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Is Georgia teetering on the brink of civil war? Or will the status of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain an ambiguous frozen conflict? Either way, Russia wins.

On Wednesday, the Russian foreign ministry ratcheted up the pressure on Georgia by establishing legal ties with the two republics, which have been quasi-independent entities since the early 1990s. Georgia's leaders are predictably apoplectic over what they see as a Russian annexation of one third of their territory. Putin claims he wants to take steps to improve relations with Georgia and has instructed his government to lift trade restrictions between the countries. These overtures haven't gone over that well either, though. The United States and European Union strongly criticized Russia's meddling in the breakaway regions, but the Georgians probably sense that Western onlookers aren't prepared to do much to back up their words.

Whatever happens, it's likely to be good for Putin. If violence breaks out in the republics, it effectively scuttles Georgia's bid to join NATO. If the stalemate persists and Georgia is forced to live with the new arrangement, it demonstrates Russia's ability to impose its will on its neighbors without international consequences. In either scenario, Putin also gets to attack Western hypocrisy over the recognition of Kosovo.

I guess "lame duck" doesn't really translate in Russian.

VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images

It’s official: Macedonians are real, at least according to the U.S. State Department. 

At a NATO Summit Foreign Press Center briefing yesterday, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried was asked by a journalist if his use of the phrase “ethnic Macedonian” during the briefing meant that the U.S. Government has recognized “the so-called ‘Macedonian ethnicity and language."' (briefing video here, skip to 37:15)

As if Macedonia didn't have enough identity issues already, "so-called” comes in reference to the Bulgarian assertian that Macedonian, the language, is nothing more than a Bulgarian dialect written in a Serbian script. 

But Fried would hear none of it:

I don't think it is so-called. Macedonian language exists. Macedonian people exist. We teach Macedonian at the Foreign Service Institute… There is also the historic Macedonian province, which is different from the country. And it's important. It's quite clear that the government in Skopje, what we Americans call the Government of Macedonia, has no claims. We recognize the difference between the historic territory of Macedonia, which is, of course, much larger than the current country.

By refusing to back down on his use of “Macedonia,” Assistant Secretary Fried has just gone where Dustin the Turkey refused to go. 

This week’s Tuesday map comes to us from a billboard controversy south of the border.

Created by advertising agency Teran/TBWA and launched a few weeks ago in Mexico, the Absolut billboard ad depicted pre-1848 North America -– before the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo turned Mexican territories into what is now the American South West.

The campaign was obviously intended for a Mexican audience, as Favio Ucedo, creative director of a top Latino advertising firm, explained:

Many (Americans) aren’t going to understand it. Americans in the East and the North or in the center of the county -- I don’t know if they know much about the history… Probably Americans in Texas and California understand perfectly, and I don’t know how they’d take it.”

But Absolut quickly learned just how some Americans would take it: not well.  Although the ad never appeared in the U.S., it was picked up by American media outlets, causing a flurry of complaint from U.S. citizens (some more creative than others).

As of Friday, Absolut’s maker Vin & Spirits had decided to withdraw the apparently offensive advertisement even though it "was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility... [and was] in no way was meant to offend or disparage, nor...advocate an altering of borders..."

ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP/Getty Images

As expected, NATO has decided not to extend an invitation to the Republic of Macedonia -- excuse me, I mean "the Former Yugoslav Constitutional Republic of Upper Northwestern Macedonia, Skopje." That's right, Greece stuck to its nationalistic guns on the name issue today, carrying out its threat to block NATO membership if Macedonia didn't agree (and it didn't) to call itself the "Republic of Upper Macedonia," the "Republic of Macedonia, Skopje," or some comparably wordy derivative.

Macedonians didn't take the rejection well. After Greece blocked accession talks, Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski and his delegation walked out of the meeting. Antonio Milososki, Foreign Minister, told reporters:

We are [in Bucharest] today to announce that we are leaving the summit. We feel it necessary to be with our people today.”

Not a bad idea. Their people needed all the comforting they could get. Back at home, Macedonian stocks suffered a record blow, with the Macedonian Bourse Index losing 10.4 percent of its total value after it became clear that the country would not get an invite.

Acceptance into NATO carries great weight for these small, former communist countries. Neighboring President Bamir Topi of Albania, whose country did receive a coveted NATO invitation, proclaimed, "This is the most important decision in the history of Albanian people… With this decision we are definitely separated from Yalta," referring to the 1945 conference of the "Big Three" at which Stalin claimed Albania for the communist bloc. 

