries rejected the US proposal to invite Ukraine and Georgia into the Membership Action Plan for NATO, in order to appease Russia. George W. Bush was virtually alone at the summit in arguing that welcoming new East European states into the alliance would both encourage them in the path of democratic reform and affirm support for their independence: ‘Welcoming them into the Membership Action Plan would send a signal to their citizens that if they continue on the path to democracy and reform they will be welcomed into the institutions of Europe. It would send a signal throughout the region that these two nations are, and will remain, sovereign and independent states.’ But this enlightened view was trumped by the grubby calculations of realpolitik. As French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has made clear, ‘We are opposed to the entry of Georgia and Ukraine because we think it is not the right response to the balance of power in Europe and between Europe and Russia, and we want to have a dialogue on this subject with Russia.’

It is not clear why the right of Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO should be held hostage to relations with Russia. Supposedly, they are independent states, not simply part of Russia’s imperial backyard - a backyard which, presumably, we no longer recognise in this enlightened, post-imperial, post-Cold-War age. If NATO is not directed against Russia, then Russia can have no possible objection to NATO expansion, and there is no point in recognising any such objection as legitimate. But if NATO really is directed against Russia, then it is a pretty puny alliance which allows the enemy a veto over its expansion. Ultimately, every sovereign state, from Russia to Ukraine and Georgia, has the right to form alliances with other sovereign states. To deny a smaller state this right in order to appease a larger, stronger state is shamefully disrespectful of the first state’s sovereignty.

If the NATO powers lack the will to stand up to Russia, it raises the question of what precise purpose NATO serves. The alliance has proved less than adequate in mobilising troops from member states to fight the Taliban. The very same states that wish to appease Russia in Europe - France and Germany - have been less than forthcoming when it is a question of providing troops to fight the enemies of humanity in Afghanistan. France has now belatedly agreed to provide the minimum additional number of troops to Afghanistan to avoid the threatened Canadian withdrawal from Kandahar. But even this move faces stiff domestic opposition in France.

Nor has the Bucharest summit upheld the noble principle that NATO should serve as a framework within which the states of ‘new Europe’, along with ‘old Europe’, can coexist and cooperate. Not only did the NATO states let down Ukraine and Georgia, but they could not even muster the will to pressurise Greece into allowing Macedonia to join the alliance without first having to change its name. Macedonia’s membership in NATO is crucial for the stability of South East Europe, and Greece’s policy of trying to crush the sovereignty and national identity of a European country has nothing to do with democratic values, and much more in common with fascist traditions - it was Greece’s 1930s fascist dictator Ioannis Metaxas who pioneered the most extreme measures to forcibly Hellenise the Macedonian national minority in Greek Macedonia.

This point was amply reaffirmed by recent Greek attempt to interfere with freedom of expression in Macedonia, by pressurising the latter over the appearance of billboards in the Macedonian capital of Skopje, showing a swastika superimposed on a Greek flag. The billboards were private advertisements for which the Macedonian government was not responsible; the Greek regime’s attempt to link Macedonia’s NATO bid to its removal of these billboards puts it on a par with the Muslim fundamentalists who rioted over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. Greece has been a very poor member of NATO; it has only about 130 troops in Afghanistan - the same number as Macedonia, a non-member with one-fifth its population. Nevertheless, a senior NATO source apparently blamed Macedonia for Greece’s veto of its NATO bid.

The sad truth is that the widely reviled Bush has shown himself to be a much better European than France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy. Although Sarkozy is an improvement on the last two French presidents, is at least relatively pro-American, and has agreed to bring France back into the NATO integrated command structure, yet he has persistently shown himself ready to put considerations of narrow national interest above higher principles - and to justify it in the crudest terms. He argued against Turkey’s entry into the EU on the grounds that ‘Turkey is in Asia Minor’ and that ‘I won’t be able to explain to French school kids that Europe’s border neighbors are Iraq and Syria.’ (This from the president of a republic that includes territories in the Caribbean, South America and the Indian Ocean as its integral parts or ‘overseas departments’). He supports Greece against Macedonia in the ‘name dispute’ on similarly principled grounds: ‘I always stressed that we support the Greek position in the name issue. Greeks are our friends.’

The US has shown itself to be more principled and more pro-European than France. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has contradicted NATO’s source, and stated unambiguously that Macedonia was not to blame for the failure of its NATO bid. The US has now promised to boost assistance to, and bilateral relations with Macedonia; one source suggests that this may even take the form of a strategic partnership similar to the one that the US has with Israel. It is a sad day for NATO when the US must bypass it to support the more youthful and vulnerable members of the European family.

One of the sorriest aspects of this dismal NATO summit was the failure of our own Prime Minister Gordon Brown to support the US, either over Ukraine and Georgia or over Macedonia. The charitable explanation is that this was the inaction of a PM inexperienced in foreign affairs who still has not found his feet. The more worrying possibility is that Brown is reacting to Tony Blair’s controversial experience by attempting to be less pro-American and more ‘pro-European’ (i.e. anti-European but pro-Franco-German). This would be a mistake. If it is left to the US, alone of all the major NATO countries, to stand up for the East Europeans, this will not be good for European unity.

We were warned that recognising Kosova’s independence would open a Pandora’s box, triggering global chaos by encouraging innumerable other secessionist territories across the world to declare their own independence in the hope of recognition. The threatened consequence was always something of a non-sequitur, since the secessionist territories most frequently cited - Northern Cyprus, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria - had all already seceded from the countries to which they formally belong. How could recognition of Kosova’s independence spark the secession of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), when the TRNC had already declared independence from Cyprus back in 1983, twenty-five years before Kosova was recognised ? It’s a riddle to which President Vladimir Putin of Eurasia no doubt has the answer, one that he may reveal to us in the course of his current propaganda war against Oceania. Putin is himself fond of the supposed Kosova - TRNC parallel. It is therefore particularly poignant that the recognition of Kosova’s independence appears to be having the exact opposite result to the one that he and other prophets of doom predicted. Namely, on Friday, the Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat and Cyprus’s newly elected president Dimitris Christofias met and agreed to restart negotiations on reunifying the country.

