Europe’s Next Major Conflict - A Forecast
At the time of writing this article, the war in Ukraine is slightly over six months away from entering its third year. Russian ambitions in eastern Europe are arguably at their highest since the late 1980s, and the world’s security landscape is looking decreasingly stable. The relative peace that Europe has enjoyed since the late 1940s, with a possible break in the late 1990s, seems to be on the decline as time goes on.
So where is the next conflict in Europe likely to emerge? At this time, Kosovo seems like a likely candidate.
Kosovo’s Flag. Credit: Aboodi Vesakaran
Largely unrecognised outside of the Western world (with a few exceptions in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia), Kosovo is a small area of land in (or, depending on who you ask, next to) southern Serbia. The territory is approximately the same size as Lebanon or Jamaica in terms of land area, and is home to less than two million people - about the same size as Rabat or Warsaw in terms of population.
Recent history has not been kind to Kosovars.
Violence in Kosovo is a product of ethnic tensions between Albania, which ethnically represents the majority of the local population, and Serbia, the country of which Kosovo has historically belonged to as a province. Decades of oppression took place under the Serbian government, including police brutality and arrest rates so high that the territory emerged as Europe’s most distinct region for human rights violations. Kosovo thus declared independence in 2008 - an outcome which Serbia (unlike the United States and major EU nations) continues to deny as legitimate to this day.
So how does a 16-year-old independence movement emerge as a leading contender for the next security crisis in Europe?
A map detailing the ethnic breakdown of Kosovo, which leans heavily Albanian. Credit: Encyclopaedia Britannica
To begin with, we should never underestimate the potential for security breakdowns in the Balkan Peninsula to quickly draw in major players, resulting in conflicts that far outsize their origins. The First World War effectively began in Serbia, and the breakdown of Yugoslavia eighty years later resulted in the Bosnian Genocide at the hands of Serbian forces. Later that very decade, a Serbian crackdown against Kosovar separatists went so far as to pull in NATO forces. One does not need to look particularly far into the past to recognise how ethnic tensions in the Balkans have caused significant crises - and it is not difficult to imagine how it may happen again.
Further complicating the situation is Serbia’s backing by Russia and, increasingly, China. This network of alliances - Albania, Kosovo, and the West, against Serbia, Russia, and China - is a perfect example of how, as previously stated, the outcome of a crisis in the Balkans can quickly become dramatically inflated, just as it did 110 years ago. And the results are clear: in May 2024, Kosovo’s Prime Minister himself stated that “The threat of war in the Balkans is not merely a theoretical one…[it is] real.”.
TAI Score: Degree 4. Despite the tension in itself being geographically contained between non-nuclear and relatively small states, the situation in Kosovo remains uncertain and holds high potential to become another proxy clash between NATO and Russia. The lack of a definitive path forward, combined with the issue serving as yet another vector for conflict not only in the Balkans, but also for major external actors, mean that constant monitoring of the situation is required. Diplomacy, compromise, and further study of how ethnic identity impacts security throughout the world will all be required to avoid another catastrophe in Europe.