But NATO membership is more than symbolic for Macedonia, which narrowly missed a Kosovo-style ethnic war in 2001 thanks to an EU/NATO-brokered peace agreement. The country may now decide to pull out of U.N.-led name negotiations entirely, in which case Greece will repeat its power play on the EU front. If Macedonia is knocked off its current EU accession path because of a Macedonian identity issue, the state's large, pro-EU Albanian minority will not be happy. And all we need in the Balkans is one more unhappy ethnic minority.

Ireland's decision to send Dustin the Turkey -- a crass puppet who rides around in a shopping cart -- as its representative to the Eurovision Song Contest was met with mixed reviews by audience members last month. But the Irish aren't the only ones calling this turkey "fowl." Once again, because of the Macedonia name issue, the Greeks are up in arms.

At one point in the turkey's song "Irelande Douze Pointe" ("Ireland Twelve Points," in reference to the maximum points each country can give a contestant), Dustin sings, "Eastern Europe we love you, do you like Irish stew, or goulash as it is to you?" then proceeds to list countries in Eastern Europe one by one, including Macedonia (check here for clearer audio -- the lyrics are pretty great).

Ever since Macedonia's independence in 1991, Athens has argued that the name "Macedonia" is a part of Hellenic cultural heritage and that the former Yugoslav republic expresses territorial claims on northern Greece by using it. Now, thanks to Greek paranoia, rumor has it that Dustin the Turkey will have to join the U.N. in calling the country FRY Macedonia ("The Former Yugoslav Republic of...") in his lyrics.

But the name issue gets far more serious on the security front. Macedonia hopes to be invited to join NATO at the Bucharest Summit this coming Wednesday, but an invitation requires the unanimous support of existing NATO members, including Greece. Despite months of U.N.-supervised negotiations, neither Athens nor Skopje seem capable of coming to an agreement any time soon, spelling trouble for Macedonia's NATO aspirations.

Greece may have Macedonia in a NATO bind, but come May we'll see who gets the last Eurovision laugh. With acts like this as the winning standard, it's really anyone's game.

Last week, Serbia announced it would refrain from placing an embargo on Kosovo, whose economy has already suffered under eight years of undefined status.

Despite the announcement, legal trade between Kosovo and Serbia has dropped by an estimated 50 percent since Feb. 17, a noticeable loss as Serbia has otherwise remained Kosovo's biggest source of imports over the last 8 years.

High on the list of goods in short supply are the tasty, strangely addicting, Serbia-made treat known as the Plazma cookie. Plazma cookies and other goods have reportedly disappeared from Kosovar markets due to strict product label requirements. Since independence, Kosovo has required all products distributed in Kosovo to say "Republic of Kosovo." This is a problem under Serbian law:

A company, Serbian or foreign, can face fines of up to 1.0 million dinars ($19,000) if it mentions Kosovo as a separate territory on labels used on products sold in Serbian stores. Terms allowed are 'UNMIK/Kosovo', referring to the United Nations mission that took over the province in 1999 after NATO expelled Serb forces, 'Kosovo, Serbia' and 'Kosovo/1244', the number of the Security Council resolution that put Kosovo under U.N. administration."

According to Reuters reporters Ivana Sekularac and Shaban Buza, such discrepancies send a message of market uncertainty, curbing trade and regional investment. But Plazma has found a solution. The cookie company has simply opted to list the Kosovo distributor as in Albania. And it's a good thing, too:

Plazma are one of the most wanted and best-selling Serbian products, people really like them," said Tahir, an employee at a big supermarket in Pristina. "We tried with some similar Italian cookies, but in the end sold only two packs."

Not too surprising -- I bet the Italian cookies don't have quite the same effect.

In an interview today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov linked the ongoing violence in Tibet to the dreaded "Kosovo precedent":

There are grounds to presume that this is not occurring by chance [...] You can see what is happening in China's autonomous region of Tibet, how the separatists there are acting. The Albanians in Macedonia are already demanding a level of autonomy that is a clear step toward independence. Furthermore, events in other areas of the world give us grounds to assume that we are only at the beginning of a very precarious process."

It seems like the sinister implication of Kosovo for the future of the nation-state is fast becoming one of the Russian government's favorite rhetorical devices. Except for when it isn't of course.

(Hat tip: Robert Amsterdam)

Tensions in Kosovo between minority Serbs and U.N. peacekeepers turned violent Monday when a peaceful protest in the Serbian controlled northern half of Kosovska Mitrovica got ugly (think Molotov cocktail ugly). The clash left one U.N. police officer dead and more than 130 people injured. And despite today's calls for an end to the violence from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, riots have only continued.

