Vuk Jeremić, the young Foreign Minister of Serbia, is a globetrotting man on a mission.  He has circled the globe in the past few months, racking up an impressive number of visited world capitals.  Among them are Jakarta, Mexico City, Cairo, Tripoli, Beijing, Tehran, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Brasilia and Moscow.  Jeremić also attended the session of the Organization of American States in Medellín, Colombia and the summits of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran and of the African Union in Egypt.

 

Each appearance provides him an uncritical platform to speak against recognition of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence and to network with and lobby politicians against such a step by their respective governments and to have the ability to shape their first impressions of the issue.  Jeremić has not had to work very hard.  His appearances around the world go unanswered by Kosovo and consequently 46 countries (as of this writing) recognize Prishtina after six months of independence.  In contrast, six months after it had achieved independence, Montenegro had received recognition from 90 countries.

 

This discrepancy is readily explained by the essentially non-existent lobbying efforts by the Kosovar government.  It is all well and good for the President of Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu and his Foreign Minister, Skënder Hyseni, to repeatedly come out and say to the media and public that recognitions are coming, but then they return to their offices and go back to whatever it is that they do.  The two reasons why Kosovo has the 46 recognitions at present is due to the good offices of other countries, such as the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, and the tireless (and thankless) lobbying efforts by private individuals in Kosovo and abroad.

 

To give credit where it is due, Mr. Hyseni has traveled to Panama, Ecuador, Paraguay, Slovenia, Belgium and the Czech Republic.  President Sejdiu has traveled to the United States and will attend the General Assembly of the United Nations in September.  However, within this same period of time, they have been out-lobbied and outfought at almost every turn by Serbia, whose foreign minister seems to hardly ever be in Belgrade.

 

Let us suppose for a moment that I had my own country.  One of my first assignments would have been to my foreign minister.  Opting not to cross my fingers and let others do the legwork for me, my minister’s instructions would have been quite clear: leave and don’t come home until you’ve gotten us 100 recognitions (100 being a nice round number and more than half the membership of the UN).  Mr. Hyseni’s instructions seem to have been something along the lines of, “Don’t knock yourself out.”  Aside from teas with diplomats in Prishtina and a few brief foreign trips, there has not been much foreign in the duties of the minister.

 

International recognition is critical to the survival of Kosovo and to treat it so carelessly is to invite disaster.  While the Powers That Be in Prishtina have sat at their desks or cut ribbons in villages, their diplomatic opponents have been aggressively working to undercut them at every available opportunity.  For Kosovo to sit back and allow other countries to lobby for them is to demonstrate great indolence.  The pronouncements that more countries will recognize while the Kosovar government does little or nothing to achieve this is embarrassing.  At this point, Bangui and Bangkok would be much better destinations for Mr. Hyseni than Brussels, if he can be pried out of Prishtina.  Diplomacy is not a sport for wallflowers.