Warzone business opportunities or Why Kill 'Em If you can't Use 'Em

/ balkan mortuary /


Tales of organ trafficking by the KLA during the Kosovo campaign surfaced recently:

BELGRADE, Serbia: Serbia's war crimes prosecutor is looking into reports that dozens of Serbs captured by rebels during the war in Kosovo were killed so their organs could be trafficked, the prosecutor's office said Friday.

The Serbian prosecutor's office said it received "informal statements" from investigators at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, that dozens of Serbs imprisoned by Kosovo Albanian rebels were taken to neighboring Albania in 1999 and killed so their organs could be harvested and sold to international traffickers.

Bruno Vekaric, the Serbian prosecutor's spokesman, said later on B92 radio that Serbian war crimes investigators have also received their own information about alleged organ trafficking, but not enough for a court case. Vekaric said Serb investigators also received reports suggesting there might be mass graves in Albania containing the bodies of the Serb victims.

Serbian media reported that the issue was brought into the open in a book written by former U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte that is to be published in Italy on April 3.

According to Serbia's Beta news agency, which carried parts of the book in Serbian, Del Ponte said her investigators had been informed that some 300 Serbs were killed for organ trafficking.

The Beta report quoted Del Ponte as saying in the book that her investigators were told the imprisoned Serbs were first taken to prison camps in northern Albania where the younger ones were picked out, and their organs were later sold abroad.

Here's the more detailed story from Belgrade's B92 and here is the story in Jurist.

To this Doug Muir responded over at A Fistful of Euros claiming that the story is unlikely on a number of grounds. While it is a matter of speculation and no one can positively determine that the crimes described did indeed happen, all of Doug's points seem moot to me:

- DM claims that 300 Serbs is over a half of all missing Serbs; this is debatable. The Serb side is claiming that over 3000 Kosovar Serbs are missing, but even if we are talking about a total of 400 missing, it doesn't stretch imagination much to picture an organized operation in which prisoners were directed to such camps - anyway the IHT article quoted above speaks of "dozens" of Serb prisoners. Other sources state that the number seems to be "at least 100" or "two trucks full of people". Thus, even if 300 is an inflated number (which it might well be) this does not disallow the possibility of the gist of the story being true.

- DM suggests that the great difficulty of disposing 300 bodies and of keeping silent about it afterwards makes the story unlikely. He compares the situation with the fact that the Serbian state didn't manage to keep secret neither the executions or the mass graves of abducted Albanian Kosovars. He thus seems to mistake state efficiency in Serbia and Albania with Mob efficiency (in either of these countries actually). Since the organ snatchers, if indeed they existed, would have to be connected with the mob, this isn't much of a problem. I'm sure that neither disposing 300 people a year or, much more, convincing people to remain silent about it, is something that is way beyond the capabilities of any self-respecting Mafia (see John Stanfa on corpse-disposal technique).

- Doug also suggests that the Albanian government would have to be complicit in such an operation. Not at all. Trafficking in people, including cases of organ snatching, already occur and have been occurring for way over a decade in much of the developing world and Eastern Europe, certainly including both Albania and Kosovo, and certainly without government complicity in most cases. In fact a few years ago a Greek-Albanian organ smuggling ring (mentioned here) was, according to investigations, active in Greek and Albanian hospitals and smuggled human organs through diplomatic pouch, having certain Albanian diplomats on the payroll as well. This was certainly neither done with the assistance or help of the Albanian government (DM brushes off a bit too lightly the connection between Berisha the Socialist Party and the KLA,but that's another story). I remind everybody that the border at the time we're talking about was quite porous with refugees coming in and out of Albania.

- The idea that this is a really difficult process, given the assistance of organizations that are superb smugglers of goods and people, have access to hospitals and doctors and very fast vehicles of all types, seems likewise an exaggeration. Again any decent-sized mafia could easily pull this over. Otherwise there would be no illegal organ trafficking trade at all. Something which is not the case.

