Seven and a half years after the last nato bomb exploded in Yugoslavia, Kosovo could be on the verge of erupting once again. Last Wednesday, three days of talks holding out dim hope that Serbian and Kosovar representatives could reach a peaceful settlement ended in two statements marking the bitter divide between Belgrade and Pristina.

“Our goal is to have independence … by the end of the year,” Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku said.

President Boris Tadic put Serbia’s position just as bluntly: “Serbia will not accept the independence of Kosovo.”

The talks, which took place south of Vienna, practically ended two years of negotiations moderated by the United Nations and, in the past four months, the trio of the United States, the European Union and Russia.

Kosovo, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians, has said that it will declare independence unilaterally if the UN’s December 10 deadline passes without a mutual solution to the dilemma.

Kosovo is part of a long, complex Balkan history.

On the heels of the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913, World War i began with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia, Russia mobilizing to defend Serbia, and the German Empire declaring war on Russia and preemptively attacking France. Serbia sided with the Allies and experienced heavy casualties before Serbian and Allied forces broke back through toward the end of the war. It is recognized that German maneuverings precipitated the war.

After the war ended, the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later named the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, controlled Kosovo’s territory. This “First Yugoslavia” fell in 1941 when the German Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade and Axis powers invaded and conquered the kingdom, setting up Croatia and Serbia as fascist puppet states. The rest of the territory was split between Hitler’s allies, and Serbian and other anti-Nazi peoples were killed en masse, many of them in concentration camps.

Following the Allies’ victory in World War ii, the Second Yugoslavia formed under Serbian Communists, the ultimate winner of a three-way struggle between themselves, fascist occupiers and Serbian royalist guerrillas. The post-war administration of former Bolshevik Josip Broz Tito reunified the disparate republics into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, albeit in dictatorial fashion. Subsequent to Tito’s death in 1980, Slobodan Milosevic rose to power. Milosevic was violently opposed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, a terrorist organization. In late 1998, Milosevic cracked down against ethnic Albanians and the KLA, which sought secession from Yugoslavia.

But in the midst of republics fragmenting into constituent republics fragmenting into provinces fragmenting into autonomous districts, the entity to recognize is the nation that turned the Balkans into an international crisis: Germany.

In the early 1990s, it was Germany that seized on Yugoslavian instability in a new form of Balkan invasion: diplomatic divide and conquer. With most Western countries in opposition for fear of the chaos that might result, Bonn recognized Croatia and Slovenia, swinging the entire European Union, as well as the United States, around to its will.

“Germany’s decision to press for quick recognition of the two republics, disregarding appeals from the United States and the United Nations, marked a new assertiveness that some Europeans find disconcerting,” the New York Timesreported at the time (Jan. 16, 1992).

The article, which called the coup a “triumph of German foreign policy,” reported that internal politics played a large role in Germany’s drive, backed by the Vatican, to steamroll the world’s conventional wisdom and recognize the two predominantly Catholic republics. “‘Germany is acting in a highly sensitive psychological environment,’ said a commentary this week in Bonn’s principal newspaper, the General-Anzeiger. ‘The fear of German dominance and unilateralism has grown’” (ibid.).

“Influential Catholic leaders, as well as the predominantly Catholic Christian Social Union, which is part of the ruling coalition, have strongly pressed the government to defend Slovenia and Croatia” (ibid.). The Vatican recognized the two states the day after Germany.

In our July 1998 issue, the Trumpet warned readers to “Watch for German initiatives to take advantage of this situation to further her continual, careful extension of eastward hegemony in the Balkans.”

In February 2002, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “The only real winner in 1999’s war in Yugoslavia was Germany. Time will show that America and Britain were the great losers. The Kosovo conflict made them weaker as Germany grew in power.”

Having lost Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, Belgrade is resisting its longtime foe’s attempt to cut territory out of its own sovereign borders, ironically and tragically assisted by Serbia’s allies from both World Wars.

Bolstered by diplomatic firepower coming from the EU and the United States, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian President Fatmir Sejdiu said independence “will happen very quickly.”

Soon after December 10 passes, the ethnic, religious and political cocktail of the Balkans may burst into flames once again. Whether diplomatically or forcefully, watch for Germany to carefully control the situation to its advantage.

For a comprehensive understanding of Berlin’s ambitions regarding Kosovo, read The Rising Beast—Germany’s Conquest of the Balkans.