A Serbian insurgency and de facto partition of Kosovo remain possible, and we have yet to face the destabilizing effects of Kosovo’s claim to independence on other divided Balkan states such as Bosnia and Macedonia But the balance sheet is even worse in terms of international relations. Kosovo was a stalking horse for Iraq, as the doctrine of humanitarian intervention morphed into President George W. Bush’s doctrine of “pre-emptive war,” by which the US claimed the right to attack any state that it deemed a threat to its national security.