Anointing the ‘Devil You Know’

As superdiplomat Richard C. Holbrooke returned from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, with yet another last-minute deal in the Balkans, reaction in much of the West was mixed. Relief that airstrikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization wouldn’t be needed for now against Serbia mingled with a sense of disappointment: Slobodan Milosevic, the slippery Serb president, had once again escaped a long-overdue punishment.

Both reactions are right. NATO airstrikes against Serbia might still be necessary, but they also will be expensive. In particular, they might mark the definitive end to the increasingly shadowy collaboration between Russia and the West. Ever since the days of the czars, Russian leaders have tried to distract public opinion by appearing as the protectors of endangered Orthodox Serbia in the Balkans. Czar Nicholas II used Austria-Hungary’s ill-advised annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina to help consolidate his authority after the failed 1905 Russian revolution, and he came galloping to Serbia’s rescue again in 1914, after a fanatical Serbian nationalist assassinated the heir to the Austrian throne.

President Boris N. Yeltsin today is every bit as vacillating and weak as Czar Nicholas was then, and he is as much the creature of his shadowy, crackbrained advisors as Nicholas was of Rasputin. NATO airstrikes might force Czar Boris into Serbia’s corner and polarize the European security system for the first time since the Cold War. Not that Russia is any threat to Europe today, but its definitive alienation would vastly complicate the work that needs to be done as European integration proceeds.

Then there’s the risk that the bombing will not work. Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon both tried to bomb the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table, and neither had much luck. The new Holbrooke agreement hopefully means we have escaped the worst Balkan nightmare: NATO bombs Serbia; Serbia doesn’t surrender; Serbian terrorists in Bosnia and elsewhere start bombing NATO barracks and mounting terrorist attacks on U.S. and other troops in Bosnia and Macedonia.

But if Western opinion is correct in greeting the peace agreement with relief, it is also correct to regret what happens now. Milosevic has again escaped; after plunging Yugoslavia into a series of murderous civil and international wars, this odious man of blood has again outfoxed the West and consolidated his political position. He is now, as he was throughout the Bosnian War and the preceding Serbo-Croatian War, both the main villain of the peace and the West’s indispensable partner in brokering an end to hostilities. We threaten him with airstrikes, but only to coax him into signing agreements--agreements that recognize his legitimacy and convert us from his opponents into his partners.

Milosevic has good reasons to be satisfied with the outcome of this latest game of brinksmanship with NATO. As so often before, his delaying tactics allowed him to achieve his main objectives before bowing to superior force. He has smashed the Kosovo Liberation Army, inflicted heavy reprisals on Kosovan villages he suspects of aiding the armed fighters and, better yet, thoroughly split the Albanian political movement in Kosovo. Ibrahim Rugova, who for 10 years guided a remarkably successful nonviolent resistance movement among the province’s 90% Albanian minority, has lost the political initiative to younger, more radical and less coherent voices associated with the KLA’s disastrous policy of armed struggle.

What has been most galling and exhausting to the West is the way Milosevic has been able to manipulate Western diplomacy and institutions. NATO is supposed to be a military organization, but it is clearly a bureaucratic one: Any decision to use force takes weeks or months of painstaking negotiation among the 16 (soon to be 19) NATO members. Once the decision to use force has been made, there are all the questions about which forces, under whose command and toward what end. NATO is thus more likely to bore an aggressor to death than to defeat one in battle.

This creates an ideal set of opportunities for a Milosevic, or anyone who wants to follow in his footsteps. Given the West’s elephantine bureaucracy and its unwillingness to use force, Milosevic can play on the hopes and fears of Western policymakers for months: provoking them to the edge of action, then soothing them until they relax. Until the very last minute, he controls the timetable and he can heat up or cool down the crisis.

Sound familiar? It should: It is the same tactic that Saddam Hussein has been using ever since the Gulf War. Move a couple of antiaircraft batteries around, deny U.N. inspectors access to one of your many presidential palaces, and you force the United States into a crisis. Remain defiant while the U.S. slowly escalates its threats; persuade Russia and other countries to mediate as, slowly and expensively, the U.S. gathers its scattered forces to form a credible threat, then accept mediation from the United Nations at the last minute and make some concessions, perhaps less than Washington demanded in the first place.

Uncle Sam is left looking foolish and breathless, like the Duke of York in the nursery rhyme, who marched 10,000 men to the top of the hill only to march them down again.

As we go through these dreary crises over and over, the U.S. public keeps asking if there is anything we can do to settle these problems once and for all?

The answer, unfortunately, is “no.” Washington long ago realized that in both Yugoslavia and Iraq we are better off with the devils we know. There are no George Washingtons or Abraham Lincolns, or even Jimmy Carters, waiting in the wings in these countries. Milosevic’s chief political rivals are Serbian ultranationalists even more bloodthirsty and unscrupulous than he is. As for Iraq, eliminating Hussein would at best create a power struggle that would be won by one of his toadies. At worst, the country could break up, causing a major crisis in Turkey and making Iran the dominant power in the Gulf region.

Moreover, as long as we want and need allies--and we do, badly, in both these cases--we have to listen to what the allies have to say. That means delay, divided counsels, giving the more dovish allies ample time and evidence to make up their timid minds. The Germans and the Dutch have to agree that the humanitarian disaster in Kosovo is serious enough to make the use of force a moral alternative. Moderate Arab leaders need enough evidence against Hussein to sell the policy to suspicious publics.

It was easier to get into Iraq and the Balkans than it will be to climb out. Now we are getting in deeper in Yugoslavia. There will be a no-fly zone to monitor, and 2,000 unarmed civilian observers for whose safety we are responsible. There will be 250,000 refugees to help feed--and all these new responsibilities will be new pressure points that Milosevic can tweak whenever he thinks a crisis will be to his advantage.

Oh, well. The United States can’t solve these problems, at least not in the short run. We can only hope to live with them with as much dignity as possible. So far, the Clinton administration has done a reasonably good job of handling these tiresome but dangerous situations. And that, when it comes to intractable problems like these, is success.

Sort of.