[mtrimpe]

OK. I stand corrected on the genocide. Still; the NATO intervention was to stop a war between insurgents (supported by the populace) and a government that started waging war against the insurgents.

In that case the equivalent would have been for Russia to militarily support the situation in Kiev, and it bears no similarity whatsoever to invading and annexing the, at that point, completely peaceful Crimea.

[vasac]

First, I'm sorry for a hash tone of my first message.

Second, I could argue that Russians just skipped the insurgency part. It would be trivially easy for them to create/support insurgency at Crimea and leave Ukrainian forces with no good choice: either they retreat immediately or they retreat under Russian assault (which will be justified as a war/genocide/whatever prevention).

On Serbia/Kosovo: discrepancy between military might between Serbia and Albanians from Kosovo was so great that any insurgency was practically suicide. But if you know that you will be backed by NATO insurgency suddenly looks like a good idea. My point being that NATO action wasn't just consequence of war but part of a cause.

Might makes right - works everywhere.

[mtrimpe]

Well; the Maidan insurgency was suicide for quite a few of the protesters. History is littered with insurgencies that won through losing.

But as for Crimea vs. Kosovo; without international intervention the Kosovo situation would still have been explosive. Crimea was already mostly independent and had a referendum for more independence coming up already and showed no signs of destabilizing.

Also; I'm not aware of dramatically self-serving incentives for NATO's intervention in Kosovo like there clearly are in Crimea (gas reserves, lease for black-sea naval base, destabilizing post-Maidan Ukraine, nationalization of Ukrainian assets, prestige through this 'little war' and restoring former USSR glory.)

My recollection from Kosovo was that NATO intervention was done begrudgingly in an honest attempt to stabilize an explosive situation.

Once again; I'm honestly curious about your perspective on this...

[vasac]

Problems in Kosovo were not something new, certainly they didn't occur because of Milosevic. His government, same as any Serbian or Yugoslav government in last 100 years, wasn't capable of solving those problems. Different things were tried, from brute force, to deep integration and back again to the brute force.

Communist government immediately after WWII even had plans for a wide Balkan federation with Albania as a part of Yugoslavia and maybe even Bulgaria, so they made some concession early on. As selimthegrim said we even had "nationalities" - in other countries that would be national minorities as Albania was their ethnic state, but minority term was deemed offensive so we invented another word. And after 1974 constitution in some way they had more rights than Serbs as while Kosovo was part of the Serbia it was also firsthand part of the federal state. So when some law on Serbia level had to be adopted they had a word in it, but when some other law had to be adopted just on the Kosovo level Serbia had no say in it. Even then there were strong separatist tendencies. Milosevic's rise to power was fueled by promises of curbing Kosovo's status. Of course Albanians were not happy, so to speak.

I could go on and on about this but bottom line is that they never wanted to be part of Serbia or Yugoslavia (and I don't blame them, neither would I in their place). So given that they represented almost 90% of population of Kosovo it's probably right for them to be independent.

The problem I have with this is that same rights do not universally apply to other people. As West politicians love to say Kosovo was "special case". Basically, they reserve right to arbitrary decide when will of the people should be respected and when not. They certainly can treat Serbia like that, but it looks like Russia reserved same rights as the West, and it has means to enforce them. Last week British FM said that "there can be no more re-drawing of borders in the Balkans" meaning that Bosnian Serbs cannot secede from Bosnia no matter what referendum results will be (of course there's no chance in hell to even hold a referendum as West will not allow that). But Scottish independence referendum will take place, so I'm confused again - are the Scots or the Serbs "special case".

As for NATO's enthusiasm for intervention in Kosovo please check Kissinger's take on Rambouillet Agreement [1] - and they didn't stabilize situation - they took a side in the war, won a war and final result is this [2] - Serbs are mostly expelled from Kosovo (civilians, not just military) or stuffed in small enclaves. And if you take a close look on that final result - just replace Serbs with Albanians in the previous sentence and you get instant switch from "stabilization" to war crimes. Go figure ;)

Also, compare that situation with Dayton Agreement - USA had enough leverage on all three sides and successfully forced them to sign agreement that nobody liked. On the other hand, during Kosovo crisis I can't recollect any situation where they put pressure on Albanian side and not that there were no arguments for it.

And for self-serving incentives for NATO's intervention - I have no idea. Maybe they concluded that Serbs had enough time to solve problems themselves, maybe they just didn't want to have Russian oriented spot in the middle of the new NATO countries, maybe NATO just searched for reason to keep existing (last instance of this is Crimea situation), maybe Clinton BJ was the reason. They know intervention wouldn't cost them much (they didn't expected that it would last more than a few days), so what the hell - compare that to Crimea situation where there's no consensus even on economic sanctions.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambouillet_Agreement [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_war#Aftermath

[mtrimpe]

Thanks for the response. It's a well-reasoned gem and I'm a wiser man for having read it.

In my mind the two are still categorically different, mainly due to the self-servingness and media contortions, but I agree that there's less factual differences than I thought before.

[vasac]

Well, I'm probably much more biased than I care to admit so someone else is probably a better speaker about Crimea than me. It's quite hard to get a good comprehension (and I really tried hard) of some events that happened in my immediate surrounding let alone a thousand kilometers away.

Common people stand no chance when mass media is skillfully deployed.