The Kosovo Crisis (Part Nine), Conclusion

At the heart of the Kosovo question is the issue of sovereignty. What constitutes sovereignty? What legitimates a state? Do states have historical rights or does simple majoritarian democracy allow a splinter group to rule themselves? Should we support this tribalism, this breaking apart of various cultures on the basis of ethnicity or religion, or should we strengthen the nation-state and encourage it to force these different groups to lay down their differences and be committed to a greater good? How do our competing notions of sovereignty help or hinder the growth of liberty throughout the world?

It is my conclusion that majoritarian opinion does not create sovereignty. States have historical rights to rule and they must be allowed this right for this right alone fosters order, which in turn allows the growth of liberty. It is for this reason that the nation-state and commitment to it must increase at the expense of warring tribal allegiances.

Senator Sam Brownback wrote in 2004 that “We should not consider advancing the cause of independence of a people whose first act when liberated was to ethnically cleanse a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens and destroy over a hundred of their holy sites.” Yet that is exactly what we have done. The West has rewarded terrorists with independence for their inhumane acts. Why have we done this? We have done it in the name of tolerance. We have done it because we refuse to judge between one culture and another.

The recognition of an independent Kosovo is an assertion that religion matters more than nationality. This is multiculturalism taken to its lunatic natural conclusion. It says in effect that nationality is not the glue that must bind people of different creeds together, but instead religion or ethnicity can be allowed to break the nation apart. Do we want to respect the freedom of belief and religion? Of course! But there must be a limit to toleration if this liberty is to continue to flourish. In order for there to be freedom of religion and expression we cannot tolerate the intolerant. In order for people to be able to freely draw cartoons we cannot allow others to threaten them with violence in order to censor them. Toleration of people who will resort to violence and terror to restrict speech cannot at once exist with the freedom of speech.

The Bosnian President has said “The Islamic movement must, and can, take over power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the existing non-Islamic power, but also build up a new Islamic one.”

The problem is not religion, the problem is when religion becomes more powerful than the state. The state should have the power to limit religious infighting; religion should not have the power to break apart the state. To maintain its power the state must restrict certain religious practices. Yes we need to respect other beliefs to a great degree, but can Western values coexist alongside the subordination of women, honor killings, female genital manipulation, etc? The freedoms we enjoy necessitate a limit to tolerance if they are to survive.

Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political blames the rise of the Nazi’s on tolerance. He wrote that the Weimar Republic should have rid Germany of a party that was intent on taking power and undermining the standing state structure. The Germans should not have tolerated a group like the Nazis. Their tolerance of a group like the Nazis allowed for the destruction of all they valued.

A UN official said “What is happening in Kosovo must unfortunately be described as a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background.”

A group of radical Albanian Muslims in Kosovo are intolerant towards the values of the West. They have engaged in brutal discrimination and ethnic cleansing. They have turned the region into a mafia state in order to fund their terrorist operations. But what can we do? They compose a democratic majority and gained power by democratic means. It is a given that the will of the people is the legitimator of the state. But majoritarian democracy should not form the basis of the state. Rather, historical rights should legitimate the state. In order to secure liberty (by means of protecting order) the right of the state to govern its territories must remain regardless of any demographic changes.

Benjamin Barber writes that “in the last several hundred years, democratic and egalitarian institutions have for the most part been closely associated with integral nation-states, and citizenship (democracy’s sine qua non) has been an attribute of membership in such states.” However, the great international organizations, like the EU and NATO undermine the nation state. They in turn provoke a tribalistic backlash. This movement towards globalization by international organizations is anti-democratic in that it seeks to absorb the keeper of democracy, the nation-state. In the same way its backlash, tribalism, is anti-democratic by the fact that it seeks to break apart the nation-state.

Both of these movements are at work in Kosovo. There is teh tribalism of the Kosovar Albanians in their desire to break Serbia apart along religious and ethnic lines. And first NATO and then the EU providing the support and legitimation for them to do that. These movements work together to undermine the nation-state and thereby undermine democracy, yet both movements do what they do in the name of democracy. How can this be?

They have a misunderstanding of democracy. True democracy is not simple majoritarian rule; it is the modern state, the keeper of liberty and protector of individual rights. When we talk about spreading democracy we do not mean simple majority dominion, but rather what are commonly known as democratic values. After all, the National Socialists were elected democratically. Yet we would not say they were a legitimate party or that they came to constitute a legitimate state. Majority rule is not enough.

Besides, the means by which the Albanians came to constitute a majority in the region of Kosovo were unjust. What good is a democratic majority when it is brought about by unjust means? It was only through unabated harassment, arson, rape, and other forms of violence and pressure against the Serbs that the Albanians were able to gain the majority.

