The single most dangerous moment in NATO’s intervention in Kosovo came when the Americans and British had almost accomplished their mission and suddenly found themselves in a race with the Russians to capture Pristina airport.
The date was June 12, 1999. NATO forces were on the point of entering Kosovo. Rather late in the day they learned that 200 Russian troops, based in Bosnia, were already on their way. NATO’s Supreme Commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, ordered British and French forces on stand-by to occupy the airport. The British commander, Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, contested the order. “I’m not going to start the third World War for you,” is what he is reported to have said.
That incident — which brought NATO and Russian forces as close to direct confrontation as they have ever been — needs to be borne in mind now, as arrangements for the long-term future of Kosovo are weighed. The UN special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, has now delivered his report to the Security Council. The formal discussion is due next month. The long-postponed confrontation over Kosovo is rapidly coming to a head.
At the UN, the alignment of forces is well known. The overwhelming majority accepts Ahtisaari’s view that independence for Kosovo is inevitable. The present arrangement, according to which the territory is essentially a UN protectorate, could be only a temporary solution. With its overwhelming majority of ethnic Albanians, it cannot revert to being a part of Serbia. For months now, impatient Kosovans have threatened violence. Any backtracking on independence could trigger a new war. Independence cannot be postponed indefinitely.
There are just two principled dissenters. Serbia, from which Kosovo would effectively be seceding, objects for reasons that have to do with national pride and the awkward reality that some of its most sacred religious and historical sites are in Kosovo. Many Serbs say the loss of Kosovo would be like the amputation of a limb.
And it is possible to feel some sympathy. For Serbia, Kosovo’s independence is a national tragedy, but it is one that has to do with demographic change, with larger forces of geopolitics — and, it has to be said, with the Serbs’ treatment of the Kosovans when they were in the majority. Serbia could delay independence for its erstwhile province, but that delay might well cost more Serbian lives and, if force were used, all remaining international sympathy.
The other dissenter, of course, is Russia — which, unlike Serbia, has the power to block independence for Kosovo with its Security Council veto. So far, Moscow has temporized, trying to maximize its political advantage. The time is near, though, when President Putin will have to choose.
Moscow’s resistance to independence for Kosovo is often presented as a simple matter of cultural solidarity — Slavonic pride — compounded by the disposition of Putin to tweak the Western tail at every opportunity. And there are certainly elements of both. But the “national dignity” explanation was more convincing eight years ago, when the Kremlin’s memory of the Soviet Union’s collapse was fresher and Russia had suffered the indignity of a major currency crisis.
The more urgent argument for Moscow now is the precedent it fears Kosovo’s independence could set. Outside Russia and Serbia, Kosovo is often seen as a constituent part of the former Yugoslavia, which has just as much right to independence following the break-up of the federation as, say, Armenia or Georgia after the dissolution of the USSR. Kosovo, though, was never a republic of Yugoslavia; it was part of Serbia, albeit with a degree of autonomy. Its status was more like that of those strange ethnic-Russian enclaves that nestle within former Soviet republics — such as Abkhazia within Georgia, or Transdnistria in Moldova. One of the closest analogies might be with Chechnya, which was, and remains, constitutionally a part of Russia.
The Chechnya parallel helps explain why Moscow is so sensitive about Kosovo. If Kosovo can become independent, why not Chechnya? However forcefully others insist that Kosovo is a special case and sets no precedents, Moscow will take a great deal of convincing.
But the cause is not lost. Russia’s rush to Pristina airport in 1999 did not result in an armed clash between East and West. There was hard bargaining, but no further precipitate action on either side. In the end Russia was allocated a sector of the international peacekeeping operation and treated as a partner with legitimate interests. If similar understanding is shown toward Moscow’s predicament over Kosovo, the chances are good that Russia will not use its veto when the Security Council vote is called.
