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Meanwhile, in Kosovo…

And here’s the rub: While the United States grappled with its inability (whether for lack of a fulcrum or fear of meddling) to use leverage to remove the regimes in Tunis and Cairo, it actually does have the power to affect change and promote transparent and accountable governance in Pristina — where a coterie of […]

And here’s the rub: While the United States grappled with its inability (whether for lack of a fulcrum or fear of meddling) to use leverage to remove the regimes in Tunis and Cairo, it actually does have the power to affect change and promote transparent and accountable governance in Pristina — where a coterie of thuggish leaders, holdovers from a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) unit accused of war crimes and weapons dealing, now run the country. But, thus far, Washington has been unwilling to exert the necessary pressure on Kosovo’s leaders — and in its impotence pours billions of dollars down the drain and risks condemning the state to thugocracy. ~Mason and Healy-Aarons

It’s not exactly shocking news for some of us that supporting an independent Kosovo run by terrorists turns out to be a waste of U.S. resources. The article is valuable for reporting on the extent of the criminality and misrule of Kosovo’s new rulers, including war crimes against Serbs and Albanians in 1998-99, but going back to before the 1999 war there was good reason to suspect the KLA of most or all of the crimes that their leaders have been committing. Back then, the enthusiasm to support self-determination and to oppose Milosevic was too great, so naturally the solution was to start a war and set up an impoverished statelet run by hoodlums.

The authors note:

As it turns out, U.S. support for the world’s youngest democracy has been almost as bad for economic security, political stability and democratic principles [bold mine-DL] as backing the globe’s oldest autocracies.

Who would have guessed that? It’s almost as if mindlessly endorsing separatist movements and following abstract Wilsonian principles lead to bad outcomes. One might conclude that replacing a repressive authoritarian system with a democratically-elected government where it has never existed before can easily lead to even worse political and economic conditions! The better time to think through all of this was in 1999 and the years immediately following. At the very least, not recognizing Kosovo’s independence would have been wise. Kosovo might still be run by thugs, but they wouldn’t have the seal of approval that comes with being recognized as the elected government of a supposedly sovereign state. The article details at some length the extent to which the U.S. was responsible for empowering and legitimizing the KLA. That is the real legacy of “humanitarian” intervention.

Obviously, it’s too late for undoing critical mistakes, so what can be done now that the U.S. has saddled itself with a criminal gang-dominated dependency? The article makes no recommendations, but I’ll propose one or two to start. The easiest option would be to suspend all aid to the current government. Even if U.S. aid isn’t directly fueling the leadership’s corruption, it is subsidizing a government that is rife with it. Another would be to target the leadership’s financial assets to be frozen, or at least make it more difficult for them to benefit from their illicit profits. The U.S. should also be willing to assist in arresting and transporting indicted leaders to stand trial. Washington is quite directly responsible for the current situation, so there is some obligation for the U.S. to attempt some remedy.

We all understand that Washington probably won’t do any of these things, because propping up Kosovo as an independent state never had much to do with the quality of governance in Kosovo or the well-being of its population. That much was obvious from the beginning of the 1999 war. Bombing and then partitioning Serbia were statements of U.S. power and influence, and Washington isn’t going to be eager to draw attention to how badly all of this turned out.

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