What's Love Got To Do With It

Did Serbia at last get its own real, large, court intrigue? Is it possible that Mrs. Mira Markovic (Mrs. Slobodan Milosevic) herself, without the help from inquisitive journalists and the tabloid press, in her own public diary, described her own family crisis and revealed that her husband has a lover?

In a world governed by the rules of supply and demand, such a spicy story could bring a whole fortune. Several newspapers in England survived for years thanks to various marital and extramarital activities of the members of the Royal family. Also, in the United States confessions of all those who claimed to have been Clinton's lovers went quite well, but no one would ever even consider that Hillary herself could tell her version, at least until she is out of the White House.

Many over here interpreted Mrs. Markovic's tale about a high official who neglects his devoted comrade for someone in a short skirt, as an announcement of a divorce and a political clash which could, locally at least, change the course of history. According to this interpretation, it is a slightly curious example of the kind of affair about which everybody gets to know everything before anything was even suspected. The unprepared public is suddenly invited to pass a moral judgment. In the world of comrades, for example, this would have been seen as a modern and more democratic kind of friendly criticism. Not only in front of like-minded persons though, because now we live in a multi-party system.

But, it looks more like a misunderstanding. The better informed claim that the author had some other couple in mind, and that it was an observation of a general trend of roaming and moral relaxation among comrades in power who behaved very well until recently when certain irregularities emerged. This means that the text must be seen as a reply to Djilas' "Anatomy of a Moral" written in 1954, which dealt with the hypocrisy of the Communist party purism. Mira Markovic, therefore, demands asceticism, and appeals to her comrades to hang on to their lawful wives and make sure that power doesn't go to their heads.

The reason why her text was misunderstood to be a confession, lies mostly in the fact that people believed that besides the ruling couple there were no other cases of such marital and ideological loyalty left from our communist prehistory. And who would have thought that in the land of Arkan and Dafina, a person from the ruling circles would dare express disgust at someone's extramarital affairs, unless she was personally affected?

But Mira Markovic does not live here and now. There is not much hope that she revealed Milosevic's infidelity. We would have known by now if he were the kind of person who is capable of looking around rather than straight ahead. We would not be in the state we are in, Serbia would not be sticking out the way it does, running away from the rest of this rotten world. What I want to say is that the reason why Serbia is so much out of step with the rest of the world is partly of moral nature and lies in the morality of the ruling couple. As if the virtue and purity of mutual devotion somehow locks them in and isolates them, creating a feeling of superiority in terms of their righteousness and benevolence which in advance clears them of every guilt irrespective of what they may do. So the world stands horrified before their deeds, and they feel disgust at the world's malice and coarseness. For them betraying a comrade is a crime, while the burning down of a village can be easily explained and justified.

Serbia however, not without shame, must admit that its fate and future depends heavily on their marital harmony. Many nationalists are still hoping that the relationship will break up and that Milosevic will return to them, just as supporters and users of YUL are hoping that it won't. Those who don't belong to either of the two groups do not know what to hope for.

YUL took a long running start for this month, promising that July fires will burn again, as if somebody was feeling cold. That is another example of the strange repetition of revolutionary traditions and the enthusiasm of communist youth not in order to topple an unpopular regime, but quite the contrary. It appears that YUL believes that youth of today can not wait to act out a rebellion, that is rebel against those who are already rebelling against the authorities. And it was those very same authorities who invented their own bitterest rivals, such as Seselj, and nationalism, and the war which so horrifies YUL.

In the week in which the nation, thanks to the ambiguity of Mira Markovic's text, worried about her marital happiness, her husband found himself on the front cover of the American "TIME" magazine to which he gave one of those typical "milk is blue" interviews. He told about his readiness do his best to end the war in Bosnia in six months if the sanctions are lifted first, sanctions which were imposed because he started it. He claims also that it was not him who started the war but the Muslims. He knows little about war crimes committed by the Serbian side, and in reply to the question about the cases of rape, he mentions a case of an allegedly raped Muslim woman who subsequently gave birth to a black child, pointing out that no Serb is black. After defending himself so succesfully, he offered guarantees that he will achieve peace. He gave his word of honor.

When they heard this, Karadzic and Mladic cried "that's right!" and took the Serbian town of Srebrenica. There is only Serbian Zepa left, or maybe not; then Serbian Gorazde and Serbian Sarajevo. Then they will accept the plan of the Contact Group as a basis for further negotiations, while the world would realize with some surprise that meanwhile the other negotiating party vanished.

All of this is really none of our business any longer and there is no point in wasting our time on ourselves, our president, or the Bosnian Serbs. Karadzic and Mladic repeated many times what they have to say, and by seizing one of the UN declared safe areas they expressed themselves in the clearest of ways.

If Boutros-Ghali still does not understand, if the European Union did not here them well, if NATO managed to hit a tank a little to late, if Karadzic and Mladic thus managed to disgrace them all more than if they took their underpants off in public, then there is no point in all of us pretending that we can not see their nudity.

What does it matter if we are excluded from such a company? What does it matter that we can not go anywhere from here, when wherever we were to go we would see the same thing? Doesn't it appear as if the whole world is made out of the same pile of mud? Answers to such questions which lead to total nihilism are increasingly difficult to give, and there is no doubt that Serbs find these questions particularly difficult to answer. They can now justifiably ask what it is that the highest world institutions want from Milosevic and Karadzic. To stop while they are stronger? To give back what they conquered just because some hollow UN resolution says so? And in the name of what can an ordinary Serb be expected to rise against the authorities which are doing so well? Some universal values from the UN Charter, that no one can or wants to defend?

It is high time that the world stops troubling itself with the Serbs and starts worrying about itself. This is a question of the whole construction of international relations and norms, which is neither too strong or too week, but can not stand exceptions and can collapse on such a small case as is the Bosnian war.

The world order is susceptible to anarchy and the recognition of the right of the stronger anyway, but everybody is in for a bad time if all principles and rules are formally abandoned. The problem however is how to find parents who would willingly send their son to get killed while defending the norms of international relations. In Bosnia it is easier to explain to people why they must fight.

The fall of Srebrenica does not mark the end of the war, but clearly marks a change of sides in the conflict. Mladic's army is now fighting the UN as well as the Muslims, and is celebrating its first victory. Boutros-Ghali sportingly conceded defeat but did not announce future battles. It all smacks of a withdrawal of UN troops in the near future and the withdrawal of the Rapid Reaction Force in the even nearer future. After that, fighting in Bosnia can carry on until Judgment Day without any interruptions. It would also mean that the Serbs won the most important war, the one against the world order and the world would probably cease to resemble the place we once knew. Milosevic and Karadzic would thus become heralds of a new era. Maybe Mira Markovic would get some kind of satisfaction out of it all and announce the end of the dominance of the West and propose the triumphant Chinese model to the Serbs.