WESTFAILURE:

Europe’s approaching train wreck (Stanley Kober, March 22, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

The momentum toward independence for Kosovo seems irresistible because it is unlikely that the predominantly Albanian population there will accept anything less. […]

If 1244 is ignored, it is unreasonable to expect that our actions would not be treated as a precedent to ignore other UN resolutions in the future. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have both made this point.

Russia, and many other nations, have been irritated by the tendency of NATO countries, and the United States in particular, to bypass the Security Council when they cannot obtain a resolution they want.

The dilemma confronting policymakers is acute. Kosovar aspirations cannot be denied much longer, but the effort to satisfy them absent an agreement with Serbia is bound to alienate the Serbs and, by extension, the Russians.

And if we craft solutions that bypass existing law, we should recognize that we are creating opportunities for mischief down the road.

Indeed, if we attempt to buy peace at the expense of law, we might find out we end up with neither.

With Ahtisaari’s declaration that further negotiation is pointless, Europe’s trains — Kosovo independence vs. Serbia’s territorial integrity, legitimacy vs. law — are hurtling toward each other.

If the Russians (and possibly the Chinese) oppose revision of Resolution 1244 to grant Kosovo effective independence, and if the United States and its allies ignore these concerns and endorse the Ahtisaari plan, the reverberations will be felt well beyond the Balkans.

It’s a quaint enough notion that regard for international law forbids the majority of a discrete territory from declaring themselves a state, but you have to ignore at least the 20th and 21st centuries to still believe it.

THERE IS NO PHILIPPINES:

Autonomy hopes for southern Philippines (Noel Tarrazona, 3/16/07, Asia Times)

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recently extended an autonomy and self-determination offer in behind-the-scenes talks with the insurgent Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a fig-leaf gesture that some hope could bring an Aceh-like solution to a nearly three-decade-old conflict that has consumed as many as 140,000 lives.

IF YOU THINK OF YOURSELVES AS A NATION YOU ARE ONE:

EU set to enact supervised statehood for Kosovo (The Associated Press, March 12, 2007)

The European Union is set to enforce a UN plan that gives supervised statehood to Kosovo, even though Serbia has rejected giving so much autonomy to the breakaway province and its largely ethnic Albanian population.

NOT QUITE:

U.S. forces pursue Taliban into Pakistan (LOLITA C. BALDOR, 3/01/07, The Associated Press)

American forces on Afghanistan’s eastern border routinely fire upon and pursue Taliban enemies into Pakistan, defense officials told Congress on Thursday, offering the most detailed description to date of U.S. action in that region.

Actually, by their admitted inability to assert authority there the Pakistanis have ceded sovereignty and it can in no wise be considered their territory.

THERE IS NO SPAIN:

The Spanish centrifuge: Madrid is losing its grip, even if Spain is not yet a federation (The Economist, 3/01/07)

NOT since the last Moorish ruler, Boabdil, quit Granada in 1492, after 781 years of Muslim rule in al-Andalus, has anything like an Andalusian nation existed. But a new charter of autonomy gives Andalusia a “nationality”, and even a “millennium-long” history. It has provoked surprisingly little passion in the home of flamenco, Don Juan and Carmen. Barely a third of Andalusians bothered to vote in the referendum that said yes to the charter. Both the ruling Socialists and the opposition People’s Party were in favour.

The new charter demonstrates the growing power of the 17 autonomous regions into which Spain divided itself after Franco. Although the country is not a federation, it increasingly looks like one. Spain is one of Europe’s most decentralised states—more than some overtly federal ones, says Francisco Balaguer, at Granada University. The regions control some 36% of public spending. Ministries in Madrid are seeing their budgets dwindle fast.

If it were Iraq they’d be calling it a failed state.