You may be wondering: Why is it so important for Kosovo to keep this little town within its newly declared borders? Ask an Albanian Kosovar, and he'll tell you it's not. Mitrovica is a sad little town, once ravaged by war and now home to a bunch of scared, isolated Serbs. And the same can be said for many small towns situated between Kosovo's northern border with Serbia and the Ibar River.

So why not just let them go? After all, if Albanian-majority Kosovo can just leave Serbia, why can't Serb-majority Mitrovica leave Kosovo in turn?

Because, for the last eight years, the West has toed the "partition is not an option" line, and with good reason. In a region already teeming with disputed boundaries drawn around ethnically cleansed communities (fruits of the wars of the 1990s), partition could only make things worse.

Looking at Kosovo alone, partition would be tough. More than half of Kosovo's Serbs live south of the Ibar. To only partition the northern enclaves would only half address the issue, and even moderate partitioning would indirectly legitimize the population swapping that turned so bloody back in 1999. Regionally speaking, partition would also only add fuel to separatist flames, sending the wrong message to Serbs in Bosnia's Repulika Srpska and Albanians in Macedonia.

So even as the U.N. withdraws its forces from the north, the West will keep up its "no partition" mantra. Good thing, too. The last thing Europe needs right now is a precedent for the creation of endless mini ethnic states.

A senior EU official has told reporters that Russia may be preparing to recognize Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia:

There is a growing preoccupation and anxiety that Russia may be paving the way for recognition of Abkhazia," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said while reaffirming EU support for Georgia's borders.

"Georgia's territorial integrity has always been clearly supported by the EU... this is absolutely clear," she told a news conference before EU foreign ministers were due to discuss Georgia at their monthly meeting in Brussels.

"We will be discussing Georgia and... what can we do in order to support more strongly Georgia in a difficult situation."

Russia took a first step toward recognition last week when it lifted trade restrictions with the territory. It's hard to see this as anything but cynical "Kosovo payback" against Georgia's allies -- the United States and the EU -- that can only further destabalize an already volatile region. But since Abkhazia has been de facto independent since the early '90s and meets most of international law's minimum criteria for sovereignty, it will be interesting to see how Brussels and Washington will make the case that it is less deserving of statehood than Kosovo. We may be witnessing a return to the politically motivated recognition battles of the Cold War era.

The Russians may also be playing with fire by stirring up latent nationalism in the Caucasus -- a policy that they may come to regret down the road.

PETRAS MALUKAS/AFP/Getty Images

As many as 16 soldiers died Tuesday in a clash between Azeri and Armenian forces in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The province, located within Azerbaijan, was the site of large-scale violence and civilian relocation in the early 1990s after ethnic Armenians declared it independent. Warring parties signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994, but the self-run province remains largely unrecognized abroad and isolated from the world, thanks to an Azeri blockade.

As reports of the clash reached the Azeri public, President Ilham Aliyev declared his country's readiness to use force in order to retake the province:

We have been buying military machinery, airplanes and ammunition to be ready to liberate the occupied territories, and we are ready to do this.”

Indeed, tensions have been escalating for a while -- in November, Azerbaijan's defense minister said the chances of war were "close to 100 percent." Nonetheless, Azerbaijan blames the Armenians for yesterday's violence, claiming they forced an attack in order to draw attention away from the riots and deadly violence that gripped their capital over the weekend. Armenia, in turn, accuses Azerbaijan of exploiting Armenia's internal struggles to advance its own territorial claims.

Aliyev's speech came in part as a reaction to Kosovo's recent declaration of independence. Azerbaijan staunchly opposes independence for Kosovo, fearing that Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh could see international recognition of Kosovo as a green light for its own full independence. U.S. officials may repeat the refrain that "Kosovo does not constitute any precedent whatsoever," but clearly, plenty of other countries and regions see it as exactly that.

China Photos/Getty Images

Give Björk points for chutzpah. At the end of her song, "Declare Independence," the iconoclastic Icelandic pop singer shouted, "Tibet! Tibet!" The incident would be unremarkable were she not in Shanghai at the time. Naturally, her outburst wasn't reported in China's rigidly state-controlled press, but it has stirred up nationalist anger online. And it made the closing moments of her concert a little awkward:

The atmosphere was very strange, uncomfortable compared to the rest of the concert," said audience member Stephen Gow, a British teacher who lives in Shanghai. People didn't boo, Gow said, but they left the Shanghai International Gymnastic Center hurriedly.

