Of Recognition and Illusions

I am surprised. Belgrade's opposition and Charges D'Affaires are announcing a certain Serbian diplomatic sensation over wine at dinner parties and coffee at press conferences. Is there anyone in Belgrade who thinks with their own head instead of the hamburgers from the American Embassy? I know this: Milosevic won't recognize Bosnia-Herzegovina. Our diplomatic reports, analyses and sources are unreliable.

My friends say: he has to recognize it. Why does he have to? Who is forcing him to: the people, Serbs, Seselj, Kostunica, Karadzic, Albanians, Montenegrins, Djindjic and the popular capitalists, the army, police, Arkan, Vojvodina Hungarians, strikers in Rakovica, voucher economists from the university, real estate dealers and farmers from Banat?

My friends say: "the people are hungry, factories are rotting away, we have to work." Yes, yes but who's politically endangering the Serbian president and Socialist authorities? No one. Danger to the president only comes from the Right and only if he recognizes Bosnia not if he doesn't. There's danger from General Perisic who wants to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina and who Milosevic can't topple without fighting the entire elite of generals. There's danger from half the police who have been blinded by Serbdom and crime. The Serbian Patriarch and his ecclesia militans are turning bells into swords and sharpening them on the stones of the double Jasenovac tragedy, the second of which they caused themselves. There's also danger from an alliance of Karadzic and Seselj.

My friends won't relent: "but the president can't keep Karadzic's Bosnia blockaded forever without speaking up about the Serb union". He can and that suits him. He doesn't need a rival, armed opposition in the common Serb state. The Serbian president has put the Bosnia issue and Greater Serbia on ice for at least 10-20 years since that is the only way the Serb program won't be completely destroyed, the nationalist and fascist opposition in Belgrade won't unite and he'll avoid the Bosnia war spilling over into Serbia. He has to continue the blockade on the Drina even at the expense of the total defeat of Biljana Plavsic's democratic empire. The arrival of 10,000 dangerous Anglo-French commandos in Sarajevo shows what would happen to Serbia after two years if he unites with Karadzic. Today Pale falls, tomorrow Dedinje. Serbia's adventure in Bosnia is over.

My friends continue: "Isn't it smarter for Milosevic to recognize Bosnia-Herzegovina immediately?" No it isn't and he won't do that until he exhausts the populist power of Serb nationalism and removes the danger of a coup d'etat. Many people don't see that a coup has already happened quietly in Serbia; I repeat, Milosevic doesn't have the power to topple General Perisic and he wants that more than anything. The army can't run Serbia directly because it doesn't have the political infrastructure of power and it's afraid to turn power over to the radical nationalists. The latter would impose terror and cause a civil war within a month. The Serbian President can't start an open fight with the nationalist by recognizing Bosnia for another reason: he can't rule without nationalism until he gets Western economic aid and starts an economic and political reform of the social system in Serbia. He needs nationalism because of Kosovo and the Albanian issue as well. He can't get rid of the Belgrade nationalist opposition radically. If he did he would have to impose a dictatorship with no ideology. Non-ideological self-rule usually lasts a short time and end in bloody rebellions or assassinations.

The Americans are so wrong to force Milosevic into recognizing Bosnia-Herzegovina. They should have made him do that in 1991 and threaten him with thunder and lighting if he dared cause a war on Bjelasnica and Igman. Now it's too late. But now the Serbian president is doing more than recognizing Bosnia! He is blockading Karadzic, his kith and kin!

Let Milosevic keep Karadzic in chains and continue weakening Seselj, the Church and the generals; that's the best way for recognition of Bosnia today. Tomorrow, in two-three years, it will be formally recognized by a "train of friendship" between Belgrade and Sarajevo which will be driven by a new foreign minister without Vladislav Jovanovic's implanted smile.

My Friends again: "If Milosevic shouldn't recognize Bosnia, what should he do?" His speech to the Americans probably went something like this: "If I recognize Bosnia now, I'll have trouble in Serbia. I'll settle it but the risks are high. I recognize Bosnia through the isolation of Karadzic and suppression of the imperialist nationalist opposition in Belgrade. I can last a long time that way but not without dictatorship and threats of civil war and national clashes in Serbia. So I need financial aid from the West and development loans. The lifting of the sanctions means little to me if I can't adapt to the international market. I know you hate me and that you'd prefer to take me to court but I still can't be toppled and I'm less dangerous than a crowd of nationalist ideologists. If you don't give me money, between two and three billion dollars to start, and you lift the sanctions and make me recognize Bosnia-Herzegovina, you will be wrong and you're worse politicians than I am. And that's not easy. If my recognition of Bosnia is linked with the lifting of the sanctions but without Western money I'll be attacked from two sides in Serbia: from the nationalists and fascists. They'll use the poverty of the people for a nationalist-fascist revolution. and there's your chaos in the Balkans."

To get rid of Karadzic and the Belgrade national-fascists and militarists, Milosevic has to get industry moving, employ more people, return part of the robbed savings to the population and secure stable prices of bread, milk and meat. He has to turn public opinion from concerns of war to concerns for rebuilding apartments, car parks and communal problems.

Few politicians have destroyed their countries so thoroughly as Milosevic did and are still considered deft politicians by their opposition. That's because most of them are no different ideologically to him. Everyone who wants a union of all Serb lands or recognition of Bosnia immediately are worse than he is. Some Charges D'affaires in Belgrade are even worse.

(The author is president of National Peasants' Party)