It took years of atrocities and civil/interstate wars (not really clear what) in Yugoslavia till several NATO air forces were employed to bomb Yugoslavia into submission. The ethnic cleaning (wiping away Albanians from Kosovo) was stopped.
A treaty allowed Western troops to secure Kosovo, a state was built up there, it declared independence and we happily recognized the new nation of Kosovo.
Finally a war, a nation-building operation and diplomatic actions with success.
That's the news (well it was, I'm a bit late). We just need to silence those critics in Belgrade and Moscow who don't accept the sovereignty of the Kosovars.
Meanwhile, some rather less optimal things happened.
A minority of a state (regional majority at the same time) wanted to break free and asked Western diplomats how they could get enough support for this idea. The answer was basically that they needed a couple thousand corpses to create enough agitation.
They received help from not so remote civil war fronts by war-experienced foreigners with experience in ethnic cleansing and launched a small civil war.
Their state's reaction wasn't favorable and with some exaggeration they created enough agitation in the West. Patience and appeasement was out, it was time for a war.
The only problem was Russia, which prevented a (by international law standards) legal war. Instead, we waged an illegal war of aggression - and won. The blunders of our air forces (like for example bombing completely pointless targets and striking lots of decoys, ridiculously inflated battle damage assessment results) didn't penetrate into public conscience, but were horrible.
Nevertheless, numerical and qualitative superiority yielded the first victory in a war based on only air power. Not a single aggressor soldier had died by enemy fire.
We went on to occupy the area and the insurgents turned into politicians. Many of these politicians were in fact criminals and war criminals, but we protected them against prosecution. The area became a major hub for a lot of criminal activity - drug trade, prostitutes trade and else.
The official economy of the region is marginal - crime is the economy.
We also accepted many of those people into some of our nations as refugees, smart move?
The regional minority (=national majority) was in great part forced to leave. We didn't call that ethnic cleansing, after all it were OUR soldiers who controlled the region. We were there to END ethnic cleansing, not to look away when it happens!
By the way - we didn't find the proposed huge mass graves, but were rather reminded of how useless aerial photography is for political decisions. It always depends on what the image interpreter writes on those photos (or what he was told to write on them).
Recently they declared independence. There's already another state of the same nationality, but nobody seems to care. We recognized their state and have yet another trouble with Russia instead of making friends. Friendship with a corrupt/criminal region is apparently more important than good relations with Russia.
A significant chunk of the region - excuse me - "new sovereign state" is still settled by a minority and doesn't belong to it, but somehow we don't care about this. Sometimes we care rather about official borders. It really depends on whether we like the borders or not. Good and bad borders, good and bad sovereignty, you know?
We had soldiers in that region for eight years and the balance is a disaster.
Now guess which state I was talking about.
A treaty allowed Western troops to secure Kosovo, a state was built up there, it declared independence and we happily recognized the new nation of Kosovo.
Finally a war, a nation-building operation and diplomatic actions with success.
That's the news (well it was, I'm a bit late). We just need to silence those critics in Belgrade and Moscow who don't accept the sovereignty of the Kosovars.
Meanwhile, some rather less optimal things happened.
A minority of a state (regional majority at the same time) wanted to break free and asked Western diplomats how they could get enough support for this idea. The answer was basically that they needed a couple thousand corpses to create enough agitation.
They received help from not so remote civil war fronts by war-experienced foreigners with experience in ethnic cleansing and launched a small civil war.
Their state's reaction wasn't favorable and with some exaggeration they created enough agitation in the West. Patience and appeasement was out, it was time for a war.
The only problem was Russia, which prevented a (by international law standards) legal war. Instead, we waged an illegal war of aggression - and won. The blunders of our air forces (like for example bombing completely pointless targets and striking lots of decoys, ridiculously inflated battle damage assessment results) didn't penetrate into public conscience, but were horrible.
Nevertheless, numerical and qualitative superiority yielded the first victory in a war based on only air power. Not a single aggressor soldier had died by enemy fire.
We went on to occupy the area and the insurgents turned into politicians. Many of these politicians were in fact criminals and war criminals, but we protected them against prosecution. The area became a major hub for a lot of criminal activity - drug trade, prostitutes trade and else.
The official economy of the region is marginal - crime is the economy.
We also accepted many of those people into some of our nations as refugees, smart move?
The regional minority (=national majority) was in great part forced to leave. We didn't call that ethnic cleansing, after all it were OUR soldiers who controlled the region. We were there to END ethnic cleansing, not to look away when it happens!
By the way - we didn't find the proposed huge mass graves, but were rather reminded of how useless aerial photography is for political decisions. It always depends on what the image interpreter writes on those photos (or what he was told to write on them).
Recently they declared independence. There's already another state of the same nationality, but nobody seems to care. We recognized their state and have yet another trouble with Russia instead of making friends. Friendship with a corrupt/criminal region is apparently more important than good relations with Russia.
A significant chunk of the region - excuse me - "new sovereign state" is still settled by a minority and doesn't belong to it, but somehow we don't care about this. Sometimes we care rather about official borders. It really depends on whether we like the borders or not. Good and bad borders, good and bad sovereignty, you know?
We had soldiers in that region for eight years and the balance is a disaster.
Now guess which state I was talking about.
S O
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