As
the Yugoslav forces left Mitrovica, civilian Serbs and Albanians dragged
together whatever material was available to create roadblocks between
their respective sides of town, and French paratroopers were forced
to place a line of tanks between them. Seemingly summarizing the whole
operation, Cpl. Beyrouti Talak told The Washington Post, "We are in
the middle, and we don't know what to do."
Oblivious, conquering hero President Clinton toured the historic capitals
of Europe to accept the laurels from his great victory against his personification
of evil, Slobovan Milosevic. He was on an ideological high after the
cluster bombing (admittedly, with their civilian casualties and very
few military ones) brought about his "peaceful, multiethnic and democratic
Kosovo" (to use the NATO phraseology), exorcising "fear and hatred of
people who are different from us" (to use his own), which crusade he
now extended to the whole world.
But as the reaction on the ground suggested, there might be a few problems
in forcing the Balkan nationalities to make nice. Bill has not even
been able to create the type of multicultural America he thinks we need.
He does not seem to know that the United States is the only one close
to a successful multicultural nation and many think even that is cracking
under the strain of political correctness and the inability to teach
a common heritage,
If multiculturalism is tenuous here, it belies belief it could work
in the Balkans, much less for the rest of the globe. Has the president
ever heard of Mr. Milosevic's likely successor, Vojislav Seselj of the
second- place Radical Party, who urged taking "out the eyes of Croatians
with spoons," was the first to propose ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and
just quit Slobo's coalition because it was too moderate?
The president and his fellow were deserting Kosovo -- perhaps 100,000
so far-- making it tough to build a mult-ethnic society with one nationality.
The cry of returning Albanian, Raif Jashari, at the sight of an empty
Serbian town, "We've been waiting for this more than a 100 years," hardly
inspired confidence. Indeed, this Clinton Doctrine has a strange genealogy.
As former staffer John B. Roberts II has documented (in the June American
Spectator), the misnamed Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
held a series of meetings and produced a report in 1992, called "Changing
Our Ways: America's Role in the New World" that urged "a new principle
of international relations: the destruction or displacement of groups
of people within states can justify international intervention."
Accepting this radical enlargement of the traditional requirement of
external aggression to justify war, supporters Madeleine Albright and
Richard Holbrooke, both Carnegie participants, brought these views into
the new Clinton administration. Carnegie's senior fellow, Robert Kagan
-- through his editorship of the Weekly Standard and op-eds in the Wall
Street Journal -- brought the new military doctrine to the right,
In 1994, the new policy was advanced by the Council on Foreign Relations
through the publication of a similar document, Richard Haass' "Intervention:
The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World." In 1997,
Carnegie President Milton Abramowitz joined the CFR. At the following
Conservative Political Action Conference, Standard editor in chief,
Bill Kristol urged conservative support for a 20-year occupation of
the region by the United States, a policy now well on the way toward
fulfillment under
This year, Mr. Abramowitz wrote a Journal op-ed explicitly urging bombing
and more to achieve Kosovo independence. But even this extensive mission
keeps expanding, In a recent Journal op-ed, Bob Shacochis supported
the Albanian KLA's commitment to a Greater Albania, including Kosovo,
Albania, Bosnia and much of Macedonia.
What is likely to happen? Either a large Muslim state will be recreated
on the edge of Europe for the first time since World War I, endangering
Greece and threatening Italy, Croatia and Cyprus, or the American police
role will expand to the whole region and last forever, Even this pales
next to a Journal editorial that recommended "standing firm even at
the risk of confrontation" with Russia. Now, fighting a country with
20,000 nuclear missiles and the means to deliver them to the United
States is a great deal more dangerous than picking on second-raters
like those in Bosnia and Serbia.
In Kosovo, either the departing Serbs, rightly fearing retribution from
the much-suffering Albanians, will retreat to Serbia proper where they
will be a Palestinian-like irredentist population, with no dreams other
than recovering their homeland, or they will congregate in to one or
two of the military zones -- perhaps protected by the Russians--to become
a local majority and effectively partition Kosovo, as is de facto being
done now in Israel. The parallels are remarkable. The only question
is whether the years of turmoil and bloodshed suffered in the Middle
East can be skipped and go right to the peaceful end game now hopefully
emerging there,
It is hard for an old Cold Warrior to say but thank heaven for the Russians.
For they were the only ones involved in the Kosovo mess who understood
that the only possibility for peace and regional stability after the
bombing, mass evacuations and the killings was to divide the province
between the Kosovo Albanians and Serbs.
The good news is that Bill Clinton, for all of his bluster and moralism,
is a lover and poseur more than a fighter and he apparently wants to
mollify the Russians. If the Standard-Journal's interventionist hero
John McCain were president, perhaps there could be a real confrontation
to prove how tough we are. The Clinton administration already stands
accused of re-igniting the Cold War, for ignoring Russian sensibilities
and interests over Bosnia and Kosovo; but that is tame game next to
adoption of the Carnegie-Clinton Doctrine. That looks more like British
colonialism -- come to think of it, a doctrine endorsed in the Journal
when George Bush the First was trying to create his "New World Order."
President Clinton promised American aircrews in Missouri, that Kosovo
"probably will not be our last" such exercise, so be prepared for the
days of the Raj. An Albanian intellectual has already begged him to
"act colonial."
Some commentators have accused this space of anti-neoconservatism. To
the contrary; the "godfather" of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, specifically
rejected this colonial New World Order position as unrealistic. We tried
to have him debate his son at the last CPAC, but failed, and we support
the God-father taking the lead in teaching his "children" that this
is a rash and even dangerous business.
Even Winston Churchill could not hold the British Empire together and
he did not have to face a world with atomic weapons and terrorism proliferating
at an alarming pace.
Indeed, colonialism requires heroic leaders, and neither Mr. Clinton
nor Al Gore are any Winston Churchills.
Donald
Devine, former director Of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management,
is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant and a Vice Chairman
for the American Conservative Union.
