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Analysis: Bearish in the Balkans

Council on Foreign Relations

June 7, 2007
Prepared by: Robert McMahon

To some observers, the suddenly precarious Kosovo situation results from either a big miscalculation by Western states, Russian grandstanding, or a combination of both. What’s certain, though, is that a painstaking post-conflict effort to bring the final chapter of the twentieth-century’s Balkan wars to a close now seems close to unraveling. The Economist blames European bungling, saying some in the European Union “got carried away with what they saw as an opportunity to reinvigorate a rudderless EU” by fast-tracking a decision on Kosovo independence. On the other hand, Russia’s hardening position on the “conditional independence” formula proposed to the UN Security Council may be part of the larger friction between Moscow and Washington. If Russia sincerely respected the sovereignty of states, critics say, it would not offer citizenship to pro-Moscow separatists in Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions. The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs recently examined the explosive situation in the Caucasus.

Back in the Balkans, many pin hopes for compromise on Germany, which hosted the 1999 G8 summit that set out the plan for post-conflict Kosovo, and which now hopes to smooth tensions at the current G8 meeting in Heiligendamm. At pre-summit meetings, Russian officials all but confirmed they would veto any resolution (PDF) that followed UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s prescription for a path to independence. Russia has said consistently any solution must have buy-in from Serbia, which will not offer anything more than the “substantial autonomy” promised for Kosovo in UN Resolution 1244, which set up the UN protectorate there in 1999. Failure to settle the issue at the G8 still leaves a private meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine next month. But failure there could spur a messy chain of events.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.