"Kosovo and a Unilateral Declaration of Independence" by Dr Ben Lombardi

Nearly nine years after the NATO-led war against Serbia, the final political settlement of the Kosovo Question remains unresolved, though perhaps not for very much longer. In the next few weeks, it is expected that the Kosovar-Albanian authorities will declare independence, with rapid recognition by the EU and the USA and possibly others following shortly after. This unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) - unilateral in that the United Nations will not authorise it - is due to the failure of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina to work out a mutually acceptable political settlement. That the most recently concluded round of negotiations - the Troika Talks - were likely never presumed by either Washington or Brussels to have a realistic chance of a favourable outcome has also reinforced the opposition of Russia to the UDI. While an independent Kosovo will pose a significant threat to regional stability in the southern Balkans, and further damage relations between the West and Moscow (though the latter will never permit core interests to be affected), the outcome is nonetheless inevitable. Fear of a popular uprising by the Kosovar-Albanian community, greater than that confronted in March 2004, is a principal motivation of Western policy. Such an uprising would lead to violent confrontations with NATO forces in the province, would challenge the image of the 1999 war as a "good war", and effectively undermine the argument that significant progress had been made in constructing a modern civil society in the former Serbian province.

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