Ante el riesgo de los estallidos de ¿esporádicas? llamaradas de violencia, en las fronteras de Kosovo, Wall Street Journal había descrito con precisión la situación de una España sonámbula en una Europa balcanizada.

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WSJ recuerda el antecedente de la trágica mascarada de las guerras balcánicas: Europa pidiendo la intervención militar de Washington (sin autorización de Naciones Unidas), ensangrentado antecedente del esperpento kosovar. Y España sonámbula en la periferia de esa Europa balcanizada.

Wall Street Journal, 20 feb. 08. Balkanized Europe.

The European Union got a chance to redeem itself for a big sin of the previous decade and show its vaunted «common foreign policy» in action. We’d like to report it didn’t blow it. Alas, we can’t.
The occasion was Kosovo’s declaration of independence on Sunday. A unified EU stance might have started to make good, at last, on Jacques Poos’s infamous 1991 declaration that «the hour of Europe has dawned.» Soon after, the EU broke up over Yugoslavia, which collapsed in a series of wars that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The U.S. had to step in to save the EU and the Balkans.
This week seemed like déjà vu all over again, fortunately without the blood. Spain opened the EU meeting on Kosovo by proclaiming that the U.N. protectorate’s declaration did «not respect international law.» The ruling Socialists were apparently enraged that the Kosovars didn’t have the decency to wait to claim their sovereignty until Spain held national elections next month. Demands for autonomy by the Basques and Catalans are a big electoral issue and Kosovo put the incumbents in an awkward position.
Similarly parochial political concerns, and Orthodox Slavic solidarity with the Serbs, are behind the refusal of Romania, Bulgaria, Greek Cyprus and Greece to recognize Kosovo. Slovakia, for its part, fears its own Hungarian minority will get the wrong idea. Others, like the Italians, fretted about annoying the Serbs and Russians. Britain, France and Germany welcomed this peaceful and long-planned birth of a new nation in the southern Balkans. But the U.S. led the way in recognizing Kosovo, and took most of the heat from Moscow and Belgrade.
In the meantime, the Greeks again threaten to torpedo the EU’s grand designs for the Balkans all over a name for its northern neighbor, which Athens insists must be called Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or the Orwellian FYROM. Unless the Macedonians stand down, Athens will veto its EU and NATO membership. The U.S. and most EU countries recognize Macedonia by its chosen name. A U.N. mediator yesterday put forward new proposals to settle this absurd and costly 17-year-old dispute.
So let there be no illusions. About the only thing that’s «common» about the EU’s foreign policy is its sheer pettiness, absence of strategic vision and unwillingness to back up grand claims to global leadership with resources or political will.

• Balcanes en este Infierno.