Thus, while I agree that this is very far from proven, I'm much less confident that the whole story can be dismissed as "probably bullshit". If the story is totally bogus what in the world could make Carla Del Ponte of all people, include it in her book? And neither of Doug's two alternative scenarios regarding the "yellow house" is plausible IMHO. Firstly because no one in Albania would deny involvement in setting up a hospital for the KLA (which anyway could easily be disguised as a hospital for fleeing Kosovars) and secondly because the "torture-camp" idea, as Doug himself notes, doesn't explain why anybody would do this in Albania rather than on the field in Kosovo.

Two things to add:

1. The story itself is important in a sense that has little to do with whether it is actually true: This is an innovation, an idea that merges seamlessly with the current zeitgeist of market-driven-everything. It is a brilliant way to make a direct profit from what are usually considered to be martial waste products. The idea is so good that I'm willing to bet that if Dick Cheney has heard about it, having already dispensed with the most of the provisions of the Geneva conventions, he has his legal team turning the idea into some sort of non-biddable contract for KBR to sign, giving it full authorization for the expedient trafficking salvaging of usable organs from terrorists and other Arabs. This has the potential to be something that is praised in the OpEd columns of the WSJ, blessed by various US congregations and sold as some form of yet another triumph in the annals of ghoulishness graverobbing colonialism humanitarian-war. Similarly, smaller markets could emerge, as a vast array of mafias big and small will be rushing to war zones with medical trucks, doctors and nurses, in order to utilize the soon to be remains of those about to die. Thus, both legal and black market supply of organs will increase. The only problem will be keeping supplies of bootleg organs at low enough levels as to not effect prices by much. Everybody (that matters, anyway) wins! $$$$$$!!!! € € € € €!!!!!

2. Regardless of the plausibility and validity of the scenario, one can be certain that, had Carla Del Ponte heard of any similar reports of organ trafficking in 1999, but from the other side, i.e. were the accused body snatchers Serbs, with exactly the same evidence to back this up:

a. It would be out in the open well before CDP decided to write a book.
b. A Hollywood film about it would already have been released with a star cast and presented as fact
c. The alleged center of detention and organ snatching would be by now a byword for modern evil, casually referred to as such by pundits on both sides of the Atlantic.
d. The people claiming that the story was "possibly bullshit" would be dismissed as pro-Milosevic patsies or something like that.
e. I'd be writing a similar post complaining that were the perpetrators of the alleged crimes, anything other than Serbs and were the victims Serbs, people would dismiss the story as not very plausible and in fact it would barely make the news.

The Covert War in Palestine

/ making civil wars /
A small price (for others) to pay for building democracy no doubt:
The Gaza Bombshell:

"Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza."

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories

/ simple truths /
This report: A/HRC/7/17 of 21 January 2008, was presented to the UN Human Rights Council by Special Rapporteur John Dugard, a South African legal scholar and 1980s anti-apartheid activist. From the report, which is of significant relevance given the current situation in Occupied Palestine, I would like to highlight the following very clear and very insightful assessment:

...Terrorism is a scourge, a serious violation of human rights and international humanitarian law. No attempt is made in the reports to minimize the pain and suffering it causes to victims, their families and the broader community. Palestinians are guilty of terrorizing innocent Israeli civilians by means of suicide bombs and Qassam rockets. Likewise the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are guilty of terrorizing innocent Palestinian civilians by military incursions, targeted killings and sonic booms that fail to distinguish between military targets and civilians. All these acts must be condemned and have been condemned.3 Common sense, however, dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al Qaeda, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation. While such acts cannot be justified, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation. History is replete with examples of military occupation that have been resisted by violence - acts of terror. The German occupation was resisted by many European countries in the Second World War; the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) resisted South Africa's occupation of Namibia; and Jewish groups resisted British occupation of Palestine - inter alia, by the blowing up of the King David Hotel in 1946 with heavy loss of life, by a group masterminded by Menachem Begin, who later became Prime Minister of Israel. Acts of terror against military occupation must be seen in historical context. This is why every effort should be made to bring the occupation to a speedy end. U ntil this is done peace cannot be expected, and violence will continue. In other situations, for example Namibia, peace has been achieved by the ending of occupation, without setting the end of resistance as a precondition. Israel cannot expect perfect peace and the end of violence as a precondition for the ending of the occupation.

