Posturing populists

As the 'troika' of EU, Russian and US mediators gather in Vienna on August 30 to continue the Kosovo negotiating ordeal, nationalists in Belgrade are spoiling for a fight with the West over their ‘lost’ province. 

Since early August, a parade of prominent politicians from Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia has been sabre-rattling.  They have denounced the West for aiming at a 'NATO state' in Kosovo, demanded the return of Serbian uniforms and -- irony of ironies -- accused the ethnic Albanian side of not taking seriously the talks to square this particular circle.

The nationalists in Belgrade will contemplate only one outcome -- the vindication of their historical title to Kosovo, which they could only pretend to govern in the teeth of determined Albanian opposition.  There has been no attempt in the intervening eight years to learn the lessons of the failed Milosevic policy of main force.  For their part, the Kosovo Albanians are equally unwilling to countenance any return of Belgrade's sovereignty, but the repression before 1999, and their local numerical supremacy, have inclined the West to side with them in this bitter dispute.  For Belgrade, the tragedy is that they are entering a devil's bargain with their Russian backers and burning their bridges to the West, for the dream of recovering a Serb Kosovo.  Given the dream's impossibility, draping oneself in the Serbian flag may have its attractions, but it is not practical politics.