That is why instead of looking to false democracy (majoritarian rule), we must look to the historical basis in order to legitimate a state. It is well known that the founders of America distrusted majoritarian rule for they knew that the majority is prone to oppress minority groups. That is why they established counter-majoritarian groups and measures (like the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights) to protect minority rights. Simple democracy, simple majority rule cannot legitimate a state. A state must be legitimated by means of historical basis.
But what is meant by historical basis? What is Spain today only became Spain in 1492. Germany unified in the nineteenth century, was split apart after World War Two, and reunified again at the end of the twentieth century. Most of the boarders in the Middle East were drawn by the great powers half a century ago. Many boarders are arbitrary, why should we respect them?

The county lines in my state are arbitrary, but that does not make them unimportant. We need a way to divide and organize people so as to create order. International boarders like county lines should be respected and maintained for they help us keep order. The lines rooted in a historical basis then are simply the lines that history has produced at this moment in time. To keep order we must respect these lines.

Many impute harsh treatment of the Albanians by the Serbs. They infer this treatment by the very fact that the Albanians wished to breakaway. If they were treated well, why would they want to break apart from Serbia, is how their argument goes.

But look at separatist movements in Canada and Belgium. Those groups are treated well and have equal rights and yet they continue to strive for independence. Obviously a desire for independence outside of mistreatment can exist. Albanians in Kosovo have always had the right to education, vote, their own language and culture, their own newspapers and radio programs—yet this was not enough, they were determined to secede.

Many of the Albanians wanting independence are radicals and radicals can never be appeased. According to Alban Deva, a Kosovar Albanian, independence from Serbia is not good enough. He said this after the final independence of Kosovo from Serbia. He said that there has been too much compromise up to this point and that mere independence is only a first step. Hitler was never satisfied with appeasement, he had to be confronted. Now this is not to say that the Albanians of Kosovo are analogous to Hitler, it is only to show that radicals can never be appeased, they must be confronted. There is a radical contingent of Albanians in Kosovo that are intent on ethnically cleansing the Serbs, destroying Orthodox holy sites, and waging a global jihad against the West. It is this group that we must recognize and confront. At this point in history we must have the foresight of Churchill and not the folly of Chamberlain.

By undermining the nation-state we have undermined the international order. As Will Durant said, “order is the parent, not the child, of liberty.” What good is wealth without freedom? How can one be happy as a slave? Liberty is the greatest value of man. But liberty cannot exist in a vacuum; it only grows where there is order. We must foster order so that we may have liberty. In Kosovo we have tried to give a people liberty while undermining order. Because we put the first things last they have neither. Since 1648 the nation state has provided itself to be the greatest keeper of order domestically and internationally, we undermine it at our peril.

Majority rule is an inadequate legitimator of the state, for the majority may not recognize the rights of the minority. Also, the majority is volatile and it works against order. We must hold to the status quo, to the historical rights of states to control the boundaries that they currently have. It is not to say that these boundaries are just, only that this system is the best way of fostering order and liberty. It is also not to say that change can never come or that a state has an uncontested absolute right to do whatever it wills within its boarders, only that change should occur slowly and we should think twice before intervening, for often intervention creates a new state that is worse than the former.

On the eve of Kosovo’s declaration of independence the BBC interviewed natives of the region. Filip Pejovic, a Serb, had this to say:

As Kosovo gets ready to declare independence, we can only wait with a sense of powerlessness and fear. I am so confused. It's like my worst nightmare. People from the West simply cannot possibly understand it. Imagine, hypothetically, how people from California would feel if one day in front of the state capital building the American flag was taken down and the Mexican flag raised, and the American people living in the state couldn't do anything about it. That's how we feel. Actually it's worse. I really don't know why the whole world is against Serbia. Did Serbia deserve all that shame and dishonour? After Croatia and Slovenia, the civil war spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbs lost control of a large portion of this republic also. And now the West still continues to support the taking of parts of Serbia. However, this time they are taking the soul of Serbia - Kosovo.


The Serbs have suffered a wound that will not quickly heal. The French loss of the Alsace-Lorraine region to Germany at the conclusion of the Franco Prussian war was a driving force behind World War One, just as the German loss of the Rhineland became a grievance that motivated Germany to seek revenge in World War Two. Neither country could rest until they could fight a war of revenge to retake their rightful regions that they had unjustly lost. Recently Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of Serbia declared, “Kosovo belongs to Serbia; Kosovo belongs to the Serb nation . . . No one will ever win a mandate from the Serbian people to accept such an ignoble trade-off. Never, and no one!” He added, “There is no force, no threat, no punishment severe and horrible enough to make any Serb, anywhere, ever say otherwise but Kosovo is Serbia!”

International intervention, especially intervention that causes a sovereign nation to lose territory, will have consequences. Western intrusion up till this point has already created overwhelming consequences. What more consequences will come we cannot yet know. Hopefully they will not be as devastating as the consequences wrought by the world wars. Only one thing is certain, this controversy is far from over.