Prishtina, Kosovo From the United States, the small, failed state of Moldova seems distant and irrelevant. The disputed election of a new Communist government headed by an ethnic Russian, Vladimir Voronin, produced anti-Communist rioting at the beginning of this month. Moldova seemed to embody, if more appropriately, Neville Chamberlain â s infamous description, at the time of Munich, of the controversy between Sudeten Germans and then-Czechoslovakia: â a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing. 

Yet, as with the Sudetenland affair of 71 years ago, Moldova merits a closer look, and from Kosovo and other troubled countries nearby, the events in Moldova appear to be serious warnings of future crises.

Street violence in...