Like Dracula, Irredentism Returns : Ominous complications could occur if Serbian and Croatian excesses proceed apace

Irredentism is a political philosophy whose name derives from the Italian word irredenta , meaning “unredeemed,” and from an Italian political movement of the late 19th Century that sought to capture or “redeem” (a later generation would say “liberate”) territory adjacent to Italy where substantial numbers of Italians had long lived under Austrian or other non-Italian rule. Irredentism has had a long and ugly career. Thus, for imperial Germany, it was the Drang nach Osten , the “drive to the East,” that led to the bloody annexation of areas populated, to one degree or another, by Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans.

With the defeat of the fascist Axis by the World War II Allies, irredentism seemed consigned to history’s scrap heap. Thus, again, Germany, swallowing hard, accepted the Oder-Neisse line as its eastern border, delivering a number of Volksdeutsche to Polish rule.

But the end of the Cold War has brought irredentism back from the scrap heap in another country. Both Serbia and Croatia have adopted the irredentist axiom that wherever your nationals are found, to that point your national territory must extend. Serbia, worse, has added the corollary that a nation does not truly possess its territory unless it possesses it exclusively. It is on this view that Serbia has sought to “cleanse” conquered territory of Croats and Muslims.

The moral case against this conduct is clear. But does the moral case also constitute a political case for American involvement. After all, the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, an even more genocidal civil war, never led to American intervention. Why is Bosnia different?

It is different, we think, because it bids fair, as Cambodia did not, to define the political culture of the post-Cold War era. Albania can scarcely fail to intervene on behalf of the Muslim Albanians of Serbia’s Kosovo province if extermination of the sort now occurring in Bosnia is the fate that awaits them. Greek and Bulgarian irredentist designs on Macedonian territory could further widen the local fighting. Conflict between Greece and Turkey is not inconceivable if yet another Muslim minority falls victim to Christian aggression.

But these regional conflicts, however serious, are ultimately less important than the collective definition of the world political culture that is under way. Is irredentism--taken for granted in an earlier era--really going to come back? We shall all lose, badly, if it does. And for that reason, U.S.-led NATO action to block it, however painful, is warranted.