There is reason to believe that this positive development is not unrelated to the independence of Kosova, as Professor Mehmet Ozcan of the International Strategic Research Organisation has persuasively suggested. Under Christofias’s hardline nationalist predecessor Tassos Papadopoulos, it was the Greek Cypriots, not the Turkish Cypriots, who were most to blame for obstructing Cypriot unity. In a referendum in 2004, the UN’s Annan Plan for Cyprus’s reunification was overwhelmingly approved by the Turkish Cypriot electorate but, on Papadopoulos’s urging, overwhelmingly rejected by the Greek Cypriot electorate. Papadopoulos believed that, with Cyprus entering the EU and able to veto Turkey’s entry, he would eventually be able to extract more favourable terms from the Turks than those represented by the Annan Plan. It is also entirely possible that he actually preferred a permanently divided Cyprus to one reunited on the basis of an Annan-style compromise; at the very least, he was prepared to postpone reunification for the forseeable future. From the perspective of most Greek Cypriots who would like in principle to see their country reunited, this strategy only made sense if it was indeed going to lead to unity on favourable terms in the long run. But the upcoming recognition of Kosova’s independence showed them that the international community could not be relied upon to uphold the principle of the inviolability of state borders indefinitely, particularly when it was a question of a country, such as Serbia or Cyprus, whose leaders were behaving consistently unreasonably. Hence the surprise electoral victory of the moderate Christofias last month. Symbolically, the first round of Cyprus’s presidential election, in which Papadopoulos came third and was therefore knocked out, took place on 17 February - Kosova’s independence day.

As leader of the Communist AKEL party, Christofias represented the non-nationalist option. AKEL has long upheld a cross-national ideology of brotherhood and unity between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and has a history of persecution at the hands of both Greek and Turkish extremists. When, prior to his meeting with Talat, Christofias was asked by a reporter whether they would be drinking Greek or Turkish coffee (they are the same drink), Christofias replied ‘Cypriot coffee, we will both be having Cypriot coffee’. Christofias and AKEL should not be viewed through rose-tinted spectacles; they opportunistically collaborated with Papadopoulos, helping to bring him to power and defeat the Annan Plan. Christofias continues to follow the Greek-nationalist line of insisting that Macedonia change its name. Nevertheless, under his leadership, Cyprus’s prospects for reunification seem incomparably better than they did barely more than a month ago.

The other element of the equation is that Talat did not respond to Kosova’s recognition by launching a new separatist drive, as the anti-Kosovar prophets of doom had predicted. Indeed, he explicitly rejected a parallel between Kosova and the TRNC: ‘We do not see a direct link between the situation in Kosovo and the Cyprus Problem. These problems have come up through different conditions.’ And he is right. Although it was the Greek side that was primarily responsible for provoking the crisis that culminated in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and although Turkey arguably had a legal basis for its invasion, nevertheless the form that this invasion took, involving as it did the dismemberment of the country and the ethnic-cleansing of the Greek population of the north, constituted an act of aggression and conquest. The Turkish Cypriot entity that became the TRNC in 1983 was therefore an artificial product of foreign invasion and ethnic cleansing - in contrast to Kosova, which was established as an autonomous region under the legitimate Yugoslav authorities, and whose Albanian demographic majority predated its conquest by Serbia in 1912.

Talat may or may not recognise this distinction between Kosova and the TRNC. But he is undoubtedly aware of something of which the prophets of doom are not, but which is blindingly obvious: the fact that Kosova is being recognised internationally does not mean that other secessionist territories will be recognised internationally. The ’Pandora’s box’ model would only hold true if a secessionist territory, encouraged by Kosova’s recognition, could translate this sense of encouragement into international recognition. As there is no way for a secessionist territory to do this, the model does not hold. The prospects of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria for recognition by Russia may have improved, but this would be because of a conscious policy decision on Moscow’s part, not because the territories in question felt ‘inspired’ by Kosova’s recognition. Talat is no knee-jerk separatist but a rational, moderate politician who supported the Annan Plan; he has no reason to jeopardise the Turkish Cypriot community’s chance to enter the EU because of Kosova.

There is a final lesson to be learned from this. Although Cyprus has much more justice on its side vis-a-vis the TRNC than Serbia has vis-a-vis Kosova, yet it is Christofias who speaks the language of reconciliation and ‘Cypriot coffee’. Serbia’s leaders have never been able to speak in this way to the Kosova Albanians; they did not speak of Kosova and Serbia as lands that belonged alike to Serbs and Albanians, or speak of the fraternity of the two peoples. Christofias may understand something that Serbia’s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic clearly do not: that if you want to keep your country united and prevent one of its peoples from seceding, you need to treat the latter as your fellow countrymen and women, not as the enemy.

This is a lesson that should be learned by all regimes around the world whose oppression drives subject peoples to secede: if you want to avoid losing part of your territory, it pays to be reasonable. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Western alliance may congratulate themselves on having, with their decision to recognise Kosova, helped to promote stability and reconciliation in South East Europe and the resolution of an old conflict in their ranks.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

The democratic choice is an easier one for progressives to make in the UK than it is in the US. Over here, the ruling Labour Party is more progressive than the Conservative opposition on both foreign and domestic issues. But in the US, things are not so simple. Were I an American citizen, I would be inclined to vote Democrat over domestic issues - abortion, taxation, etc. But I have no doubt that the interests of South East Europe would be better served by John McCain as president than by either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Bill Clinton bears a very large share of responsibility for the problems faced by the Balkans and Caucasus today. These are, in particular, a dismembered, non-functioning Bosnia; an anti-Western, disruptive Serbia; and a dismembered Georgia. The problem was not that Clinton was a particularly reactionary president in world affairs, but that he simply was not very interested in them, something that resulted in a failure of leadership. The mess in Bosnia is above all the fault of the former British Conservative government of John Major and the former French Socialist regime of the late Francois Mitterand; they were the champions of appeasement and the architects, along with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman, of Bosnia’s dismemberment. Clinton could and should have insisted upon a change in Western policy vis-a-vis Bosnia upon becoming president. Instead, he chose to defer to his pro-Belgrade European allies, Britain and France, not wishing to fall out with them over something trivial like genocide in the heart of Europe. This was not only a moral failing, but a betrayal of US interests; the disastrous Anglo-French policy and Clinton’s vacillating support for it greatly damaged both transatlantic relations and the Balkans. There are times when Europe needs American leadership; Bosnia was one of them.