... A further comment on terrorism is called for. In the present international climate it is easy for a State to justify its repressive measures as a response to terrorism - and to expect a sympathetic hearing. Israel exploits the present international fear of terrorism to the full. But this will not solve the Palestinian problem. Israel must address the occupation and the violation of human rights and international humanitarian law it engenders, and not invoke the justification of terrorism as a distraction, as a pretext for failure to confront the root cause of Palestinian violence - the occupation.

"Five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists" lose it

/ how I learned to stop worrying and use the Bomb /


...today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
General Jack D. Ripper - Dr. Strangelove

The Guardian reports that five prominent military officers have submitted a "manifesto for a new NATO" which advocates that

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction...

In this document the five former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, claim that:

a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

The manifesto as presented by the Guardian is like something out of an updated Dr. Strangelove movie. It purports to defend the West's values, lamenting that "the west is struggling to summon the will to defend them". The particular subset of the West's values being defended hails from the colonial era, with a healthy dose of the "shoot first and see who's dead later" ethos which has endeared billions of the unfortunate portion of humanity to the West and its values for some centuries now...

The threats to "our values and way of life" as presented in this document are apparently the following:

1. Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

As I'm quite certain that this is not a call for nuking either the Huckabee headquarters or the Vatican, or indeed of turning the world's most powerful fundamentalist state, Saudi Arabia, into a radioactive desert, I assume that political fanaticism refers (as it does traditionally in these circles) to any political power that opposes a very narrowly defined set of western interests, as illustrated here; and religious fundamentalism, as a threat, refers to non-governmental Islamic fundamentalist actors - and possibly Iran. To make this last point more explicit it is repeated in the list as a second threat (international terrorism):

2. The "dark side" of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Now, the first two have existed for a long time, with much less radical proposals for their elimination. In fact organized crime has had frequently mutually beneficial relations with western intelligence agencies. As for the spread of weapons of mass destruction the report apparently means the spread of weapons of mass destruction to countries we don't like (such as Iran and North Korea) and where we don't actually support their efforts to acquire them. The countries not-so-subtly indicated here, however, are motivated to obtain these weapons in no small part exactly because of the actions of the leading western power and the realization that they might be next in line for the carnage euphemistically "regime change" if they don't get them quick, and by the insane statements of the sort that these five Generals are making.

Thus the threat here again is either Iran and North Korea (which would be yet another incentive for those two countries to acquire any sort of WMDs they can get their hands on as fast as possible), or "organized crime" and non-state entities. If the latter is the case however, one wonders what kind of nuclear or conventinal deterrent effect on these organizations' actions is imagined. The only scenario I can think of is either blackmail ("we will bomb the countries in which these organization are based and everybody in them, regardless of whether the organizations are in fact a very small part of the population of said countries"), or a declaration of the intent of exterminating huge numbers of civilians in blind retaliation to a possible strike against "the West". One wonders whether this includes the bombing of Moscow in retaliation to a strike by the Russian mafia, or an invasion of Sicily and Southern Italy in retaliation against violent acts by the three branches of Organized Crime there. I doubt it.

3. Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential "environmental" migration on a mass scale.

