RICHARD WARREN FIELD'S INTERNET COLUMN

A quick quiz: Who were the last two governmental entities to move Albanians into Kosovo? The disturbing answer: Nazi Germany and the Ottoman Turkish empire. This is not comfortable company we are keeping. Does this mean we should abandon Albanians to their fates at the hands of vicious, genocidal Serbs? Absolutely not. But these facts underline the complexity of this situation, and beg for a different, less-simplistic, more-informed approach. There are some mistakes already made, and in the making.

Mistake One: The Demonization of the Serbs. The Clinton Administration has a long-standing strategy of creating villains to rally public support. From Hillary Clinton’s considered and calculated attempts to demonize physician/specialists and insurance companies to pass the Clinton Administration’s health care plan to Bill Clinton’s recent attempts to demonize anyone disagreeing with his idea that limiting legal access to guns will end violence, this has been a consistent pattern. And so, the Clinton Administration offers us the Serb demons. Our allies in World War II are now the evil villains of the Balkans. But reality is just not that simple. The Serbs were murdered by the thousands during World War II—Croats working with the Nazis perpetrated their own genocide against Serbs. Serbs were oppressed by Turks for hundreds of years, and they tend to see any Moslems in the area as “Turks.” This does not excuse “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo. But we need to understand the Serbs’ fears that if they lose political control, history could repeat itself. And demonizing them will guarantee an increase in their fears and paranoias!

These fears, unfortunately, have been expertly exploited by a man who will do and say anything to retain power. He realizes most former Communist leaders are out of a job. So he has cynically recast himself as a Serb nationalist, and preyed upon deeply-rooted Serb fears. We help him by demonizing Serbs. They rally to him, because they feel the world has turned against them. Casting villains and victims might make good reading, and good television, and good short-range politics, but will not lead to a just and proper conclusion of this crisis.

Mistake Two: Fighting the Battles for the Kosovo Albanians. This mistake goes back a number of years. As harsh as it sounds, sometimes all we can do is arm the oppressed and let the combatants fight it out. Instead, we insisted on an arms embargo, solidifying the Serbs’ military superiority in the area. With an unprincipled leader in power, we not only guaranteed this awful situation would occur, but we became partially responsible for it! So, we are almost morally obligated to become involved.

A quick listen to interviews with both Albanians and Serbs from Kosovo reveal irrational, inflexible passions, based on rigid devotion to ancestral traditions. Many of these people ache for a fight. They offer reams of historical, religious and even personal justifications for their hatreds of each other. These hatreds go back well beyond the beginning of our own country. To see our own soldiers fighting and dying on either side of a conflict that is not ours should sicken all of us. The correct model? Israel. We gave the Israelis support, but never fought their battles for them. There is still blood in the eyes of some combatants in the Middle East. But peace is closer thanever. Most of the members of these violently opposed factions have finally decided to shelve their hatreds, hatreds that also go back many hundreds of years, because they have finally grown tired of blood. Israelis were effective because they fought their own battles.

Mistake Three: Utilizing Military Force Without a Clear Objective or a Certain Result. The Viet Nam syndrome. The comparisons have already begun, because they are accurate. We should be able to see this perilous repetition of history ahead. The first two mistakes here are straight out of the Viet Nam War. We demonized the Communists in both North and South Viet Nam, without understanding the nationalist appeal of Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, who had led his people against the Chinese, the Japanese, the French, and finally, the Americans. We fought the battles for an uninspired, corrupt South Viet Nam, which was a western creation, a chess move in a global battle between superpowers imposed on a peasant nation with little understanding or concern about the contest between Communism and Capitalism. But worst of all, there was no clear idea of what the spent American lives were supposed to gain—what was victory going to be?

In Kosovo, what is victory? Repatriating Albanians into Kosovo? Without long-term protection, we will be sending them to slaughter! Imposition of our own solution to this conflict? We should have learned from the past that our solutions, no matter how well-intentioned, will be no more than outsiders’ meddlings to the parties involved. Neither side will ultimately accept them. Establish an independent or autonomous Kosovo? Then Milosevich has been right; we are trying to partition his country! And are we prepared to protect Serbs from Albanian reprisals? The bottom line is this—the only purely military goal that makes any sense is to take over the area and control it ourselves. If we are not prepared to go all out for that objective, we will want to rethink the military option.

So, how do we fix this predicament? Imperfectly. Here are some ideas. Bring the bombing to a halt as soon as possible. Arm and train Kosovo Albanians so they can defend themselves (this should be a top priority). Work with NATO to protect the neutralities of neighboring countries, or countries sympathetic to the Kosovo Albanians. Bring the parties to the negotiating table and ask “would you rather fight and die at each others’ hands, or settle?” And, pursue and prosecute all war criminals to their dying days.

There are no easy answers to this complex crisis. But we can at least do our best to avoid any further moves toward these three mistakes.

Copyright © 1999 by Richard Warren Field

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