There is a lot on this site about the problems we and the people of the former Yugoslav region face in where precisely the borders of new states should be, and how those new states should be defined.

Try this. Or this.

Former US Ambassador to Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia/Montenegro Bill Montgomery has written again about the philosophical contradictions in US/Western policy:

In both those countries, we have become trapped in policy “boxes” that make it impossible to achieve stability or long-term solutions, despite enormous investments of personnel and resources for almost two decades.

This is because we continue to insist that it is possible, with enough pressure and encouragement, to establish fully functioning multiethnic societies in Bosnia and Kosovo with no change in borders. And we have consistently ignored all evidence to the contrary and branded as obstructionist anyone who speaks openly about alternative approaches…

The end result is continued tension between the two Bosnian entities, a dysfunctional country, and the prospect of many more years of efforts by Western politicians — like Vice President Joe Biden on his recent visit — to pound a square peg into a round hole.

I know of what I speak: For more than 15 years, I was one of these pounders. I finally came to understand that the historical experiences in this region have implanted a mind-set very different from our own. We keep expecting the people in the Balkans to think and react as we do: It is not going to happen…

He opts for solutions which are "achievable", notably some sort of partition of Kosovo and allowing the Bosnian Serbs a referendum on independence:

The fact is that both in Bosnia and in Kosovo, independent local forces can take matters into their own hands and in a very short time bring about renewed violence that we will be hard-pressed to contain. And we simply cannot afford to become even more entangled in the Balkans.

Like an alcoholic whose first step is to recognize he has a problem, we need to accept that the current policies are not tenable. Only then can we start thinking constructively about solutions which can bring lasting stability to the region.

A position which of course prompts the angry retort that any sort of separation of Republika Srpska "rewards genocide":

His call is shortsighted, dangerous and insulting to the victims of genocide and aggression in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It reminds all freedom loving Bosnians of the genocide committed against Bosniaks in the current territory of Republika Srpska and beyond. It also brings Serbs one step closer to realizing the genocidal call of Slobodan Milosevic for Greater Serbia, where all Serbs could live in one country, one nation, one land.

Why should there be separate nation states in this region based on religion alone. The fact that the land of current day Republika Srpska was created, as a direct result of genocide and the ethnic cleansing of its non Serb population, makes Montgomery’s call for independence absolutely absurd.

Why is this question so difficult? Because it straddles a smoking trembling fault-line in one of the great earthquake zones of diplomacy and indeed moral philosophy, namely self-determination. Where and how do people live together? What if they don’t want to live together?

When the former Yugoslavia started to wobble as the legitimacy of ‘rule from Milosevic’s Belgrade’ seeped away, there were two principled ways forward.

One lay in creating a way to let the peoples of that territory negotiate new borders based upon the classic idea of self-determination (ie creation of new polities based on predominant local ethnicity/religion/identity).

The other lay in proclaiming that the former internal borders of the SFRY would be the only accepted basis for new external borders, but that each new country would have to accept nice behaviour towards minorities.

The EU and US had an eye on policy towards the former Soviet republics where it was deemed essential to split up the USSR along internal republic borders to guarantee that someone had formal responsibility for those nuclear weapons sited outside Russia. So in an unhappy way the same principle was applied to the former Yugoslavia.

This worked well in Slovenia, as Slovenia was populated primarily by Slovenes. We could compliment ourselves that we were cleverly ticking both the territorial and self-determination boxes simultaneously.

But elsewhere where the Yugoslav ethnic mix was more complex, this did not work. Nor did it apply so obviously to Kosovo, not a republic within Yugoslavia but an ‘autonomous province’ within Serbia (albeit with Kosovo enjoying most constitutional attributes of a republic including a member of the eight-person state Presidency).

Why? Because Principle collides with Reality.

If people on the ground do not want to be part of the country they are in, they sooner or later start to ‘opt out’ – peacefully or otherwise.

Which brings us to a battle of wills. How far are the central authorities supported or not by the international community able and willing to persuade or (if necessary) compel those opters-outers to stick with the existing arrangements? How far are the opters-outers really prepared to push things (Scotland/Quebec/Basques)?

Turkey is not going to let the Kurdish population within its borders secede. We have seen what Moscow did to Chechnya. Anyone remember Nigeria/Biafra?

So pick your example. And pick the argument you fancy from the volleys to and fro among international lawyers as to why one situation is really (or not) the proper precedent for another.

In Bosnia the argument that Republika Srpska as it is now is a "product of genocide" has rhetorical and political force. But only up to a point. Plus it does not address the issue of principle, namely that if the Bosnian Serbs want to leave Bosnia and take some territory with them, why is that in principle unreasonable?

In Kosovo the core argument is that the Kosovo Albanians overwhelmingly reject Belgrade rule. But why does that mean that they should have the whole territory, when Serb-majority parts of Kosovo overwhelmingly reject rule from Pristina?

Bill Montgomery is right to say that it makes no political sense to try to establish peace in the former Yugoslavia space on a basis which leaves the largest community there (ie Serbs) feeling cheated and resentful.

But what about Reality? Is it in practice possible to move from where we are now to something  more coherent in principle without creating huge new practical problems which set back the lives of people in the region for yet more decades?

If we accept that there are to be ‘territorial adjustments’ in that part of the world, the rival communities will sprint towards creating ‘new facts on the ground’ so as to increase their bargaining positions. Result? A soaring potential for renewed conflict.

Bill of course realises this, saying that any such moves would need "demonstrated will and readiness to use military force to prevent violence along the way". But he rather glosses over the reality that Balkan bickering is no longer of interest to anyone other than the protagonists. NATO troop numbers in the region are declining.

In short?

Staying as we are looks to be unsustainable. Moving anywhere better looks implausible. Hence unhappy and unstable stagnation.

Welcome to the Balkans.

What’s left?

Just this, with a creepy life of its own down the decades and centuries::

It is hatred, but not limited just to a moment in the course of social change, or an inevitable part of the historical process; rather, it is hatred acting as an independent force, as an end in itself.

Hatred which sets man against man and casts both alike into misery and misfortune, or drives both opponents to the grave; hatred like a cancer in an organism, consuming and eating up everything around it, only to die itself at the last; because this kind of hatred, like a flame, has neither one constant form, nor a life of its own: it is simply the agent of the instinct of destruction or self destruction. It exists only in this form, and only its task of total destruction has been completed…