Barrel Strength

Lawrence Eagleburger, former Secretary of State under Bush the Elder,  predicted last night on television that ”there will be blood” in Kosovo, the break-away province of Serbia. Kosovo was originally Serb but became ethnically Albanian, and Muslim, over time.

Eagleburger and John Bolton wrote:

 ”We believe that an imposed settlement of the Kosovo question and seeking to partition Serbia’s sovereign territory without its consent is not in the interest of the United States. The blithe assumption of American policy — that the mere passage of nine years of relative quiet would be enough to lull Serbia and Russia into reversing their positions on a conflict that goes back centuries — has proven to be naive in the extreme. We believe that American policy on Kosovo must be reexamined without delay, and we urge the Bush Administration to make it clear that pending the results of such reexamination it would withhold recognition of a Kosovo independence declaration and discourage Kosovo’s Albanians from taking that step.”

 Too late, it seems.

One might ask, why is American policy so pro-Muslim in the Balkans? Or is it merely anti-Serb? And why are we gratuitously angering the Serbs? Conflicts in the Balkans, which are at the intersection of the Orthodox, Catholic and Islamic worlds, predate the foundation of the United States. When sensible conservatives like Eagleburger and Bolton question US foreign policy, we should take notice.