straitstimes.asia1.com.sg
APR 13 1999
Vietnam again in
Yugoslavia?
By GREGORY CLARK
THE shadow of Vietnam hangs heavily
over events in Yugoslavia. Once again
Western policymakers have proven unable
to grasp the reality of events in distant
lands with complex backgrounds.
Both disasters began with bad bouts of
historical amnesia. In Vietnam, we were
supposed to forget the 1954 Geneva
Accords that had promised early
reunification of Vietnam, and to ignore the
brutal suppression of pro-communist
elements in South Vietnam soon after.
Instead, we were presented with the image
of vicious guerillas backed by Hanoi and
China who had suddenly emerged to
overthrow a friendly and legitimate South
Vietnamese government. Massive Western
intervention was thoroughly justified --
morally, legally and politically.
In Yugoslavia, we are supposed to forget
the dreadful World War II massacres of
Serbs at the hands of pro-Nazi Croatians
and Muslims. Instead, it was taken for
granted that with the Western-encouraged,
post-Cold War breakup of former
Yugoslavia, the Serbs would accept
minority status in an artificial,
Muslim-dominated state of Bosnia and in a
still fairly unrepentant Croatia.
And this is in a part of the world where
memories last long and revenge is fierce.
When the Serbs did retaliate by cleansing
brutally some of the areas from which they
themselves had been cleansed brutally a
little more than a generation earlier, we
were supposed to be shocked and
horrified. No one criticised the Western
policymakers who had created the mess in
the first place.
The parallels continue in the way the West,
having worked itself into a lather of moral
indignation, has since bypassed numerous
chances to end the fighting.
In Vietnam, the obvious solution all along
was to get North and South to talk to each
other and seek compromise. But to the
Cold War moralists that was selling out to
the communist enemy and would see the
rest of South-east Asia collapse like
dominoes.
So, instead of compromise, we ended up
with total confrontation, the West's total
defeat, three million dead, the bombing of
Cambodia and Laos, and no dominoes.
In Bosnia, and to some extent Croatia, the
obvious answer is to separate the warring
ethnic groups into autonomous regions. But
when the West Europeans finally began to
realise this, with the Vance-Owen
proposals for a partial breakup of Bosnia,
they were told by the US that "we are not
into maps".
A few years later, with many more tens of
thousands killed or displaced, the US, with
its Dayton accords, decided that it is very
much into maps after all.
That ended the conflict, though not without
a lot more Western moralising about the
need to punish war criminals and to keep
the framework of the Bosnian state intact.
(The US sees a Bosnian breakup as a
threat to its own model of unity in ethnic
diversity, just as a Vietnam reunification
was a threat to its belief that no one could
possibly want to live under a communist
regime).
But the mistakes do not end there. With
Dayton, there was some Nato bombing of
Serbian positions and threats of more.
From this came the idea that it was the
bombing that had forced a Serbian
concession.
That, combined with a by-now anti-Serb
bias in Western media and official
attitudes, set the stage for the Kosovo
disaster.
True, Serbian crackdowns in Kosovo
leading to the rise of the radical Kosovo
Liberation Army guerilla movement also
helped set the stage. But from then on the
Serbian dilemma followed that of the US
in Vietnam closely -- ruthless military
action to root out guerillas enjoying
popular support, atrocities by troops,
massive destruction in the countryside and
the displacement of population...
In this situation the only way to avoid
massive killing lies in talking to moderates
on the other side to find a compromise as
soon as possible.
This was rejected by the US in Vietnam,
and under the recent US-sponsored
doctrine that says anyone who attacks me
or my friend is a terrorist who has to be
exterminated, Belgrade is also entitled to
reject it.
Fortunately, in Kosovo, unlike Vietnam,
outside pressure guaranteed that there
would be talks. But for talks to succeed,
the West needed to distance itself from
KLA radicals and throw full backing
behind the moderates. This it has not done.
This failure, combined with more threats
to bomb the Serbs if they did not bow to
Western wishes, strengthened the
no-compromise elements in the KLA and
undercut the ethnic Albanian moderates.
Now, we have the rejection of the very
reasonable Russian proposal to stop the
bombing and let the Kosovo refugees
return (dislike of Moscow and concepts of
Slavic unity play a role not unlike that
played by fear of China in Vietnam).
Even stranger is the abrupt dismissal of the
willingness of the leader of the Kosovo
moderates, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, to
negotiate directly with Yugoslavia in
Belgrade.
He is acting under duress, we are told. But
at least he has fared better than South
Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem, who
was assassinated when he looked like
wanting to negotiate with the North on
ending the war. Shallow-minded media
bear much of the blame for this crude
immaturity in Western policies. They have
little interest in historical background,
preferring to report what they see rather
than report the other side.
So, like Hanoi and the Viet Cong,
Belgrade and the Serbs can do no right,
their enemies can do no wrong.
Policymakers find it easy to swim with the
media tide. To oppose the conventional,
hawkish wisdom is to be a wimp, which
was the case with the few in Washington in
the 1960s who had the common sense and
courage to oppose hardline solutions in
Vietnam.
Mr Yasushi Akashi, who was a candidate
for Tokyo governor, was the UN
representative who helped mediate a
settlement in Cambodia in the 1990s and
was then sent to sort out the Bosnian
conflict. US contempt for his willingness
to listen to the Serbs and seek
compromises saw him forced out of
Bosnia in semi-disgrace.
Recently, I had the chance to ask him why
he has never tried to publicise his own
side of the Bosnian story. His acerbic
reply: "Over Yugoslavia, you simply
cannot trust anyone to report you
properly."
[The writer, president of Tama
University, contributed this article to The
Japan Times.] |
