Why Moldova should worry about Kosovo

The issue of Kosovo does not make many headlines in Moldova, but there is no doubt that, behind the scenes, the government is following developments very closely, concerned at the way events might unfold.

Kosovo matters to Moldova because there are too many parallels and it is too close to home to dismiss any final outcome to the dispute as irrelevant to our own.

Put bluntly, Kosovo is another Transnistria, a part of Serbia over which the recognized central government has no control, lost for good in the aftermath of a war, overwhelmingly populated by a different ethnic group (two thirds Slavs) than the rest of Moldova (the majority of which are of Romanian descent) that claim the right to self-determination. Settlement talks have failed to produce agreement (in this case, the international community is seeking an agreed divorce), and now leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority are threatening to declare independence if a final push fails by December 10.

What should seriously worry Moldova is that, while Transnistria has so far remained unrecognized, there is a good chance that things will turn out differently for Kosovo in the case of a unilateral declaration of independence - an "UDI" - and that this will set a precedent in international law. Indeed, were it not for Russia’s implied threat of a veto there is a good chance that independence for Kosovo would have been enshrined by the United Nations Security Council itself, irrespective of Serbia’s opposition, and irrespective of her recognized sovereignty over the province.

Analysts say the Albanians of Kosovo can count on recognition from Washington, with the United States expecting the EU to follow suit. That would pose problems for the European Union, with a number of countries opposed to recognition, and a common position is unlikely to emerge. But we can envisage a situation where individual member states break ranks and recognize Kosovo, just as they did with Croatia and Slovenia in the early 1990s.

What would that mean for Moldova? It would underline the fundamental truth of international politics that ultimately political interest reigns supreme, that power politics drives international law, and not the other way round. It would underline that recognized sovereignty can be unrecognized at the stroke of a pen, if that is what the great powers want to do.

The point is that Washington couldn’t care less if Belgrade goes ballistic over the issue. And the way things are going, it may not be too worried about Russia’s opposition either. Serbia has burned whatever bridges it had with the international community during the years of Milosevic rule.

The danger for Moldova is that in feeding a paranoid isolationism for domestic political purposes, the government is genuinely isolating the country in the international community. Lacking any strategic weight, we are entirely dependent on the good will of our allies.

Our legal right to Transnistria is already hard enough to defend because we based our own independence on the illegality of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and how it was used to force us into the Soviet Union. Transnistria is asking how we can lay claim to them if we already said that the "marriage" with them in 1940 was totally illegal. At the level of international law, they have a point. In the court of public opinion, Moldova has a very weak claim to a territory that was never even ours to begin with and where we ourselves said that the act of joining us and Transnistria in 1940 was illegal.

What Kosovo shows is that our legal right alone will not save us, even if it was as strong as that of Serbia to Kosovo. But it is not, and that is partly the fault of history and partly our own fault. It is no secret that relying on international law alone, based on our unproven legal right to Transnistria, is a very risky way to defend our interests.

Victor Lupu is a Moldovan/Romanian speaking writer whose previous article on the history of Moldova appeared in "The Tiraspol Times & Weekly Review" in August, 2007.