Avoiding Peace

Everything is falling back in into place in Serbia.  For some time after Deyton, it became the custom to tread softly and with hesitation, without a clear objective, and it was patently clear that the role of stabilizer and of the lover of peace did not come naturally to our president.  Let others busy themselves with getting back into the international community, let those who are normal busy themselves with normalizing relations, he himself is really no longer interested in that.

He allowed himself to be duped once. He tried it and saw how bland it is, how little it suits real men, how slow, boring, and mushy it is.  Why should he bother and haggle with diplomacy and negotiations when he has Kosovo?  Didn’t he always count on this, that when everything else failed, he would still have this one gem remaining?  Well, here it is.  That moment has come.  What is happening in Kosovo could still be called something else, but why should we delude ourselves?  It is a war.  Perhaps only starting, but already gone far enough, judging by the number of victims, by the will to continue, and by the absence of bigger barriers.

Milosevic has taken care of all the preparations: restoring TV Bastille, the referendum, the patriotic-traitors campaign, resisting the outside world, agitating against separatism, he even, just for insurance, opened up an extra TV station.  But, you will ask yourself, what about Albanian terrorism, the Liberation Army of Kosovo, and the arms smuggling from Albania?  Well, you must have a partner, and the real question is why this statesman always chooses and even carefully cultivates the most extreme partners?

His colleagues today are mostly starting from the position that war is a misfortune which must be avoided at all cost.  Milosevic thinks the same thing about peace.  During the present crisis in Kosovo he has not made a single gesture, not including false ones, which would lead toward calming and avoiding a conflict.  On the contrary, he has behaved like a man who is merely waiting for the best excuse to pull out all the stops.  It is just like a car driver who, as soon as he sees someone crossing the street, applies the gas, thinking that he is in the right.

Therefore, I believe that the behavior of Kosovo’s Albanians is not of primary importance, even though I do not claim that they are merely reacting to moves made by Serbia.  There is no doubt that among them at the present there is total consensus on what they want, that they want it as soon as possible, and that they are prepared to kill and to die, to pay as much as they can, to rush into friendships and to ingratiate themselves with anyone who is able to help them.  However, their greatest hope rests in Slobodan Milosevic.  Their demand for handing over Kosovo to them would otherwise be based on real conditions, but that alone is not sufficient for the change in the status of Kosovo to be accepted.

The Albanian side could argue that “the land belongs to those who till it”, which some people could consider fair, but land in reality still belongs to the landowner.  That is why their argument carries weight as soon as everyone becomes convinced that the landowner is ruining his property and systematically breaking all of man’s and God’s laws, and that it would be a good deed to dispose him of everything.  It seems to me that things in Kosovo are developing precisely in this direction.  Or more correctly, I think that the line has already been crossed.

In all likelihood, Kosovo is already at this moment finally lost for Serbia, even before any negotiations have started.  Too many victims have already fallen and every new one is merely making more meaningless the official Serbian position that what is at issue is a domestic question which no one should pay much attention to.  Such a territory, with such a homogenous population that is so antagonistic cannot be retained by a force of any magnitude.  And for the actions of the Liberation Army of Kosovo to be characterized as blatant terrorism, Serbia would have to be properly organized.  It would have to offer the Albanians something which seems fair, and it would have to prove this well and truly to all who are interested.  But, as Serbia is not doing any of the above and is most reminiscent of an old-fashioned oppressor, the Liberation Army of Kosovo could also soon be looked upon as an authentic movement of national liberation.

The experience of the previous wars ought to be a sufficient lesson which reads that such a war is won, that is to say lost, less through the use of arms than through the impression the world’s powers have of the sides in the conflict — even without their direct military participation.  There is such a things as “world public opinion” against which it is not easy to wage battle, and the Serbs have not been favorites with that force for some time.  In actual fact, this force is the one which tells you whether you are right or wrong.  I do not wish to say that this world justice is completely subjective and completely manipulated.  On the contrary, it mostly isn’t, nor is it easy to manipulate, even though our Serbian propaganda would like to believe that all world television stations lie as much as the local ones do.

In this regard, in the eyes of the world, the Kosovo question looks hopeless for the Serbs, while Milosevic is straining to make a complete ruin of it as quickly as possible.  However, if the thing is lost, than the sooner the better.  In this sense Milosevic could still count on praise from those who hope that Serbia will swing the other way, free itself from the Kosovo dead-weight and begin with modernization.  But, of course, he will not live to hear such praise.  He does not think that far, nor is he looking in that direction.  For now he is merely happy that there is once again bloodshed.

However, in recent times he has made too many senseless moves, has opened all possible fronts and raised all barriers, as if he has premonitions that the final hour is at hand, and he wishes for the flood to be worthy of his greatness.  How are they planing to survive the flood?  Does he ask himself what is going through the minds of those who surround him?  Who believes whom in all of this, on the basis of what and up to what point?  It will be entertaining one day to listen to answers to such questions.