Nations can be induced to or can be forced to give up territory. But every nation has some land of symbolic value that it cannot give up, unless it is crushed first. Even then, the giving up of symbolic land is temporary, and irredentism starts, which will bring back an even bloodier war, sooner or later. You cannot expect Israel to give up Jerusalem even under threat of death and extinction. Could it be true that the Serbs' feelings for Kosovo are of such a nature? The western press has tried to minimize such feelings. An example is the Reuters report from Belgrade, dated March 17, which seems to suggest that folks probably went to a government-organized rally for Kosovo because they got a day off and a free trip. A very sensible conclusion, why else go to a boring rally , where you have to listen to and applaud patriotic speeches? But here comes the clincher: "Outside on the street, people went about their business, immune to the patriotic fever inside." A rational person would conclude from reading the article that the people of Yugoslavia do not really care that much about Kosovo, and that their patriotism is a matter of convenience, easy to be turned off or on. A person who is as ignorant of the history of this region as western editors and western leaders are, would rationally conclude the the Belgrade government is just waiting to to have its arm twisted a bit , that it might put up some pro-forma resistance and then quit. An extremely dangerous conclusion. Everything I have read about this country suggests otherwise. Every person I have spoken to, without exceptions, speaks of Kosovo in terms similar to what Israelis say about Jerusalem. There is no Israel without Jerusalem, and there is no Serbia without Kosovo. The Serbs would have to be crushed by fire before they give it up. Fear of fire is insufficient. Everyone here says that if Milosevic tried to give up Kosovo he would be overthrown faster than Prince Paul's government, when he signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany in 1941.
Serbs have a national tradition of doing crazy things. In 1914 they could not accept that ultimatum from the Austro-Hungarian empire, even though it was backed by the German Empire, they were pretty much surrounded by enemies, had no access to the sea, and their only friends were very far, in St. Petersburg. In 1941 at the height of Hitler's power, when European leaders were rushing to Berlin with hat in hand to see what the leader of the master race desired--a non-aggression treaty, some nice new special law for the Jews, maybe some iron ore, or unhindered passage for German forces--Belgrade challenged Hitler. It was utter madness, and they paid for it. In 1948, when there was still great hostility between Yugoslavia and the western nations, so that no help could be expected from the west in case of war, Belgrade challenged the mighty Soviet Union. Stalin had said, "I will shake my little finger and Tito will fall." It did not happen, and Stalin was smart enough not to step into the Balkan quicksands. The Serbs' feelings and their history speak quite clearly: if NATO wants Kosovo, it will have to go to war to get it.
Fortunately there are alternatives to war. Since neither Serbs nor Albanians are wrong in Kosovo, since both sides are moved by perfectly rational fears, western countries should intervene as mediators, not as cops, who suffer from a tendency to decide that the guy who talks back is the bad guy. Impartial intervention years ago, before all this blood was shed, could have obtained an agreement on a bicameral parliament, with a nationality chamber in which each nation had veto rights. Now it is too late for that. The only possible solution is the Palestinian solution. Partition. In the case of Palestine, everyone, except for religious fanatics, recognizes that partition was the only sensible solution in 1948 and that partition of the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 will be the only possible solution. Land for peace. If Israel wants peace it has to give up land, not to some weak and humiliated "Palestinian entity", but to a Palestinian state. That's partition.
The Israelis have not as yet fully accepted the "land for peace" solution. It will not be easy to persuade the Yugoslavs to accept it. The means of persuasion have to be the same ones which are normally used in normal diplomatic negotiations, by normal diplomats, not big stick diplomats. Give and take. Incentives. There are no demands that NATO bomb Israel to persuade it to compromise. The condition of Palestinians in Lebanon in 1982, after the Israeli invasion, was much worse than that of Albanians in Kosovo today. In Palestinian refugees camps the killing started after the the PLO soldiers left the area. The victims were in excess of one thousand in a couple of days. No fighting was involved, children were killed, but NATO did not consider bombing Israel.
In Racak, after a day of heavy fighting which included mortars on the KLA side and artillery on the Yugoslav side, forty-five villagers were found dead. A number of reports suggest that this was not a massacre but a case of rearranging battle dead in order to make it appear a massacre, with the intent of creating a casus belli, an excuse to go to war.. This is a kinder variant of the Islamic Bosnian government penchant for bombing its own markets and bread lines in order to garnish western sympathy and air support.