Now, it is interesting to note that on both of these issues these former NATO commanders assume that there is a military role for the alliance, which is rather doubtful. Unless of course they imagine that the forced migration of millions due to climatic changes can be accomplished by creating a huge military fence around the most severely afflicted areas, thus letting the people that live in them starve in an extended concentration camp. Or unless they think that the "contest for energy resources" between Arctic states should be decided by forcefully excluding the main non-NATO (and non-Western) player in this new Great Thawing Game, namely Russia. That is indeed a situation which might potentially create a nuclear confrontation, but one has difficulty to understand exactly which of the West's values will be defended - other than greed that is... The prospect of a nuclear confrontation over Arctic fossil fuels (which is what they're talking about here) and the knowledge that it is seriously considered by "senior NATO military officers and strategists", is rather frightening... I imagine that military action to keep those damn Arctic fossil fuels in the ground, is not what is meant here, and the concept of modifying our way of life (and our energy production and consumption patterns) in order to mitigate climate change is beyond the scope of this proposal...

4. The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.

I fail to see how this constitutes a threat, but one should note that the UN has been weakened most recently by US unilateralism and NATO, if indeed it has been weakened, has done so because it seems irrelevant nowadays to an increasing number of citizens in NATO-member countries. As for the EU, I fail to see how it has been weakened in any real sense.

These are the threats then. And what do these five military men suggest NATO does to face them? Among other things, the following:

To prevail, the generals call for an overhaul of Nato decision-taking methods, a new "directorate" of US, European and Nato leaders to respond rapidly to crises, and an end to EU "obstruction" of and rivalry with Nato. Among the most radical changes demanded are:

1. A shift from consensus decision-taking in Nato bodies to majority voting, meaning faster action through an end to national vetoes.

2. The abolition of national caveats in Nato operations of the kind that plague the Afghan campaign.

3. No role in decision-taking on Nato operations for alliance members who are not taking part in the operations.

4. The use of force without UN security council authorisation when "immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings".

Let's translate this: The "overhaul of Nato decision-taking methods" and the "new 'directorate' of US, European and Nato leaders" (detailed in proposals 1, 2, 3), really means that NATO should be shielded both from pesky "smaller" members' opinions (suffering from the illusion of being equal partners in the Alliance) on how to use their own armed forces, as well as from possible popular majorities inside NATO-member countries that may disapprove of the Alliance's goals and methods. In fact this is a call for terminating (or at least limiting) public participation through elected governments in NATO's decisions. It is a contempt for democracy not at all uncommon among military brass, and quite dangerous for the, supposedly, core values of democracy that the west alleges it is trying to protect and export. This is amply demonstrated by Klaus Naumann's attack on his own country's performance in Afghanistan:

"The time has come for Germany to decide if it wants to be a reliable partner." By insisting on "special rules" for its forces in Afghanistan, the Merkel government in Berlin was contributing to "the dissolution of Nato".

A statement that should be seen in light of the fact that:

An opinion poll carried out by Forsa reported that over 60 percent of Germans wanted the troops brought home.

So Naumann suggests that the Merkel government, already performing a balancing act between its NATO "duties" and public disapproval for any sort of continued German involvement in Afghanistan, should ignore public opinion and, in fact, act exactly opposite to its demands. The legitimacy of such a policy does not seem to be an issue with the good general.

Further, the proposals contribute to the further weakening of state sovereignty (1,2,3), the "end to EU obstruction" weakens the EU, and proposal 4, weakens tremendously the UN. All of the above institutions' weakenings, are presented as threats above... There seems to be a non-trivial contradiction here.

Proposal 4 is, indeed, a direct affront to international law. The highly selective protecting of "large numbers of human beings", as judged by NATO, using its own highly partial criteria, constitutes potentially an act of aggression. I wonder if use of force is considered in protecting Gaza's population from starvation or if NATO would consider intervening in Iraq, to protect the huge numbers of human beings suffering, escaping or dying from the US invasion and its aftermath. The idea that NATO should become judge, jury and executioner of international law, given the history of its most powerful member-states is morally laughable and practically of disastrous potential consequences.

Some idea on how well thought this proposal is, is given by Naumann:

Naumann suggested the threat of nuclear attack was a counsel of desperation. "Proliferation is spreading and we have not too many options to stop it. We don't know how to deal with this."

