Chuzzlewit, I should have known better than to stick my head above water! Got zapped for that mistake!
To get some good answers -- or at least, some opinionated answers -- to your questions about the latest Balkan crisis, may I direct you to SI's very own Kosovo thread. The heat is as high there as it used to be(and perhaps still is) on the Clinton threads...
I stopped "following" events in the Balkans on a regular basis years ago, when they got too confusing to keep track of. But I have mulled over the issues that you raise, and so let me share my thoughts on one of them. (That's all I have time for, anyway.)
I have often asked myself -- and others -- one of the questions that you pose, namely: "Why does NATO believe that the Balkans are more worthy of military action than say Chechnya?"
The parallel between Chechnya and Kosovo is much stronger than most people realize.
In the first place, Tito modelled the state structure of Yugoslavia after the state structure of the Soviet Union: certain "nations" had "union republics" of their own; smaller (and less prestigious) "nationalities" had "autonomous" republics, regions, or districts located on the territory of the union republics, but subordinate to the union as a whole. This was not fixed for eternity. For example, some "autonomous" republics within the Soviet Union were subsequently raised to full "union" status (e.g., Kazakhstan and Kirgizstan, which started out as autonomous republics within the Russian Federation).
Thus, both Chechnya and Kosovo were "autonomous" republics within a larger union that subsequently fell apart, leaving them at the mercy of one of the constituent "union" republics, now an independent state. Now, if you reject the idea that some nationalities are "entitled" to their own states and international recognition thereof, while others are eternally relegated to subordinate status, then Chechnya has as good a claim as Kosovo to independent status.
In one respect, Chechnya's claim is even better. Historically, Kosovo WAS the "cradle" of Serbia. Chechnya was never "Russian": it had been an independent region for centuries before the Russians conquered and annexed itin the mid-19th century.
There is a crucial difference, however, which may help explain why NATO acted in the Kosovo crisis, but not in the Chechen crisis: there is no Chechen state outside Chechnya, but there is an Albanian state right next door to Kosovo. And there is a considerable population of Albanians in Macedonia as well. And there had been much talk about a "Greater Albania." And etc., etc. The reasoning here may well have been that Milosevich had to be forced to settle with his local Albanians, lest their aspirations destabilize the countries bordering Kosovo, and, through them, member countries of NATO.
Other possible (or rather, probable) reasons:
1) Russia is outside NATO's "competence", whereas the US and European members of NATO had previously been involved (through the UN) in other conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. On top of that, some -- or all -- of them may have taken to heart the oft-heard criticism that they did not act quickly or decisively enough in those conflicts, and so they determined to be "firm" on Kosovo.
2) Russia is too dangerous to confront, anyway -- it has nukes. It is easier to bluster at a weaker (weaker-looking) country, and then to attack it, if the bluster does not work.
What really bothers me in all this is the rhetoric. I don't believe it. Clinton tells us one of the objectives of the bombing campaign was to protect the "suffering people" of Kosovo. Well, what did he have to say about the "suffering people" of Chechnya, who were being bombed out of their wits by the Russians? On a visit to Moscow in 1995, he patted Boris on the shoulder, and told him -- publicly -- that "we understand -- we had a Civil War, too." (A civil war, between a huge, millions-strong Russia and tiny Chechnya, with a population of under a million?) I suppose we should be grateful that our President at least did not go on to compare Yeltsin to Abraham Lincoln... On another occasion, he advised Yeltsin not to shed "too much blood" in settling the Chechen conflict...How much blood is "too much"? The Chechens had fun with that one, I can tell you.
Needless to say, the intervention of NATO into what it would normally shun as an "internal" conflict raises a whole host of questions, which I have also thought about, but will have to save for another time...
jbe |
