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Jewish World Review Oct. 12, 2000 / 11 Tishrei, 5761
Philip Terzian
It's difficult to say what the Clinton/Gore administration has learned from the fall of
Milosevic, but it's fair to assume that humility is not among the lessons.
Bill Clinton ran for president by condemning George Bush for "kowtowing" to China.
But once in office, Clinton showed a healthy penchant for deference as well. He not
only declined to turn around the Bush policy on the People's Republic, he
augmented it by transforming Beijing into a "strategic partner." When genocide
erupted in Rwanda, Clinton invented ways to avoid U.S. involvement, and 2 million
Tutsis died. When Yugoslavia imploded, and Bosnia was devoured by ethnic
cleansing and reprisals, Clinton held the coat for our European allies.
During much of this time, his second secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, was
touring the world describing the United States as the "essential superpower." At
some point, presumably, somebody told Mrs. Albright that essential superpowers
don't prevail by inertia, and so America got active. We brokered a settlement in
Bosnia, the Dayton Accords, which has kept the antagonists from killing one
another by stationing NATO troops there as constables. And while Milosevic was
pleased at Dayton to abandon the Bosnian Serbs, the accords said nothing about
neighboring Kosovo. So when the dictator proceeded to massacre Albanians in
Kosovo, and CNN broadcast tearful refugees, the Clinton/Gore administration
intervened.
Three months of bombing Belgrade yielded no American losses -- a feat that still
impresses Vice President Gore -- but left Yugoslavia in considerably worse shape
than before. The Albanians we had come to rescue fled largely to Greece, and when
the bombing stopped, those who returned to Kosovo started killing resident Serbs.
So while no American blood has been shed, American troops enforce an uneasy
Balkans peace. And the bombing campaign, which devastated one of Europe's least
prosperous nations, left Milosevic in office, and his countrymen desperate.
Fortunately, Milosevic was unwise enough to submit to an election, and Serbia's
fractious opposition suddenly united. The fact that a majority of Serbs voted against
their dictator, and that the Serbian army and police lost confidence in their patron,
owes little to us. A combination of sanctions and diplomatic isolation no doubt
subtracted from the government's popularity, but nearly half his countrymen cast
their ballots for Milosevic. The civic revolution that swept the streets of Belgrade was
not an endorsement of NATO and the West, but a swift repudiation of corruption and
privation.
At this juncture, therefore, some caution is in order. The Serbs have rid themselves,
more or less, of Slobodan Milosevic, but the structure he constructed won't be easily
dismantled. There is widespread resentment toward Western Europe and the United
States, and not without reason. Having demonized the Serbs, we transformed the
Croatian Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, into another strategic partner, and made
common cause with bloodthirsty Marxist guerrillas, the Kosovo Liberation Army. The
newly elected Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, is a Serbian nationalist, and
no particular admirer of the West. Not least, people who have been bombed by the
world's essential superpower seldom harbor feelings of affection for the bomber.
Which is to say that the United States and its NATO allies should not now descend
on Serbia with visions of political and economic sugarplums. We tried that in Russia
-- shock treatment and aid packages pocketed by oligarchs -- and the results have
been disastrous. Serbia is not on the verge of becoming the next Vermont; it is a
natural Russian satellite, finally emerging from decades of repression.
What Serbia needs is not the United States descending upon Belgrade like Big
Brother, but the freedom to choose a direction worth following. As Jeffrey Gedmin
has pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, the salvation of post-communist Eastern
Europe has been the work of "non-governmental organizations" (NGOs), encouraging
the liberalizing elements in society, and private investment. The European Union can
play a constructive role by integrating Belgrade into regional initiatives, and guiding
Serbia toward political liberty and economic freedom. Russia has a role to play in all
this, as George W. Bush suggested in debate; but the key is broadening Europe,
not rebuilding Greater
10/05/00: Good show, bad sports
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