The Kosovo peace conference concluded this week with claims of a limited success.
Some progress is evident.
The deal reached represents nothing more than agreement over principles, and in the Balkans details matter more than bits of paper. Europe and the US merely gained time, while the region is still hovering on the precipice of a disaster. The peace conference was a finely balanced exercise of reconciling the impossible. It sought to promise the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo enough freedom in order to persuade them to stop fighting, while reassuring the Serbs that the province would remain part of Yugoslavia. The people of the Balkans always knew that autonomies are merely a prelude to independence, and that Kosovo was unlikely to be an exception.