Mission in a mess

There are quite a few rulers out there who want order, greatness, immortality. Slobodan Milosevic, currently the Balkan bad boy under ass...

There are quite a few rulers out there who want order, greatness, immortality. Slobodan Milosevic, currently the Balkan bad boy under assault, is one of them, the one who has given the most sanguineous definition to what is known as balkanisation. Almost a decade ago, when the idyllic blanket of communism was swept away by history, when the long suppressed demons of ethnicity and religion marched out of the trapdoors, when Tito was posthumously undone, Milosevic said, what the hell, there8217;s life after communism, and cried out, hail the nation, hail Greater Serbia.

But greatness became the gory disintegration of Yugoslavia, and Bosnia brought out the idea of Auschwitz in miniature horror. The post-Bosnian peace, scripted not by the institutions of Europe or the United Nations but by the professional peacemakers from Washington, was shattered by Kosovo, which is of course part of the rump Yugoslavian state Serbia plus Montenegro.

Milosevic wants to get rid of Kosovo8217;s impurity: ethnic Albanians, who are,according to the Serbian warlord8217;s cleansing worldview, as bad as the Bosnian Muslims. And the Albanian nationalists want liberation. Milosevic talked peace with visitors from Washington. Didn8217;t work. Only guns and barbed wires work when Milosevic is in the business of cleansing.

Surprisingly, and so arrogantly, NATO intervened to contain Milosevic, to save the Albanians, and the western military alliance did it like Milosevic. And that explains why the NATO mission is in a mess: the exodus of the refugees, and a national mobilisation on the streets in support of Milosevic. The airstrikes have defeated its own declared intention. True, the destiny of the Albanian majority in Kosovo cannot be left to the nationalist fantasy of Milosevic, whose political vampirism has been tellingly vindicated by the secret graveyards of Bosnia and, now, Kosovo.

The Serbian participation in the international peace negotiations on Kosovo was, in a way, Milosevic8217;s own admission of Kosovo8217;s relevance beyond the Yugoslavfederation. Still, Milosevic was not indulging in extra-territorial terror, Saddam style. The NATO is not Washington8217;s mercenary who can be despatched to every rogue8217;s courtyard, for even rogues are protected by national sovereignty.

Still the question remains: how to deal with rogues who have the capacity to make an internal problem into an international crisis? Here, the United Nations is of little help. In the international crisis management of the last few years, the UN contribution has been practically zero. In such a scenario, the most familiar rhetoric is: the arrogance of Washington in a unipolar world.

Unfortunately, Washington happens to be the common denominator in almost every high-profile peace process. In Kosovo, even Milosevic has no problem with America as such. He also knows that in today8217;s world Russia or the historical Slavic solidarity has not much value in terms of political returns. But this time Washington has played it wrong. For you cannot liberate the suffering ethnic majority ofKosovo by fighting a war with Milosevic. Milosevic is not losing, but NATO is losing its credibility. If Milosevic wants to talk, talk to him again, and stop the bombing.