This past Sunday, nearly a decade after the United States and other U.N. countries intervened in Serbia’s ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s predominately Albanian Muslim minority, Kosovo declared itself independent of Serbia. The United States was quick to recognize this diplomatic step, as were many of our Western allies. Russia, a longtime proponent of Serbia, has voiced fervent opposition to Kosovar’s independence. This has Cold War and James Bond fighting the Russians written all over it.

Many countries are hesitant to support Kosovo’s declaration out of fear that it may embolden their own minorities to pursue presumed rights of self-determination. Kurds in northern Iraq have been contemplating such a move for many years, but have been advised by the West to hold off and remain committed to a unified Iraq.

Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka have been seeking their own territory in the island nation off the coast of India for many years. The Basques in Spain, Chechnyans in Russia, Tibetans and the Taiwanese in China are all examples of separatist groups looking for independence from their ruling regimes. What is the criterion for being able to declare yourself an independent country, and why Kosovo but not any of the other aforementioned?

It seems to this writer that legitimacy is only granted to fledgling breakaway nations when it is politically convenient for the world’s powers to do so, meaning no major countries have to make any serious concessions. Serbia is not a country that the United States and our allies are overly concerned with offending. The same can’t be said about Spain, China and Russia. How else can we explain why some group’s right to self-determination are more legitimate than other’s?

Further compounding the issue are the prospects for survival for the newly independent country. In Kosovo, where unemployment is at 60 percent and most of the 2 million or so inhabitants are living in poverty, the country will be almost completely reliant on outside help to sustain its economy, security and other vital aspects of any new country. The legitimacy of a regime is difficult to prop up when it is completely dependent on Western benevolence.

The thought of granting independence to a group of people who have been brutally oppressed in the past is certainly intoxicating for a government in need of a public foreign policy victory in the face of its failures in the Middle East. However, this sentiment must be properly weighed against the circumstances facing our own country today.

Now isn’t the ideal time to pick a fight with Russia — we need Putin’s new patsy president Medvedev to line up behind us as we deal with the continuing insubordination coming from the Iranian regime in Tehran. We need Russia to pressure its Arab allies like Syria to continue to take steps towards curtailing the flow of arms and money to insurgents in Iraq and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. We need Russia to stop meddling in the electoral affairs of former soviet republics such as Georgia and the Ukraine so that democratic roots planted long ago can grow into functioning democracies. America simply does not have the political capital to waste on a breakaway republic whose short-term prospects for survival are murky at best. We’ve got to keep our eyes and checkbook focused on the bigger picture.