Sounds like the Likud position on 'Judea and Samaria' (i.e. the West Bank). I guess it's no coincidence that the Israeli right tended to dislike the intervention in Kosovo.

I remember that back in the nineties many Poles I knew liked to say that in a way the Soviet Union's annexation and ethnic cleansing of what had been Eastern Poland had been a favour. If they hadn't, we might well have gone down the Serbian path. Same martyrdom complex, long history of oppression by an empire which shared a religion (Orthodoxy) with the local majority there, ugly civil war within WWII with some of the Ukranian groups collaborating with the Nazis... an alternate history experiment - the Galician war and the NATO bombardment of Poland.

The mentality you describe is why I suspect it's a bit  shortsighted of the EU/US to ignore the Serbian interest in retaining at least part of Kosovo. Even though it's my understanding that young people in Serbia today are less preoccupied with Kosovo than the oldies, these things wax and wane.

There may be no adequate solution. But one possibility that noone in the West wants to consider is partition, whereby the north and west with Serbian majorities and most of the monasteries remain in Serbia and the rest of Kosovo either goes indepedent or joins Albania, as decided by referendum.

Noone will love this solution, but in the long run it may be far more stabilizing than full secession of the entire province, which satisfies the Kosovo Albanians now but provides enduring grist for the mill of Serbian revengism.


The world's northernmost desert wind.

However, having said all that, it seems that the idea that Kosovo is, was and should always remain Serb is flawed and unrealistic. Serbs voted with their feet over the past half-century, creating a reality on the ground that is now (and in the future will be even more) leading to permanent partition of one form or another. The idea that Albanians are "guests" in Kosovo is both unhistorical and unrealistic. Not only because Albanian speaking people have lived in the area for ages - and certainly before the "Slavic invasions", but also because in point of fact there is no way that in an area fiercely contested by opposing nationalisms, the majoritarian nationality will not tend to have the upper hand...

Although I am very much against the recognition of an independent Kosovo as things stand (being an example of victorious militancy, this sets a bad example in an area still quite teeming with minorities which are local majorities), it seems unlikely that in the long term Kosovo will be in any meaningful way Serb, apart from a small minority perhaps living there (or in a partitioned province). This is a fact. The only way it can be reversed is by a large scale military operation that will expel most of the current inhabitants and settle a new population. This would be a. impractical, b. unlikely and c. morally repugnant.

I tend to think that the least problematic of current options would be a large scale concerted and consensual redrawing of borders in the Balkans, affirming minority rights, repatriation of refugees and granting autonomous status to various population groups (as stated briefly here). The EU train (if it ever arrives) is still pretty far off, don't wait for it to arrive too soon, because you'll be disappointed.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake