For Milosevic the three NATO bombs that struck the Chinese embassy must have appeared like manna from the heavens.
The pilots of the alliance have tens of thousand of air excursions under their belts at a rhythm of 800 sorties a day. Compared to the precision targeting of the tons of explosives which have been dumped on Serbia, the number of errors has truly been statistically insignificant. However, like all statistics the numbers don’t count when you happen to be that one in a million.
It’s been hard enough for the 19 members of the NATO alliance to brush off lightly the inevitable victims of its military action, but hitting the Chinese embassy is at the very least a political boomerang that we could have quite frankly done without.
In Russia, Communism has been reemerging like the Egyptian phoenix rising from the ashes, dispelling the fears of those who thought we might be doomed to sign off the century with the victorious if boring globalization of liberal democracy. As if that resurrection didn’t forebode enough evil, Zyuganov’s Communists have been finding common ground for grievances together with Zhirinovsky’s ultra-nationalists. Uniting the red forces of communism with a black-tinted nationalism has produced a dangerous brown cocktail in the former Soviet Union. Milosevic’s post-communist serbomania is a similar murky concoction. Add to that two more common ingredients, panslavism and religious orthodoxy, and the front between Moscow and Belgrade was hardly a happy harbinger. All we needed was the anger of the Chinese and the promise of a bi-continental confraternity of pancommunism reminiscent of bygone Cold War days, or even worse. At least during the times of Tito, Mao, and Kruschev the three communisms were enemies, notwithstanding their common ideology. The only word to describe the thought of their conjunction together in the same trenches united against the West is apocalyptic.
Fortunately, it doesn’t serve the purpose of any of the great powers to put in jeopardy the advantages of the reciprocal collaboration that has been established over the last decade. However, it goes without saying that both Russia and China will attempt to exploit the impasse in which the Atlantic diplomacy has put itself. It’s to their advantage to present themselves as mediators. They could draft a solution to the Balkan crisis which might be acceptable to several European countries but undesirable to the United States and other NATO members.
Undesirable and unacceptable is any solution which includes Milosevic at the negotiating table. It was sickening enough to see him smiling at Dayton and adorning the cover of Time magazine as the man of peace.
It is uncomfortable for liberal democracies, particularly ones run by center-left governments, to be using force to cure the ills of the world. However, comfortable easy decisions do not come hand in hand with the responsibility of power. Peace in the Balkans cannot come at any cost and one signed and sealed with Milosevic is inadmissible.
May 1999
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