After the initialling of the Dayton Peace Accords in November 1995, Clinton continued to neglect Bosnia, allowing the indicted war-criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to escape arrest - primarily because he did not want to risk American casualties in arrest operations. Nor does Clinton deserve particular credit over Kosova; it is highly questionable whether the US would have acted to prevent the genocide there in 1999 had not Major and Mitterand been replaced in the meantime by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac. NATO’s liberation of Kosova should have been followed up by the prompt recognition of its independence, while the Russians were in no position to cause such trouble for us as they are today. We could have ’punished’ the Serbia of Milosevic with Kosova’s independence, instead of the Serbia of today, led as it is by the relatively pro-Western President Boris Tadic. But that problem, too, was allowed to fester; its resolution today is proving much more difficult than it need have been.

Over Russia and the Caucasus, too, Clinton, like George Bush Snr before him, showed a disastrous failure of leadership. With Russian politics in a state of flux, with the pro-Western Boris Yeltsin in power in Moscow and financially dependent on the West, a golden opportunity existed to push Russian policy in the Caucasus in a less imperialistic direction. The Western powers should have acted decisively to halt the dismemberment of Georgia in the early 1990s and prevent the break-away regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from falling under Russia’s exclusive control. We should have recognised the independence of Chechnya, preempting Yeltsin’s violent assault on the country in 1994. But as is so often the case, the dovish policy is the one most likely to lead to confrontation in the long-run - think of Neville Chamberlain and Munich. Our failure to engage in the Caucasus, and Blair’s shameful support for Vladimir Putin over Chechnya in 1999, have been richly rewarded: Georgia, an aspiring NATO member, faces perpetual dismemberment, while an aggressive, ungrateful Putin has reentered the Balkans with a vengeance with the deliberate aim of derailing the region’s Euro-Atlantic integration. Chechnya proved to be the poison of Russian democracy and Russian-Western friendship; a Russian president willing and able to use weapons of mass destruction against his Chechen citizens is unlikely to respect democratic freedoms in Russia proper, and an undemocratic, authoritarian Russian regime is more likely to be hostile to the West.

In fairness, Russia is not solely responsible for the mess in the Caucasus; Georgia’s brutally chauvinistic former president Zviad Gamsakhurdia was one of the architects of his country’s dismemberment, as was the Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, who supported the Abkhazians. The people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia had legitimate grievances against Gamsakhurdia’s regime and its successors in Tbilisi. These are all issues that a more forward-looking US policy could have helped to resolve, but did not. 

I fear, therefore, the consequences for South East Europe of a US president who is dovish, uninterested in or unserious about foreign policy. Hillary Clinton has always worked hand-in-glove with Bill in the political sphere, and should share responsibility with him for his disastrous Bosnia policy. Indeed, the story is that her influence made it worse; that she read Robert Kaplan’s truly dreadful book ‘Balkan Ghosts’ and passed it on to her husband; this book, filled as it was with crude stereotypes about the Balkans (along the lines of ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’), encouraged the perception of the Bosnian war as an expression of intractable ethnic conflict in which no moral issues were at stake, militating against any intention Bill might have had to resist Serbian aggression. Be that as it may, Hillary was more frank in welcoming Kosovo’s independence than Obama, who appears to see Balkan politics largely through the prism of his need to win the goodwill of the Serbian and Greek lobbies in the US. Hence his letter to the Serbian Unity Congress, in which he stated: ‘I support and shall help in every possible way development of the dialog between all sides in Kosova because I believe that peace and stability can be reached only by solutions acceptable for all sides’ - not far from an endorsement of the Serbo-Russian position on Kosova, which insists on a Serbian veto on any settlement. Hence also Obama’s endorsement of the Greek-nationalist position on Macedonia. These acts may be motivated by simple electoral opportunism, but they do not bode well for a principled and forward-looking US policy toward the Balkans should Obama become president. In flirting with the US’s Serbian and Greek lobbies, Obama is flirting with groups that encompass ultra-right-wing, Christian-fundamentalist, Muslim-hating bigots.

There are several reasons to believe that McCain would follow a more serious and principled policy toward South East Europe than either Clinton or Obama. He is aware of the importance of what he calls a ‘progressive Turkey’ as a strategic partner of the US and a beacon of Muslim democracy, and of the mutual inter-relatedness of democracy and stability in Turkey and Iraq. Turkey is both the most important Balkan country in world affairs and a state that borders on Iraq; the Balkans and the Middle East are adjacent, interlocking regions; McCain’s commitment to staying the course in Iraq is therefore most likely to promote stability in the Balkans.

McCain was correct to oppose Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide (here I break ranks with Norman Geras). The Ottoman Empire in 1915 was undoubtedly guilty of genocide against the Armenians, and Turkey should recognise this genocide. But it is not for an outside power like the US to single out this historic crime as uniquely totemic and worthy of recognition, particularly given that the US Congress has taken no parallel steps to recognise the genocidal crimes carried out by Russia and the Balkan Christian states against Ottoman and Caucasian Muslims during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Why should the US recognise the Ottoman genocide of one million Armenians, but not the Balkan Christian genocide of over six-hundred thousand Ottoman Muslims in 1912-13, when the latter crime was an immediate catalyst of the former ? The Turks would be entirely justified in taking offence at such double standards, and McCain is entirely correct that the US should be developing its relationship with Ankara, not creating new barriers to it - though he is also far from uncritical in his support for Turkey.

McCain was an early supporter of Kosova’s independence. He stood by the oppressed Kosova Albanians before it became fashionable in Washington to do so, and continued to do so despite the support given by many right-wing Republicans - largely for anti-Clinton and anti-Islamic reasons - to the anti-Albanian policies of Milosevic and subsequent Serb-nationalist politicians. A Republican president who is ready to put a combination of US strategic interests and morality above petty sectarian domestic feuds and religious hatred is more likely to act in South East Europe’s best interests.

Finally, McCain led a delegation of US senators to Tbilisi in August 2006, to express unconditional support for Georgia’s territorial integrity and to challenge the presence of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, suggesting they be replaced by a UN or OSCE force. Although Moscow likes to draw a false parallel between Kosova and South Ossetia, in reality, secessionist South Ossetia is more like the Serb-controlled enclave in northern Kosova - an expression of the imperialism of a larger neighbour that seeks to punish a former colony for seeking independence by dismembering it. Georgia is not Russia’s backyard, and any policy that treats it as being so will only bolster the anti-Western Russian neo-empire that has arisen under Putin to become a dangerous enemy of the West. McCain is entirely correct in his belief that in defending Georgia, the West will be defending itself. His suggestion that Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia be replaced by a UN force should be welcomed by all multilateralist opponents of unilateral intervention by great powers in the internal affairs of other countries. But don’t hold your breath.

