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In our effort to widen the dialogue over the Kosovo issue we e-publish the views of Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic Assistant Managing Editor of the journal NATIONAL INTEREST.
We would like to thank Dejan Gajic, Srdjan Gligorovic and Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic and the G17 Institute, Belgrade for their cooperation.
Is Kosovo Ready for Final Status?
By Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic
Remarks as Written to be to the Western Policy
Center's conference
Serbia Transformed? Western Integration and Trans-Atlantic Security,
St. Regis Hotel, Washington, DC, 7 October 2003.
I am neither a believer in a league of all the nations of Islam, nor even in a
league of Turkish peoples. Each of us here has the right to hold his ideas, but
the government must be stable with a fixed policy, grounded in facts, and with
one view and one alone-to safeguard the life and independence of the nation and
within its frontiers. Neither sentiment nor illusion must influence our policy.
Away with dreams and shadows! They have cost us dear in the past.
-Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as quoted in Hugh Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent (NYU Press, 1997), p. 93.
Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, the remarks to follow
will consider whether UNMIK's Kosovo is ready for final status.
Belgrade's position is that it is not, and I will begin from there not because I
am a Serb but because I find the arguments persuasive. And of course this is the
position of the Bush Administration, happily. The White House recognizes that
continuing American support for doing things slowly in the Balkans means that
the West will only have to do them once. In the example of the Djindjic
assassination, to recall a recent ugly event in the history of Europe, we see
what happens when the West pressures those who are most like them in parts of
the world unlike theirs to act quickly without granting much in return. Indeed,
the absence of war should not provoke the international community into declaring
Kosovo a nation-building success: the pull of Potemkin's sleigh of hand remains
strong for those who think that getting out is the answer to stability.
But this is going too far too quickly. Let me begin anew, with my understanding
of Belgrade's position. And let us be mindful of the broader strategic context,
which is to say, of the current state of U.S.-Serbian relations.
As America agonizes about securing a permanent peace in Iraq, and the naysayers
begin to talk about quagmire and Vietnam redux, a quick look at this remarkable
success story in the Balkans can bring some perspective to those who equate
democracy's understandable birth pangs with long-term democratic failure.
