Today Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the new NATO secretary-general, is visiting Kosovo as part of his get-to-know-the-job tour. What is so remarkable about this particular visit is, well, that it’s so unremarkable. That there is so little attention paid to the newly-independent country at all.
Those, particularly on the Left, who railed against the war – and Kosovo’s declaration of independence almost ten years after NATO’s air campaign – have moved on. Their interest in Kosovo, let alone the Western Balkans, was instrumental.
Those who predicted that the declaration of independence would spark another cycle of violence and the election of irredentist Serbs in Belgrade were wrong. Violence has been minimal and moderate parties have won the last two elections in Serbia.
For this, credit goes to three parties in particular: the new Kosovo government, which has gone for the higher moral ground, Pieter Feith, the skilful Dutch diplomat charged with overseeing the move to independence on behalf of the EU, and the Belgrade government, which has focused on Serbia’s European future rather than Kosovo and the past.
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