Half a Big Mac is not a smorgasbord

Jerry Gallucci over at Transconflict says Serbia is offering Kosovo a smorgasbord of possible solutions to the status question.  Looks more like half a Big Mac to me.  Not something I’d be interested in.

Anyone who thinks the European Union will accept Serbia as a member without settling the issue of Kosovo status, as Gallucci suggests, is living in a different reality from mine.   That would require twenty-two European states that have recognized Kosovo as sovereign to go mad, suffer amnesia or more likely brain damage.  Even if twenty-one of them did, the Dutch can be relied upon stay sane, remember and insist, as they did with the arrest and transfer to The Hague of Ratko Mladic.  Several EU members have already stated that settling Kosovo’s status will be a precondition, and those that haven’t will rely on the EU requirement of “good neighborly relations” to make the same point.

Gallucci’s smorgasbord consists of one basic idea:  Serbia retaining control of northern Kosovo.  To agree to that, Pristina would have to gain control of the Albanian-majority areas of southern Serbia.  After all, Kosovo has its political pressures, too, including from the Self-Determination movement Gallucci mentions.  And Serbia would have to recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity before any territorial exchange, since Kosovo could only engage in such an act as a sovereign.

In the unlikely event such an agreement could be reached, Pristina and Belgrade would then have to figure out how to guarantee  that it would not destabilize Bosnia and Macedonia.  This would be particularly important for Belgrade, since instability could of course spread from Bosnia to Sandjak, a part of Serbia in which many Muslims (they call themselves “Bosniaks”) live.

Gallucci wonders why ethnic states are such a bad thing.  They aren’t.  The problem is that forming them often entails a process known as violent conflict.  It did in the 19th century, it did in the 20th and it would in the 21st.  It’s admittedly difficult, but best to avoid war whenever possible.  And fighting, or even quarreling, over half a Big Mac would just be ridiculous.

It is time for Belgrade to accept reality.  Kosovo Serbs as well as the Serbian religious institutions in Kosovo can and should be treated properly.  Putting forward a smorgasbord of ideas on how to satisfy those requirements would be a good idea.  A one-way partition of Kosovo is not.