However no mechanism by which the threat of a NATO nuclear first strike might prevent proliferation spreading is presented. Not knowing how to "deal with this", apparently leads the modern Dr. Strangeloves, to propose a policy that is likely to lead, among other more terrible things, to the acceleration of proliferation. That is, leaving aside the issue of whether nuclear proliferation is actually spreading, or whether there exist silver billets to counter it... I note in passing that Mohamad ElBaradei proposed in 2003, a sensible plan to end nuclear proliferation:

My plan is to begin by setting up a reserve fuel bank, under IAEA control, so that every country will be assured that it will get the fuel needed for its bona fide peaceful nuclear activities. This assurance of supply will remove the incentive – and the justification – for each country to develop its own fuel cycle. We should then be able to agree on a moratorium on new national facilities, and to begin work on multinational arrangements for enrichment, fuel production, waste disposal and reprocessing.

This plan, as Noam Chomsky noted, was rejected by the usual parties:

ElBaradei’s proposal has to date been accepted by only one state, to my knowledge: Iran, in February, in an interview with Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator. The Bush administration rejects a verifiable Fissban — and stands nearly alone. In November 2004 the UN committee on disarmament voted in favour of a verifiable Fissban. The vote was 147 to one (United States), with two abstentions: Israel and Britain. Last year a vote in the full General Assembly was 179 to two, Israel and Britain again abstaining. The United States was joined by Palau.

All in all this proposal provides an excellent example of why generals should be restrained from participating in any kind of policy planning. Jack D. Ripper would be smiling.

[Crossposted at The European Tribune]

Time magazine: Support the antiquities traffickers

/ incitation to plunder /


This is an outrageous piece of journalism from Time magazine in which the benefits of "investing in antiquities" are extolled, with no mention of the fact that the vast majority of such "assets" are the product of plunder, perpetrated by various smuggling gangs, at various times.

The article has the gall to begin by describing rather approvingly an auction of a Sumerian (?) artifact sold recently at Sotheby's, which - as Iraq is under colonial control (and obviously can't protect or demand back its cultural treasures) - is rather outrageous.

While it might indeed be true that "no matter how ornate a stock certificate might be, an Egyptian amulet is always going to look better in your living room display case", it's probably even more accurate to say that the amulet might look better in a museum in Cairo. And, as Digging Digitally suggests, the article doesn't even "hint at the larger external costs and widespread destruction that is part of this trade".

On the issue of post-colonial cultural plunder and antiquities trafficking from museums, Greekworks had a couple of interesting articles a couple of years ago, which are to the point and cutting in their critique.

New Left Review - Qin Hui: Dividing the Big Family Assets

/ uncommon analysis /


This is an interview with Qin Hui, almost four years old now (brought to my attention via metafilter, triggered in turn by this recent piece), in which the historian discusses a broad range of issues:

Where is the PRC heading? One of its leading intellectual iconoclasts, after describing his origins in the Cultural Revolution, offers a long-range comparative perspective on the Chinese state’s strategy for land and industry today. The divisions in the intelligentsia and the fate of the peasantry, the overwhelming majority of the country, as China enters the WTO.

This is a treasure trove of information and insight for those (like me) who have a superficial knowledge of current China. It offers glimpses of the Cultural Revolution from within (a very different and more nuanced situation than that usually found in western publications), the situation of the peasantry and the problems facing today's China. He also points out the implications of China's current situation for the West:

Obviously, in the manufacturing sector no labour force—either under the welfare system of developed countries, or backed by trade unions in Third World or East European democracies—can ‘compete’ with a Chinese working class that has no right to unions or to labour negotiations. So too, Western farmers who rely on state subsidies may find it difficult to compete with Chinese exporters who can rely on peasant producers who have never enjoyed any protection, only strict control—causes underlying many of the ‘miracles’ in today’s China that often seem equally baffling to Right and Left in the West. In fact, though no one in the contemporary world will say so, such a situation is not without historical precedent. Around the sixteenth century, some East European countries became highly competitive in commercial agriculture by establishing a ‘second serfdom’. You can find people in today’s Chinese think-tanks who understand this very well. In some internal discussions they bluntly state that, as China has no comparative advantages in either resources or technology in today’s world, and cannot advance either to a real socialism or a real capitalism, its competitive edge can only come from its unique system of dependent labour.

