A New Country On The World Stage

Yesterday, the world witnessed the birth of a new nation. The Republic of Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Since 1999, Kosovo has been supervised by the United Nations. There have been negotiations for the last couple of years to try and figure out a workable status for Kosovo to remain a part of Serbia, but nothing could be decided that was acceptable to all parties.

In 2001, the United Nations administration helped Kosovo form a constitutional framework. This created a 120 member Kosovo Assembly elected by the people, which chooses a President and a Prime Minister. Yesterday, the Assembly passed a Declaration of Independence from Serbia, and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci read it to the international media. That marked the birth of the independent nation -- the Republic of Kosovo.

This probably needed to happen. Kosovo is largely composed of Albanian Muslims. After the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbians in the late 90's, I don't know how anyone could expect Kosovo to trust that they would ever be treated fairly by the Serbians again. Too many people were killed or expelled from their homes.

It is expected that the United States, Great Britain, France and possibly a few other Western nations will recognize the new country. However, this will not help relations between the West and Russia. Russia backs the Serbs and opposes the creation of the Republic of Kosovo. They have told Serbia to oppose this move in every way short of violence.

While I support the new nation and hope the United States does recognize its existence, we need to understand the ramifications of this move. We must tread carefully and exercise our best diplomatic efforts, or we could be witnessing the birth of a new cold (or hot) war.