Compare the reaction of NATO countries to a very doubtful atrocity in Kosovo and a very obvious atrocity in Lebanon. In Kosovo, indignation, followed by bombing threats. In Lebanon, an offer of peacekeepers, followed by intervention on the side of those who had committed the massacre. U.S. behavior in Lebanon could be justified on the basis of supporting old trusted allies and opposing their enemies. U.S. behavior in Kosovo, involving support of a terrorist organization, is in contempt of every international law on the book, and is particularly odd since it goes against recognized American interests, and in contempt of geopolitical realities. Staggering is the level of ignorance shown by NATO policy makers regarding Balkan history and present realities. The Balkans tremble, dumbstruck in horror, as sophomoric apprentice wizards set about casting powerful spells, the very spells which in the past have been sufficient to materialize out of thin air, that wondrous chimaera, religious war.
THE FUTURE BALKAN WARS
Yugoslavs fear that war will resume in Bosnia when the Moslems feel they are strong enough. In view of the persecutions they were subjected to in the seventies and eighties during the years of Albanian autonomy they believe that autonomy means expulsion of all minorities from Kosovo. They believe that even if they had the option of giving up Kosovo there would still be demands for the Sanjak and for pieces of Montenegro. They fear that ethnic cleansing of the Serbs still in Croatia could resume and that the western nations would not object to it, just as they did not raise a finger when hundreds of thousands of Serbs were expelled just a few years ago, with generally recognized US government complicity. They feel that they are being asked to give up all of Kosovo for nothing. An odd negotiating position for NATO to take. A rational proposal would be giving up some of Kosovo for peace. Not just peace in Kosovo, but peace and security throughout the territory of the Second Yugoslavia.
Western policy makers and editors, in their abysmal ignorance of the Balkans, think that the issue is just one of Serb versus Albanian. They are totally unaware of the fact that the multiethnicity of the Second Yugoslavia has been transferred to the Third Yugoslavia, where Serbs, Montenegrins, Albanians, Hungarians, Romany, Croats, Turks, Slavic Moslems, Jews and other minorities still perfectly coexist, at least in all areas not as yet chosen by western leaders for destabilization. Many Albanians, Croats and Slavic Moslems live in Belgrade, without suffering any trace of oppression. The same cannot be said about Kosovo, where western money--obtained through the drug trade, donations from Albanian emigrants, and western assistance--has pushed the most chauvinist Albanian ideologists to the fore. Besides the Serbs, all Albanians and Romany who may be seen as uncooperative with the local KLA faction are killed, and all Kosovo minorities live in fear. A rational solution of the Kosovo problem would involve the peaceful partition of Kosovo, with western cash helping the resettlement of the people to the areas of their choices. Most Albanians would choose to reside in Albanian control areas, but many would choose to remain in Yugoslavia. Their motives would be family or professional ties to Yugoslavia, fear of the organizations supported by the west, or unwillingness to relocate from Serb control areas. Once such solution is accepted for Kosovo, it will automatically become the solution of choice for Macedonia.
The only alternative is war in Macedonia. Macedonians believe that after Kosovo is in the bag, they are next. They fear that the American umbrella will not help them one bit against Albanian guerrilla activities or terrorism. They see war coming, a war that might spread to the Greek minority in Albania and the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, thus involving the whole Balkan peninsula in warfare. So the time to negotiate is before the war starts. Once it starts in Macedonia, there will be victims, there will be atrocities, and compromise will be harder to achieve. When Serbs and Macedonians, just like the Israelis, say that their borders are not negotiable, they are following normal human behavior, based on territorial instinct. The job of western diplomacy should be to convince them that a territorial compromise is in their interest, that a rational demographic policy would support partition, that the economic advantages of partition would be great, and that economic integration would soon make the new borders much less important. Today European borders are open. Usually you do not have to stop at the border, usually you just slow down. The oppression of minorities which was normal in Europe 40 years ago is today unthinkable. People change country without difficulty. Such is a future which western diplomats should be offering to the Balkan countries. Instead, western "diplomats" have just bombs in the briefcase, and instead of economic incentives there is a stream of insults directed at the men with whom they have to negotiate, and threats, directed of course against only one of the parties.