I am half-Croatian, and I shall confess to having a specifically Croatian agenda for opposing the right of Bosnia’s Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) to secede from Bosnia, and for rejecting the idea that such an act of secession would be in any way equivalent to Kosova’s entirely legitimate secession from Serbia.

Namely, if one were to support the right of Republika Srpska to secede from Bosnia, one would have to support a similar right for the Croat-controlled part of the Bosnian Federation. This would lead, effectively, to the emergence of a Great Croatia. As an opponent of Great Croatian nationalism, this is not something I could accept. Every true Croatian democrat and anti-fascist is the sworn opponent of Great Croatian nationalism, consequently of the partition of Bosnia. Not only would this be an enormous injustice to the people of Bosnia, but it would reward the worst elements in Croatian politics - Ustashas, Tudjmanites and other chauvinists. It would be a betrayal of all those true Bosnian Croat patriots - Stjepan Kljuic, Ivo Komsic, Ivan Lovrenovic and others - who valiantly defended their Bosnian homeland against the Great Croats during the 1990s and thereafter.

Support for the right of national self-determination is about supporting democracy, but it is also about opposing oppression and injustice; about standing up for the rights of smaller, oppressed nations against colonial masters or predatory neighbours. It is therefore wholly at odds with the idea that such predatory states should be allowed to manipulate the right of national self-determination to expand their borders at the expense of those smaller and weaker than themselves. This is what Serbia attempted to do vis-a-vis Croatia in the 1990s. It is what both Croatia and Serbia, at the same time, attempted to do vis-a-vis Bosnia. It is what Russia is attempting to do vis-a-vis Georgia. And it is what occurred in the most notorious instance of the abuse of the right to self-determination: the 1938 Munich Agreement.

It could be argued, however, that no matter how one tries to justify it, this remains hypocritical. Let us take up the challenge and say:

1) We should recognise the right of Republika Srpska to secede from Bosnia - provided Republika Srpska recognises the right of its former Muslim- or Croat-majority areas to secede from it (with all those expelled and non-resident allowed to participate in the vote), and provided Serbia recognises the same right to Muslim-majority areas in the Sanjak and Hungarian-majority areas in Vojvodina;

2) We should recognise the right of the Bosnian-Croat-held areas to secede from Bosnia - provided Croatia recognises the right of its former Serb-majority areas to secede (again, with all those expelled and non-resident allowed to participate in the vote);

3) We should recognise the right of South Ossetia to secede from Georgia - provided Moscow recognises the right of North Ossetia to secede from Russia;

4) We should recognise the right of Abkhazia to secede from Georgia - provided Moscow recognises the right of all its autonomous republics in the Russian North Caucasus to secede.

I strongly suspect that once you insist that the strong be subjected to the same principles that they would like to impose upon the weak, then their own enthusiasm for these principles would vanish.

The right of nations to self-determination is an undeniably thorny issue, above all because there are so many areas where the rights of two or more nations overlap, and where it is difficult or impossible to grant the right to one nation without denying it to another nation - or even destroying the second nation altogether. This is why, when considering how to apply the right, so many factors must be taken into account - rather as in the case of a judge or jury weighing up numerous factors in a court case. I would, however, suggest two general rules of thumb:

1) The right of self-determination, since it is a democratic right, cannot belong to nations that have achieved an artificial majority through ethnic cleansing, since the right belongs to the whole population of the territory in question - including those expelled;

2) The right of self-determination should not be used by larger, stronger nations that already enjoy independent statehood, to expand their borders at the expense of smaller, weaker ones whose state would be consequently destroyed. Thus, although I sympathise with the Albanian minority in Macedonia, given its history of oppression and discrimination, I would not support its right to secede and join Albania or Kosova - simply because there are already two Albanian states in existence, because the Macedonians are a much smaller people than the Albanians, and because Macedonia would be unlikely to survive such an act of secession.

If anyone responds by saying that I have imposed too many qualifications, I would reply that democratic rights are never perfect or absolute. I support freedom of speech and expression - but not to inciters of racial violence or distributors of child pornography. I support freedom of assembly - but not for uniformed, private armies. I support freedom of the press - but not the freedom of newspapers to practice libel.

National self-determination, furthermore, is inherently imperfect - however one draws the borders, there are always likely to be some members of a particular nationality who are stuck on the wrong side. The very concept of majority-rule implies that someone has to be in the minority. The problem with national self-determination is in fact a problem with democracy itself.

Most of the objections to the idea of a right of nations to self-determination are made by people positing hypothetical, extreme cases - such as the supposed danger of a Muslim-majority part of London seceding, or the possibility of a ‘Kosovo in the Galilee’. One could oppose just about any democratic principle by citing hypothetical, worst-case scenarios.

The secession of a Muslim-majority part of London ? That’s a risk I’m prepared to live with. ☺

I have noted before the parallels between the Islamic fascists of al-Qaeda and the Christian Chetnik fascists in Bosnia, including the fact that both groups share the same left-wing apologists. I have also noted before that Islamophobes and Islamofascists are two sides of the same coin. I am therefore unsurprised to see that another piece of the Red-Brown jigsaw puzzle has slotted into place, and that right-wing anti-Muslim bigots are beginning to view the West’s dangerous and aggressive enemy, the Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin, as a desired ally in their crusade against the Muslim peoples of the world.

