Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Kosovo Dreams

George Friedman takes a look at the issue of Russia and Kosovo's independence, and suggests a few - mostly scary - scenarios, such as a "light military" option:

...Putin would send a battalion or two of troops by air to Belgrade, load them onto trucks and send them toward Pristina, claiming this as Russia’s right under agreements made in 1999. Assume a squadron of Russian aircraft would be sent to Belgrade as well. A Russian naval squadron, including the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, already is headed to the Mediterranean. Obviously, this is not a force that could impose anything on NATO. But would the Germans, for example, be prepared to open fire on these troops?
However, as Valery Dzutsev points out in the comments, for several well-founded reasons these projected scenarios are the least likely ones to arise, and Friedman ignores a much more possible outcome, though even it can't yet really be tagged as "probable".

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