Austin Bay Blog

Former Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic’s long-running trial is finally over– without a conviction. Milosevic was found dead in his jail cell in the UN detention center at The Hague, Netherlands. The first reports said he died of natural casues– his health was terrible and failing. In fact his long-running trial often stopped because of his poor health. Milosevic had been on trail since February 2002. According to this AP report he faced 66 criminial counts. That seems about right. When the trial first started I recall a prosecutor focusing on a dozen key charges. Milosevic probably should have been tried in Serbia; the UN trial had aspects of farce and show, though the charges were deadly serious and the prosecutorial teams’ work (in many instances) was superb. I think the Iraqis are doing a much better job with Saddam’s trial than the international court did with Milosevic. The trial has moved along despite Saddam’s shenanigans (and some of what Saddam is doing appears to be ripped from Milosevic’s playbook). Milosevic orchestrated the Serb-Croat war and crafted the Serb strategy of “creeping aggression.” He was also the bully behind “ethnic cleansing” in eastern Bosnia. He epitomized the move from “red to brown” in eastern Europe– moving from Communist to ultra-nationalist fascist as the Cold War ended. The Nazis and Communists both knew they were cut from the same hideous human mold. They both share a disdain for liberalism and a disregard for human life. They are also permanently anti-American. Hitler called the US cowboys– remember that next time you hear the US “cowboy” disparaged. You can see these traits displayed by the Stalinists still among us.

Some useful grafs in the AP report:

His death comes less than a week after the star witness in his trial, former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, was found dead in the same prison. Babic, who was serving a 13-year prison sentence, committed suicide. He testified against Milosevic in 2002.

A figure of beguiling charm and cunning ruthlessness, Milosevic was a master tactician who turned his country’s defeats into personal victories and held onto power for 13 years despite losing four wars that shattered his nation and impoverished his people.

Milosevic led Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, into four Balkan wars, but always managed to emerge politically stronger. The secret of his survival was his uncanny ability to exploit what less adroit figures would consider a fatal blow.

Each time he would bounce back, skillfully reinventing himself in a series of political transformations _ as a devout communist, a reform-minded nationalist, and again as a communist at a time when most of the world had abandoned Marxist ideology.

He once described himself as the “Ayatollah Khomeini of Serbia,” assuring his prime minister, Milan Panic, that “the Serbs will follow me no matter what.” For years, they did _ through wars which dismembered Yugoslavia and plunged what was left of the country into social, political, moral and economic ruin.

UPDATE: If I can locate an e-copy, I’ll post a column I wrote for the Dallas Morning News that appeared on November 21, 1991. The column pegs Milosevic as the central actor in the Yugoslav wars.

And finally (4 PM CST)– a copy of that ancient op-ed. A thank you to The Dallas Morning News for sending me a copy for the DMN’s op-ed archive.

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Headline: Europe needs to play role in Yugoslavia

November 21, 1991

Yugoslavia is dead. Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and the other tribes once lumped inside Yugoslav borders might ask if the nation ever existed as anything more than a fragile political convenience. Patched from the political fragments of World War I, briefly cemented by fascist threat, Nazi invasion and then the personality and secret police of Josip Broz Tito, the figment of “Yugoslav unity’ has disappeared with the end of the Cold War, as the old Balkan strifes and troubles return like so many Draculas.

Yugoslav disintegration has become a blood bath that cannot be ignored, for the crisis involves much more than drawing new borders between peoples who have fought one another for centuries. Yugoslav breakdown is an aggressive microcosm of the troubles that haunt post-Cold War European geopolitics.

Thus Yugoslavia’s breakdown has become a political laboratory for Europe and the United Nations, each bloody day asking the question: “How do we deal with the historical fragmentation resulting from the end of the Cold War?’

Unabating ethnic violence is not the correct answer. Since summer, over a dozen cease-fires brokered between fighting Serb and Croat forces have failed, often within hours of the agreement.

The chief culprit is the former Yugoslav national army, now thoroughly a creature of Serbia and its ultra-nationalist leader, Slobodan Milosevic. The Serb army’s strategy is to create a “greater Serbia’ by winning a “creeping’ war of aggression. It attacks, takes a niche of Croatia, halts and waits for the international community’s diplomatic rhetoric to subside. Then it attacks again.

