Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia on Sunday. You’ll remember that President Clinton sent American troops to Kosovo as part of a NATO mission to curb Serbian aggression against the ethnic Albanian population there. At the time, then-candidate George W. Bush criticized Clinton, saying "Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is." Funny how just a few short years later the Republicans would be all about invading other countries without any sort of exit strategy, isn’t it?
Well, anyway, Serbia was sufficiently defanged and declawed through the U.S. bombing campaign and the eventual deposing of Slobodan Milosovic, but the political question of Kosovo’s autonomy was more or less shoved aside by more pressing issues, especially once the Bush Administration started working on their list of places to invade. A United Nations protectorate (UNMIK) has been running the show in Kosovo for the last eight years. Writing at Spiked Online, Philip Cunliffe explains that the declaration does not declare complete independence from the Serbian government in Belgrade, or even from UNMIK. Instead, the Kosovars have declared themselves to have "supervised independence", transferring the control of their country from UNMIK to another protectorate controlled by the EU called EULEX, which gets 16,000 NATO troops to use in maintaining the stability of the area. Mr. Cunliffe concludes:
"The travesty of Kosovo’s declaration of independence is not the act of secession, nor the undermining of international law, but the very idea of supervised independence – a contradiction in terms if ever there was one."
He notes, as well, that the new flag of Kosovo (seen above) bears more than a passing resemblance to the flag of the EU, rather than the traditional flag, which bore the twin-eagle of Albania. It’s kind of unfortunate that the flag also has that big mustard stain right in the middle. The deaign committee must have been having a dinner meeting.