Factually, I admit they are to a great extent right. Without this labour system China wouldn’t have been able to pull off the ‘miracle of competitiveness’, which attracts such interest from the West, the former Soviet bloc and many Third World democracies—but which they will never be able to emulate. The question I would ask, however, is whether a ‘miracle’ of this kind is sustainable? We might want to look at the long-term consequences of the ‘second serfdom’ in Eastern Europe. Nowadays there is a lot of talk in the US about a ‘China threat’. Actually, as no big power emerged out of the sixteenth-century East European experience, it is highly doubtful whether the current Chinese miracle could continue to a point where it really did threaten the West. But even if economic magic of this sort, that does not treat people as human beings, did take China to the top of the world, what would be its value? Such a development would first of all threaten the existence of the Chinese people themselves.

I would also highlight this insightful comment:

…The merit of general ‘isms’ lies in the universal values that inform them; yet the specific theory of a given ‘ism’ is usually constructed in response to particular historical questions, not universal ones. Therefore, when we advocate universal values we should be careful not to confuse them with universal questions. My slogan is: ‘isms’ can be imported; ‘questions’ must be generated locally; and theories should always be constructed independently…

The many faces of a news item

/ huh? /
OK, so Finnish Unions took a Finnish ferry company, Viking, to court because it replaced the crew on one of its ships with Estonian workers and relocated to Estonia to achieve this. The court ruled. The essence of the court's decision however is a highly subjective matter, at least if one judges by the title of the relevant stories in various international publications. A brief selection:

- BBC: Blow for unions in EU labour row

- The Guardian: EU court backs unions on business relocating in EU

- EUBusiness: EU court defends right for firms to move abroad to save costs

- EUObserver: Unions may take action over cheap labour, EU court says

- Jurist: European Court of Justice limits right of labor unions to strike

- EurActiv: EU court upholds right to strike but sets limits

- Maritime Global Net: International Transport Workers Federation WELCOMES VIKING JUDGEMENT

So what's up? Who won? I must suspend judgment on this, although I hope the ITF wouldn't be welcoming the judgment if it really was a "blow" for unions. People just try to understand what's happening, the media's point however is to spin it.

Rushing Kosovo

history repeating itself

So let me get this straight: In 1991 the EU hastily recognized Croatia and Slovenia, in a move that, rather undoubtedly, contributed (and I'm putting this rather mildly) to igniting the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Yesterday, Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband, advocating immediate EU recognition of Kosovo's independence said that:

...European nations must decide whether they want to "take a lead" on Kosovo and prevent a return to the bloodshed of the 1990s, when Yugoslavia broke up in a series of wars.

... neglecting to mention that, in fact, the EU's "lead" in the 1990s, helped the create the "series of wars" he refers to, in a process precisely described by NPR's Sylvia Poggioli, in a lecture back in 1995.

In fact Jonathan Steele writing in the Guardian a year ago, bizarrely acknowledged a need for haste, while suggesting that:

...As current president of the EU, Germany has a chance to show leadership on a major European issue. Many Europeans charge Germany with helping to precipitate the Balkan wars of the 1990s by hasty recognition of Croatia. It would be ironic if Germany over-compensates now by delaying the recognition of Kosovo, and thereby precipitating Balkan violence again.

Thus, drawing historical lessons is a form of over-compensation. The fact that hasty recognitions, in the name of "stopping the conflict" or "not precipitating violence", in the past led to all-out civil war in the same damn region, somehow is deemed as irrelevant and in fact it is claimed that a delay (that would include say some sort of UNSC deal, or even - God forbid - some sort of mutually tolerable solution) would prevent violence. As long as no-strings-attached independence id guarantied, the Kosovar Albanians don't have anything to negotiate about, no reason to make the slightest concession. The talks were theater, with deadlock as their foregone ending.

