Another war in Europe?

Europe doesn't need another explosion in the Balkans. It's getting one anyway.

KFOR helicopters attempting to extinguish a fire in Kosovo, via KFOR Public Affairs Office . 

Humanity is vile. That’s my conclusion upon surveying the news from Serbia and Kosovo. Yet more imbeciles itching for more war, more misery, more bloodshed, and more suffering. Mothers and fathers who are eager to see their sons come home in a coffin. Sons who are eager to hop into them.

No one ever learns a goddamned thing.

Serbia has put its military on the highest state of combat alert. The Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, plans to “take all measures to protect our people and preserve Serbia.”

The casus belli? License plates.

Kosovo, you may recall—which ethnically is overwhelmingly Albanian—broke away from Serbia after the 1998-99 war.¹ Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo. Nor do more than a hundred thousand ethnic Serbs who live in Kosovo, especially in the north, where they’re the majority.

KFOR, NATO’s 3,700-strong peacekeeping force, has been in Kosovo since the US bombed the Serbs out. The US and most of the EU recognize Kosovo. Russia and China back Serbia. Kosovo’s not a member of the United Nations, because Russia has blocked its membership. Five EU states—Spain, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, and Cyprus—refuse to recognize it.

For years, the government of Kosovo has been trying to get ethnic Serbs to put Kosovar license plates on their cars. They’ve refused. They’re deeply attached to their Serbian license plates. They’d die for those license plates.