An exceptionally bigoted article by Irina Filatova, representing the Putinist Russian-nationalist perspective, appeared on the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ website in response to Western recognition of Kosova’s independence. Filatova writes: ‘This opposition [to Kosova's independence] among the Russians is practically unanimous. From the nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky to the communist Gennady Ziuganov to even Nikita Belykh, leader of the Union of Right Forces, a crumbling but consistent defender of liberal values in Russia - all support the official line of Putin’s government.’ She goes on: ‘Many Russians warn that the creation of a Muslim state in the middle of Europe will strengthen the position of Muslim minorities and of Islam in Europe generally. They also point to the role of Kosovars - even under Nato control - in drug and people trafficking in Europe… how would the British feel if in 20 or 30 years Windsor, for example, proclaimed its independence on the grounds that the majority of its population was now Muslim and if the US decided to support this claim?’ What we have here is a bogey raised of ‘Muslim minorities and of Islam in Europe generally’; of a particular ethnic group identified with organised crime; and of a Muslim demographic threat leading to a Muslim state on British soil. However offensive such BNP-style sentiments are, and however inappropriate to find them expressed in an article on the website of Britain’s leading liberal newspaper, they are undoubtedly representative of the chauvinistic mainstream in Putin’s Russia.

Russian nationalists like Filatova are selective in their presentation of Russia as the aggrieved party, righteously upholding international law - an area in which Russia’s record is less than immaculate. The Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states and Japan’s Kurile Islands during and after World War, and subsequently invaded Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan - all without the sanction of the UN Security Council. Previous Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin have repudiated or apologised for the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but this tradition of apologising for has not been continued by Putin. The current Russian president describes the collapse of the Soviet Union as ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe’ of the twentieth century, and has refused to apologise for the Soviet Union’s illegal annexation of the Baltic states - an annexation that the US never recognised - claiming that the act had been consensual. He has refused also to return Japan’s Kurile Islands. Other Putinist actions that have been less than fanatical in their respect for international law include Russia’s launching of a cyber-war to destabilise Estonia, because the Estonians decided to move a statue from one place to another; the murder of Alexander Litvinenko; and the maintenance of a military presence in Moldova’s and Georgia’s break-away territories of Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in violation of the sovereignty of two UN member-states, Moldova and Georgia. Indeed, Putin’s support for these break-away territories, which are much closer to Russia than is Kosova, suggest that Russia, as well as being less than consistent in its support for international law, is less than consistent in its opposition to unilateral ’separatism’.

Russia’s conflict with the Western alliance over Kosova is, in other words, a crisis that Putin unnecessarily manufactured for his own purpose, which is to split the EU, disrupt its expansion and cause problems for the US and Britain. This is not a conflict that can be attributed to aggressiveness on the West’s part; Western leaders have bent over backwards to accommodate Putin since he took power in 1999. Tony Blair very publicly (and shamefully) supported Putin’s murderous war to crush Chechnya. Putin responded to Western benevolence by supplying Saddam Hussein’s regime with military information in the run-up to the Iraq War. This is not a conflict that we started.

There is a global struggle taking place against Islamic fascism, and it is one that all democrats should support. But in doing so, we find ourselves in some sense aligned with some unsavoury bigots whose motivation has less to do with support for democratic Western values and more to do with simple hatred of Muslims and Islam. Since democratic Western values include respect for freedom of conscience and religious toleration, such bigots clearly have no place in our ranks. Their hatred of Muslims is essentially no different from the Islamofascist hatred of Jews and Christians, and their bigotry only alienates ordinary Muslims and pushes them into the arms of the extremists. It is therefore gratifying that the Kosova crisis has prompted these bigots to reveal their true colours: as supporters of the West’s enemies. Writing in the pages of Frontpagemag.com, the screaming American chauvinist Julia Gorin suggests: ‘If Russia intervenes [over Kosova], then 2008 might become the year that war broke out between Russia and NATO. America, the EU, Europe’s immigrant ‘youths,’ and Osama bin Laden would find themselves on one side, fighting Russia, China, and those Europeans who resist Islamization on the other.’ No question about which side Gorin would be on in such a conflict; it wouldn’t be ours. Her antipathy toward the Kosova Albanians apparently originates with the support given by Democrat President Clinton’s support for them. Never mind that the Kosova Albanians are about the most pro-American nation on the planet; if you sufficiently hate Muslims and Democrats, it is apparently acceptable to align yourself against them and on the side of the West’s enemies.

Melanie Phillips, writing in the Spectator, has this to say: ‘It was at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 that some 70,000 died to keep the Islamic Ottoman Empire from advancing further into Europe. What is the point of fighting the jihad in Iraq when we are cheerfully opening the door to it in that very same place? Russia’s President Putin has warned that recognising Kosovo will rebound very badly upon the countries who have blundered into endorsing it. The fact that this outcome is merely the inevitable consequence of the war so unwisely prosecuted by those countries against Serbia does not soften its deeply alarming implications. Putin is warning only too correctly of the dangers to the west of this development and the supreme folly of endorsing it.’ Mad Mel’s article is about one of the craziest I’ve ever read, and contains too many gems to be listed here, but one of my favourites is this one: ‘The Albanians [in Kosova] have turned Christian graveyards into car parks, playgrounds and rubbish dumps. Anything relating to Serbia or Christianity libraries [sic], public records, books, names of places and even towns have been wiped out.’ Anything, apparently, except for the statues of Mother Teresa and Skanderbeg - the Albanians’ two most revered national heroes, both of them Christians - that stand right in the centre of the Kosovar capital of Pristina. Perhaps the Albanians didn’t notice them ? Thus, an anti-Muslim bigot with no knowledge of Kosova, its history or its people is allowing her prejudices to align her with the anti-Western regime in Moscow.

Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihadwatch argues: ‘Among major world powers, both Russia and China are opposed to an independent Kosovo. Even within Europe there are nations that oppose this independence — Spain — and others where many are uneasy. It would have been politically possible for the American government to have thought a bit more about the implications, the consequences, of having another Muslim state — the product of centuries of Ottoman rule — within Europe, and to have thought a bit more about the historical treatment of the Serbs under that same Ottoman rule, and their understandable bitterness.’ He goes on: ‘There is no reason not to take Serbia’s side now. There is every reason — of principle and of Infidel self-interest — to take it.’ In other words, you can burn down US embassies, you can give military information to Saddam to help him kill American soldiers, you can drive a wedge into the Western alliance, but you will still be our ally against people who wave the American flag in gratitude - provided that you are Christian and they are Muslim.

Albania has sent troops to Iraq and has shown much greater loyalty and staying power as our ally there than many predominantly Christian states. Albanian Defence Minister Fatmir Mediu has said that Albanian troops will remain in Iraq as long as US forces remain there. Western anti-Muslim bigots would like to deprive us of yet another ally, simply in order to satisfy their own hatred for all things Muslim.

What a disgrace.

