Despite innumerable "cease-fires," international protests, partial embargoes, threats of sanctions, and even a short-lived introduction of a U.N. peacekeeping force, the destructive fighting continues in Yugoslavia. To their shame, Western nations have done little beyond wring their hands.
The scale of the murderous fighting has resulted in thousands of deaths, many of them women and children; destruction of centuries-old cities; execution of innocent hostages; a cynical grab for territory; forcible uprooting of entire ethnic populations; and perhaps 1.3 million refugees on the move, the biggest such upheaval since World War II.Because it is seen as a civil and ethnic war, the West has hesitated to get involved in the many complexities. Yet, for the most part, the terrible human suffering has a simple root cause - the egocentric ambition of Slobodan Milosevic, the communist leader of the Yugoslavian federal government. Milosevic is the only hard-line leader not to fall in Eastern Europe's democratic revolution. His warmaking is seen as a way to hold onto political power by exploiting ethnic hatreds and appealing to fears of Serbian minorities in the seceding states while at the same time expanding the size of Serbia.
There isn't any oil in Yugoslavia, but the principle at stake isn't any different than when Iraq's Saddam Hussein ruthlessly seized neighboring Kuwait in 1990.
When the Yugoslavian states of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina declared their independence, the central government - located in Serbia and dominated by Serbs - quickly attacked Croatia in a grab for territory, carving out areas that had large Serbian populations and even some non-Serb areas. Now the fighting is centered in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Serbs are expelling the majority Muslim citizenry.
The inability to make any cease-fire hold is mostly a matter of Serbian cynicism, of saying one thing to appease foreign concerns while blatantly going ahead with massive cease-fire violations. Often, Milosevic's troops stop fighting but slip weapons to the well-supplied Serbian irregulars, who are doing much of the damage.
The United States is a long way away, but the language from Washington has become increasingly impatient. The administration has imposed diplomatic sanctions. This past weekend, the United Nations Security Council voted to impose economic sanctions, which seldom work. The rumbling has grown louder in the mostly impotent European Community, where timidity has held sway despite the fact that fragmented Yugoslavia is right next door.
European procrastination is particularly troubling since it is Europe that should be taking the lead. A strong European response to Serbia's aggression would surely get the rapid endorsement of the United States.
Pleas for reason have not worked with the Serbs. It may be time to try something more to the point, perhaps a European ultimatum and a deadline, with the threat of military action behind it. Delay is asking for being faced with an accomplished aggression. Things would have been much simpler months ago.
Europe's desire to avoid getting drawn into the conflict is understandable, but the failure to act only means that the fighting and dying and suffering will continue to affect hundreds of thousands of mostly innocents. And a brutal leader will get away with his plans for slaughter and conquest. Is this what the world is willing to accept as normal in the aftermath of the Cold War?