http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2357
Doug Bandow
The Bush administration has made quite a botch of U.S. foreign policy. Initiating an unnecessary and needlessly bloody war in Iraq. Pushing a now discredited belligerent campaign against Iran. Creating more Islamic hostility and additional terrorists around the world.
Ignoring a worsening situation in Afghanistan. Delaying negotiations with North Korea. Wrecking relations with Russia.
Fulminating impotently against Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. Generating suspicion from governments and especially peoples in almost every allied state. Lowering U.S. credibility to levels not seen since Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
But the administration isn’t finished yet. It still has more than a year in office. And at least one potential crisis looms next week: Kosovo.Kosovo is the issue that just won’t go away, no matter how much the administration wishes it would. The latest, and apparently final, round of negotiations, if they deserve to be called that, over Kosovo’s final status have finished. The ethnic Albanians say they plan to declare independence from Serbia – as early as next week. The result could be dissension within the European Union, unrest throughout the Balkans, civil conflict in Kosovo, a renewed flood of refugees, and possible intervention of the Serb military. Quite a mess.
The Kosovo problem goes back to 1998. The territory, the historic heartland of Serbia, was suffering through a bitter guerrilla campaign directed against the ruling Serbs. Over the years this one-time ethnic Serbian conclave had turned into a sizeable ethnic Albanian majority.
The latter were none too gentle with Serbian residents during their relatively autonomous rule under the latter-day regime of communist Josip Broz Tito. The Serbs returned the favor several times over when Slobodan Milosevic reasserted Belgrade’s authority. Albanian http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2503 led to bloody Serbian retaliation, and the usual spiral of violence.
http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=12011