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NSPM IN ENGLISH

NSPM IN ENGLISH - Serbia, Democracy and the issue of Kosovo and Metohija

 

 

Nicolas Gvosdev

Democracy in Serbia and Kosovo issue

Future diplomatic historians looking back at U.S. policy toward Kosovo are going to be puzzled. In almost every other case where a new democratic state has faced a question of ethnic separatism, Washington has always opted for a compromise solution: ensuring territorial integrity of the country as a whole while promoting maximum autonomy for the disaffected regions in question.
 
Take Senate Resolution 344 concerning Georgia, passed in December 2005, whose principal sponsors were three influential members of that body—Republicans John McCain and Sam Brownback and the current Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid. This resolution reaffirmed U.S. support for the “the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and ongoing democratic reform process” of the country.
 
While acknowledging that Georgia had made “mistakes” in its treatment of its ethnic minorities—the Senate still made a point of condemning the separatists for  “militarizing the area, allowing organized crime to flourish, and posing a threat to the peace and security in the region.” They then endorsed plans on the table that would give “significant autonomy” to the breakaway areas but would nonetheless reinforce the territorial integrity of the entire state.
 
The U.S. stance on Georgia is not unique. The standard American position is to always endorse the territorial integrity of a state, even when its claims to territory may be disputed—and to promote plans that promise autonomy, cultural rights or even a significant devolution of power to the region rather than outright separation. This is true even when the state in question has in fact carried out repressive policies against the minority group in question—as U.S. policy toward Turkey and its Kurdish population demonstrates.
 
This tendency is especially true when the country in question is considered by the United States to be a democracy. This flows first from the general doctrine, most recently re-articulated by Senator McCain, that democracies form a global “community”—that democratic states share similar interests based on shared forms of governance, and therefore are more prone to working together to advance a common (and often assumed to be an American-led) agenda. The second, based more specifically on the experience of Central and Eastern Europe , is that new democracies, particularly those escaping from the Soviet/Communist past, have tended to be strongly pro-American in their orientation; have sought NATO membership, and usually contributed both support and actual forces to assist American military operations around the world.
 
In this approach, then, a democratic state offering substantial autonomy to its minority groups guarantees most of the rights of self-determination and there should be no efforts to then weaken the state in question by promoting its division. This is also stressed when there is a perception—as in the case of Georgia —that while the core state is pro-American, the separatists favor Russia .
 
But support for territorial integrity is not only found in the case of democracies or semi-democracies such as Georgia or Moldova; it is the basis for U.S. support for Morocco's initiative to offer Western Sahara broad autonomy within the kingdom and why Washington rejects outright independence as a solution. Even in the case of Somalia , a failed state that has not had a functional central government since 1989, the U.S. has resisted calls to recognize the independence of Somaliland, the former British protectorate that was merged with the Italian colony to produce Somalia in 1960 which has re-established itself as a de facto independent state. The reason? Washington 's unwillingness to violate the territorial integrity of Somalia !
 
Finally, the United States has traditionally never pushed for an imposed solution of a separatist conflict if it threatened the stability of the larger region, and has preferred maintaining a “status quo” situation—for decades if needed—as the price for peace. This has been seen most clearly in Washington 's approach toward Taiwan (balancing Taiwan 's de facto autonomy against America 's de jure recognition of a single China ) and in maintaining the current balance on Cyprus . In both cases Washington has no desire to move a solution on any sort of timetable unless there is some agreement in place among the parties.
 
So what makes the case of Serbia and Kosovo different? Why would the principles behind Senate Resolution 344 not be applied to Belgrade and Prishtina?
 
Some have maintained that there is no connection between a separation of Kosovo from Serbia and the further consolidation and deepening of Serbian democracy itself, and then even an “imposed solution” would be “beneficial” for Serbia itself by removing Kosovo as an issue, and allowing the core of the country to move forward. Even a casual perusal of opinion polls, however, shows that this is not the case. Nor, since the European Union is not offering a rapid membership track to Serbia , is there a case that Serb voters might accept a compromise where the loss of Kosovo would be compensated by joining the EU before the close of the decade.
 
One argument put forward is that Serbia is not a “real” democracy and therefore effecting a separation of Kosovo from Serbia supports and advances the “freedom agenda” of the Bush Administration—by creating a “new” democracy from a non-democratic state. Yet Freedom House, in its recent surveys, defines Serbia both as a “free country” and as an electoral democracy, meaning that Serbia possesses a competitive, multiparty political system where there are regularly contested elections (or in the parlance of the OSCE, “free and fair” elections) which produce results that correspond to the desires of the electorate, since all major political forces have the ability to compete for votes.
 

 

 

 
 
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