Welcome! or welcome back, to Springtime of Nations. With another week comes another worthy struggle for self determination and a push against the centralizing power of the state.

This is our first secessionist movement that takes place in the western world, albeit on its fringes. We’re talking about the Republic of Kosovo today, which is having their national elections on February 14th. Kosovo is recognized by 98 countries in the world, but significantly this does not include their neighbor Serbia. Why is this, and should libertarians see Kosovo as a legitimate secessionist movement? To find out, as usual, we’re going to have to go back to the beginning of this crisis.
Serbian nationalists will say the story starts with the legendary battle of Kosovo in 1389 where the Serbian army was defeated by the Ottoman empire, beginning the centuries long Ottoman rule of Serbia and the northern Balkans. This is used to claim that Kosovo is the sacred ground of Serbia which should never be separated from it again. The real historical events of the battle itself are hazy and unclear, but it has become a powerful source of Serbian nationalism, and Yugoslavian nationalism in general. We do know that Serbs in the late 17th century mass migrated north to Christian ruled Hungary and Austria, leaving the territory to be inhabited by Albanians, who also fought and lost to the Ottomans in the 15th century, over time converting from their native Catholicism to Sunni Islam. But let’s look at more firm historical events we know did happen, starting with the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
By the 19th century, the once great Ottoman Empire was beginning to bleed territories in the Balkans, with many of the repressed nations within it liberating themselves, starting with Greece in 1822 (assisted by our patron Lord Byron of course), followed by Serbia and Montenegro. In 1878 the Congress of Berlin gave parts of Kosovo, at that time inhabited by ethnic Albanians to Serbia and Montenegro. This led to outrage among the Albanian populace of Ottoman Albania and several major uprisings against the Turks followed, first in 1888 and in 1910 that finally led to the independence of Albania in 1912. By that time the rest of Kosovo had been taken by Serbia and Montenegro in the 1912 First Balkan War.
The events of World War I resulted in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia being formed in 1918 which lasted until 1941 when the Germans and Italians invaded. Tito’s Communist partisans emerged victorious from World War II and created their Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945. In contrast to the Serb led kingdom of Yugoslavia, under Tito Kosovo got its first taste of autonomy as the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo. However, given the enmity between Yugoslavia and Albania at the time, Kosovo Albanians were subjected to harsh repressions and secret arrests as suspected traitors to Yugoslavia. By 1974 Kosovo was de facto elevated to a Socialist Republic with the same legal status as Serbia within the confederation. This outraged the Serbians (led by President of the Serbian Republic Slobodan Milosevic), and the status was officially revoked in 1990. The Albanians in Kosovo reacted with mass strikes and protests, and unofficial elections and referendums showing their overwhelming support for autonomy. The Serbian government reacted to this with violent repression of the population.
With the loss of Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia from Yugoslavia by 1995 in the Yugoslav Wars, the Kosovans started to see a violent uprising as their way out of their forced association with Serbia, and their hope ultimately to unite with the rest of Albania. The Kosovo Liberation Army started a terror campaign against the Serbian government and ethnic serbs within Kosovo in that Year. By 1998 the conflict erupted into a full fledged war between Albanian guerilla fighters and the Serbian and Yugoslav armies. Into this chaos stepped who else but the World Police! the United States of America. In June 1998 President Bill Clinton declared a state of EMERGENCY due to the “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” imposed by Yugoslavia and Serbia over the Kosovo War. It seems unclear at best how this conflict far far away from America and involving much smaller countries than it present an extraordinary threat to the most powerful country in the world, but nevertheless this resulted in America taking the side of the Kosovans and engaging in a destructive and murderous bombing campaign against the Yugoslav forces, which they easily cowed into defeat. At least 500 Yugoslavian civilians, including Albanians, were killed by American and NATO bombing by the time the war officially ended on June 11 1999.
Since then the Albanians of Kosovo have officially declared the independence of the Republic of Kosovo in 2008. In reality, the “independence” of this state relies almost entirely on a place called Camp Bondsteel, a vast American Armed Forces complex. The force of American guns have allowed the smaller Kosovo to defend itself from Serbia, and also to prevent the Serbian majority region of North Kosovo from in turn seceding from Kosovo, although de facto they exist in a state close to Artsakh does in Azerbaijan, as an unrecognized but independent state. In the past few months there has been some rapprochement between Serbia and Kosovo, engineered by Donald Trump eager for foreign policy victories, but fundamentally little has changed since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999.
There’s a lot going on here, and a lot of bad actions by both sides of this conflict. What should libertarians make of all of it? We must hold to the principle of decentralization and self determination, and recognize that both Serbians and Kosovo Albanians have legitimate grievances. Kosovo has every right to be an independent state of Albanians or to unite with the Republic of Albania, and North Kosovo has every right to join Serbia. Politicians and military leaders of both sides have greedily and wrongly used armed might, some of it from abroad, to impose their will on other ethnicities. The liberal answer to national struggles is always and everywhere to apply our values consistently. Our next video will be on the Catalonia region in Spain. Freedom for Kosovo! Freedom for North Kosovo! May a thousand flowers bloom!