Nowhere is there even the slightest mention of the domino effect that might ensue and the precedent that this unilateral recognition will establish. The fact that Cyprus steadfastly rejects a EU recognition of Kosovo, is exactly because this would set a legitimizing precedent that might open a future recognition of the "Republic of Northern Cyprus" and half the world in fact. It will bolster bellicose separatism in Europe and certainly the Balkans, creating instability in the region that bodes ill for its future. The wheels that might be set in motion by such a recognition of Kosovo as an independent state, don't have to start immediately, nor are they inescapable. But they will be moving, and they might roll out of control in the event of any serious crisis in the Balkans, Caucasus and beyond. Awkward prevarications such as "In every case, it must be made clear that the case of Kosovo is legally unique and must not create a precedent which will have repercussions in the respect of the borders", are to be used as alibis in the event of an avalanche of resurgent secessionism, in the wake of widespread recognition of Kosovo as an independent state. Note that the affected areas will be as distant to Mr. Miliband as Bosnia was to Mr. Genscher.

I still insist on my Regional Conference idea.

Secession: beyond economics

/ is breaking up so hard to do? /
I was following, a month ago, the whole brouhaha surrounding the Belgian government crisis. Possibly the best summary of what was and is at stake in Belgium was written by Ingrid Robeyns, at Crooked Timber, a post that offers coprehensively both background and analysis of the current crisis' main events. Today, as the issue of Belgium's political impasse moved past record-breaking territory, into a major crisis, previous claims that the country quite probably is not heading towards a break-up, although quite possibly accurate, might seem less than 100% convincing. Everybody seems to agree that the financial imbalance between Flanders and Wallonia, which led to the Flemish having to subsidize the Walloons through their taxes, is a factor in the Belgian equation. It quite probably is, but the interesting thing here is that in the event of secession, both countries will remain partners within the EU, with some sort of transfers certainly flowing again from the State of Flanders to the State of (Rump) Belgium, through the Union's many funds and subsidies!

The question of independence and secession from a country, within the EU, is a novel twist to the "subnational" issue, that enhances the viability of the secessionist project and the vision of secession advocates, in many parts of Europe. To name but a few cases, this prospect has been part of the rhetoric of the Catalans, the Basques, the Scots, the Welsh, the "Padanians" and of course the Flemish. The EU offers a "safe haven" of sorts to various independence movements, a guarantee that "much will remain the same" even in the event of secession, especially regarding the economic viability of such a project. Thus, economic motives for secession can be reasonably seen as enhanced by the prospect of EU participation. Indeed, given the current ideological climate and raw economism, the concept of nation-building as an exercise in revenue maximizing state-branding, isn't beyond contemplation at all.

Economic motives for secession, or market-driven "ethnogenesis", seem very "contemporary". But is economics the driving factor (instead of a driving factor) in secessionist movements? Can states be built on economic considerations alone? Does the Flemish secession movement exist principally because of taxation issues?

I think not.

First of all it is far from obvious that the EU itself is comfortable with the idea of internally multiplying its member states. As the Economist has pointed out:

The EU is also unlikely to support moves leading to any disintegration of member states. Regional movements often point to the EU as a trans-national safeguard, allowing them more easily to dispense with their nation-state affiliation. But the EU may be more concerned about any process that upsets its own delicate institutional balance, to say nothing of making it harder to gain a consensus for a new EU constitution. Having put the brakes on further external enlargement, the EU will not welcome a form of internally-generated expansion.

In fact Prodi had warned explicitly (Scotland in that instance), as President of the EC that EU membership is not a given for any wannabe breakaway republics:

Three years ago... Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, warned that if Scotland... breaks away from the United Kingdom, Edinburgh would have to reapply for membership of the European Union (EU). "A newly-independent region would, by the fact of its independence, become a third country with respect to the (European) Union and the treaties would not apply any more in its territory," Mr. Prodi said.

