Don’t Drown Serbs in Bitterness

“Does the government of the United States intend to adopt a policy which will make innocent men and women suffer because of the political situation which makes their government unacceptable to the United States?” Fiorello LaGuardia, director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in 1946, posed that challenge when Washington ended support for famine relief in Ukraine.

Someone should put that question to President Clinton. However justified the desire to see Slobodan Milosevic removed from office and punished for war crimes, the administration’s single-minded fixation on that goal is distorting efforts toward Balkan reconstruction in general and Serbian reconciliation in particular. A moral and political disorientation has crept into U.S. policy.

Ten million Serbs are to be excluded from full participation in economic reconstruction programs, held hostage unless and until they rid themselves of a bloody-handed authoritarian. Punishing all Serbs indiscriminately for their government’s vicious actions in Kosovo obliterates the difference between the culpable and the guiltless. It compounds the dilemmas of a war whose bombing attacks on Serbian infrastructure far from Kosovo were strategically understandable but morally dubious.

Current policy ignores the distinction between collective guilt--blaming an entire community for crimes perpetrated by some of its members--and collective responsibility--holding a community accountable politically for crimes committed in its name. It is just and reasonable to demand that the Serbian people confront the atrocities and human rights violations their government directed in Kosovo and to press them to change that government. It is neither just nor reasonable to subject them simultaneously to the grave hardships now being imposed.

Clinton has tried to resolve this moral tension by offering humanitarian assistance to the Serbs, but denying them reconstruction help. That distinction is meaningless and counterproductive. Without serious efforts to address the calamitous state of Serbia’s ravaged economy, humanitarian relief alone is a prescription for the protracted misery of millions. And they will not all be Serbs. A moral policy would give priority to compassion for the Serbian people rather than to hostility toward Milosevic.

If the policy is morally obtuse, it is politically maladroit. It is by no means clear that deprivation in Serbia will lead to Milosevic’s removal or to his replacement with a less nationalistic, more amenable leader. Serbs who have seen their facilities and jobs destroyed by sanctions and bombs may not be disposed to take political cues from those who persist in punishing them. To them, NATO’s widespread bombing made a mockery of the claim that the war was not against the Serbian people. Clinton’s attempted coercion could well backfire, producing either a Serbia hunkering down in a mood of victimization or a more authoritarian regime suppressing democratic tendencies.

Milosevic has cards of his own to play. One is already on the table: Belgrade will bargain hard over reopening the commerce disrupted by the bombing of bridges over the Danube River. Yugoslavia will try to persuade countries dependent on Danube transportation to pressure Washington to relax its adamant treatment of Serbia.

More generally, vigorous recovery in Serbia is crucial to healthy regional recovery. Contempt and anger toward Milosevic are nearly universal in neighboring countries, but those emotions could dissolve in bitterness toward the United States if our obsession with one villain hampers their own economic restoration. It was a considerable feat to hold NATO together through 78 days of bombing in Serbia and Kosovo. Allies committed to boosting the Balkan economies are unlikely to stick together for months and years if a focus on removing Milosevic impedes that larger endeavor.

Obviously, the brutalities Milosevic directed differ vastly from the more subtle pain inflicted on Serbians by excluding them from full participation in reconstruction and development programs. Yet is the difference one of degree rather than of kind? If the consequence of policy is to increase infant mortality rates and shorten life spans--as the evidence from Iraq suggests could certainly occur in Serbia--one may argue that those indirect results are comparable in lethality.

NATO has made much of its success in limiting damage from the airstrikes, but relying on estimates only of direct effects is clearly an inadequate gauge. Even with major investment in rebuilding Serbia’s and Kosovo’s infrastructure, the indirect collateral damage to public health and human welfare will be far greater than the lives lost to the recent military operations. That fact should not rest easy on our national conscience.

To be sure, there are risks in providing large-scale help to a country still governed by an indicted war criminal. A gloating Milosevic undoubtedly will seek to claim credit for any progress in restoring Serbia to a functioning economy. The task is to make clear to Serbians that international assistance arrives in spite of, not because of, the incumbent regime.

That means relying on the visible presence of foreign firms and staffs, working side by side with independent groups in Serbia, to carry out major projects. It means, as some in the administration have indicated, giving preference to localities and areas where democratic forces may gain strength. It means encouraging and possibly conditioning assistance on tolerance of a free press in Yugoslavia, for the best safeguard against Milosevic hijacking international aid is alert scrutiny by his fellow countrymen.

A mixed economy with substantial latitude for market enterprise was already emerging in post-Tito Yugoslavia. One cannot blink at the fact that reconstruction on the needed scale will require dealing with official circles in Belgrade and government institutions under their control elsewhere. Creatively planned, however, with assistance targeted on nongovernmental organizations and private businesses, an active reconstruction program can go far toward loosening the authoritarian reins in Serbia and strengthening those elements conducive to future democratic modernization. Before the war, 26 of the 27 radio stations in Serbia and Montenegro (which together make up the current Yugoslavia) were at least nominally private, as were seven of the eight television stations. Rehabilitating those independent communications links should be a priority. There is some political space in Serbia to work around Milosevic. The most promising way to exploit and expand that space is to have alert, energetic, international organizations on the ground collaborating with suitable partners.

Admonishing the Pharisees, Christ said, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.” As a man of humane impulse, perhaps the president will reflect further on how to advance justice in the Balkans.