Good analysis. The Russians were very clever in trying to assert Kosovo as a precedent. I do think we should not have recognized Kosovo, because it does set a very bad precedent - but the precedent was for recognition of the take over by an aggressive “micro-nationality,” as Hitchens calls them, or worse still, the carving out of a region by Muslim domestic aggression.
We seem to have had a massive intelligence failure in Georgia, though. Putin practically announced his plan, other people (in the regular press) observed that this would lead to Russia’s self-justification of its actions in S. Ossetia, and in the days leading up to the attack, the European press was full of accounts of “activity” in that area. Why were we so surprised and unprepared?
Perhaps, as usual, there was intelligence and nobody listened to it because it conflicted with how we wanted things to be. Or perhaps, because this has been going on for a long time, we just shrugged and thought, oh, more of the same old same old.
The Russians have been in full bluster mode lately. It’s tempting to ignore this as just the juvenile rantings of a country that wants to attract attention, but we would have been wiser to have taken some of their ranting at face value and responded before they tried to put it into action.
From Hitchens:
"Kosovo, which was legally part of Yugoslavia but not of Serbia was never manipulated as part of the partition or intervention plan of another country—the United States, in fact, spent far too long on the pretense that the Yugoslav federation could be saved—and, for a lengthy period, pursued its majority-rule claims by passive resistance and other nonviolent means.
"NATO intervention occurred only when Serbian forces had resorted to mass deportation and full-dress ethnic "cleansing.""
I fail to see how the independence of Kosovo is different IN ANY WAY from that of, say, Croatia, Slovenia or Bosnia. All are simply parts of the old Yugoslavia which decided to go their separate ways.
The Kosovo war in 1999 was Bill Clinton’s way of dealing with 5 lingering problems— 1. Draw attention away from Blowjob-gate and his embarrassing impeachment (Hillary Clinton herself seems to have suggested Serbia as a target), 2. Give the epically incompetent Madeleine Albright a place to publicly screw up as Secy. of State, 3. Infuriate a then-weak Russia for no good reason, 4. Launch a “PC War against genocidal Serbs” despite the fact that most genocide in 1999 was being committed by the al-Qaida allied, Islamofascist KLA against Gypsies, Jews, Serbs and opposing Albanians, 5. Most of all— to appease the Islamofascists by making the USA appear to be an ally of Muslim terrorists in the West.
The Islamofascists, of course, showed their gratitude and returned idiot Bill Clinton’s favor by launching the most damaging attack on US soil since the War of 1812. Which of course, was further facilitated by Bill Clinton’s utter incompetence in allowing Osama bin Laden to go free on 5 occasions. Even Democrats these days are admitting that Bill Clinton royally screwed up in Kosovo and has caused major geopolitical problems in his wake.
What’s inexplicable is why George W. Bush himself continued the idiotic policy, though this is perhaps explained in part by Condi Rice, the so-called “Russia expert,” who seems to be in a contest to rival Albright in utter incompetence.
I don’t like what Russia is doing now, and they need to be pressured to high-tail it out of Georgian soil. But the West also needs to withdraw any hint of recognition for the unviable, Islamofascist narcostate of Kosovo as well. For our own good, as much as in any sort of exchange with Russia itself.