No matter how the Contact Group, the EU, or the UN try to mask their power plays in value terms—such as “standards” or, their latest fetish, “decentralization,” nobody should be fooled about the essence of international rule here. There is no debate in the literature about what the term “trusteeship” entails as the works of William Bain, Michael Pugh, or Francis Fukuyma show. It is a 19th century colonial term based on the idea that the “strong” have an “obligation” to govern those who are not deemed—for various geopolitical reasons—"FIT” TO GOVERN themselves. Having been thoroughly discredited during the Cold War as imperialist and racist, it has now come back with a vengeance in the guise of UN rule in Kosova. The project aims at nothing less than transforming—through political cooptation and enforced consent—societies as a whole WITHOUT ANY LOCAL INPUT.

To control Kosova, the “international community” has resorted to all kinds of schemes and empty promises such as “standards before status”, ”standards and status”, and “the future of Kosova lies in the European Union.” Its latest device is the term “decentralization,” which, brilliantly, captures the double need to punish the local while, at the same time, hold it hostage to negotiations on the final status question. An urgent letter is sent to the Prime Minister of the Kosova Provisional Government from the Contact Group on the “lack of progress” on “decentralization”; a government minister is summoned to the State Department to explain it; and suddenly the outcome of the “standards” evaluation exercise—by CZAR KAI EIDE—has been made contingent on ONE CONCEPT: decentralization.

We are not talking here about self-determination or statehood, but a couple of SMALL PILOT PROJECTS. And even if the Albanian political parties here—as well as the Serbs, who are torn by their loyalty to Belgrade and their local leaders—can certainly be blamed for using them for silly and petty political gains, the importance of these pilot projects have been blown out of all proportions. Indeed, since politically speaking, the term “decentralization” is so hazy and, frankly, unsexy, the “MORAL MISSIONARIES,” including powerbrokers such as the Contact Group, and political pigmies, like the Ombudsperson in Kosova, have needed to spice it up a little—for theatrical effect—by raising the specter of “violence” in Kosova. The aim of the exercise, however, is as old as it is stale: to divert attention from the real issue at hand: the final status.

The international propaganda barrage targeted at Kosovars—becoming cruder, more sexist, and more infantalizing each day—does not change one fact: that the so-called “international community” is concerned with political stabilization. It is not about values. It is—to paraphrase a famous political line from the Clinton years—about one thing: POWER—STUPID!