Word: kosovo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Perhaps the best preview of Russians' brewing rage at their lost grandeur came in Kosovo, when, in the wake of NATO's 1999 war against Serbia - a war Russia opposed - Russian forces seized the airport that NATO had intended as headquarters for what many Russians considered an occupation force. No shots were fired, but Western generals found it jarring to see how far Russia would go for a territory so marginal to its wealth and security...
...When Western countries recognized Kosovo earlier this year, Russia's NATO ambassador, Dmitri Rogozin, telegraphed Moscow's plans by threatening to "proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force." Putin said the "stick" that Western countries had employed "will come back to knock them on the head...
...picking apart of Yugoslavia, particularly the splitting off of Kosovo from Serbia, further fueled Russian resentment and humiliation. It reminded Russia how the U.S. had undermined it in the Middle East, peeling off Egypt, South Yemen, Iraq and Syria from its sphere of influence over the decades. But more than anything else, Russia would never forget that it was Washington that created the Sunni jihadist Frankenstein in Afghanistan. That was an arrow pointed straight at the heart of Russia. With Muslims making up 10% to 15% of Russia's population, the Afghan-born jihad became an existential threat to Russia...
...long catalogue of mythic losses. Aleksandar Vucic, the secretary-general of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, said the arrest marked "a horrible day for Serbia." But the spontaneous demonstrations in Belgrade against Karadzic's arrest didn't approach the intensity of February's street violence over Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence...
...This seems like a pipe dream now. After the furor caused by America's preemptive invasion of Iraq, it's hard to imagine the U.S. mustering the credibility necessary for a Kosovo-like humanitarian intervention for at least a generation. Sudan provides ready evidence of that. The International Criminal Court recently indicted Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur. Given America's post-Iraq reputation, some combination of European, Asian and African leadership would be needed to bring al-Bashir to justice, but even this is unlikely. On the same day that Karadzic was arrested...