Don’t leave the Balkans to Europe

     

 

Kosovo’s foreign minister has asked Apple to correct her country’s borders in its maps, AP reports. Meliza Haradinaj posted in her Twitter page on Sunday that she had written a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook “to take immediate steps to correctly present Kosovo’s internationally recognized borders in its AppleMap Service.”

On those maps, Kosovo is shown as part of Serbia, something the minister said was in “in direct contradiction of the political and legal realities.” Kosovo seceded from Serbia after a 1998-99 war that ended with a 78-day NATO air campaign against Serbian troops.

Differences between the U.S. and key European states have been growing since the Cold war ended, but a recent Kosovo dispute shows that the transatlantic partnership has reached a turning point, according to Reuf Bajrovic, co-chair of the US-Europe Alliance, and Ivana Stradner, a Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. European inability to solve the crisis in the Balkans in the 90s resulted in the bloodiest conflict Europe had seen since the World War II, which ended only when America took the lead. No matter who wins in November, the U.S. should not leave the region to the Europeans. It’s too important for that, they write for The American Interest. 

Corruption and unemployment in Kosovo are the public’s top two concerns, according to a 2019 survey by the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Next on the list is a desire to win visa-free travel to the EU, which all other Balkan states enjoy, DW adds.

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