Posted on 02/22/2008 12:14:12 PM PST by processing please hold
MOSCOW - Russia's envoy to NATO warned the alliance Friday against overstepping its mandate in Kosovo and said Moscow might be forced to use "brute military force" to maintain respect on the world scene.
Dmitry Rogozin said the Russian military also might get involved if all European Union nations recognize Kosovo's independence without United Nations agreement and despite strong objections from Russia and Serbia.
The comments were the latest harsh rhetoric from Moscow protesting Kosovo's declaration of independence, which has sparked violent protests in Serbia and international disagreement over whether to recognize the fledgling nation.
The comments also sparked quick reaction from the U.S. State Department, which urged Russia to repudiate them.
Rogozin couched his threat, however, assuring that Russia was not currently making plans for a military confrontation.
"If the European Union works out a single position or NATO goes beyond its current mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will conflict with the United Nations," Rogozin said in a televised hookup from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
If that happens, Russia "will proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force," he said.
The U.S. ambassador to NATO, meanwhile, said Washington was "very disappointed" by Russia's hostility over Kosovo, and Nicholas Burns, the U.S. State Dept.'s third-ranking official, called Rogozin's statement "highly irresponsible."
"This cynical and ahistorical comment by the Russian ambassador should be repudiated by his own government," Burns said responding to questions in an online discussion.
Later, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russia's envoy to the European Union, used a more conciliatory tone, saying the Kosovo problem should be resolved exclusively by political means.
Rogozin - an outspoken nationalist known for his tough rhetoric - told NATO that its 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo must "remain neutral" over the contentious declaration.
"Under no circumstances should the alliance get involved in politics," Rogozin said. However, Moscow already was alarmed by reports that authorities in Kosovo had closed the border with Serbia.
Local authorities patrol Kosovo's borders, but the main responsibility for security lies with NATO peacekeepers. On Friday, they sent back several busloads of Serbs seeking to join a rally in the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Kosovska Mitrovica.
Russia has staunchly supported Serbia's to Kosovo's secession, and has vowed to block any efforts in the United Nations to recognize its independence.
In what appeared to be a contradictory comment, Rogozin assured that "Russia was not planning to get involved in any armed confrontation over Kosovo."
"There will be no war between Russia and NATO over Kosovo," he said, though the Kosovo issue "will certainly hamper our dialogue."
Nations that recognized Kosovo's statehood had made "a strategic mistake, similar to the invasion of Iraq," he said.
Other Russian officials have called the recognition illegal and said it could effectively split Kosovo in half. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Kosovo's secession could lead to regional instability.
More than a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany. Russia has been joined in its opposition by China and others, including EU member Spain.
Rogozin called the violent protests that took place Thursday in the Serbian capital "national wrath that will be hard to curb," and criticized the West for making "a step toward a very cruel and emotional ethnic conflict" in the Balkans.
Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo - which has been governed by a U.N. mission and patrolled by NATO peacekeepers since 1999 - had been widely expected to declare independence from Serbia after internationally mediated talks on its future fell apart last year.
Unbelievable situation isn’t it?
Did I hear or read somewhere that Lawrence Eagleberger had said something to the effect that the West will “spot”, or “grant” the Moslems Kosovo, as a token of sorts for all else that the West has done against, or had been attempting to do against, to the rest of the Moslem world...I could be wrong...could this be a “grant” to the Saud dynasty to firm up support against Shia Iran/Humiliated-Furious Russian Federation...hmm, I wonder...either way, Otto von Bismarck couldn’t have been more right, especially as applies to today—today the role of Kaiser Willi is being played by another W....hey, what about any oil pipelines running through Kosovo? Or any mining interests in Kosovo? (I smell the distinct smell of oil and mining interests in Kosovo, and I’m sitting in Kansas...)
I haven’t heard Eagleberger say that. I hope to God you’re mistaken. I’ll go poking around to see if I can find it.
I’m still looking. The last I heard is that Eagleberger wasn’t happy with what’s going down concerning Kosovo.
I am tempted to take sides, but really, both are disgustingly disingenuous and hypocritical. I see making normative judgements re: the one side as being the good one, or another side as the bad one to be clouding the argument. W.W.S.S.? (What would Socrates say?) (Maybe we should separate morality/ethics from what is transpiring here: naked self-interest of the world’s sea-power versus the naked self-interest of the world’s counterbalancing land-power; i.e., U.S.A vs. R.F.) ...but it’s hard to go to a game and not pick one side to root for...
I hope I’m wrong about that, too.
Hard to be happy about that; it’s almost a “lose-lose” situation for us non-elites; i.e., for the 99.98% of us...
Me and mine are in that 99.98%. We worker ants are really being trodded on lately, aren't we. We pay the bills, and what we want is dismissed out of hand.
Well, yes. That is true. He also knew that the Balkans have ALWAYS been a source of trouble, for 700 years.....
Remember, that WW I started when a Serbian Nationalist murdered the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand........
Kosovo could be a real strike against McCain who supported Clinton's war against Kosovo and who now supports Bush's recognition of its independence. In fact the only major candidate who'd be unaffected by too much focus on Kosovo among the punditry would be Obama.
