Declaring Something a Lot Like Dependence

By GRAHAM BOWLEY

IN the Balkans, many things did not change when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17. It remains a small, poor, landlocked territory of two million people, riven by ethnic hatreds and memories of atrocities. And “independence,” despite its heroic ring, is an exaggeration. Kosovo still depends, for its very existence, on the presence of 16,000 NATO troops, both to keep order and to discourage any thoughts of reprisal by the kind of Serbian nationalists who rioted in Belgrade to protest the secession. In the background, meanwhile, there stands a resentful Russia, Serbia’s ally, whose presumptive new president, Dmitry A. Medvedev, declared to the world that Serbia and Kosovo are still “a single state.”

But from the point of view of Europe, a lot did change. A thousand miles to the north, foreign ministers from 27 European countries met in Brussels and agreed that at least some of them would go ahead and recognize Kosovo. In that action was a hint that one day the tiny, insecure and economically strapped statelet just born might one day join the European Union itself — perhaps, in the best of all possible worlds, together with its implacable enemies in Belgrade.

“I don’t know at what date, in which year,” said Bernard Kouchner, France’s relentlessly hopeful foreign minister, “but Kosovo and Serbia will be together in the European Union.”

Thus began Kosovo’s journey — no doubt long and probably full of wrong turns — toward the potential embrace of a European idea that itself was born after the horrors of World War II. Then, the logic was to bind the chief Western European powers together so inextricably that another European conflagration would be inconceivable. The idea has endured and evolved — fitfully, to be sure, in the last couple of years — and over the last decade it was extended to Central and Eastern Europe, in hopes of anchoring the struggling former satellites of the defunct Soviet Union stably within its embrace.

The ability to participate in one of the world’s two largest trading blocs has since made economic stars of at least some small states that live in the shadow of ethnic rivals and might have failed alone. Estonia, Slovenia and Slovakia come to mind. So does Ireland.

These successes showed that if its members relinquished some sovereignty to a continent-wide authority that could nurture and shield even small nations, Europe might finally have a way to extract the poison of regional conflict and allow the small to coexist confidently alongside the large.

Now comes Kosovo, even more frail, and so the idea goes a step further: that Europe’s identification as a continent has become strong enough to rewrite the definition of nationhood itself. Now, perhaps, the continent as a whole can protect at least the self-governance of national groups too small and weak to form self-sufficient states of their own.

The agony of such national groups, when contained within larger states that oppress them, has, after all, been a historic source of genocidal mayhem on the Continent. The Yugoslav breakup showed that the century-old formula for self-determination — forcing together tribes who hate each other just to make them viable states — has failed. Now, rather than let the ministates that are breaking off founder, they may have a chance to make it anyway — as wards of the whole continent.

THAT is the real meaning of Kosovo’s limited sovereignty. And with it comes the implicit promise that a shrunken but homogeneous Serbia, too, could one day get the same protection and nurturing if it agrees to play by Europe’s rules.

“The European Union has already demonstrated that it can serve as a vehicle for turning former enemies into partners,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “A lot of countries cleaned up their acts because they needed to get into Europe. I think that will happen in the Balkans. It is just going to take a much longer time because the disputes run much deeper and the ethnic divide is very much alive and well.”

That is the optimistic view, at least. There are also many reasons why Kosovo’s journey to Europe may be a long one. Richard C. Holbrooke, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations and the man who brokered the Dayton peace agreement in 1995 to end the war in Bosnia, points out that one of the most troubling aspects of the aftermath of Kosovo’s declaration has been Russia’s support for ultranationalist forces in Serbia and for the Serbian government’s argument that the declaration of independence is a breach of international law.

Russia, in other words, represents an alternative future for Serbia, in opposition to Europe and the West, as it clings (at least in Serbia’s case) to the notion that territorial sovereignty and indivisibility are sacrosanct.

“This is a challenge to NATO and this is also a serious problem in U.S.-Russian relations,” Mr. Holbrooke said. “If the Russians used their influence for moderation, it would not be such a problem. The Serb body politic is deeply divided, and these are the same ‘ultras’ that caused the wars in the 1990s.” He added: “Economically, Kosovo is not viable unless it is part of a regional economic zone that embraces Southeast Europe and the Balkans.”

There are also questions about whether all of Europe is ready to embrace Kosovo. After Kosovo’s declaration, not all of the foreign ministers gathered in Brussels were willing to recognize it. Spain, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, Cyprus and Bulgaria refused, fearing it would encourage ethnic minorities to secede.

“They said, ‘There but for the grace God go we. If we acknowledge Kosovo then how do you say no to Catalonia, or the Basques?’ ” said Tony Judt, a professor of European history at New York University.

In other words, Mr. Kouchner’s dream may, in the end, be just that. Europe is still digesting the last round of enlargement, with some lingering doubts about its place in a globalizing world and questions about where its true borders lie. Not least, any further expansion to include Kosovo would carry the extra complication that the territory, like Bosnia, is a mainly Muslim state.

Still, many in Brussels are haunted by Europe’s failure to act in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, which ended only after the United States intervened militarily. So whatever Kosovo’s ultimate prospects for joining the union, Europe is already pouring money into the territory — 1.8 billion euros between 1999 and 2006, with an expected additional 1.1 billion euros through 2010, including payments for police officers and judges to build Kosovo’s chronically corrupt judicial system.

“It is the most ambitious peacekeeping operation in Europe’s history,” said Ben Ward, who supervises the work of Human Rights Watch in the Balkans. “The E.U. has an enormous amount riding on it. There are people in Brussels who are saying again that this is Europe’s hour, who remember the last time and are very much aware of the potential risk.”

Practically speaking, according to Mr. Judt, before Kosovo could join the union, other Balkan countries would have to join first — Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia — and provide Kosovo a land connection with the rest of Europe that wasn’t through Serbia. Others even hold out hope that one day Serbia would take up Europe on its implicit promise that it, too, would be welcome in the community if it turned away from nationalism toward the mores and values of the continent.

If all of that could happen, there might then be a parallel to the successful examples of the past decade, when the European idea marked a path toward the peaceful coexistence of former enemies: Slovakia exists alongside Hungary despite the claims of Hungarian minorities in Slovakia; and the Czech Republic and Germany get along despite memories of Hitler’s torment of Czechoslovakia before and during World War II, and of the Czechs’ expulsion of Germans afterward.

“It is not a ‘happy land’ where everyone loves each other,” said Mr. Judt. “People tell you how they hate each other.” But, he adds, the hatred “has no political purchase because Europe transcends it. You can’t get much money from Brussels if you build your politics around ethnic hatred.”