Clarity like this is rare these days. In case my Serb readers have forgotten, here are all the opportunities you have lost to make amends.
It's time to stop pandering to Serbian nationalists and give them a reality check.
Comment is free: No more on Kosovo
technorati tags:kosovo, kosova, independence, justification
5 comments:
Meh... I still think the best way for Serbia to regain Kosovo was to arrest Mladic & co. and concentrate on the EU/economy. It's too late for that now, of course.
Things would probably have gone a lot differently had the Balkans been a richer region.
Zli,
That outlook is dangerous. Your conclusion fails to account for the desire of majority of population of Kosova. Let me tell you that from talking to different generations independence has always been considered an inevitability no matter how the economy was doing.
Oh, I'm sure that thoughts of independence have always been there, but state of the economy is the line between thoughts and actions. Compare, for example, Catalonia, Spain's richest region, with the somewhat poorer Basque country, then Iberian peninsula with the Balkans.
In any case, I don't think it would be enough to look at Kosovo over time, because the economy there has always been poor - if not on the macro level, then at an individual one. No matter how much money went into Kosovo's infrastructure (resulting in content Albanian politicians), there had always been policemen from central Serbia going to the province for a six month "tour of duty", coming back home with enough money to go to an early retirement (resulting in the racketeered Albanians wanting independence).
It's cynical, I know, but you should remember this - whenever someone starts talking about patriotism, watch out for your wallet. We learned it the hard way during the 1990s (hell, we're still there now), and I can only hope you won't repeat the same mistakes with your own country.
I would hesitate to reduce everything down to poverty. Remember, Slovenia was rich and Croatia was at a comparable development level to Serbia. Still they wanted to part ways. Things feed into each other so every government should be careful to feed their students well.
Serbs policemen didn't make a difference in the economy of Kosova, but they certainly created bitterness.
Spain has handled both the poor case and the rich case successfully in the later decades, although earlier Basques went through worse times.
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