My point is that globalization, a world wide free market made up of self determined peoples, is a goal that GW and many of the globalist share.
I admit that there is just as many globalist who believe in a tightly regulated market and a strong central government (at a minimum facism, more likely socialism).
The first ideal may be ‘pie in the sky’ but it is a worthy goal and one that the U.S. has had as policy for nearly 70 years. Unfortunately it is easily co-opted and many people muddy the ideal with their own self interests of wealth and power.
The second ideal is one the Stalin, Hitler and Mao all shared and is filled with the blood soaked ground of millions of innocents. Today Kim Jung Ill, the Castro’s and Hugo Chavez are the poster children for that type of globalism.
In the ‘pie in the sky’ view, a free and self determined Kosovo, with a free market economy is what every freedom loving ‘globalist’ (American Dream?) invisions. The fact that it comes with a cost is the downside. And what that cost really ends up being determines whether the decision to support a free Kosovo was right or wrong.
In short I thnk GW truly believes in the “Free Market Economy, Self Determined State” global community. He truly believes that states like Kosovo move the world closer to that view. Only history will truly determine if that was his folly or his brilliance. Everything else is second guessing.
Free Market Economy, Self Determined State
Has never worked with totalitarian states: Islamic or Communist/Fascist. Neo globalists/3rd way one worlders/ neo cons whatever -—are glued to this pipe dream and it is nothing more than a bloody sordid fantasy.
The victims of this nightmare venture number in the hundreds of millions.
Thanks! Good article explaining Eagleberger and Bolton’s position.
Clinton's war was not against Kosovo. It was against Serbia and Serbia's intervention in Kosovo's bid for autonomy.
Remember that this all started with the breakup of Yugoslava and Belgrade's desire to keep its borders intact. Bosnia, Herzogovenia, Crotia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Serbia were all area's (Some were independent states)that the communists and Tito forced into a single artificial state.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Americans and Europeans saw the breakup of those area's into their independent states as a natural consequence. Much like the breakup of the many states that made up the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, for Serb Nationalists, that breakup extends to within the borders of Serbia itself. Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Vojvodina were/are all part of the Serbian state that existed just before World War I.
An ealier statement in this thread stated something to the effect that people make the mistake that there is a 'good' side an a 'bad' side in this affair. It is certainly much more clouded than that. There are many factions on both sides andd there are those among each side that we would find ourselves in agreement with and abhored by.
Just to give one a idea of how convoluted this area's history truly is, here is an excerpt from wikipedia:
For centuries, shaped at cultural boundaries between East and West, a powerful medieval Serbian kingdom - later renamed an empire - occupied much of the Balkans. The modern state of Serbia emerged in 1817 following the Second Serbian Uprising. Later, it expanded its territory further south to include Kosovo and Metohija and the regions of Raška and Vardar Macedonia. The Syrmia region united with Serbia on November 24, 1918 and they were joined by Vojvodina (formerly an autonomous Habsburg crownland named Serbian Voivodship and Tamiš Banat) the following day after it proclaimed its secession from Austria-Hungary. The current borders of the country were established following the end of World War II, when Serbia became a federal unit within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Serbia became an independent state again in 2006, after Montenegro left the union which was formed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1990s.
In short this area of the world is a (expletive deleted) mess.
Wow! $3.00 a gallon! Damn, I would love to be paying so little for fuel. 1 gallon is about 4liters, while 1USD is about 6,44SEK. Petrol (gas in the US) costs around 13SEK per liter at the moment. So if my calculations are correct (and I admit maths is not my favorite subject) we are paying roughly 2USD per liter here in Sweden!! Which comes to about $8.00 per gallon! But ok, at least 75% of the price here is government taxes from what I understand...
I agree with the first part of your statement. It has not worked in many states (thought the reasons are far from simple) and that many are enamored with the "Free Market, Free State" worldwide dream.
I completely disagree that the dream of freedom has killed millions, in fact it is within that dream many have sacrificed themselves for the betterment of others. It is the nightmare of Totalitarianism (facism, socialism, communism, dictatorships, islamist states, etc.) that slaughter the worlds peoples.
I could be wrong but I sense that you are more of an isolationist. Whether you support free markets or self determined peoples is here nor there, though I should hope that being on Free Republic means you do.
Keep in mind that isolationism, by it's own self interest, has cost many innocents around the world their lives through it's own inaction.
I think he already was...but you knew that, right? right?
That's the way the finely tuned fighting machine known as the Wehrmacht saw it too, when they looked East and saw nothing but a bunch of undisciplined drunks called the Red Army.
NO I am not an “isolationist” but I suspect many are becoming so including me because of the horrors inherent in propping up the one world fantasy in all its heinous forms.
Call us neo isolationists.
We become this because our meddling leads to innocent deaths which we silently or defensively accept in the vague hope that the resulting state becomes more humane, more open, more PC, more accepting of minority populations, more crap...NOPE it doesn’t work...has not worked. In the meantime we justify the means to the end. And the end is a crueler beast than the one it replaces.
America cannot operate without a moral compass. That is what I believe. Having done so in the past allows totalitarian states free rein in doing their bloody deeds.
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