[ALBSA-Info] We May Need Moscow To Deal With Milosevic-From JRL

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Wall Street Journal

October 5, 2000 

[for personal use only]

We May Need Moscow To Deal With Milosevic


By Anatol Lieven. Mr. Lieven, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment 

for International Peace in Washington, is author of "Chechnya: Tombstone of 

Russian Power" (Yale University Press, 1999).


The exchange on Yugoslav policy in Tuesday's presidential debate had a 

curious twist. George W. Bush essentially declared support for the old 

Clinton-Gore policy of seeking Russian help in the Balkans, which Al Gore was 

automatically forced to deny. Mr. Bush in turn was forced to agree with Mr. 

Gore that he would only enlist Russian mediation if Moscow agreed fully with 

U.S. policy.

 

The problem with their accord is that this is not what "mediation" means, and 

that there is little chance of Russia agreeing to mediate without its own 

policies and interests being taken into account. This is a pity, because on 

the basic goal of removing Mr. Milosevic, the position of the U.S. and much 

of Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration is the same. And it may 

well be that, as during the Kosovo War last year, a role for Russia could be 

the best or even the only way of forcing Mr. Milosevic to go into exile 

without further bloodshed.


Russia and the U.S. do have differences, as Mr. Gore noted. But a central one 

has been not Russian support for Mr. Milosevic as such, but Moscow's 

opposition to his indictment as a war criminal. This is not only Russia's 

attitude, nor is it necessarily politically wrong. As other writers have 

pointed out on this page recently, on numerous occasions the U.S. has helped 

remove wicked dictators from power not by promising to put them on trial, but 

by guaranteeing them safe and comfortable exiles.


By doing so, it avoided bloody civil wars that the democratic opposition 

would not necessarily have won. This is not a pretty business, least of all 

when dealing with someone as vile as Mr. Milosevic. But before it is 

denounced as morally unacceptable, it should be remembered that the Western 

commentators doing the denouncing are not those who will pay with their blood 

if their moral policy fails.

 

Mr. Bush was absolutely correct in his opposition to the use of U.S. force. A 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization invasion of Serbia to overthrow Mr. 

Milosevic is out of the question. It is impossible to organize on short 

notice, would almost certainly unite a majority of Serbs in violent 

hostility, and would be strongly opposed by both European members of NATO and 

the Pentagon. This means that the U.S. has to seek alternatives, of which the 

obvious one is to go on supporting the opposition in its campaign to get Mr. 

Milosevic to step down.


But despite some encouraging signs, at the time of writing it is still not 

certain that this alone will work. The cold, subtle monster in Belgrade may 

still be able to mobilize enough resources to crush the opposition and remain 

in power.


There is even a risk that Mr. Milosevic may launch some form of attack on the 

government of Montenegro in order to try to force a NATO intervention there. 

As so often before, this would allow him to portray himself as a Serbian hero 

fighting the aggressive West. In recent weeks, U.S. officials have admitted 

that they were relying on Moscow to deter Mr. Milosevic from such a course.


But Moscow is by no means sure that it wishes to be used in this way again. 

One reason for the Russian government's ambiguous stance concerning the 

present crisis is the presence of pro-Milosevic hardliners, especially in the 

Russian military. More important is that even Russian officials who 

desperately want to be rid of the Milosevic incubus resent the way Russia has 

been treated for its role in ending the war in Kosovo. Seen from Moscow, it 

was Russian pressure on Mr. Milosevic that brought him finally to agree to 

NATO's terms in June of last year -- pressure that took real courage given 

the fury of many Russians over NATO unilateralism.


If the mission of former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and 

former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari had failed, NATO might well have 

been forced to launch a ground war. It would have won, but the strains this 

would have caused between the NATO allies would have risked destroying the 

alliance from within.


Russia believes it has received no tangible rewards for saving NATO from 

potential disaster in this way. (The Russian elites have received large 

amounts of International Monetary Fund money as a Western geopolitical bribe, 

but neither we nor they can admit that this is what it was.) Moreover, after 

brief expressions of gratitude by Western governments, the response of a 

majority of Western commentators has been a continued vilification of 

Russia's role in the Balkans.


As a Russian official told me bitterly: "To judge by the past, Western 

gratitude lasts about two weeks. So if we did help get Milosevic out of power 

peacefully, two weeks later there would be calls in the U.S. Senate to bring 

sanctions against us for protecting a war criminal."


So while there is considerable division in Moscow over what policy to follow 

with regard to Yugoslavia, there is a consensus that Russia must not simply 

be the channel for a new Western ultimatum. And if Russia is to provide 

asylum for Mr. Milosevic or facilitate his peaceful departure to some third 

country, it wants written guarantees that it will not then be subjected to 

future Western pressure for extradition.


Secondly, as Mr. Gore stated, Moscow wants Yugoslavian opposition leader 

Vojislav Kostunica to win through internationally supervised second-round 

elections, rather than Western-backed street protests. This is admittedly a 

tricky question, given Mr. Milosevic's capacity for clever ruthlessness in a 

tight corner; but it is not wholly unreasonable and is at least a point on 

which we can talk with the Russians.


Of course, we may decide that these Russian positions are unacceptable, and 

that we will act without consulting Moscow. Fine. But in that case, if the 

Serbian opposition is defeated, how precisely do we mean to act? On this, 

Messrs. Bush and Gore have an identical position. They don't know.