Morning thoughts

Despite the winter storm, our McDonnell Douglas seems ready to leave Denmark on time and begin its climb through the reddish morning light. The last days have been eventful, both personally and professionally. One of my manuscripts is now on track – admittedly not a short one – toward publication in Political Studies; another paper has been accepted for the ECPR Graduate Conference in Barcelona; and, following Kosovo’s declaration of independence last Sunday, I once again find myself thinking back on the summer’s visit there.

Though it was quickly retracted, the threat of military force issued by Russia’s NATO ambassador, Dmitrij Rogozin, did not bode well. Yet the frustration of the Serbs in Mitrovica is fully understandable. Often, conflicts of this kind come to feel intractable, especially when you hear the personal stories. Getting my morning coffee in Lund the other day, I struck up a conversation with the café owner, whom I know comes from Kosovo. Seemingly happy, he told me that at last his people were free to rule themselves –  to decide what to teach in their schools and to pray according to their own religion.

I did not feel like arguing by suggesting that those freedoms had been secured ever since the bombings of 1999 and the creation of UNMIK. Nor did I ask what he thought about the hundreds of minorities in the world who might potentially wish for a state of their own – especially the Serbs in northern Kosovo. But as I left with my coffee, I could hear the chilling words of Kiro Gligorov, the former president of Macedonia: “Why should I be a minority in your country when you can be a minority in mine?”

And now, sitting here at the gate in Copenhagen, writing on a paper about global federal governance, I finally know what I should have said there at the café: that the great idea of the European Union has been not to change borders, but rather to change the meaning of borders.