An independent Kosovo
From Time:
"From the beginning, it was clear that there was very little common ground between the parties: the Kosovo Albanians opted for nothing less than independence, while Serbs vowed that they would never accept it. Belgrade now says it is ready to retaliate against Kosovo if it tries to secede, as well as against any country that chooses to recognize it."
Further down, the article says
"Serbia's ultimate threat is that the secession of Kosovo would topple moderate nationalists in the government and replace them with ultra-nationalists from the Serbian Radical Party, thus ending democracy in Serbia and turning it, again, into a rogue state. Western endorsement of Kosovo's independence, Serbian officials say, would turn a vast majority of Serbs against the U.S. and the E.U. and bring it closer to Russia, the only major power that backs Serbia over Kosovo.
Yet it turns out that the majority of Serbs do not share the government's views. Although recent opinion polls do show a slight increase in anti-Western sentiments, more than half of the electorate strongly supports Serbia's prospective membership in the E.U., even if the price of that means losing Kosovo."
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Very interesting stuff. All the news reports I've read about this more or less say the same thing, which is a lot of... "we don't really know what will happen." News articles shift their tones from "well you know what, Kosovo will be independent and Serbia will deal with it and in the end there won't be problems because the UN is there and Serbia wants to be part of the EU so there will be tension but no violence" to "this could lead to another war and separatist movements in other areas of the Balkans, including Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Serbia is going to cut off power to Kosovo and everyone will go crazy and start a new war."
At least that's what I'm getting.
So we'll just wait and see, and try to pay very close attention.