Bosnian Serbs threaten to secede

After Montenegro declared its independence, I wondered whether the West had perhaps been too quick in the early 1990s to recognise small nations that seceded from others. There was a time when everyone seemed to be doing it, as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia fell apart. Then the Slovaks decided to jump on the band-waggon and secede from the Czechs; a decision most of them now regret.

From East Timor to Kosovo, states have seceded, designed themselves a flag, then appealed to NATO for protection. And therein lies the problem. Many of these states are just not viable on their own. Without military protection from NATO or a larger neighbour like Russia and, in Europe, the prospect of economic support from the EU, they would collapse.

But now everybody is at it. Kosovo has seceded from Serbia, so the Serbs there reckon they will secede from Kosovo. Now the Serbs in Bosnia have decided that, with the prospect of big-brother Russia wading in to help, they might as well give secession a go too. The already fragile Bosnian state could be about to collapse.

Who will be next? The Albanians in Macedonia? Russians in Moldova? Russians in eastern Ukraine?

What if Russian minorities in what are now NATO states in the Baltic decide to have a go too?

And then there is the question of the patchwork of ethnic groups across Russia.

A collection of small precarious states is not in the interests of the US, the EU or Russia. They are likely to become havens for drug smugglers, arms dealers, people traffickers and religious extremists.

Rushing to recognise Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence could prove to be as disastrous as the recognition of the Yugoslav secessions in 1991.