Kosovo vs. South Ossetia

Did the Bush administration really believe that the Russians would take the separation of Kosovo from Serbia without a response? It is interesting to note the reaction of our secretary of state to the declaration by Russia that it is granting recognition to South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. She and the rest of the administration she serves apparently believe that it is still 1992, that perhaps it would always be 1992 and that a debilitated Russia shorn of its empire would forever remain docile and in a state of shock. And, although relations between Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R. were less than close, it is hard to believe that the caper the U.S. and some of our European allies, particularly Germany, acted out in the course of bringing democracy to such stalwarts of the philosophy as Croatia and Slovenia could fly today as it did in the immediate aftermath of the cold war. One lasting heritage of our intervention in Kosovo under the Clinton administration is Camp Bondsteel, perhaps the largest U.S. military compound in the world.

When Kosovo, considered the spiritual locus of Serbian culture, declared its independence from Serbia, the U.S. rushed to recognize its independent status, and most of our Eropean allies followed suit. On the other hand, when South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared their independence from Georgia, Ms. Rice stated that the move would not stand, that it was a violation of Georgia's "territorial integrity." A short time after Tblisi launched a rocket attack on South Ossetia, President Bush got out of his ringside seat at the Beijing Olympics for a few moments to declare that the Russians seemed confused, that the cold war is over as is the era of "spheres of influence," an artifact of the nineteenth century. For the leader of a nation that maintains one thousand U.S. military bases around the world to declare that the era of spheres of influence is over offers a rare linguistic challenge. How characterize such a statement? Disingenuous? Chutzpah? Orwellian? And for whose benefit would such remarks be made?