Why is there so much division in recognizing Kosovo as a sovereign state?

Question

I find the phenomenon curious, that all other countries that don't have recognition as sovereign states by other countries fall into two categories:

• Only recognized by a small number of countries (or even by no other countries, in some cases countries that recognize those countries are also not recognized as sovereign states by almost any other country).

• Recognized by almost all countries except for a few, due to some political conflict.

But in the case of Kosovo, more or less half of the world countries recognize it as a sovereign state while the other half don't.

Blue for recognizing countries, Orange for ones that don't

What reasons could explain this phenomenon?

Answer 1

The issues at hand are:

• Kosovo declared its independence unilaterally, without an agreement with Serbia. That makes recognizing its independence troubling for many countries that have their own independence movements. That explains why some countries do not recognize it.

• Kosovo declared its independence in the context of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, in which Serbia had attempted, with different levels of success, to take over the Serbian populated areas of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This did include expulsion and murder of civilians (not only by Serbia, but Serbia/Serbian backed forces were responsible for most of them). Kosovo had the potential to develop into yet another repetition of this. Recognizing its independence gave more possibilities to countries wishing to step in (because an attack by Serbia would no longer be an internal Serbian matter). This explains some other countries wishing to recognize Kosovo.

• Serbia was backed by Russia, which gave Western countries another incentive to recognize Kosovo's independence.

Answer 2

Spain does not want to recognize Kosovo to avoid recognizing Catalonia in the future.

Ditto China, because they do not want to recognize Taiwan.

Russia tackles Kosovo precedent in a post-modern fashion, where at the same time Russia does not recognize Kosovo in light of good relations with Serbia and not wishing to show an example for Chechnya, etc - but at the same time using it as a showcase to reason around its own Crimean affair.

(For those who are not into Balkan politics, Kosovo has a big brother state of Albania, to which it clings after its divorce with Serbia)

In general, Kosovo is an example of the US showing that they may disregard the rules that they set for other countries to follow. According to international law, Kosovo should remain de jure part of Serbia. Perhaps in federalized fashion, but here it goes. The pressure and encouragement from a superpower is sufficient for a half of world countries to actively violate that law.

Answer 3

The beginning of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia aligned with the fall of the Berlin wall and the shift of Eastern European countries towards the West. Yugoslavia was a federal communist state, and Serbia was one the federal republics within Yugoslavia. As the other republic sought to pursue independence they turned towards the West. Serbia, headed by Milosevic, a former communist, did not pursue the pro-Western policy. Instead Milosevic was establishing his own authoritarian type of rule.

This set the context for the US and Western foreign policy, which did not view Serbia aligned with the Western interests. As the wars started sanctions were imposed on Serbia. There were crimes committed by the Serbian side in Bosnia and Croatia, but unlike what's been inaccurately mentioned in the other responses, Serbia was not found guilty of these crimes, but rather Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia were found guilty of war crimes. Bosnia even sued Serbia for genocide in the International Court of Justice but lost the case.

With the wars in Croatia and Bosnia over in 1995 Milosevic still continued to rule in Serbia. However, another conflict was starting in 1998, with the Albanian population in the Serbian province of Kosovo also seeking independence. The conflict could mostly be compared to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Serbia facing the same challenge as Israel. Even though Serbia's response towards the Albanians was much milder than the Israeli response towards Israel, the West took a different approach in the case of Serbia. With Serbia not politically aligned with the West, the approach that the West took was to bomb Serbia, which eventually lead to NATO taking over Kosovo. Also, it is worth mentioning that prominent US politicians at the time such as Bob Dole, Joe Biden and Eliot Engel lobbied for the Albanian cause throughout the 90s.

When Kosovo declared independence in 2008 it was done so unilaterally, without the Security Council approval thus circumventing the international law. Why the US decided to recognize Kosovo is most likely for political and security reasons. Thus most countries shown in the map above have some sort of political and/or security arrangements and/or dependence on the US. There are some exceptions, such as Greece and Spain.

Most countries that do not recognize Kosovo, are less dependent on the US. Some have their own issues which are similar to the issue of Kosovo, and some do not have the incentive to recognize Kosovo and circumvent the international law. Thus, the issue of Kosovo remains the stalemate between the US and countries reliant on the US, and countries that are capable of pursuing more independent policies.