http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=e89f6b8d-6e99-4afa-bbac-7fe2826c1287
OTTAWA CITIZEN (CANADA)
OPINION
Rewarding separatists will haunt the West
David Warren
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Readers with exceptionally tenacious memories will recall that this pundit
was opposed to the NATO intervention in Kosovo nine years ago. This may come
as a surprise to readers without tenacious memories, since it is widely
believed that I never saw a war I didn't like. Yet, believe it or not, I was
opposed not only to the wanton bombing of Serbia, but also to the whole
"inevitable" project of carving a new European Muslim state out of the flesh
of that Orthodox Christian country.
I was not without sympathy for the "plight of the Kosovars," however. Like
virtually all journalists at that time, not of Serbian ethnicity, I fell for
a great deal of typically Balkan propagandist rubbish that has since been
quietly withdrawn.
My rule of thumb, on wars, is to fight them with your enemies, when
absolutely necessary; but never with your friends, and in particular, never
in order to create new enemies. True, as we all know from personal
experience, sometimes your friends are more irritating than your enemies,
and the temptation to bomb them is always there. It is a temptation that
must be resisted, however.
This temptation was surely in play with the Serbians, under the late
Slobodan Milosevic, who seemed determined to inspire loathing and distrust,
and suspicion that he was doing in Kosovo precisely what his nationalist
allies had done in Bosnia: "ethnic cleansing," also known as the massacre of
innocents. Although not nearly as monstrous as, say, Saddam Hussein, nor
anything like Saddam's threat to the West, Milosevic missed as many
opportunities to come clean with his diplomatic interrogators. The Serbs,
who allowed this vicious old Communist, turned nationalist demagogue, to
remain in power, showed very poor judgment.
But the fact that Kosovo had a significant ethnic majority of Albanian
Muslims over Serbian Christians was not, in itself, sufficient argument to
detach it from Serbia by main force. For if that is the argument, the state
system which provides the only order the planet currently enjoys will tend
to disintegrate.
Strange to say, I am with Vladimir Putin on this one, and against George W.
Bush. Mr. Putin's remarks on the inspiration that Kosovo's independence has
given to violent separatists in Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and
elsewhere, are entirely to the point.
Indeed, driving the Serbian government and Serbian people into the
protective embrace of ex-Soviet Russia, and ultimately her ex-KGB strongman,
was among several counter-productive dimensions in the war that Madeleine
Albright organized, along with other ruinous Clinton interventions in areas
of peripheral interest to the U.S. (Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia).
The NATO action in Kosovo brought Mr. Putin -- the hammer of the Chechens --
to power, by demonstrating that force and force alone will decide secession
struggles, East or West. It restored anti-Americanism to its place in the
Russian national security consensus, indirectly bringing an end to the
Yeltsin reform era.
It was an incredibly stupid war to wage, and the product was on display in
Brussels yesterday where the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogovin,
actually threatened the use of force to prevent Kosovo's declaration of
independence from going any farther.
President Bush, who was prompted to recognize the self-declared Kosovar
state (together with most European powers), feels obliged to accept the fait
accompli he inherited from the preceding administration. He, or his
successor, will then try to resist the next stage of demands, for a Greater
Albania in which Kosovo attempts to merge with Albania, and the Muslim
majorities in adjoining districts of Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and
Greece begin insurrections to join them. By recognizing Kosovo, Bush et al.
have validated exactly that: a deadly new round of Balkan troubles, ripe for
Islamicization.
We cannot afford to validate the principle of armed insurrection, whether in
Kosovo or Chechnya or Palestine or Kashmir or northern Sri Lanka or southern
Thailand or the southern Philippines or in any of the many other places
where terrorism demands to be rewarded with an independent state. And,
within Europe, a coupleof thousand EU policemen (about to be installed
without United Nations cover, and in defiance of agreements with Serbia)
cannot guarantee order in a territory that is already a European refuge for
radical Islamist cells, and threatens to become Europe's terrorist safe
house.
There is a deeper history here, for the understanding of which we would have
to review the rest of the legacy of Ottoman imperialism in the Balkans. But
that is, alas, something the Serbs understand a lot better than we do.
