You don’t need to know a lot of history

I tweeted to Kosovo President Thaci on Friday:

.@HashimThaciRKS: do you really want to open for renegotiation the deal with the US and most of the EU that got your state recognition? This could end very badly.

He responded:

Dear @DanielSerwer, I’m committed deeply to obtain #Kosovo‘s membership in @NATO and EU. Based on values we share. Based on need to ensure safety of our children. We need to close a chapter that brings about reciprocal recognition & good neighborly relations between RKS & SRB.

I’m against partition. I’m against swaps. I’m against status quo. I’m against making a Republica Srpska in #Kosovo. But I’m in favor to peaceful demarcation and settling the 400km long border between Kosovo and Serbia. Balanced agreement is in all our interests, incl US & EU.

I prefer to respond here rather than on Twitter, which doesn’t work well for complex issues. This one is complex.

I share the President’s goals: NATO and EU membership, recognition, and good neighborly relations between Kosovo and Serbia. I am also against partition and land swaps, and a Republika Srpska (RS) in Kosovo (that is part of Kosovo that de facto escapes Pristina’s sovereignty, like the RS in Bosnia). Peaceful demarcation of the border is vital. You can look long and hard for two countries with good relations that have not agreed on and demarcated their border.

So what’s the problem? Just this: President Thaci has responded to Serbian President Vucic’s constant harping on partition of Kosovo with the suggestion that Kosovo would like to absorb at least some of the Albanian-populated communities in southern Serbia. Never mind that Serbia’s main route to the sea is adjacent to those Albanian communities and that Kosovo’s main water supply is the Serb-controlled north. The tit-for-tat presidential speculation on partition opens what diplomats call Pandora’s box: border changes throughout the Balkans that would necessarily involve significant populations and land areas.

Calling it “border correction” and associating it with demarcation does nothing to lessen the broad and dramatic impact an attempt to redraw borders along ethnic lines would entail. Consider this from Father Sava on his Facebook page today:

Acceptance of ethnic partition between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo by territorial division, forcing 70.000 Serbs south of the partition line to an imminent exodus and leaving their holy sites in peril would mean that EU accepts the idea of an AGREED ETHNIC CLEANSING as a legitimate solution.
This would be a dangerous precedent with unforeseeable consequences which would inevitably encourage replication of such a model throughout the continent. EU member states are before a critical historical responsibility if this scenario is politically supported. This will bring us back to the tragic years of the ex-Yu wars in the 90ies.

Meanwhile, Republika Srpska President Dodik is declaring:

I think that BiH [Bosnia and Herzegovina] will not survive and that it will peacefully dissolve. 

He knows that there is no possibility of a peaceful dissolution and has been arming his police with weapons from Russia to ensure that RS is ready to defend its secession when the time comes. That would of course lead to the expulsion of the (relatively few) Croats and Bosniaks who have returned to RS and might imperil the Serbs in the Bosnian Federation as well. The net result would likely be a non-viable Islamic Republic in central Bosnia that could readily become an extremist safe haven.

In Macedonia, there is a real risk that more extreme ethnic nationalists of both the Albanian and Macedonian varieties will benefit from the atmosphere that these partition fantasies are creating. That could lead to defeat of the September 30 referendum on the agreement that would end the more than 25-year dispute with Greece over the country’s name. NATO and EU membership would then become impossible and agitation in favor of an infeasible partition would become inevitable.

The implications for the secessionist regions of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine are all too obvious. President Putin couldn’t hope for more.

Why is this happening? In part because the US has an ethnic nationalist administration whose erstwhile chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is running around pushing ethnic partition while former Trump campaign officials sign up lobbying clients like Dodik and Vucic. The lobbyists don’t care how much trouble their schemes may cause, but those who are actually governing in Washington, European capitals, and Brussels should. You don’t need to know a lot of history to know how easily conflicting ethnic territorial claims in the Balkans can lead to instability, and instability to much worse.