Christopher Hitchens back in February tried to build the case that Kosovo was never ‘internationally recognised as part of Serbia’:

[After WW1] legal instruments agreed between [Yugoslavia and the no-less-new state concept calling itself republican Turkey] recognized Belgrade’s sovereignty over Kosovo, but solely in the sense that they recognized Belgrade as the capital of Yugoslavia. (For a more extended discussion of this essential constitutional point, see Noel Malcolm’s Kosovo: A Short History.)

Thus, and if we exempt some decisions made by Stalinist bureaucrats after the re-creation of Yugoslavia in 1945, Kosovo has never been treated or recognized as Serb territory within Yugoslavia and never at all by international treaties outside that former state. Even those hasty Stalinist decisions were later undone by Tito, who granted Kosovo a large measure of autonomy in 1974.

Methinks the usually all-powerful Christopher is just wrong here. His argument in effect is, ignore everything which undermines my case, and see, I have a great case!

It surely matters not one bit whether Kosovo was ‘internationally recognised’ as part of Serbia after WW1, insofar as that implies some actual recognition decision by other states.

Within Yugoslavia before and after WW2 Kosovo was in law and fact part of Serbia. No member of the international community claimed that Kosovo existed in SFRY separate from Serbia.  Foreign diplomats including myself visited Pristina to talk to Kosovo leaders who themselves took it for granted that Kosovo indeed was an Autonomous Province in Serbia, albeit with important federal-level attributes too.

That fact continuing for decades, it has to be concluded that in law and practice the international community did ‘recognise’ Kosovo’s status in this sense.

Anyway, here now is CH describing six differences between Kosovo and S Ossetia/Abkhazia.

And here (via Instapundit) is Michael Totten on a similar theme.

Both these excellent pieces hit numerous nails on the head.

But I think they miss the key ones.

There are different sorts of ‘precedent’ under international law and paractice.

Precedent of fact.

Precedent of law.

Precedent of process.

Precedent of outcome.

When the world rummages around in the bran tub of arguments surrounding these and other such ‘separatist’ problems, people tend to pull out one of these precedents and claim that it trumps the rival argument. Hence vacuous arguments zig-zagging around inconclusively.

I need to collect my thoughts on this one. Back later.