The Serbs have not confined their assaults to Serb-populated districts. The Serb army has surrounded and shelled the Croat Adriatic port of Dubrovnik, turning a tourist attraction and regional economic asset into a shooting gallery. Even if the Serbs don’t intend to keep Dubrovnik, taking it gives them something to trade for a larger slice of the Croatian coastline.

Until last week, the European nations had done little more than kvetch and cajole the Serbs. Great Britain, France and Belgium have now asked for U.N. peacekeeping troops, should Serbs and Croats agree to yet another cease-fire.

Economic sanctions could ultimately stop the Serb war machine. The neighbor nations of Romania, Hungary and Albania, however, given their economic distress, cannot be relied upon to enforce an embargo. Besides, the Serb armed forces may have sufficient fuel and ammunition to continue their attacks for another six months.

Calling for U.N.-sponsored peace-making troops is the right step, but action must support rhetoric. Under the umbrella of a Security Council resolution, Western Europeans must be prepared to commit their armed forces to the peace-making mission. A dramatic demonstration, perhaps breaking the siege of Dubrovnik, would clearly send the message that Europe and the U.N. stand for evolutionary rather than revolutionary change in the political order. A dozen British, French and Italian destroyers and mine sweepers could relieve Dubrovnik in an afternoon.

The Europeans’ goal is not to remake Yugoslavia as it was. Frankly, Slovenia is already essentially a separate nation; the other republics are close behind. The goals are to stop the bloodshed and make the case that post-Cold War geopolitical change will not be conducted by wars of aggression. Let the borders of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia be redrawn by local plebiscite. The lesson should be this: Democracy works, not war.

A continuing Yugoslav blood bath could be a prelude to a much larger Balkan war. Unchecked Serbian war making encourages pocket fascists in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. who would use civil war as a means of gaining power. It is time for the members of “next year’s superpower,’ the European Economic Community, to start to quench through collective political action those terrible ethnic fires that are the threat to peace in the common European home.

Austin Bay of Austin has worked as a consultant for several defense agencies. His new book about the Persian Gulf War, From Shield to Storm, will be out in December.

copyright Austin Bay
courtesy of the Dallas Morning News

Would the Western European military operation sketched in the column have changed history?

UPDATE 2: Excerpt from a tough comment: “I remember watching in horror as the kind of insane powermad acts that led to the Nazi death camps were repeated before an international television audience in the X-yogoslovia in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. I kept asking my on-line collegues, “where are the Europeans? What part of ‘Never Again!’ did they fail to understand?”” Read the whole comment. Comments usually take from one to six hours to go through moderation.

UPDATE 3: I’ll re-post the comment rules post. From July 12, 2005:

We’ve installed a new comments moderation routine which should allow comments to appear more quickly. The policy instituted after the “identity theft” incident still stands and means comments will be moderated. During my latest trip to the Middle East I received about a dozen emails from commenters who said the comment function did not work. I put up two posts saying that comments would be turned off. Twice during the trip I Went to the moderation file and found ten or so comments in the file. Those did get posted. Once again, new commenters need to do a site search and pull up the comment rules. My rules are basically the same as Don Sensing’s.

Here are Don’s rules:

Comments policy, read and heed!

A. No - means no - profanity!

B. No personal attacks on me or any other commenter or author.

C. No commercial commenting, but links to your own blog site or relevant other web pages are fine.

D. I rarely answer comments - I just don’t have the time - and when I do it is on a whim, so if you leave a comment challenging or commending my post, thank you, but don’t get bent when I appear to take no notice.

E. Please do not email me something you left in a comment - Wordpress emails me every comment so I do see it.

F. If you include more than two links in your comment, Wordpress automatically slides it into the “awaiting moderation” file. Eventually I will notice but probably not quickly.

G. I reserve the right to delete or edit a comment for any reason I see fit, but it is almost unheard of for me to edit one. If you left a comment and either don’t see it or it disappeared, 99.9% of the time it means you broke one of these rules. Do not email me asking what happened; I will not reply.

H. Please keep your comments relevant to the topic of the post.

I. Remember Rule No. 6!

There are some changes since July 12, 2005, of course. It now takes anywhere from one to six hours for a comment to post. In December we added some new “spam” controls that obliterate common spam words– I never see the comment. Also some typical curse words get blocked– I consider those to be adolescent spam of a type. I enjoy comments and will keep them as long as I can. I have a different view from others who also run personal websites. I also ask that commenters RESPECT other people. Civility is crucial to useful, productive discussion.