Powerless in Kosovo

For the west, saber-rattling is cheap, but action is unlikely.

By Loren Jenkins

Jun 12, 1998 | With evidence mounting by the hour that another tragic chapter in the Balkans' long history of violence is under way in Kosovo, world concern over the Serbian repression of its southernmost province has reached a fever pitch.

As with Bosnia, fever pitch means a maximum of oratory combined with a minimum of concrete action. And, as with the Bosnian Muslims, the response out of Washington and other Western capitals does not bode well for the plight of Kosovo's Albanian ethnic majority.

First, the oratory. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has termed the crackdown by Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic an act of "barbarism." President Clinton, more politely, called what is happening "unacceptable." Pope John Paul II has weighed in between prayers to speak sorrowfully of "repression and the flights of people" in Kosovo in urging world powers not to remain "inert."

Papal urging and secular saber-rattling notwithstanding, inertia on Kosovo remains the order of the day. Ever since Milosevic's crackdown in Kosovo began three months ago, the West has responded with hand-wringing meetings by NATO foreign ministers, the six-nation Balkan "Contact Group" (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States), the European Union in Luxembourg, the White House and the National Security Council. The upshot of those meetings has been a mantra-like recitation of demands for Milosevic to desist and get down to talking to Kosovo's civilian leaders, or face possible military wrath.

The latest round of meetings this week in London and Brussels were no different. The Contact Group discussed a plan to give Milosevic yet another ultimatum to resume talks with Kosovo's moderate civilian leader, Ibrahim Rugova. Thursday, NATO defense ministers warned of possible military options, though they were only able to agree on the dispatch of NATO planes to conduct air maneuvers over Albania and Macedonia, beyond Kosovo's borders.

Milosevic has heard it all before. As far back as 1992, when Yugoslavia first started to fragment, President George Bush warned the Serbian leader to keep his hands off Kosovo militarily or face American intervention, even bombing. Milosevic dodged that threat by refocusing his holy crusade for Serbian dominion on the breakaway republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It took four years of vicious civil war and genocidal "ethnic cleansing" campaigns before Western fulminations were translated into military intervention and the flawed peace accords negotiated by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke.

By then, Milosevic had accomplished his goal. He expanded Serbian power into Bosnia while solidifying his own political dominance over the fragmenting Yugoslavia. He is now gambling he can do the same in Kosovo, the small, impoverished province worshipped as the historic cradle of Serbian nationalism, despite the fact that 90 percent of its current population of 2 million is ethnically Albanian.

Next Page: No more Bosnias? Too late.

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