A reader asks:

Do you approve of the current US and UK policy to appease nationalist Albanian threats of violence?

There may be people out there who do not follow the Kosovo problem with close attention. Just to remind them that the long-running attempt to the EU’s bright young Laura Norder into Kosovo continues to be … long-running.

Kosovo has declared itself independent. So Kosovo does not like to see the UN negotiating with Belgrade over how the international presence in Serb-dominated areas of northern Kosovo is to be defined.

Belgrade wants to keep it defined in UN terms, as it has strong UN membership support for its core position plus the hope of a Russian Veto if things get too difficult.

Kosovo/Pristina wants the UN to give way to the EU for the same reason Serbia wants ultimate UN authority to stay.

Meanwhile both UN and EU face a tough choice. How far are they prepared to go to suppress local Serb or Albanian hostility to their presence on the ground?

As a British general put it to then International Development Minister Clare Short once in Banja Luka (Bosnia), "The locals are compliant because they know that if it comes to it we’ll kill them."

So do I approve of ‘appeasing’ those locals on either side who threaten violence against honourable international officials and troops doing their best?

Well, no. But the problem is not quite that.

Rather this. If as seems to be the case we (the ‘West’) are not ready to let Serbs and Albanians fight it out over the desultory territory in dispute, then we end up unhappily appeasing all sorts of difficult people when we are then caught in the middle.

Which is why the Kosovo case study is such a supreme example of Negotiation on different levels sumultaneously.

What matters more to the US/UK/EU? How to balance the threat of Kosovar force on the shabby streets of Mitrovica today against the prospect of a humiliating UN veto exercised by Russia down the road? Risks of killing Kosovars (or Serbs) to stay credible? The policy defeat which an eventual UN veto night entail?

What matters to the Kosovars? To focus on building up a successful new state in the majority areas of Kosovo they control, or to insist on the porinciple that all Kosovo is their’s?

What matters to Belgrade? To move quickly towards ‘Europe’ and leave behind a Kosovo full of people who do not want Serbia and who Serbia does not want either? Or to stick to the principle that Serbia can not have part of its territory stripped away without its consent?

What matters to Moscow? To risk rows with the US/UK in New York over these irrelevant scraps of Balkan territory, not to mention the inconsistencies its positions might create closer to home? Or to be seen to be throwing its weight around toughly?

That Moscow choice is at least quite easy for the Russian leadership.

For the EU/US/UK things are trickier. 

Having chosen to stand in the middle of the road, we risk getting run over.