Yaacov, Your analysis of the Azeri/Armenian situation is very inciteful. Please take a look at this geopolitical analysis just posted at Stratfor- what do you think?
Morality and Geopolitics - Thoughts on the Negotiation
1 May 99, 0320 GMT
The current peace negotiations are deadlocked at precisely the same point that the Rambouillet discussions were: the question of outside forces in Kosovo. In a sense, each side has made a critical concession. The Serbs have now agreed that outside forces could come into Kosovo to oversee Serbian treatment of Albanians. The Americans have agreed that the force need not consist of only NATO forces. There are still two critical dividing issues. First, there is the question of whether any peacekeeping force will be armed? Second, there is the question of whether Serbian military and police forces will be allowed to remain in Kosovo and if so, how many?
In short, the critical question is Serb sovereignty over Kosovo, the same issue that divided the two sides in the beginning. The Serb position is that Kosovo is an integral and inseparable part of Serbia and that any secession or even temporary suspension of that sovereignty is unthinkable. The Anglo-American position is that Serb atrocities against the Albanians have made it essential to suspend that sovereignty for an extended period of time in order to protect the Albanians from the Serbs. The Serb's view is that apart from being a matter of principle, any temporary suspension of sovereignty in the form of armed, foreign troops, will inevitably lead to the permanent loss of Kosovo and the creation of a greater Serbia that will tilt the geopolitical balance in the Balkans.
There are therefore two axes of discussion going on here. On the surface, the dispute is over a set of facts. NATO claims that Serbia has been carrying out hideous crimes against the Albanians. Serbia denies this and claims that the charges are a pretext for waging war against Serbia. The massive outflow of refugees is, they assert, not the result of war crimes, but primarily the result of the bombing. There is a simple problem here. While the Serbian claims of complete innocence are not persuasive, given the massive outpouring of refugees, whose movement actually began before the bombings, the actual extent of the war crimes is just not clear. After World War II, the world discovered that the worst fears of German war crimes did not begin to capture the horror. After World War I, the world discovered that most of the charges made against the Germans were allied propaganda. Something has happened in Kosovo, but where it rests on the scale between brutality and genocide will not be known until later. Right now everyone, Albanians, Serbs, Americans, and British, all have reasons to exaggerate and are therefore all suspect. The debate over the atrocity question is not trivial. It is simply terribly difficult to come to an objective conclusion.
What is clear is that on the second axis of the debate, the geopolitical, an independent Kosovo will not end the war. Serbia is not alone in having an Albanian problem. Macedonia also has an Albanian minority with which it lives in an uneasy relationship. Even more than an inflow of Albanian refugees, which it dreads, Macedonia fears an enlarged Albania. It is convinced, like the Greeks, that temporary peacekeepers will lead to an independent Kosovo that will in turn lead to Kosovo merging with Albania. That will shift the balance of power dramatically, particularly if Moslem Albania and Moslem Bosnia join together.
No one in the region, except for Albania and perhaps Bosnia, wants an independent Kosovo. No one in the region believes that an armed occupation of Kosovo by NATO forces, coupled with the withdrawal of Serb forces, will have any other result in the long run. Therefore, the reasonable humanitarian concerns are encountering hard core geopolitical fears. It is these fears that severely limit NATO's room for maneuver. Macedonia is not going to agree to a ground attack on Kosovo if they see the ultimate result as being an independent Kosovo. Macedonians, like the Greeks, Bulgarians, and even Montenegrins, are quite content to see Kosovo under Serb control.
Thus, the simple question of armed versus unarmed troops brings two competing principles into collision. Armed troops means, in this reading, an independent Kosovo but safety for the Albanians. Unarmed civilians means a Serbian Kosovo and danger for the Albanians. The important point, of course, is that Serb sovereignty over Kosovo is not merely a Serb value, but something that is generally supported in the region.
The United States and Britain, being far from the region, are the least sensitive to the regional fears of greater Albania. The Italians and Germans, more knowledgeable about the region and more vulnerable to instability, are far more sensitive and far more concerned to find a formula that guarantees the safety of the Albanians in Kosovo without threatening Serb sovereignty. The Russian proposal is an attempt to draw an exquisitely fine line between the two, as it speculates about peacekeepers carrying side arms but not heavy weapons.
Growing Russian influence and credibility has many roots. One of them is that Russia is able to accurately reflect the region's innate fear of new borders while, at the same time, resonate to Italy and Germany's fear of a protracted war. The United States and Britain are obsessed with the single axis of atrocities, which leaves the geopolitical concerns of the region unexamined, and, therefore, have little resonance. That is the key weakness of U.S. diplomacy at this moment. The harder it presses on the atrocity issue, the more it appears to want an independent Kosovo. The more it appears to want an independent Kosovo, the more it frightens the other Balkan countries. The more it frightens the other Balkan countries, the more the U.S. convinces the Germans and Italians that the U.S. doesn't know what it is doing. The more the Germans and Italians fear that the U.S. doesn't know what it is doing, the more they turn to the Russians to broker the peace. The more the Russians are brokering the peace, the greater the diminution of American influence in the region.
The hard decision that the U.S. must make is whether it can live with continued Serb sovereignty over Kosovo, even under Milosevic. That is the issue that Chernomyrdin's visit has driven home to Washington. Everyone is afraid of a radical solution in Kosovo. The moderate solution leaves Serb forces somewhere in the province, and limits the power of the peacekeepers. Having painted the Serbs as genocidal maniacs, the Clinton administration has obvious problems with a moderate solution. How can one make peace with a genocidal maniac?
We are reminded of Clinton's line to the Israelis and Arabs: you make peace with your enemies, not your friends. The first axis, atrocity, has made the U.S. an enemy of Serbia. The second axis, geopolitics, does not make them friends, but does moderate the extremity of the position. Without that moderation, the war can lurch on indefinitely and inconclusively. Serbia will not give up Kosovo and it does not believe U.S. claims that a NATO occupation will not mean giving up sovereignty. Apart from the Albanians, none of Serbia's neighbors wants an independent Kosovo and they tend to agree with the Serbian view. It is up to the United States to demonstrate, not only to the Serbs but to the rest of the Balkans as well, that a peacekeeping force will not mean an independent Kosovo. It is not clear that Washington understands this imperative. |