In the global struggle against the Islamist menace, the anti-Muslim bigots are a liability. They should have no place in our ranks.

Hat tips: Hakmao, Drink-soaked Trots; Oliver Kamm.

Yesterday, I truly felt what a privilege and a joy it was to be alive, and to watch as the great people of Kosova finally achieved the freedom that they have sought for so long. It is a moment that all Kosovar patriots, all sincere Serbian democrats and all those who believe in freedom for the people of South East Europe, and indeed in freedom generally, should be celebrating. With all my heart, I should like to congratulate the people of Kosova on this great occasion.

Kosova was crushed and oppressed by the Ottoman Empire; murderously invaded by the Serbian Army; repressed and colonised under the Yugoslav kingdom; dismembered by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy; and terrorised by the Communist police-state after World War II. It was partially emancipated in the late 1960s and 70s, only to see its autonomy brutally abrogated by Slobodan Milosevic, in an assault that culminated in the attempted genocide of the late 1990s. Who would have thought before 1999 that the story would have a happy ending ? Who would have thought that when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, East Timor would one day be free ? This is a lesson, that no matter how bleak things may seem, justice and liberty may triumph in the long run. I have said before that the idea that Kosova’s independence will cause innumerable other ’separatist’ territories around the world to try to follow suit is a scaremongering myth. Still, I hope that the happy outcome will indeed inspire other enslaved nations not to give up hope: liberation may be just around the corner; you can’t keep a good nation down. Long live the freedom of the Chechens, Kurds, Taiwanese, Kashmiris, Darfurians ! Long live a free Palestine alongside a free Israel !

It is easy to forget at this happy time that yesterday there were, in fact, two victors: Kosova and democratic Serbia. No nation can be free if it oppresses another, and all true Serbian democrats should be celebrating, not only the emancipation of their Albanian sisters and brothers, but their own. Kosova was a millstone around Serbia’s neck, and Serbia will be happier without it; just as Britain and France are happier with Ireland and Algeria independent. Many Serbs may not feel like celebrating, but one day this will all seem in a much more positive light to them; an unhappy conflict is over and their path to long-term peace, prosperity and participation in the European dream is open. As for the die-hard nationalists - Vojislav Kostunica, Tomislav Nikolic and co. - long may their misery last. Their genocidal campaign to break up Yugoslavia, redraw borders and establish a Great Serbia was the direct cause of Kosova’s independence. They sought to dismember their neighbours, yet this led only to Serbia’s loss of Kosova. What goes around comes around. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. Unfortunately, their misery will not be as great as the misery of the mothers of Racak, Srebrenica and Vukovar; they should bear that in mind while they wallow in their self-pity. But how many Serbs turned out to demonstrate and attack the US embassy ? 1-2,000 ! There was a time when hundreds of thousands of Serbs would have demonstrated over Kosova; that time is past. The people of Serbia have moved on; the nationalists should too.

There is an ignoble tradition on the Left of refusing to acknowledge any of the good things that Western leaders do. Let us break this tradition and give credit where credit is due. Well done George W. Bush and the United States of America ! Well done Gordon Brown and the United Kingdom ! Well done Nicolas Sarkozy and the Republic of France ! Well done to the free world ! And a special well done to Tony Blair, our greatest prime minister in half a century, whose resolution in 1999 made this all possible. Well done not just for doing what is right, but for standing up to the imperialist bully and thug, Vladimir Putin. It is easy (and right) to be critical of Russia, but it should not be forgotten that in the early 1990s, Russia’s record on the Balkans was less bad than that of Britain and France; our leaders used Russia’s alleged (in fact mythical) ‘historical friendship with Serbia’ as an excuse for their own disgraceful policy of appeasing Milosevic, and the worst elements in Russia were only encouraged. It is time to make it clear that if Russia wants to avoid irrevocably damaging its relations with the West, it needs to stop causing trouble for us in the Balkans. We should be friends with Russia, but this means Russia democratising, not the West pandering to a brutal ex-KGB tyrant who uses weapons of mass destruction against his own civilians and wages racist campaigns against ethnic minorities. Putin asks: “Why do we promote separatism? For 400 years Great Britain has been fighting for its territorial integrity in respect of Northern Ireland. Why not? Why don’t you support that?”. He seems not to realise that we in the UK will happily let Northern Ireland go if that is what its people want; the concept of a democratic majority appears to be alien to him. Or perhaps he’s just stupid.

If anything dampens one’s mood, it is the tepid welcome to newly free Kosova given by so many pundits and commentators; freedom apparently is not very inspiring to our chattering classes who live permanently in fear. The Guardian describes Kosova’s independence as ”a unilateral solution which only sets back further the goal of a new international order, where disputes are decided multilaterally”. No doubt the Guardianistas would be happier allowing Chinese Communists and Russian KGBers a veto on the freedom of every new state; thank goodness Dubya and Gordon take a less wishy-washy approach. That a right-wing, Republican US president should prove to be more progressive and ‘left-wing’ on the question of national self-determination than our leading liberal paper - not to mention our so-called ‘radical left’ - is merely a sign of the times.

The Daily Telegraph has come out in favour of the partition of Kosovo as a solution to the problem, showing that the spirit of Neville Chamberlain’s brand of unreconstructed Toryism is very much alive. Let us be clear on this point: according to the last legitimate census of Kosova in 1981, a single Kosovar municipality had a Serb majority - Leposavic. The current Serb majority over a larger area of northern Kosova is simply the result of ethnic cleansing, and should not be recognised. Kosova should allow Leposavic to secede and join Serbia - provided Serbia similarly allows the Albanian-majority municipalities in southern Serbia proper, Presevo and Bujanovac, to secede and join Kosova. But thankfully partition - which really might open a Pandora’s box for border changes in the Balkans - is not going to happen, so any debate about it is a waste of time.

As for whether we are hypocritical for not recognising a similar right to secession for Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s Serb Republic) or Abkhazia: perhaps these two entities could allow back to their homes the roughly half of their respective populations they kicked out in the process of establishing themselves; then perhaps we might discuss the merits of their respective cases. But a country that can only achieve a workable majority in favour of independence by expelling half its population is not a country with any right to that independence.

