You know incredibly more about the subject, of course. You are obviously an expert on these aspects of Russian history.
Many qualified observers and international lawyers argue that it WAS genocide. I can attest that the civilian population (including the many ethnic Russians in the republic) was the primary target.
Yes, many people shout genocide rather a lot these days. Targeting civilian populations in a war is hardly genocide. Or if it is, then most war includes at least some genocide. And the Allies certainly engaged in massive amounts of it, by that definition, in WWII. Hamberg, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Yokohama, not to mention of course Heroshimo and Nagasaki (sp?) (Actually, those last two cities are commonly taken entirely out of context, for purposes of anti-nuclear sensationalism. We firebombed a lot of cities in WWII, to sap the will of our enemies to fight, and to kill workers helpful to the war effort.
Even if the State Department had felt it would hurt Russian-American relations to issue even the mildest reproof to the Russians, that still does not mean that State, and the President, had to SUPPORT the Russian war effort. That was gratuitous.
I don't recall support for the Russian effort. Not at all. I recall lots of background stories indicating that while the U.S. government was not happy about the Russian actions in Chechnya, it was an internal Russian matter.
I think people regularly overestimate what the U.S. can actually do. Our resources though great, are limited. Except in the very rare instances when we can get most of the rest of the world to act with us, sanctions work badly if at all. Even when they are tightly enforced they don't tend to sway really ideologically committed parties very much. Just greedy capitalists. (South African white government.)
I Russia were to engage in wholesale genocide, there wouldn't be all that much we could do about it. And I sure wouldn't want to risk nuclear war to try. Period.
In such a case we would have to condemn the action, and could cut off any economic aid, and the like. But those actions would be largely symbolic to help maintain our own moral compasses. And would probably do very little.
Press attention, and world popular revulsion is about the only thing that might have some effect in such a case.
Now if little Serbia engages in wholesale genocide, we CAN do something about it. It might cost us a lot, but it IS possible. Those seem to me to be the messy, and inequitable, realities.
Doug
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