Kosovo independence, international norms and perspective of new emerging states

_{By Sai Wansai, 18 February 2008}
 
While the US and EU support argues that Serbia's brutal subjugation of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority cost it any right to rule the territory, the Serbia government and its Russian allies insist that Kosovo's independence is a reckless breach of international norms and could spur other secessionist movements across the world.

All along, the notions of "territorial integrity", "sovereignty" and "non-intervention" have been established norms which no one thought of  questioning seriously. But NATO's bombardment of Serbia in 1999 within the context of  Kosovo has changed all of this.

Since 1999, Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and NATO, when Serbian forces were forced to withdraw after a NATO air war launched to end the crackdown and oppression on ethnic Albanian. Around 10,000 people were killed and nearly a million others had to flee their homes.

At that time, it was presumed that the notion of "humanitarian intervention" had taken a front seat and that “responsibility to protect” would play an important role in facilitating ethnic upsurge, which was closely linked to achieving rights of self-determination. But this has not been the case, for from 1999 until now only one new country joins the existing nation states club, which is East Timor. And even this is only redressing or granting independence to an old colonial possession of Portuguese, which the Indonesian had annexed illegally against the resolution of United Nations.

With the Kosovo independence declaration, the recognition of its statehood by the Western countries followed. Russia and China rejected as expected. Russia, in particular, hints to retaliate by recognising the statehood or independence of the small former Soviet Union, protectorate of the Russian, one in Moldova and two in the republic of Georgia, which have been in a limbo since the early 1990s. Two of the separatist areas in Georgia are Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

While most of the European Union's 27 member states might eventually fall in line recognising the statehood of Kosovo, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia and Romania are set to oppose recognising it, due to the fear of  encouraging secessionist movements within their own borders.

Given such circumstances, the socio-political disintegration – from the point of existing nation states –  or the upsurge trend of newly emerging new states could depend on how the Russian-led bloc and the West would handle the situation. If a tit-for-tat action is employed and each bloc would stick to its own rule, the world would likely have to confront and live with scores of newly born, half-baked, nation states recognised by some existing states and rejected by the others, as is the case of Kosovo today.

At the turn of the century, some fifty acknowledged states constituted the world community. This number is now approaching two hundred. All of the new states having been carved out of existing states. This suggests that a fair amount would have been learned as to how the procedure works. But this has not been the case.

Even today, the world is still muddling through, in the absence of clear legal rules, on how to legally respond to ethnic demands for self-determination.
Perhaps, it is time for international stakeholders to formulate recognition criteria of statehood, which all could accept and adhere to it. While large scale and continuous dismemberment of existing states is definitely not an ongoing trend, it would be wise to have something to fall back on for another eventuality like the case of Kosovo.

However, on the bright side of the spectrum, the velvet divorce of Czechoslovakia have produced Czech Republic and Slovakia, which are now members of the European Union and the co-operation and relation between the two newly formed countries are even better than before the break-up. It must have been “stout fences make good neighbours”.

The author is the General Secretary of the Shan Democratic Union (SDU) - Editor