Indeed, if there’s one good thing that can be said about the awful new flag that has been foisted upon Kosova by the international community, it is that it does at least contain an image of Kosova in its existing borders, so militating against partition, and is therefore less totally dreadful than the monstrosity imposed on Bosnia by the international community a decade ago; a flag that is too awful for me to reproduce here, or even link to.

Why should the people of Kosova not be allowed a flag with their own beloved black double-headed eagle on a red background ? A flag that they held onto through all the bad times: It waved above their infant might; when all ahead seemed dark as night.

They are out of the dark now.

Long live Kosova ! 

We are constantly being warned that recognising the independence of Kosovo will instantaneously lead to hundreds of separatist territories all over the world breaking away from their parent states, from Scotland, Catalonia and the Basque Country all the way to Taiwan.

Of course, any democrat would recognise that nations or countries such as these do have the right to self-determination, should they wish to exercise it. As an Englishman and a Briton, I would be very sorry if Scotland or Wales chose to secede from the United Kingdom, but I respect the right of Scotland or Wales to do so if that is what its people want. I would bear a seceding Scotland or Wales no ill will; I would wish it all the best in its new life as an independent country; and if the British state were to react to its secession with violence, I would support Scotland or Wales in the resulting war. However, I am confident that the UK, as a democratic state, would never resort to violence in this manner, and that a Scottish or Welsh secession would occur peacefully.

If the recognition of Kosovo’s independence inspires other unfree nations to struggle for freedom, then it can only be a good thing. But I very much doubt it will. Secession is a serious and often mortally dangerous business; nations secede because they are suffering from oppression, or because their people believe they will enjoy a happier existence as an independent state; they do not do so merely because some other nation in a different part of the world has successfully seceded. The Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Kurds in Turkey or Iraq, or the Taiwanese are not naive enough to believe that if Kosovo’s independence is recognised, then they too have been given a green light by the international community to set up their own independent state. When people cite the possiblity of the recognition of Kosovo’s independence encouraging secessionism in other parts of the world, they are usually scaremongering.

Georgia is the country most often cited as the one that would pay the price for Kosovo’s secession, given that two of its own autonomous territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, have broken away with Russian support. So it is noteworthy that Georgia’s Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze himself has just publicly rejected the idea that Kosovo’s independence would create a precedent for Georgia: “We hope our friends and allies in the west take a firm position on the inapplicability of the Kosovo case to Georgia. In other words, Kosovo is sui generis”. He nevertheless expressed his fear that Russia would respond to the recognition of Kosovo by itself recognising the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. If this were to occur, it would have nothing to do with any natural spin-off effect from Kosovo’s independence, and everything to do with Russian troublemaking; i.e. a new crisis in the Caucausus would be the result of actions by Russia, not by Abkhazia or South Ossetia.

Neverthless, the Financial Times reports: ‘Mr Gurgenidze won support for his position on Kosovo on Thursday from Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s external relations commissioner, with whom he held talks in Brussels. “We do hope also that Russia will understand that, certainly on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, things should remain as they are,” she told reporters.’ Furthermore, ‘Some EU officials doubt that Russia, beset with restive minorities of its own on its southern borders, would go so far as to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.’

Indeed. If Russia were to recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it would raise the question of why Chechnya, with its much larger population, should not also have the right to self-determination.

Food for thought.

Tasiilaq, East Greenland 

V.I.Lenin once wrote that class-conscious workers should ‘conduct systematic propaganda and prepare the ground for the settlement of conflicts that may arise over the secession of nations, not in the “Russian way”, but only in the way they were settled in 1905 between Norway and Sweden.’ Quite. When surveying the bloodshed and horror resulting from attempts to suppress national ’separatism’, from Kosovo and Chechnya to Kashmir and Sri Lanka, it is worth remembering that it really does not have to be this way.

The Nordic peoples have a long and strong tradition of national separatism, and it is one they should feel proud of. For over a hundred years from the end of the fourteenth century, all the Nordic lands from Greenland to Finland were formally united under a single crown, but since then there has been a steady process of Nordic Balkanisation. Sweden broke away from the Danish-dominated Union of Kalmar in 1523, and it is true that it took years of warfare before Denmark recognised the secession, but that was a long time ago. More recently, Norway seceded from Sweden in 1905 and Iceland from Denmark in 1944, in both cases peacefully and without bloodshed. This may be due in part to the strong Nordic tradition of representative bodies, and respect thereof; the Icelandic parliament that declared independence could trace its origins back to the year 930.

Yet there was nothing primordial or pre-ordained about some of the nation-states that today seem immutable parts of the map of Europe. Until the Napoleonic wars, Norway had been in stable union with Denmark for many centuries, while Finland was merely a part of Sweden where a Swedish-speaking elite ruled over a Finnish-majority population. We do not know whether, or how quickly, Norway and Finland would have emerged as independent states had it not been for the ‘accident’ of the Russian conquest of Finland and the Swedish conquest of Norway early in the nineteenth century. Today, the Nordic countries are not as nationally homogenous as they are commonly perceived to be by outsiders and it is far from certain that the process of Nordic Balkanisation has come to an end, yet it is extremely unlikely that these factors will ever result in bloodshed.

Iceland was before 1944 an autonomous territory under the Danish crown. Other such autonomous Nordic territories exist today: Greenland and the Faroe Islands, both autonomous under Denmark with representatives in the Danish parliament, but strong pro-independence sentiments among parts of the populations; and the Aland Islands, an autonomous Finnish territory where Swedish is the language of the administration and population. A distant cousin that still bears a certain family resemblance is the Isle of Man, a self-governing possession of the British Crown whose parliament, the Tynwald, was established by Man’s Norse rulers during the Middle Ages and has been in continuous existence ever since. It is entirely conceivable that the Faroes and Greenland, at least, may become independent at some time in the future, following the Icelandic example. Greenland has already seceded from the European Union, in 1985. Yet it is questionable how much real difference independence would make, either to the lives of the populations or to their functional relationships with their parent countries. Today, Iceland’s Reykjavik Airport (not to be confused with Keflavik International Airport) mostly operates domestic flights - its only international flights are to Greenland and the Faroes, which until the 1940s were not ‘international’ vis-a-vis Iceland.

