YOU'VE GOT TO HAND IT TO Yugoslav president and ruler of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic. He has our number.
Hemmed in economically, his country a basket case, his people alienated, he has the United States and its allies begging him to make peace and throw a bone to the Albanians of Kosovo. For many weeks he has told visiting Western delegations of his commitment to end the fighting, as he continues to torch Albanian villages. After eight years of watching him destroy the former Yugoslavia, you might have thought we had learned something.
Indeed, Milosevic has manipulated the West so skillfully that many believe we have joined with him in trying to eliminate the Kosovo separatists, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
After wagging its finger at Milosevic for the destruction of villages in Kosovo, performing military exercises in next-door Albania and Macedonia, and incessantly asserting that "the use of force is still on the table," the West has watched for four weeks as he has cleaned the clock of the Albanian insurgents. Many in both Serbia and Kosovo maintain that the West gave Milosevic a green light. As one unidentified Western diplomat commented, it was necessary to "bring the KLA down a peg or two" to get "negotiations" going.
What have Western "peace" efforts and incessant NATO foreplay produced since January? We have watched the ethnic cleansing of Albanian villages along the Kosovo-Albanian border. We are witnessing a major humanitarian crisis, the dimensions of which daily unfold. Over 60,000 Kosovars are refugees, some 300,000 are displaced, with many wandering in forests, and another 700,000 or so are under some form of siege or food-supply restrictions. Milosevic is targeting the civilians of Kosovo as much as the KLA; he is quenching the violence by draining the sea in which the KLA operates. And as this goes on, we call it a "success" when we get his permission to send into Kosovo foreign observers to view the destruction, and we content ourselves with a stream of announcements about Milosevic's eagerness to get displaced people home and bind up the wounds of the war -- a task for which he has no money and we would likely end up paying the bill.
Events in Kosovo are also creating more chaos in Albania -- if that is possible -- by weakening reformist elements in Tirana and accentuating the split between North and South. More ominously, Milosevic is polarizing Macedonia, as many Slavic Macedonians -- not surprisingly, given their own unhappy Albanian population -- are supporting Belgrade in the fight against the Albanians. In his own backyard, Milosevic is undermining the position of his enemy, president Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro, by sending him more and more Kosovo refugees.
Milosevic has every reason to be confident of his handling of the West. He has created dissension within NATO and put Russia in the middle of the issue, effectively giving Russia a veto over the use of NATO forces. Now he has led the West to agree that the enemy is really the Albanians. He can do this because he knows the West is opposed to Albanian demands for Kosovar independence for fear of destabilizing both Macedonia and the Dayton accords. In fact it is Milosevic's policies and the continuing war that are undermining Macedonia and, quite possibly, Dayton.
More important, Milosevic believes that Western publics and legislatures want no more Balkan military adventures. Once-robust Western rhetoric has turned mushy in the past six months. So when Western tought talk heats up again, as it did last week, over the humanitarian nightmare Milosevic has created, who can blame him if he pays no attention?
Kosovo is not Bosnia, as Western governments repeatedly state. In at least one way, it is worse: The West has had such extensive dealings with Milosevic over Yugoslavia's disintegration that to be beguiled by him again almost defies imagination. His word is meaningless unless he is totally cornered, as he was by Croatia's destruction of the Croatian Serbs and imminent destruction of the Bosnian Serbs and the subsequent NATO bombing; those developments are what persuaded Milosevic to make peace in Bosnia.
Over the past six months, the Kosovo problem has been radically transformed. The "non-violent" Albanian leadership of Ibrahim Rugova has been badly tarnished. The advent of the KLA and the war and destabilization has made any solution politically difficult for either party. Right now the KLA is reeling and may be willing to settle -- along with Rugova, and under Western pressure -- for whatever "Slobo" offers. Many Albanians understandably want to negotiate at all costs, in the belief that the fighting must stop to save their people. We are encouraging them to think that they can lie down with the lion. So we rock along seeking "negotiations" at any cost and a settlement that may be elusive and is not likely to be sustainable without a massive Serb or Western military presence. Presumably if a deal jells, we will reward Milosevic for his generosity by lifting sanctions, providing aid, and welcoming him into the Western club.
We have made the Albanians the crux of the Kosovo problem and not the man who created it and survives from it. We have supported the strong and deserted the weak. We seem to have the hope that Milosevic can, by such Western "statecraft" and a change of heart, reestablish some form of Albanian self-rule in Kosovo, possibly portrayed as leading to independence. Failing that, we seem to be prepared to live with a continuing low-level guerrilla war until the Albanians run out of steam. Thus, apparently, will the West "solve" the Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia problems.
Morton Abramowitz, a former assistant secretary of state, serves on the executive committee of the International Crisis Group.