One might also add that the regionalisation of Europe (as intent for the time being and not as actual pervasive policy) and the role that regions seem to be playing in EU development strategy, can act as a counterweight to separatism, as they deliver plenty of self-government to local entities, circumventing (up to a point) the hold of the national government. The prospect of a purely regional Europe however is a non-starter, among other reasons because of scaling problems. I quote from a highly relevant interview with Nicolas Levrat, the director of the Institute of European Studies at the University of Geneva, questioned by eurotopics:

Q: Could you imagine a European Union made up of regions and not of nation states?

NL: A Europe of the Regions wouldn't work. We see that the Committee of the Regions is quite inefficient. We are talking about 200 or 300 entities trying to make decisions. Imagine the procedures necessary to reach a qualifying majority in a decision making body with 300 members! It's not like your average parliament, it would be much more difficult as is already the case in the present European council with 27 members.

Then there is the issue that, apart from problematic parts of the world such as Africa and the (Western) Balkans, there is little that suggests that independence or autonomy movements are directly tied to solely economic considerations - see for example the paper by Elliot D. Green On the Endogeneity of Ethnic Secessionist Groups, which presents the theoretical context of the debate and evidence that shows that the relation between economic opportunity and secessionist power is not linear at all.

Ethnogenesis is a complex process and certainly not one that can be reduced to a purely economic cost-benefit analysis. If this is the case for well established secessionist movements, it is even more so for ad hoc potential entities constructed on economic considerations alone. In fact the only case of a country built on principally economic considerations in Europe that I can think of is Montenegro. Whether that was a wise move, is another discussion, as it isn't at all that obvious that Montenegro is more independent now (under any meaningful definition of the term "independent") than it was when it was federated with Serbia. Anyway, the post-Yugoslav Balkans, home of the smuggler-state, doesn't lend itself towider generalizations.

Note also that were regional economic inequalities a driving force for "nation building" alone (either through the logic of "liberation" from paying for the "backwards" regions, or through the aspiration of a better economic future for disadvantaged regions), the phenomenon would be vastly more widespread than it is now. The economic gaps that exist in almost countries between certain regions are often quite larger than the corresponding gaps between secessionist regions and other regions within the same country, yet not all regional income gaps lead to demands for autonomy or secession. Thus Nicholas Levrat's assertion (in the abovementioned interview) that "Contrary to what is commonly said - that the rise of regionalism is linked to the funding structure and federal EU policy - the facts suggest that it is not the regions that are heavily subsidized by the EU that are pushing for independence but rather the rich regions", is a generalization that is not even statistically valid: Not all, not even most, but just a handful of "rich regions" are pushing for independence. The ones that do are riding on and succeed because of a preexisting national identity.

Thus, the sort of mechanistic reductionism that sees national or regional aspirations of independence as a result of solely, or even principally, economic forces and motives, isn't convincing. The EU separatist movements in fact are, if anything less prevalent today than they were in the past, because political issues such as minority rights, language issues and local government are guaranteed inside the EU. There is a political primacy here that cannot be generated at whim, and is dependent on factors such as local history and past grievances. Countries are not corporations. They presuppose (and impose) a vastly deeper loyalty than any brand-name ever could. History cannot be fast forwarded nor reduced simply to the pursuit of profit.

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According to the Strategy Page:

Hundreds of ICBM silos have been sold off in the last twenty years, as new missile forces were reduced with the end of the Cold War, and the enactment of arms reduction treaties.

The site warns however that

...No one has found an economically useful function for demilitarized missile silos, but the allure is still there, and people still buy them...

... which is not completely accurate as, apparently, there is the option of turning them into homes, a prospect not without certain difficulties, since:

...The interior receives little or no natural light (unless, for example, you replace the gigantic hatches and doors with skylights). Your cell phone and radio probably won’t work inside. And you’ll have to spend an enormous amount of money to make the silo habitable if someone else hasn’t already done so. (One major complication: some of the silos filled with water over the years, becoming in effect giant wells.)

Via Monochrom