The Balkans return to the headlines this month, as the United States and Europe prepare to launch negotiations to determine whether Kosovo—the breakaway Serbian province over which they went to war in 1999—becomes an independent state.

Can diplomacy at last bring peace and stability to the Balkans, or do negotiations over Kosovo risk reigniting the wars of 1990s? What is the geopolitical future of the Balkans, and how will the European Union’s internal debate over expansion affect the integration of Kosovo and Serbia into the transatlantic world? What are the lessons of the Balkan experiment in nation-building, and what clues do they hold for Iraq and Afghanistan?

The New Atlantic Initiative will host a luncheon discussion to examine these and other questions. Participants include Janusz Bugajski, director of the Eastern Europe Project at CSIS; John Norris, chief of staff of the International Crisis Group’s Washington office and author of Collision Course: NATO, Russia and Kosovo (Praeger, 2005); Helga Flores-Trejo, executive director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Washington office; Radek Sikorski, executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative; and AEI research fellow Vance Serchuk.

This will be Radek Sikorski’s final appearance at AEI before returning to Poland, where he is a Senator-elect representing the Law and Justice Party in the parliament.