Björk appears to use the song as a neo-Wilsonian Mad-Lib. Last month, she dedicated it to Kosovo, and in the video for it, she wears an outfit bearing the flags of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, both Danish territory.

ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis said today that his country will block Macedonia’s entrance into the EU and NATO if the country does not change its name. Macedonia expects an invite to NATO at the organization's summit in April and could possibly start EU negotiations this fall.

So what’s wrong with “Macedonia”? According to Greece, the name belongs to its northern region, an area that covers what was once ancient Macedonia back in the glory days of Alexander the Great (and they were glorious). Greece claims that use of “Republic of Macedonia,” as Macedonia calls itself in its constitution, not only violates Greece's historic cultural claim to the name, but also suggests territorial ambitions. Instead, Greece, and the U.N. by default, have continued to call Macedonia by the outdated name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” ever since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia seventeen years ago. It’s an awfully long name for a tiny country, but you can call it FYROM for short.

Speaking between rounds of negotiations between Skopje and Athens, Karamanlis said:

I want to be very clear on this. The intransigence of our neighbor is dashing its ambitions to join NATO and the European Union. If there is no settlement, the neighboring country cannot aspire to join NATO. Our position 'no solution-no invite' is clear."

On Tuesday, U.N. envoy Matthew Nimetz proposed five name alternatives: Constitutional Republic of Macedonia, Democratic Republic of Macedonia, Independent Republic of Macedonia, New Republic of Macedonia and Republic of Upper Macedonia.

Clearly, these choices were not satisfactory to Macedonians because riots broke out on Wednesday over the prospect of tampering with the country’s constitutional name. With Greece still hung up on a name from the third century B.C., Serbia's 1389 claim to Kosovo suddenly seems more reasonable.

Luis Acosta/Getty Images

Last year, FP's "Top 10 Stories You Missed" highlighted an issue that hadn't yet gotten a lot of attention in the press -- the fact that nearly half of the 700 miles of fence being built along the U.S.-Mexico border was actually slated to be "virtual" fence. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have said they prefer virtual to more conventional fencing. But it might be time for both campaigns to go back to the drawing board. After evaluating a virtual fence pilot project, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has thrown cold water on the notion that such fences can be relied upon to secure the border any time soon:

The pilot virtual fence included nine mobile towers, radar, cameras, and vehicles retrofitted with laptops and satellite phones or handheld devices. They were to be linked to a near-real-time, maplike projection of the frontier that agents could use to track targets and direct law enforcement resources. GAO investigators said that [the virtual fence] could not process large amounts of sensor data. The resulting delays made it hard for operators in a Tucson command center 65 miles to the north to lock cameras on targets. Radar systems were also triggered inadvertently by rain and other environmental factors. Cameras had trouble resolving images at five kilometers when they were expected to work at twice that distance...."

The initial phase of the virtual fence -- covering approximately 100 miles near Yuma, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas -- was supposed to be completed by the end of 2008. But the GAO now estimates that it will take until the end of 2011 to complete that initial 100 miles of virtual fence. That means it will take until nearly the end of the next president's first term to deploy a virtual fence along a tiny 100-mile stretch of the border. After that, friends, there's just 1,900 miles to go. I figure we can get the whole thing "virtually secured" sometime around the turn of the century.

Listening to the Democrats talk about using science to secure the southern border is like listening to Republicans talk about using technology to solve climate change. Technology, we are assured, will solve all of America's problems without us having to make any real changes. Sadly, in both cases, that's just cover for not having a real policy to address the problem.

While Americans watched their embassy burn last Thursday, Serbs in Belgrade watched as other Serbs ransacked more than 90 storefronts along the capital city's main drag.

During the chaos, one Belgrade resident caught a pair of women on camera snatching clothes and shoes from broken store windows (watch the video here). At one point, the cameraman asks a woman, her arms full of pilfered shoes, if she had found her size. Later, when a different thief refuses to tell the cameraman her name, he calls after her sarcastically, "Hero of the protest!"

The video, posted on Youtube as "Kosovo for sneakers," has been a huge hit among Serbian speakers. With more than a million views before it was taken down and resubmitted, it has drawn thousands of comments from Serbs angry at the behavior demonstrated in downtown Belgrade that night.

The video has also spurred on a series of mock Kosovo/Nike ads such as this one that is making the e-mail rounds:

The top reads "Kosovo is Serbia" and the sneakered man to the left of Condi is Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica -- a fierce advocate for keeping Kosovo in Serbia.

Serbs may have a rocky future ahead of them, but at least they haven't lost their sense of humor.

