The annual Munich security conference is a splendid occasion that assembles the cream of the military and political establishment of the Nato alliance and has traditionally been a good place for Europeans and Americans to tell each other a few home truths.

Sometimes they do, and sometimes they do not. Since the end of the cold war, the Russians have attended, although they are still treated rather like gate-crashers.

Yet for an event that prides itself on blunt speaking – famously exploited last year by Vladimir Putin with a frontal assault on US foreign policy – there are sometimes subjects that get ducked. This year that subject was Kosovo.

Of course the imminent declaration of independence by that rebellious territory, technically still part of Serbia, was mentioned. Boris Tadic, newly re-elected president of Serbia, made sure of that. He issued an emotional appeal for others not to rush into recognising the new state.

Yet answer came there none. No one wanted to debate the consequences, or how to deal with them.

It seems to be a problem on both sides. Mr Tadic and the Serbian government do not wish to spell out in any detail how they will respond. The Nato allies, including America, and most of the European Union, simply want to treat the act as an inevitable fact of life that Serbia must live with. They do not want to contemplate wider consequences.

The only person who dared to tackle the question head on was Sergei Ivanov, the Russian first deputy prime minister and former defence minister. He warned that international recognition of Kosovo’s independence – he meant by the US and most of the EU – would set a dangerous international precedent.

“That would definitely be beyond international law,” he said. “It would be something close to opening a Pandora’s box.”

For once, Mr Ivanov did not appear to be too smug. “We disagree on Kosovo, not because Russia is stubborn to support the Serbs and nothing else,” he said. “We won’t be more Serbian than the Serbs themselves”.

Indeed, he rejected the “misconception that is spread among Nato and EU countries”, that Kosovo’s independence would be swiftly followed by Russian support for the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, breakaway provinces of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. “I assure you Russia is not going to recognise Abkhazian or South Ossetian independence the next day,” he said.

But he went on to talk about a “domino effect” throughout the region. What could he mean?

For a start, Republika Srpska might well call a referendum on its secession from Bosnia-Herzegovina, a move that would start to unscramble the 1995 Dayton peace settlement that ended the Bosnian civil war. And the Albanian minority in Macedonia may also start to demonstrate again for independence.

Mr Tadic may well not want to encourage the Bosnian Serbs. He has promised he will do nothing to encourage a violent response to Kosovo’s independence. But there are still large quantities of arms stockpiled in Bosnia, and not enough international forces to defend them.

Washington is adamant that the faster Kosovo presses ahead with independence, the better for Balkan stability. But it is the European Union that is supposed to guarantee that stability. Because the EU is divided between supporters and opponents of independence, planning has been less than it should be.

Serbia will undoubtedly lobby for all its worth to undermine the legality of Kosovo’s independence. It may well impose a trade embargo at its borders, although cutting off electricity would cut the lines to Macedonia and Greece as well.

The chances are that Kosovo will remain in a legal limbo, and an economic vacuum, for the foreseeable future. Its security will be guaranteed by 17,000 Nato troops, and 1,800 EU police, judges and bureaucrats. Their job will be to build new institutions. Yet without an economy – unemployment is somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent, and exports cover just 6 per cent of imports – institutions alone will not survive.

“At the very worst, we could even be faced with a failed state,” says Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister.

It is not a prospect many are ready to contemplate.