As much as the Nordic countries have benefited from their traditions of administrative continuity, they all bear hallmarks of the diversity of their backgrounds, a diversity that was not always dealt with gently. Parts of southern Sweden were originally part of Denmark and spoke Danish; Sweden’s King Charles XI, faced with their pro-Danish irredentism, was a seventeenth-century pioneer in forced linguistic assimilation. The small, originally semi-nomadic Sami people who inhabit the Arctic north of Norway, Finland and Sweden (the region commonly referred to as Lapland), with a smaller community in neighbouring Russia, were for centuries subject to often brutal forced assimilation that really only came to an end in the 1960s, as the Nordic nations improved their behaviour under the influence of anti-colonial struggles elsewhere in the world. There remains today much Sami resentment at this treatment; a strong Sami patriotism was apparent to me when I visited the Norwegian Sami capital of Karasjok in 2004; at the Sami themepark of Sampi, the tags on the exhibits were written in Sami and English but not in Norwegian - something that the attendant appeared proud to acknowledge. The Norwegian Sami have their own parliament in Karasjok, built to resemble a traditional Sami dwelling. The Swedish and Finnish Sami have their own parliaments as well; the three representative bodies enjoy a consultative relationship.

The Sami parliament at Karasjok

The Norwegians themselves have two versions of the Norwegian language - the traditional Danish-influenced Bokmal deriving from the long era of union with Denmark and the more patriotically inspired Nynorsk, supposedly ‘purified’ of Danish influences, though it is Bokmal that is the dominant version. Finland, for centuries part of Sweden, is a formally bilingual Finnish- and Swedish-speaking country; the Finnish national hero Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, who led Finland against the Russians in its war of independence and in World War II, was himself a Swedish speaker who did not speak Finnish very well. It was the Russians, however, who established Helsinki as the capital of Finland; today, Helsinki’s Uspenski Cathedral lays claim to being the largest Russian Orthodox Church in western Europe. Russian influence is also apparent on the fringes of the Norwegian world; the town of Kirkenes, close to the Russian border, has street signs in both Norwegian and Russian and a prominent statue of a Soviet soldier, in memory of the Soviet liberators of World War II. Still more remote, Norway’s Svalbard islands are the site of the Russian mining settlement of Barentsburg; with its Soviet-era architecture and bust of Lenin in the village centre, Barentsburg is more different in appearance from the neighbouring settlement of Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s typically-Norwegian administrative centre, than St Petersburg is from Oslo.

It is Greenland, however, where the Nordic world’s capacity for cultural synthesis is perhaps most striking; the village of Kulusuk, the gateway into east Greenland, is only a short flight westward from Reykjavik, yet comes as something of a culture shock after the cosy Icelandic capital. Reykjavik city centre boasts a London telephone box and Tube sign and the same shops and latte-serving cafes as other West European capitals. Two hours away in Kulusuk, there are brightly coloured houses and a wooden Lutheran church similar to those found in Iceland, Norway and Svalbard, but the villagers have no rubbish disposal service or running water (the pipes would freeze in the winter). Kulusuk’s larger neighbour Tasiilaq, however, with a population of less than two thousand, is large enough to support supermarkets stocked with imported European goods. Under Danish rule, parts of the Inuit Greenland population have gone technologically from the stone age to the twenty-first century in little more than a hundred years. The experience of Danish colonisation and rapid modernisation has not been uniformly happy; in his brilliant novel, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, the Danish author Peter Hoeg portrays the unhappiness of his mixed-race Danish-Greenlandic heroine Smilla, who spent her formative years in Greenland and was never able to adjust to life in Denmark - her brother committed suicide. Still, the experience of the Greenland Inuit at European hands may be favourably compared with that of other Native Americans; although demographically a small nation (smaller than South Ossetia), Greenland enjoys almost complete autonomy and a bilingual Greenlandic and Danish administration, numerically dominated by native Greenlanders. Should Greenland choose to secede fully, Denmark is unlikely to respond with destruction or genocide.

This positive historical experience, of bilingual nations seceding from, or enjoying extensive autonomy under parent countries, is one that other parts of Europe should emulate. And to some extent they have. Lenin was inspired by the example of Norway’s peaceful secession from Sweden, and was a prominent advocate of the right of nations to self-determination (as an aside, Russia has historically been influenced by its Nordic neighbours; the medieval reach of the Nordic peoples stretched from Canada to Constantinople and the Caspian, and it was the Scandinavian Varangians who founded the medieval state of Kievan Rus, the precursor of Russia. Peter the Great built St Petersburg on occupied Swedish territory. More recently, Lenin himself was of an ethnically mixed background that included Swedish roots). Under the Communists, the Soviet nationalities were organised on the basis of different levels of republican statehood or autonomy. There was of course a lot of hypocrisy in the Communist treatment of the Soviet nationalities, and Soviet brutality was at times equal to anything the Western colonial powers produced - witness Stalin’s genocide of the Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tartars and others. Nevertheless, the fact that the break-up of the Soviet Union was ultimately less bloody than that of the French, British or Portuguese colonial empires was due in part to the fact that, under the Soviet constitutional system, the right of members of the Soviet federation to secede was formally guaranteed.

Where the break-up was more bloody, as it was in Chechnya as well as in the former Yugoslavia (also organised on the basis of Leninist nationality principles), this was in large part due to the fact that the system had not been developed to its logical conclusion. Thus, under the Yugoslav constitution, the right of Yugoslavia’s constituent republics to secede was not spelled out, although it was strongly implied, while Kosovo was accorded a lower status than the formally sovereign republics, although it was a member of the Yugoslav federation. Chechnya, in the Russian Federation, enjoyed a lower status still, being not even a member of the Soviet Union. These factors were used as justification for the wars waged by the enemies of self-determination. In Yugoslavia’s case, a lot of nonsense was spoken by ill-intentioned or ill-informed individuals about the constituent republics of the federation having nothing to do with the constituent nations, and having purely ‘administrative borders’ that could be legitimately redrawn at will by fascist dictators and terrorists in the event of the federation’s break-up - myths I have refuted in my book, The History of Bosnia. But leaving aside the wording of constitutions, it is clear that when nations secede, they must in practice do so on the basis of existing ‘administrative’ borders - as was the case with Norway, Iceland and the former European colonies in Africa and elsewhere - if there is to be any chance of the experience being peaceful. The secession of individual nations from a multinational whole is not a matter of arbitrarily drawing lines on a map; it occurs in a context shaped by centuries of history that cannot simply be swept away.

Barentsburg, Svalbard