{"id":1699,"date":"2008-02-15T08:06:47","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T08:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2008-02-15T08:10:08","modified_gmt":"2008-02-15T08:10:08","slug":"kosovo-some-more-causes-for-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2008\/02\/kosovo-some-more-causes-for-concern\/","title":{"rendered":"Kosovo – some more causes for concern"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you may have noticed, I’ve been pondering the EU’s proposed mission to Kosovo<\/a> quite a lot over the last day or two, and getting increasingly concerned that the province’s impending independence hasn’t been quite thought through. Overnight, a rather succinct comment was left<\/a> that neatly summarises much of what I’ve been coming to think – as well as noting a few things I’d missed (criticising, I’ll add for my ego’s sake, an article I’d linked to, rather than anything I’ve written so far – though it also applies to my stuff to an extent):<\/p>\n

No mention is made of the 55% of Kosovo albanians who did not vote in the recent elections, surely a sign of no-confidence in the politicians that claim to present them?<\/p>\n

No comment on Kosovo\u2019s economic situation or other critical problems either, nor how long the patience of the average Kosovo albanian will last if things don\u2019t improve fast after \u2018independence\u2019<\/p>\n

No comment on how much it will cost the EU. The EU itself quotes EUR 250m over approximately 3 years. If tens of billions of IMF dollars spend on the region by Tito hasn\u2019t helped, then what makes the \u2018EU\u2019 thinks its paltry sums will succeed? Most of all, what about the cost of this indeterminate subsidy to the EU tax payer?<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s policy can be summed up as \u2018Independence and Pray\u2019.<\/p>\n

Neither does the \u2018analysis\u2019 really address the matter that Serbia\u2019s stability as critical to the EU\u2019s \u2019stabilization\u2019 of the Balkans. Sure, Serbia under Nikolic may be made a \u2018Pariah\u2019 by the EU, but that will also damage neighboring states such as Bulgaria and Romania, much as the economic damage that sanctions caused in the 1990s, something that very few commentators care to address nor comment upon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More on this, no doubt, over the next couple of weeks. I’m working on a theory about what’s going to happen when the EU gets more closely involved in the Balkans, but it’s going to take a bit more work…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you may have noticed, I’ve been pondering the EU’s proposed mission to Kosovo quite a lot over the last day or two, and getting increasingly concerned that the province’s impending independence hasn’t been quite thought through. Overnight, a rather … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,70],"tags":[178,72,71],"class_list":["post-1699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eu","category-the-balkans","tag-eu","tag-kosovo","tag-serbia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}