yugoslavias implosion

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Balkan peninsula until states are established within national frameworks”
and that a “multiethnic society ought not to be imposed
in the Balkans by force.” 455 The pro-government Skopje newspaper
Nova Makedonija provoked a fierce debate by publishing a proposal
by a group of Macedonian academics for a territorial swap with
Albania entailing a shifting of borders in Kosovo and announcing
that the proposal was partly supported by state leaders in Belgrade.
Westerners, too, contemplated redrawing borders. In March
2001, to take a notable example, the former British foreign secretary
Lord David Owen, a former British foreign secretary and the
eu’s mediator in Bosnia, suggested, “What is needed today is a Balkans-wide
solution, a present-day equivalent to the 1878 Congress of
Berlin. With a pre-arranged boundary endorsed by the major powers.”
456 Owen’s proposal was preceded on February 26–27, 2001, by a
u.s. Army War College seminar on the future of the u.s. presence in
the Balkans. 457 One participant reported that “scholars and u.s. military
officers attending the two-day seminar appeared to be in almost
unanimous agreement that current state boundaries in the Balkans
should be redrawn to create ‘smaller, more stable mono-ethnic
states.’” Former u.s. secretary of state Henry Kissinger had anticipated
Owen’s “geo-racism” 458 in an article in the Washington Post in
1996 in which he argued that ethnic cleansing in the Balkans could
not be reversed, so it should be accepted as a stabilizing factor, claiming
that “with extensive ethnic cleansing in Bosnia only the most
insignificant remnants of other groups are left in each area.” 459
By postponing a decision on their future status, the West allowed
the situation in Kosovo and Macedonia to deteriorate, thus playing
455 Politika, May ., 2001
456 “To Secure Balkan Peace, Redraw Map,” Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2001 .
457 As reported by Umberto Pascali in Executive Intelligence Review, June 22, 2001 .
458 A term used by Umberto Pascali in an article “British ‘New Berlin Congress’ Behind the
Macedonian Civil War” that appeared in Executive Intelligence Review, June 22, 2001 .
459 Washington Post, September 18, 1996 .