David Warren's column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.
OTTAWA CITIZEN (CANADA)
OPINION
Rewarding separatists will haunt the West
David Warren
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Readers with exceptionally tenacious memories will recall that this pundit
was opposed to the NATO intervention in Kosovo nine years ago. This may come
as a surprise to readers without tenacious memories, since it is widely
believed that I never saw a war I didn't like. Yet, believe it or not, I was
opposed not only to the wanton bombing of Serbia, but also to the whole
"inevitable" project of carving a new European Muslim state out of the flesh
of that Orthodox Christian country.
I was not without sympathy for the "plight of the Kosovars," however. Like
virtually all journalists at that time, not of Serbian ethnicity, I fell for
a great deal of typically Balkan propagandist rubbish that has since been
quietly withdrawn.
My rule of thumb, on wars, is to fight them with your enemies, when
absolutely necessary; but never with your friends, and in particular, never
in order to create new enemies. True, as we all know from personal
experience, sometimes your friends are more irritating than your enemies,
and the temptation to bomb them is always there. It is a temptation that
must be resisted, however.
This temptation was surely in play with the Serbians, under the late
Slobodan Milosevic, who seemed determined to inspire loathing and distrust,
and suspicion that he was doing in Kosovo precisely what his nationalist
allies had done in Bosnia: "ethnic cleansing," also known as the massacre of
innocents. Although not nearly as monstrous as, say, Saddam Hussein, nor
anything like Saddam's threat to the West, Milosevic missed as many
opportunities to come clean with his diplomatic interrogators. The Serbs,
who allowed this vicious old Communist, turned nationalist demagogue, to
remain in power, showed very poor judgment.
But the fact that Kosovo had a significant ethnic majority of Albanian
Muslims over Serbian Christians was not, in itself, sufficient argument to
detach it from Serbia by main force. For if that is the argument, the state
system which provides the only order the planet currently enjoys will tend
to disintegrate.
Strange to say, I am with Vladimir Putin on this one, and against George W.
Bush. Mr. Putin's remarks on the inspiration that Kosovo's independence has
given to violent separatists in Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and
elsewhere, are entirely to the point.
Indeed, driving the Serbian government and Serbian people into the
protective embrace of ex-Soviet Russia, and ultimately her ex-KGB strongman,
was among several counter-productive dimensions in the war that Madeleine
Albright organized, along with other ruinous Clinton interventions in areas
of peripheral interest to the U.S. (Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia).
The NATO action in Kosovo brought Mr. Putin -- the hammer of the Chechens --
to power, by demonstrating that force and force alone will decide secession
struggles, East or West. It restored anti-Americanism to its place in the
Russian national security consensus, indirectly bringing an end to the
Yeltsin reform era.
It was an incredibly stupid war to wage, and the product was on display in
Brussels yesterday where the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogovin,
actually threatened the use of force to prevent Kosovo's declaration of
independence from going any farther.
President Bush, who was prompted to recognize the self-declared Kosovar
state (together with most European powers), feels obliged to accept the fait
accompli he inherited from the preceding administration. He, or his
successor, will then try to resist the next stage of demands, for a Greater
Albania in which Kosovo attempts to merge with Albania, and the Muslim
majorities in adjoining districts of Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and
Greece begin insurrections to join them. By recognizing Kosovo, Bush et al.
have validated exactly that: a deadly new round of Balkan troubles, ripe for
Islamicization.
We cannot afford to validate the principle of armed insurrection, whether in
Kosovo or Chechnya or Palestine or Kashmir or northern Sri Lanka or southern
Thailand or the southern Philippines or in any of the many other places
where terrorism demands to be rewarded with an independent state. And,
within Europe, a coupleof thousand EU policemen (about to be installed
without United Nations cover, and in defiance of agreements with Serbia)
cannot guarantee order in a territory that is already a European refuge for
radical Islamist cells, and threatens to become Europe's terrorist safe
house.
There is a deeper history here, for the understanding of which we would have
to review the rest of the legacy of Ottoman imperialism in the Balkans. But
that is, alas, something the Serbs understand a lot better than we do.
David Warren's column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.
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