The fact that Kosovo was torn away from Serbia as a result of the Bosnia War of the 1990s was not dictated from above or was inevitable. It was a Loss by Complacency.

Serbia had allowed this situation to develop over the years by letting a Muslim majority grow in place. It then was able to take over the most important district in Serbian history.

International interference in this developing conflict helped decide its fate, but only because Serbia did not continually demonstrate that it cared for the area, and therefore should have ensured a permanent Serbian majority in it and not let it fall into the hands of Muslims, thus altering the entire strategic balance in the Balkans.

The U.N. and other international forces decided the fate of the war in Kosovo, but it was the Serbs own self-delusion that they needed to do nothing to ensure their sovereignty over the territory that was theirs for centuries. They should have had no faith in the American and European assurances, or in the Dayton Agreements, which ended the Bosnia War and that Serbian territorial integrity would be guaranteed in any case.

Born in Fes, Morocco, Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is currently a Professor Emeritus. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. A Fellow of the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, Professor Israeli is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam in the Middle East, in Asia, and in Europe.