RAFA RIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

Since Kosovo declared independence last week, secessionist fever has gripped disgruntled regions from Somaliland to Scotland, and possibly even Montana. With all these pseudostates pushing to get their sovereignty on, who's to say when a place actually becomes a country? No less an international legal scholar than Frank Zappa once said, "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." It's a bit more complicated than that, but Frank was right that the criteria for independence are not always clear.

If you're planning on starting a state of your own, you'll want to check out FP's new online guide, "How to Start Your Own Country in Four Easy Steps." These easy-to-follow instructions will make declaring independence, getting international recognition, and applying for U.N. membership a breeze. Whether you're a freedom fighter or just an aspiring kleptocrat, it's a must read. Just follow my simple rules and you'll be sipping your national brew on the presidential jet in no time.

ANJA NIEDRINGHAUS/AFP/Getty Images

For more than a decade, Bosnia has been struggling to pull itself back together under the Dayton Peace Accords, the 1995 agreement that brought an end to the country's bloody civil war but also left Bosnia divided into two mini-states.

Also for more than a decade, Radovan Karadzic (shown at right) -- one time president of the Bosnian Serbs, now indicted by the U.N.'s International Criminal tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity –- has remained at large, making a mockery of the court's attempt at international justice. (For anyone who’s seen The Hunting Party, you know the story).

Now, Bosnian officials have reported that the actual original copy of the signed peace accords is missing from the presidential archives. And who do they think has it? None other than Radovan himself. Vladimir Lukic, former prime minister of the Serbian half of Bosnia, said:

I suppose the document was given to the President of the Republika Srpska (Karadzic) for safe keeping."

No wonder Bosnia continues to be an unsustainable, divided country -- its founding document has been entrusted to the very face of ethnic cleansing.

David Silverman/Getty Images

A Palestinian man hurls stones at Israeli troops (unseen) during a violent protest against Israel's security fence, Feb. 22, 2008, where it cuts off Palestinian farmers from their land at the West Bank village of Bil'in. Hundreds of villagers backed up by foreign and left-wing Israeli supporters marked three years of demonstrations against Israel's controversial barrier.

The world's best-selling board game is finally going global. Hasbro, the makers of Monopoly, are creating a version wherein instead of snatching up the deeds to Atlantic Avenue or Park Place, players can build up property in global cities such as Moscow or Tokyo.

The company is letting people vote online through Feb. 28 on what cities to include. Originally, the cities listed on the game's Web site included the countries where they are located -- "Dublin, Ireland," for example.

An early version of the site listed "Jerusalem, Israel" as a potential place on the board. But then pro-Palestinians wrote in to complain, because Jerusalem, they hope, will be the capital of a future Palestinian state. So, a mid-level employee dropped the word "Israel" from Jerusalem's place name. Then pro-Israelis complained because of the inconsistency, since other country names were still there.

In a truly Solomonic feat, Hasbro decided to drop all country names (though the company claims they were only there in the first place "as a geographic reference to help with city selection"). And now capitalism is free to run amok without any borders. At least in Monopoly.

The latest news on the Kosovo recognition front is that Bolivia has decided not to recognize the country's independence. President Evo Morales compared Kosovo to the four eastern Bolivian states that are pushing for greater autonomy, a situation we wrote about in December. Morales's ally Hugo Chávez will not recognize Kosovo, either.

Smoke billowed from the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade today after protesters broke into the building, destroying offices and setting fire to the interior. Outside, furious Serbian protestors burned the American flag that few over the embassy door, briefly replacing it with their own:

The violent demonstration came at the end of a state-sponsored rally held under the banner "Kosovo is Serbia." Apparently the angry, anti-American outburst had no relation to the 200,000 person rally, but Serbia's state officials definitely should have seen an attack on the U.S. Embassy coming.

The embassy was already the site of a major demonstration that took place just hours after Kosovo announced its independence on Sunday. And its location made it a very easy target in today’s gathering -- it sits just blocks from both the Parliament building where the protest began and the Serbian Orthodox temple where the protest concluded.

Yet despite its obvious vulnerability, the Serbian officials who called the rally apparently did not plan any police protection for the building. When the fires broke out, not one police officer could be found on the scene. And it took more than an hour and a half before 200 riot police finally made an appearance.

By leaving the embassy unguarded today, Serbian officials reverted to a favorite technique of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic -- call in the crowds and let the mob mentality do the rest. In doing so, they did manage to grab international attention, but only to demonstrate just how little Serbian democracy has progressed.