Former U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke (the man who brokered the Dayton Accords ending the war in Bosnia), has a column in today’s Washington Post in which he describes the impending train wreck in the Balkans.
According to Holbrooke, the nightmare scenario goes like this: The EU-US-Russia working group on Kosovo announces that it has failed to find a solution to the problem of Kosovo’s status. Following that announcement, the elected government of Kosovo will declare independence and be recognized by the US and the EU, but not by either Serbia or Russia. Egged on by the Russians, the Serbian region of Bosnia would then declare it’s independence, thereby abrogating the Dayton Accords and significantly increasing the likelihood of renewed war in Bosnia. And, just for good measure, the Russians will, Holbrooke asserts, use the situation in the Balkans as a precedent for encouraging two regions of the Republic of Georgia to declare their independence, possibly leading to more conflict there.
The losers in this scenario?
- Everyone in Bosnia regardless of nation, because none of the three nations of that state stand to gain from the renewal of the war there;
- Serbia, because no government in Belgrade can sit on the sidelines while Kosovo declares its independence and war breaks out again in Bosnia. Serbian military (or even logistical) intervention in any subsequent fighting will derail any hope that Serbs have of joining the EU in the next decade or two, leaving Serbia as the potential permanent pariah of Europe;
- The EU and the US, because eight years of peacemaking in Kosovo and twelve in Bosnia will have been derailed and NATO will once again be fighting in a war it wants no part of;
- The peoples of Georgia who will have to revisit the wars of the early 1990s that left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands as refugees.
The winners? That’s easier–Russia.
I wonder when the Serbs are going to figure out that Russian policy in the Balkans has never been about what is or isn’t good for the Serbs–not in the 19th century, not in the 20th century, and now not in the 21st century. Russian diplomats, whether in 1878, or in 1914, in 1941, or the 1990s, have blustered on about the kinship between the two “Slav brothers”, but when the rubber hit the road, the Russians have left the Serbs high and dry again and again and again.It’s a virtual guarantee that they will do so again in this case.