Expect more of this in the coming weeks:

“If the independence of Kosovo is recognized, it would not be the final stage of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, but the first stage of new disintegration and secession in the Balkans,” Serbia’s Kosovo minister, Slobodan Samardzic, said.

For those not up to speed on what’s going on inside Serbia, this is a good primer on the political dynamics. The DSS is the party of Vojislav Kostunica, who was until recently fêted in the Western press as a welcome change after Milosevic. Whoopsie!

Signs point to most Balkan specialists still not really “getting” it. The International Herald Tribune runs an article titled “A Balkan crisis that some see as overblown”, which cites a certain European study:

In a recent paper published by the European Stability Initiative, a group based in Berlin that advocates the EU’s expansion throughout the western Balkans, argues that contrary to the rhetoric by Kostunica and Gregorian, Bosnia has made enormous strides in recent years, and this current crisis is political, not interethnic.

Fools!¹ It’s always been political, not interethnic! That’s the single biggest misapprehension of the recent Balkan wars: that they were the product of inscrutable ethnic hatreds. I’ve got an article coming out in the next issue of The American Interest on this very topic.

Stay tuned…