Moreover, such "diplomacy" ignores the realities of the ground. Thus it supports Albanian nationalism in Kosovo but denies it in Macedonia while it simply ignores Slav nationalism anywhere. It is as if these western rulers had received their training on video games, where nothing can happen which is not in the program. They wrote the program, thus only what they expect to happen can happen. Just as some young people can become lost in Dungeons and Dragons or in a computer game and actually come to accept directions for the real world from a fantasy, so have western rulers come to believe the fantasy world they have created.
THE LOGIC OF WAR
People here keep asking me how could the US be orchestrating the rise to power, in Kosovo, of an organization that is currently engaged in placing bombs at the market and in tossing grenades into coffee houses. I have to answer that long term solutions and long term possible damage do not concern the rulers of the west. The objective of western diplomacy has been the achievement of "feel good" victories, good enough to hold us until the next election. "Apres nous le deluge," as King Louis XV of France said. "After us, let the deluge come." A catastrophic error was made in Afghanistan, where the US gave massive aid to groups which in the 1970's specialized in shooting in the legs women in western dress and now are attacking American embassies. Yet President Carter and President Reagan are not blamed for creating modern Islamic extremism with their misguided Afghanistan policies. Thus President Clinton may trust that his Balkan policies will not be challenged by American historians. The thinking of the adepts of gunboat diplomacy today is the same as it was 100 years ago: we must show that it does not pay to disobey Washington, we cannot afford to lose face. The thinking of the rulers has not changed since the Trojan war. Einstein wrote that everything has changed except the way in which our minds work. The threat of nuclear war is ignored. The threat of terrorism is ignored. The threat of regional destabilization is ignored.
The history of the world is a history of threats, actions, and reprisals punctuated by occasional periods of diplomacy. In periods of diplomacy we follow Aristotelian logic, during the rest of history we follow an ancient system of logic called "paleologic" by the psychiatrist Silvano Arieti. Paleologic is the logic that humans often make use of, for example in dreams, in early childhood, under the spell of certain mental diseases, and in time of conflict, whether it be conflict between spouses, brothers, clans, or nations. The finest , most cultured, practical, and sensible people start acting like hostile drunks in time of conflict. Paleologic makes us very sure of ourselves, makes us take risks that would be unacceptable under Aristotelian logic, makes us accept conclusions that everyone outside the conflict sees as totally insensate. A person, a general, a president working under the spell of paleologic is absolutely sure of victory. Success appears then inescapable, and a man sees nothing odd in pulling the trigger during a little bout of Russian roulette. Paleologic deprives us of our ability to use our human advanced skills, such as diplomacy, in favor of more primitive ones, such as threats and violence. Paleologic blocks advanced feelings like shame and guilt and it enhances primitive feelings like fear of people we do not know--such as those evil people across the creek who are well known to consort with demons-- and the fear of losing face. Diplomats whose brain is working in paleologic mode make public threats while Aristotelian diplomats privately point out to their opponents the disadvantages of their position. Paleologic diplomats lead their countries to war because they turn disagreements into matters of face.
Going back to the issue at hand, paleologic does not allow western nations to realize the absurdity of the gambles they are taking, nor their guilt and responsibility in the destruction of the second Yugoslavia, the start and prosecution of the war in Bosnia, the expulsion of more than half million of Serbs, and the beginning of the war in Kosovo. In the same way, paleologic does not allow the Serbs to see their own faults. Serbs have suffered violence and oppression at the hands of Albanians, and paleologic tells them, "We are victims, thus we cannot be oppressors." Serbs do not believe that their forces have been involved in violence and oppression against Albanians. As a neutral observer, I believe otherwise. I know of the atrocities committed by the Albanians against the Serbs since the 1970's and I expect that the Serbs, in the course of this guerrilla war, have been answering in kind. War cannot fail to increase the level of brutality, it has always done so, and I do not see any reason to expect that it will be different in this coming war.
I expect that NATO leaders, having made public threats, afraid of losing face, will take us to war. NATO intervention will result in generalized ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, with the Serbs and the Albanians burning each other's villages. However, since the Serbs are militarily stronger, the Albanians will suffer most. Albanians are terrified of what may happen if NATO starts bombing. The most experienced amongst western reporters here are also very pessimistic, but they know that their editors do not want to give prominence to negativism, at the beginning of a crusade: crusades sell newspapers. The only people who are not worried at all are western leaders and generals we see on CNN. They do not mind betting the farm on the idea that their ultimatum will bring peace: the farm they are betting belongs to someone else.
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