The Cedar Lounge Revolution

I can’t argue with Misha Glenny’s recent piece in Prospect. Under the title: ‘You broke it, you own it’ he skillfully dissects the motivations of the various players in recent events and arrives at a bleak enough conclusion.

He notes that The EU’s handling of the Kosovo final status issue has been a dog’s breakfast.

This he argues has been…

…a disastrous cacophony. Europeans have poured many billions into the Balkans to stabilise the region over the past decade, and since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, have expended vast diplomatic and political effort on the region. We have derived real benefits from a long-term strategy that aims at the integration of all Balkan countries into the EU. And yet when it came to the critical decision, we allowed the US and Russia to take the lead—not on the question of Kosovo’s independence, but on the timing and framing of the province’s final status.

I find this interesting, particularly because it hints at a distinction between ‘independence’ and ‘final status’. Those of us adept at such things will also note his use of the word province.

The Americans let it be known long before negotiations ended that they would move to recognise Kosovo swiftly. This, of course, removed any incentive that the Albanians might have had to seek a proper settlement. The Russians replied that they would guarantee Serbia’s sovereignty over the province by deploying their veto at the UN security council.
Forced into making a decision by Washington and Moscow, the EU consensus collapsed. A majority opted to recognise the Republic of Kosovo (albeit in some cases reluctantly), while a resolute minority said “no” (or in the case of Cyprus, “never”).

There is much to consider here. The issue of overly hasty ‘recognition’ did, without question, distort the outcome. And in doing so it laid waste to EU pretensions to be capable of delivering a clear solution. Indeed, I’ve argued previously that it is the impossibility of arriving at anything near to a ‘clear solution’ which has been a central problem in this process.

And in this void, where ‘recognition’ was too lightly granted by the US, we arrive at a position where others are equally quick to withhold it.

The British and Americans assured other EU members that an avalanche of other countries would sign up for recognition as soon as Europe and US signalled their intention so to do.

Except… er, it hasn’t worked out that way.

The big emerging powers—Brazil, China and India—show no inclination to recognise. Despite its confessional connection to Kosovo’s Albanians, Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim state, looked on in horror at the move, fearing it could threaten its own territorial integrity. Apart from Afghanistan and Turkey, the Islamic world has cold-shouldered the new state for various reasons (including the vast sums of Russian money that are being washed through the Gulf). And if the supporters of recognition do not muster a majority in the UN general assembly by September, then Kosovo’s attempts to join the key organisations of global governance will be largely in vain.

So a rushed independence leaves us in the following situation…

If Kosovo is not recognised by the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WHO et al, then who is going to look after it? The Americans who were so keen to recognise? Nope—they feel they’ve done their bit. Obviously the Russians aren’t going to help. The Saudis are always ready to fund the construction of mosques and madrassas, but are less interested in the prosaic issue of creating jobs. That leaves the EU.

This is a mess of monumental proportions. But why should it be a surprise? Glenny notes that: far from London and Washington’s [insistence] that Kosovo was a “unique” case whose recognition would have no implications for secessionist issues elsewhere in the world. But when push came to shove, it turned out that the Russians were the ones with their finger on the global pulse. Almost everyone else in the world saw Kosovo as an uncomfortable precedent. The point is not whether recognition of Kosovo’s independence was right or wrong, but that EU supporters of independence failed to make the political case on the wider global stage.

And that is the point. By pushing a concept of ‘independence’ that from the off was bound to meet significant resistance even from those who by rights should be somewhat sympathetic (consider again Indonesia’s ‘horror’) due to their own little local difficulties the EU (and the US) did no favours to the cause of Kosovo or its independence. Arguably what has happened is the development of yet another EU Protectorate, in all but name. This is sub-optimal. To put it mildly.

Add to that massive internal problems…

The west has recognised a state which is de facto partitioned. Kosovo has five governments—the Kosovo government itself; the UN administration, the EU institution-building operation, the Serbian government (which functions in the Serbian areas) and Nato, which still has 16,000 troops there. And while the UN will probably go by summer, the new country remains an ungovernable mess with high levels of both unemployment and organised crime.

And perhaps we’re not actually looking at a state at all. Indeed the response from within the EU as regards recognition is as interesting as that without.

Again, as has been argued at the CLR before:

The EU will now be lumbered with responsibility for a chronically dysfunctional state for many years to come. There is a general election in Serbia in May—if we are lucky the pro-EU parties will win, but at the moment the nationalist parties are successfully making hay out of the Kosovo debacle. If they win, then the EU will face a recalcitrant, mischievous Serbia in the heart of the Balkans, capable of causing real disquiet in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a payback for the Kosovo recognition. Jealously guarding the sovereignty of member states when it comes to major foreign policy decisions is going to prove an expensive business for the EU.

Consider too Shaun Walkers thoughts in the same edition on how the recognition of Kosovo has ‘given fresh impetus to other separatist movements’.

He notes that:

There are four “breakaway states” in the former Soviet space: entities that were autonomous within their parent Soviet republics, and that when the Union collapsed in the early 1990s demanded their independence.

