Big Waste of Time

It might be that the Balkans are a place for chronically bad politics, but it is certain that the part of the Balkans called Serbia represents such a place at this very moment.  It is also certain that throughout history the Balkans often witnessed bad politics as conducted by others, and it seems to me that on the occasion of the Kosovo crisis we are at this moment witness to the nightmare of world politics characterized by absence of understanding, carelessness, infantile vengefulness, maliciousness, and unclear interests.  Admittedly, the situation is somewhat complicated, but not quite so complicated as to justify moves which respond to local stupidity with global stupidity.

Today, Kosovo is in a state of fairly massive Albanian rebellion which is threatening to become complete.  For Serbia, this is becoming a situation similar to the one Russia faced in the Chechen Republic; except that this situation is far more difficult. Russia is far more powerful; no one threatened or pressured it from the outside; Yeltsin’s regime was never as compromised and despised in the way Milosevic’s is; and the arguments of the Chechen separatists were somewhat weaker than those of their Albanian counterparts.

The conflict in Kosovo cannot end better for Serbia than the war in Chechnya ended for Russia.  Everyone here would understand this sooner and with less pain if only the present government did not have special interest in prolonging the trauma and confusing its own people with stories about a holy land.  Besides that, if the question were to be formulated in terms of Serbian interests in Kosovo, many Serbians would give better and more reasonable answers than if the question is formulated in terms of Albanian separatism.

Namely, I believe that the majority of Serbians are now more interested in Kosovo because they don’t want the Albanians to get anything, rather than because of Decane or the Patriarchy.  But the bigger problem here consists in weakness than in the types of motives.  Serbians are evidently not ready to make great sacrifices for Kosovo, especially if they are being called to sacrifice by a regime that only recently did the same thing, with consequences that are known by everyone.  This time, no one is in a hurry to organize volunteer units or armies.  It appears that even patriotic profiteers and smugglers do not see any perspective for bigger operations, and they are hardly willing to go mining in Trepca.

Mothers are trying to rescue their sons from the army, and even professional policemen are willing to turn a deaf ear to orders calling them to go to Kosovo.
All this is topped off by Milosevic’s state ambitions of turning this local issue into a world issue.  He is not satisfied with not giving Kosovo to Albanians — he also does not want to give it to America, to Europe, or to NATO.  And the best thing of all is that all of them have agreed to argue with him over this and to grab at each others throats.  It simply seems that he has managed to get them all hooked with the referendum against foreign intervention, and now they are competing to see who will come closer to this forbidden territory, while everyone is slightly jealous of Yeltsin.

I will be greatly indebted to anyone who manages to explain to me the logic behind NATO’s threats directed against Serbia, that is to say, the logic in the connection between the threat and the explicit attitudes of the West to Kosovo.  Everyone is clearly against Kosovo’s secession, and with good reason, but all the threats are directed against Serbia, which the Albanians can only interpret as support of their secession.  I understand the concern because of excessive use of force, because of the bombing of villages, because of civilian casualties and refugees, but none of that can ever be compared with Bosnia.  The fact that Milosevic is taunting and calling on NATO out of his own demented reasons does not mean that NATO is obligated to give an immediate answer.  Delays in Bosnia can in no way be compensated by hurrying in Kosovo.

The problem is that it is already becoming clear that despite the disproportionate use of force by the Serbian side, time and everything else is on the side of the Albanian cause.  It will soon be a lot more difficult to prevent the secession of Kosovo and to keep it within either Serbia or FR Yugoslavia than it will be to hand it over to Albanians.  And the problem which will then ensue will not depend on Milosevic, and will then not be so much an issue for Serbia, as it will be for Albania, Macedonia, and the entire Balkans.  The perspective of a change in Balkan borders should worry the international community more than Milosevic’s maneuvers and machinations.

I do not wish to suggest that he is not a serious problem, but he is certainly a smaller problem than he demonstrates.  Kosovo is the last opportunity for him to attract attention and anger.  This means that he, according to custom, is more willing to opt for spectacular defeat than settle for a game with small conditions.  Thus, Milosevic is also working toward the undesirable result, but if the West is willing to prevent this result, then it would be better if it would direct some of its energy against him, instead of making threats of NATO intervention.  I am not sure what could be done in this regard, but I am sure that it is not in Xavier Solana’s job description.  I don’t think that Kosovo can be given back its autonomy from an airplane.  NATO can only be used against one or the other side, and as it’s unthinkable that NATO could give its support to Milosevic, the only thing remaining is to turn against him.  In such a scenario, it is not clear why and how Albanians could stop halfway.  And it is also not clear how the same planes could be used to drop democracy into Serbia.  I fear that it far more likely that after NATO intervention the regime in Serbia will become far worse, hopelessly closed and held together by poisonous hatred and impotent rage.  Along with all this, I respect the will and resolve of Albanians to solve their national problem.  Perhaps their problem is the biggest, but it is not the only one, and it certainly opens an enormous crisis with a lot of possible aggression and relocation of populations and borders.  Albanians might be ready to pay any price, but world powers should be obliged to keep fair accounts if they wish to maintain a minimum of stability here and to prevent a general breakout of violence.