Kosovo throws wrench into U.S.-Russian relations
Posted: Friday, February 22, 2008 3:38 PM
Filed Under:
Moscow, Russia
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
MOSCOW – A generation ago, Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin defined the no-go zone between East and West. If you listen to Russian officials these days, that geopolitical schism
has now shifted to the Serbia-Kosovo border.
On one side, Russia defends its nationalist proxy, Orthodox Serbians, who say they will never accept a non-Serbian Kosovo; on the other side, Kosovars – more than 90 percent of whom are Albanian Muslims – are backed in their desire for independence by the United States and most of Western Europe.
Russian warning
This new East-West gap should surprise no one who's watched and listened to Russia's take on Kosovo since June 1999.
Then, just as Serb forces were involuntarily withdrawing from Kosovo, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered his general to take his troops – part of an international peacekeeping mission – and occupy the strategic airport in Pristina before NATO could get there.
Those Russian troops eventually re-joined the peacekeeping operation, but only after days of intense negotiations in Finland between U.S. and Russian officials. Most Serbs believed that Yeltsin had abandoned Serbia by acquiescing to NATO’s demands.
For years, every time rumors of an Albanian declaration of independence for Kosovo were whispered in Pristina or Brussels or Washington, Moscow would weigh in, warning that such an illegal act could plunge the whole European continent into another spasm of violence. But no one seemed to take notice.
Then Russia started to muscle up: President Vladimir Putin is no Yeltsin, and Russia under Putin has grown into an economic powerhouse, no longer afraid to throw its weight around. During Thursday’s massive rally against Kosovo independence, Serbian protestors were holding up posters of Putin, showing that they consider the Russian leader to be their chief ally in the current stand-off with the West
Fighting words
People inside Serbia and beyond are now taking notice of what Russia is saying. And for many in the West it's frightening.
On Friday, Russia's NATO envoy, Dmitiry Rogozin, warned that Russia might have to resort to "brute military force" if Europe recognizes an independent Kosovo. But in the same breath, Rogozin backed off some, suggesting that Russia would not to go to war over Kosovo. Still, many are asking, how did it come to this?
Russian analysts explain that the West – especially the United States – has fallen victim to a miscalculation which some equate to being as grave as the ill-advised invasion of Iraq. They say that the West has grossly underestimated the place Kosovo holds in the hearts of Serbs, no matter how many – or few – actually live there. As Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said at the 200,000-strong rally in Belgrade on Thursday, "Kosovo is Serbia."
This is not to be taken lightly. He used the same words almost 10 years ago when I spoke to him following his election as president of a new, seemingly moderate post-Milosevic nation. "Kosovo is the origin of Serbia," he told me. "We will never give it up." No one took much notice.
Pandora’s Box
Analysts here in Moscow also warn that the ripping of Kosovo from the Serbian province will open a Pandora's Box of potentially destabilizing ruptures all around the world: Chechens in Russia, ethnic Serbs in Bosnia, Russians in Moldova, Abkhazians in Georgia, Basques in Spain, just to name a few.
Would the United States defend these groups if they were to declare independence in violation of territorial integrity and international law, experts in Russia ask? If not, then why in Kosovo?
To define it in more familiar terms, Kosovo, for Serbs, is like a combination of Jerusalem and the Alamo: both the birthplace of its identity, forged in a bloody defeat at the hands of the Turks in 1389, and the crucible of its religious faith. Over the centuries, Russia has been Serbia's natural ally, sharing the Orthodox religion and the Cyrillic alphabet. But the United States also has been a trusted ally to Serbia through two world wars and other difficult times.
But strangely, friends of a friend can act like enemies. Just when it seemed like Russia and the United States were on the brink of what some consider a new Cold War, tiny Kosovo reared its head, caught the West's fancy for freedom and declared its independence – just as it promised it would. In the process, it triggered the kind of belligerent rhetoric we haven't heard from the Russian military in years.
Forget Checkpoint Charlie. Kosovo means hot zone.
Q & A: The history of strife in Kosovo
Key dates in Kosovo's drive for independence
Jim Maceda is an NBC New Correspondent based in London who covered the wars in Yugoslavia extensively during the 1990s. He is currently on assignment in Moscow.
