Having recently translated a short academic study on the Kosovo question, I feel a strange urge to tell the world what I think about this issue myself.

The people of Kosovo have no right to independence.

International law is by definition half-baked, but this is a particularly blurry case. On the one hand, Russia is right. Kosovo forms part of a sovereign state, Serbia. It has no heritage of independent statehood. It was given over to United Nations control under duress (rightly or not) and on the clear condition of remaining a nominal part of Serbia. Well, Serbia wants to keep it. On the other hand, the laudable principle of national self-determination prescribes that Kosovo may opt out of this arrangement, by democratic choice. Competing principles, then.

So let’s look instead at more practical issues. Have Kosovo’s people and leaders proved that they are likely to exercise power over minority Serbs with responsibility and tolerance? What example might the precedent of independence set in Bosnia, in the Caucasus, in Cyprus, in Spain – in Belgium, even? Is it a good idea to encourage these various simmering national grievances? Is statehood really the inevitable destiny of every single nation, as was believed so fervently at the beginning of the last, bloody, century?

The people of Kosovo have a right to something more important than collective independence. They have a right to individual freedom. And no-one has yet proved that this requires flags, embassies and armies.

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