David Johnson runs an excellent newswire service about all things Russia over at the Center for Defense Information (click here to support him). Scraps of Moscow has kindly reprinted one article from the latest posting here. The piece is an op-ed written by a Russian policywonk who is calling for a “new world order.” This excerpt caught our eye:

It is possible for the existing centers of power these days to recognize political units as sovereign states or deny them this recognition regardless of the accepted legitimate criteria. Some UN states including three permanent members of the UN Security Council recognized the former Serbian autonomy as a sovereign state in February 2008. Permanent member of the UN Security Council and Atomic Club, Russia recognized sovereignty of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008. In the meantime, Russia flatly refuses to recognize Kosovo while the United States and its EU allies keep singing hosannah to the Georgian territorial integrity. In a word, common rules, standards, and criteria no longer work. Political expediency is the only guideline. It did not begin yesterday, of course. Last year events became but another confirmation (in the post-Soviet zone, for a change) of the premise that the Yalta-Potsdam version of the international law is history and that nothing has been developed to replace it. [emphasis added]

The Kosovo Precedent is being used to justify refashioning borders.  It is easy for the US and EU to talk of Kosovo being a one-off.  Their secessionists are either kooks — extremists in Vermont and Hawaii — or harmless — independence advocates in Puerto Rico and Flanders, for example. Most of the rest of the world lives with arbitrary borders because once you open the issue to revision there is no particular endpoint short of Mad Max.

Russia was unlikely to part with the two breakaway regions before Kosovo.  There is a zero chance after Kosovo.  However many times the EU, NATO, UN and US tell themselves that the Kosovo Precedent is a one time special situation they are not seeing reality from Moscow (or Beijing). If Kosovo can be an exception for Western convenience, why not South Ossetia?  Abkhazia?  Transistria?  Why not the Yalu River Valley should North Korea implode? If Kosovo, why not Somaliland?  Why not the Ogden?  Why not Katanga or East Congo?  From a Chinese prospective, why not Taiwan?  Sinkiang?  Tibet?

The genie is out of the bottle on the sanctity of state boundaries.  NATO will someday soon be faced with annexation and have to swallow hard.

Source: Stanford Review, August 7, 2009

Home | Contact us | Links | Archives | Search