FEUILLETON Henry Kissinger, America, and Kosovo (8): The Kosovo precedent that will reach the Urals

Writing for Kosovo Online: Dragan Bisenic

Variations of Kissinger's idea regarding a conference on Kosovo, or the Balkans in general, emerged in the middle of this year.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, after a meeting with the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell on June 27, 2023, proposed a conference with the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo, as well as officials from the EU and the US, suggesting that they "not be allowed to leave without an agreement". Borrell supported this idea at a joint press conference.

As early as 1998, at the Forum 2000 conference organized by Czech President Vaclav Havel, Kissinger spoke about his lack of understanding of "what can be achieved in an ethnic conflict on the edge of the Balkans".

More than 500 people attended the opening ceremony of Forum 2000. Participants included over 40 Nobel Prize laureates, international human rights activists, diplomats, government officials, writers, and scientists from India, Russia, the United States, Japan, and across Western and Eastern Europe.

How to manage Kosovo?

Kissinger concluded before them that "the West is moving towards military action in Kosovo" with the necessary military means, "but without clear goals". He said that some would like to blame Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for the attacks on Kosovo but emphasized:

"No one can be blamed for the ethnic crisis in the Balkans. It is a crisis of interaction between Islam and Christianity on the edge of the Balkans that has been ongoing for hundreds of years".

He warned that any temporary solution to the Kosovo problem could trigger new ethnic conflicts.

Kissinger confirmed that the United States is the only remaining global superpower.

"The US is, however, only a superpower in one field of action, and that is military".

He said he hoped the West would consider how to manage conflicts in the Balkans to avoid the onset of new ethnic conflicts while suppressing those that had already ignited. In this regard, care was taken not to let, for example, the conflict in Kosovo flare up while the conflict in Bosnia was ongoing. Or for a war in Bosnia to not start while the war in Croatia was ongoing. It is noticeable that conflicts and wars in the former Yugoslavia developed in this manner, with no overlapping but rather occurring "one by one".

Therefore, he believed it was necessary to ensure not to enter into a "permanent conflict with the Albanians because the next phase of this ethnic crisis in the Balkans is very likely", which is "demands for self-governance by the Albanians in Macedonia, and perhaps even in Montenegro". To prevent this, a political decision is needed where "some international forces" will guarantee the agreements reached. Kissinger was not willing to accept the United States in that role but believed that NATO forces should do it, with "some Russian presence being politically helpful".

Kissinger stated that the military operation had officially begun with the argument that it would last until Milosevic or the Serbs returned to the conference table to accept the agreement from Rambouillet, reminding that the Rambouillet Agreement "keeps sovereignty in Serbian hands" because it "allows the presence of thousands of Serbian police officers and a smaller number of Serbian 'border troops, and requires the disarmament of the KLA".

Since he couldn't envision a "NATO defeat in Kosovo", it was clear that NATO would impose "some form of autonomy, self-governance, quasi-independence, or real independence". The leaders of both national communities in Kosovo, Serbs, and Albanians, are fully absorbed in the conflict and effectively support it. What will be needed, he said, was a detailed proposal on how Kosovo would be governed once hostilities ended. Discussions would be necessary from village to village on how autonomy functioned.

"American exceptionalism"

However, Kissinger believed that the enormous power of the precedent set with Kosovo, from the way the agreement had been imposed as in Rambouillet, to the use of NATO and military force, and ultimately, the creation of a situation after which it would no longer be possible to maintain territorial autonomy, but rather things would inevitably move towards independence. He warned senators that the issue of secession and violent separation of a part of the territory of an independent state would arise before all states "until it reaches the Urals".

This implied exactly what is happening today in Ukraine, where a Russian ethnic group can question its status and be militarily supported by Russia. Although Kissinger sought guarantees for all other states to prevent the overflow of ethnic crises from one country to another, nothing was achieved in that regard. The Kosovo crisis has thus manifested itself even up to the Urals.

Regarding the fate of the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, Kissinger said that it was a question the United States and NATO would face as the war came to an end. Kissinger stated that he did not recommend continuing the war just to remove Milosevic. When he received the "Call to Conscience" award from the American organization on April 27, 1999, Kissinger outlined the peculiarities of US foreign policy and its connection to what was happening in Kosovo at that time.

"This is a strange country for conducting foreign policy. It is the only major country in the world almost exclusively populated by immigrants. The only major state that can date its history from an exact date and dedicate it to one concept of freedom", Kissinger said.

However, what was more important is that America was the only major state that never had a powerful neighbor and never faced a foreign enemy on its soil. It has never suffered a national catastrophe. Along with all this comes the belief in "American exceptionalism", and the idea that it "can make the world in its image and do so in a short period".

Within the framework of the understanding of "American exceptionalism", Kissinger said that it was a "very American approach to take a Muslim ethnic group and a Serbian ethnic group and give them an 80-page document and say this was the final solution to 400 years of their history". If the document was signed, the problem was solved. Such an approach could only come from America.

Kissinger warned that this temptation could be observed at every stage of American foreign policy.

"We did extraordinary things when we had a clear enemy or a concrete challenge. In World War II, in the Cold War, in the Marshall Plan, in aid programs that no other country pursues with such dedication as the US", Kissinger said.

Contemporary statesmen are obsessed with tactics. They want immediate recognition in the evening news. They are driven by what the comments on their daily actions will be. In such circumstances, it is a huge challenge to organize actions "around purpose" and not have the action be merely technical.

All of this was an introduction to his main message - challenging humanitarian interventions.

Continuation tomorrow: NATO bombing action against the Chinese Embassy