Some of them—like tiny South Ossetia, which demands independence from Georgia—are inconceivable as “real countries.” But Abkhazia, a strip of beautiful subtropical coastline on the Black sea, which was also part of Georgia during Soviet times, would probably be viable as an independent state.

Western politicians, however, worried about the potential knock-on effects of Kosovo in the post-Soviet space and elsewhere, have all along stated that there is no “Kosovo precedent.” Kosovo is a “unique case,” we are told again and again.

Hard cases make bad law, as the old saying goes. But Kosovo is hardly unique.

It is true that there are differences between Kosovo and Abkhazia. The constitutional status of Kosovo within Yugoslavia was slightly different than Abkhazia’s within the Soviet Union. More seriously, there’s the issue of numbers: not only is the population of Kosovo several times higher, but the Albanians in Kosovo were an overwhelming majority; the Abkhaz in Abkhazia were a minority until the Georgian population were forced out in the early 1990s.

I think that Walker makes an important point when he argues the following.

Nevertheless, “unique” is not a particularly helpful term. Of course Kosovo is unique, just like every separatist conflict. Kosovo is different to Abkhazia, Abkhazia to Kashmir, Kashmir to the Basque country, the Basque country to Tibet. Just because the Kosovars “deserved” independence doesn’t mean that the Abkhaz do too. But what Kosovo does do is set a precedent that suggests that in certain cases, there is a moral imperative that allows the often arbitrary lines of states to be redrawn. And this will be felt not only in Abkhazia but in unrecognised territories and separatist movements across the world.

How do we decide? Who decides? Parnell once said ( and I think it was Joe Lee who commented acidly that it was a marvellously ambiguous phrase) that No man shall have the right to fix the boundary to the march of a Nation. It’s a great principle, but one that in practice needs continual tuning and modification. Not because it’s untrue. It’s certainly true, but because it isn’t the only factor in any of these processes.

In the case of Georgia, the line from the west is unchanging: its “territorial integrity” is sacrosanct. But nowhere have borderlines been more in flux than in the former Soviet Union. The fact that Stalin decided in 1931 to append the republic of Abkhazia to the Georgian republic hardly seems a watertight argument for keeping it there today. “The west say they hate Stalinism and communism,” an Abkhaz minister told me last year. “Yet they are supporting the legacy of Stalinism by insisting that the borders Stalin created cannot be changed.”

Walker makes an interesting case that:

So perhaps it’s time to reassess the Abkhazia situation. If the international community were to say that no options were off the table, and started to treat Abkhazia as a mature negotiating party rather than a pesky pariah, we might start to see some progress. If, when they met with European or American representatives, the Abkhaz weren’t simply faced with the brick wall of the “territorial integrity” mantra, but with an assurance that all options are on the table, Russia’s role as the sole benefactor of the Abkhaz would be undercut.

I don’t disagree with him. My instincts are always to listen to those seeking self-determination. But… there is no established structure that can give a coherent answer to these problems (look at how sections of the left are tying themselves in knots over the status of Tibet).

There are no easy answers in the Abkhazia situation… But in recognising Kosovo, the west has admitted that there are sometimes circumstances when a country’s territorial integrity can be violated without its consent. Quite how one determines whether or not a separatist region “deserves” international recognition is difficult to say. But the Abkhaz—as well as many other separatist territories—will feel that, after Kosovo, people should at least listen to their arguments.

And there is the problem. The very process of engagement gives further legitimation to such issues. That may well be right, but in this world, as we have it today that will merely exacerbate heartfelt conflicts. There may well be no solution to this problem because we have to engage. But a bit of caution, a little less reliance on ineffable ‘uniqueness’ and a sense of how one act may precipitate others would be at least a prudent start to such engagement.

But, so what, one might say. This has little relevance, doesn’t it?

Er… no. As the IT reported last week.

Russia has announced that it will establish legal links with neighbouring Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, a move whicn Georgia has condemned as a breach of international law.

The step was likely to create a new irritant in relations between Russia and western states, which are closely allied to Georgia and suspect Russia of trying to punish the small Caucasus state for its move to join Nato.

In an instruction released by Russia’s foreign ministry, President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to recognise some documents issued by the separatist authorities and co-operate with them on trade and other issues.

“The main motivating factor for all our actions in this field is care for the interests of the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, including the Russian citizens living there,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“Our actions . . . do not mean that Russia is making a choice in favour of confrontation with Georgia,” it said.

In a neat little reversal…

In Washington, state department spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated US backing for Georgia, saying its commitment to the country’s territorial integrity was “unshakeable”.

Why, of course… and let’s not pretend anyone in this has clean hands, not least the fact that…

Mr Putin’s order made no mention of recognising the two regions’ claims for independence from Georgia. Diplomats say Moscow is unlikely to grant diplomatic recognition because it is wary of fomenting separatism inside its own borders.

But then, that’s not the point.

And so it begins…