Terror in the Balkans

As the debate over what to do in Bosnia & Herzegovina after the country's October elections resurfaces and the Kosovo issue again moves to the UN General Assembly, the Obama Administration will be increasingly called upon to provide American leadership in the Balkans. Yet a serious observer of U.S. Balkan policy might be forgiven for questioning whether the US has an intellectually or politically coherent policy in the Balkans, or whether our approach to the region is simply an ad-hoc collection of prejudices and biases. The very same diplomats and pundits who tell you that ethnic vetoes are bad in Bosnia will say they are needed in Macedonia, or that international supervision should be eliminated in Kosovo but increased in Bosnia, or that Helsinki principles do not apply to a universally recognized member state of the United Nations, but they should apply to an entity which two-thirds of the international community hasn't recognized.