Callaghan doctrine can't cope with the Kosovo crisis

CRISIS? What crisis? The spirit of James Callaghan stalks the land, as Britain responds to an international threat in its traditional style, by inserting its collective head resolutely in the sand. Kosovo - a far-off country of which we know little - is fast becoming the most dangerous place on earth, the potential seed-bed, according to the most advanced pessimists, of the Third World War.

That claim may be somewhat on the drastic side; but there is cause for serious concern. Not among the tunnel-visioned commentariat, however. On Friday, British state television led its news with an alarmist global-warming story about the Siberian permafrost thawing (as it has done routinely and harmlessly for many centuries). Far down the news list was mention of another Russian story: the general election today in which voters are expected to endorse President Vladimir Putin's party with a landslide majority.

This is happening just eight days before Kosovo is poised to make a unilateral declaration of independence, an event which Putin described last September as a "red-line" issue for Russia. There are British troops in Kosovo: we are embroiled in this crisis up to our necks. Our fifth-form Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, however, was more preoccupied last Friday with the plight of a British schoolmistress given 15 days' imprisonment in the Sudan for idiotically allowing her pupils to name their teddy bear Mohammed (under the current PC terror she would have received a much heavier sentence for the same conduct in a school in Bradford).

So it is to the credit of David Cameron, whose own priorities in the past have not always been the most sensible, that he devoted much of his speech to the Brookings Institution in Washington last Thursday to Kosovo and the need to stand up to Russia on this and similar issues. The Kosovo question is, at first blush, intensely complicated. Yet, like most such international and ethnic contentions, it is at root quite simple. Serbia claims sovereignty over Kosovo, even though 90% of the population are ethnic Albanians who viscerally detest the Serbs. Nor does it help that Serbia's most recent mechanism for asserting sovereignty was the rape of 20,000 Albanian women and the massacre of their menfolk.

Nationalism is not a pretty sentiment. Since 1848 it has wreaked a degree of havoc across Europe second only to socialism. Yet there is undeniably such a thing as national identity and the respectable patriotism that underpins it. In the case of Kosovo, where not even the remaining 10% of the population is wholly Serb, what possible justification could there be for subjecting the Kosovars to Belgrade?

In any case, Serbia is a rogue state whose government cynically provoked the First World War by assassinating the heir to the Austrian throne through the intermediary of a secret society and which, alone among the belligerents on either side, emerged with its territory and status greatly enlarged and its war aims fulfilled. More recently, its savage conduct in the Balkans provokes the question whether the Serbs are fit to govern themselves, let alone anybody else.

Under normal circumstances, the resolution of the Kosovo question would be simple: a declaration of independence on December 10, recognised by the United Nations and the European Union, leading to a normalisation of life there and an inflow of investment. The circumstances, however, are not normal. Russia has appointed itself the patron of Serbia and in that capacity is mischief-making in the Balkans. This is a return to the old Tsarist doctrine of Pan-Slavism. Where formerly the Soviet Union justified its aggressions into European states as the performance of its "internationalist duty to defend the gains of socialism", Russia today has reverted to the role of protector of all Slav nations.

Putin is following the foreign policy of Nicholas I. It was a menace to Europe then and it is a menace now. From tonight, Putin is likely to be strengthened by a sweeping election victory fuelled by the domestic perception of him as a strong and ruthless leader (which Russians masochistically adore) and nationalist chauvinism. He will be in a position to flex his muscles by Kosovo's December 10 deadline. Any declaration of independence will be vetoed by Russia in the United Nations Security Council. That will leave a chicken-hearted European Union to confront a dilemma.

Since Nato rescued Kosovo from Serb domination in 1999, the province has been under United Nations governance (UNMIK), under the terms of Security Council Resolution 1244. In July this year, a draft resolution backed by the United States, Britain and other European members of the Security Council was amended four times to conciliate Russian demands, before being scuppered by Putin's opposition. Since August, a 'Troika' of negotiators representing the US, the EU and Russia has struggled to find a resolution. The Contact Group will report the outcome to the UN Secretary General on December 10.

The likeliest eventuality is a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovar leaders, whose negotiations with Serbia broke down last Wednesday. David Cameron rightly said: "There is a crisis developing in the Balkans and we must act now to prevent it, in the interests of national security not just in that region but around the world." He was in no way resiling from his earlier denunciation of Blairite interventionism - indeed he reiterated his repudiation of "grand Utopian schemes to remake the world".

His demand that the Nato presence in Kosovo should be strengthened immediately by drawing on its dedicated operational reserve is sensible and would place no additional pressure on Britain's over-extended forces. Most important is his recognition that Russia must be faced down. The United States has a special interest at stake in Kosovo: this is the only Muslim population in the world that loves America, to the extent of setting up a Statue of Liberty in Pristina, its capital. At least Cameron is alert to this situation. It is to be hoped he can awaken the rest of the country to Balkan realities. That region is the tinder-box of European conflict. Appeasement would be fatal.