PERILS OF INDIFFERENCE -- AND OF ACTION
April 14, 1999
WASHINGTON
Clarence Page
Chicago Tribune
chicagotribune.com
Events have an ironic way of overtaking the
best-laid plans of the Clinton White House.
More than a year ago First Lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton invited Elie Wiesel, the
distinguished author and Holocaust survivor,
to speak at the White House "Millennium
Evenings" series.
As she introduced Wiesel and President
Clinton at the two-hour seminar Monday
evening, Mrs. Clinton said she never could
have imagined that the war in Kosovo
would make Wiesel's topic, "The Perils of
Indifference: Lessons Learned from a
Violent Century," so relevant.
As I listened, I was taken not only by the
discussion's relevance but also by its
irrelevance. Much was said about how the
catastrophe in Kosovo illustrates the perils
of indifference. Too little was said about the
perils of action, specifically the actions taken
by President Clinton and NATO that have
made bad matters worse.
Wiesel was the first to note a key difference
between world reaction to Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic's "ethnic
cleansing" of ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo
region of his country and the war Adolf
Hitler waged against the Jews.
"This time," Wiesel said, "the world was not
silent."
Nor has the world been indifferent. Despite
painful memories of our Vietnam debacle
and the fevered harangues of isolationist
naysayers, polls show most Americans want
to help. We are a nation of compassionate
people willing to make tremendous
sacrifices for others, but only if we think our
actions will do more good than harm.
Unfortunately, when the United States and
NATO took action, hoping bombs would
force the Yugoslav president to back off,
Milosevic's removal of ethnic Albanians
speeded up and his political position in
Yugoslavia was strengthened.
Too much of the debate in Washington has
focused on whether we should send ground
troops to Kosovo, a risky venture in that
tree-covered and mountainous region.
History shows the Yugoslavian military
might well do to the U.S. what it did to the
German Wehrmacht during World War II,
hand us an apparent victory in a day or two,
then take to the hills for an endless guerrilla
war. The Germans lost thousands of
soldiers and never took Yugoslavia.
As an alternative, some American leaders
are proposing that we offer aid to the
independence-minded Kosovo Liberation
Army and let them take over the fight
against Milosevic. But the extremist KLA,
some of whom are murderous thugs, may
not be the sort of army we want to support,
either.
Indifference at the end of the 20th Century
is undermined by modern news media. But
the media also encourage us to think in
terms of solutions that are as quick and easy
to digest as the 10-second sound bite or a
network mini-series.
"The Face of Evil" crows the cover of
Newsweek, next to Milosevic's photo. But
Milosevic is neither the beginning nor the
end of Balkan problems.
Nothing excuses Milosevic's bloody
tyranny, but he is not the same sort of tyrant
as Hitler. We make a mistake if we try to
demonize Milosevic too much. Unlike
Hitler, who wanted to wipe out the Jews,
Milosevic's forced removal of ethnic
Albanians has different roots. It grew, in
part, out of his overreaction to the KLA's
attacks against Serbs and even some fellow
ethnic Albanians who were believed to be
insufficiently committed to the KLA's cause.
A realistic solution in Kosovo must show an
appreciation for the complexities of a history
that has a deeper presence in the lives of
central Europeans than we Americans
usually feel. Many Serbs regard their defeat
by the Ottoman Turks in 1389 "as if it
happened last week," observed Rep. Rod
Blagojevich (D-Ill.), the House's only
member of Serbian descent.
From the House floor and in an op-ed in
Tuesday's Washington Post, Blagojevich
has called for a settlement that would
partition Kosovo and would take four
factors into account:
- It must keep as many of Kosovo's sacred
Orthodox cathedrals and historic places as
possible within Serbia, properly
appreciating the widely held Serbian view
that Kosovo is the cradle of their civilization.
- It should seek to place as many Albanian
homes as possible within an area of self-rule
contiguous to Albania.
- It must include the Russians as part of the
agreement, defusing Russian resentment of
NATO bombing and taking advantage of
close historic relations between Serbs and
Russians.
- Finally, the partition boundaries must be
drawn not just along ethnic lines but along
strategically defensible lines, assuring their
long-term stability.
Blagojevich does not have all the answers,
but at least his formula contains an
appreciation for history and its complexities,
an appreciation too often missing in the
Kosovo debate. History matters.
Indifference holds many perils, but so does
a failure to act with intelligence.
|
