-> RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
| The World's Magazine: g21.net
G21 WORLD TOUR Event # 272: Fortune's Child AMERICAN DREAMS DAY ONE G21 BARNES & NOBLE SEARCH ENGINE G21 AFRICA G21 ASIA G21 Daily Cartoon G21 Digital Internet Postcards JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. You'll be glad you did. Surveys that affect our look and feel and much more. Be part of the In-Crowd! G21 EUROPE G21 LATIN AMERICA G21 NEWS HOLLYWOOD & VINES HOT LINKS LONDON CALLING! MY GLASS HOUSE OPEN EARS POWERSSOUND RADIOACTIVE RDR Search Engine Collection TABLOID HART THE SEX COLUMN VICTORIA'S SECRETS VOX POPULI RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT ARCHIVES. MEMOIRS OF THE INFO AGE ARCHIVES. G21 STUFF: SHOW THE PRIDE. Why wear that T-shirt or sweats from Nike when you can sport the splendiferous G21 blue logo? Let people know you're In The Know with G21 gear. Follow that link and find it here. Thank you so much!!! LAST WEEK's EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. |
The world rejoices because Mr. Milosevic has been handed over -- the legalities are so doubtful as to rule out the word "extradited" -- to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. He is the first head of state, President Pinochet having got off on a technicality when in Britain, to have been accorded such treatment.
This is a new beacon for a new age.
Never again, it is said, will dictators be able to behave with impunity. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, it is supposed that when they contemplate the mass murder of their own people an image of a solemn court-room will drop down before them.
The truth is that the kind of people who perpetrate such acts are too fanatical (Hitler), driven (Stalin), unscrupulous (Khmer Rouge) or simply power crazed (Milosevic) to worry about notional consequences miles ahead; they are worried about what is driving them from behind, whether it is rivals, the army, the people or their own personal demons.
The root of my concern, however, is the means by which Milosevic's custody was effected. This was no noble act by a penitent new regime. It was an opportune exit route for an internally dangerous enemy, which was rewarded with 1.25 billion pieces of silver. An apparently enlightened and hopeful act has been tainted by shameless bribery. Had the war crimes perpetrator been a pocket dictator with distinct Republican Party leanings one doubts that the money would have been found.
I have no doubt that the proceedings of the Court will be so far beyond reproach that they might even be in danger of favouring the accused but not even this effort will be able to erase the shameful way by which they obtained a defendant.
It is clear from the popular reaction in Belgrade that, for the time being at least, there are more important, less spectacular, projects, than the revival of Greater Serbia. Ten years ago Yugoslavia was one of the most prosperous countries emerging from its own peculiar communism; its only near comparison was Hungary which had also engineered a prosperous mutation from the command economy.
It has wasted a decade in hubris and horror and, in a pattern of international affairs established by Marshall, we have followed our bombs with our cheques. I have no quarrel with the development assistance nor with the commission of Milosevic to the Court, I simply deplore the linkage.
Perhaps now people will understand why Serbian dominated, fragile Macedonia was so reluctant to act as a transit camp for hundreds of thousands of Kosovan Albanians. They have repaid its cold comfort with artillery. The Albanian rebels in Macedonia are in danger of over-playing their hand, after the fashion of Milosevic before them, after the fashion of Arafat and Qadafi.
It is difficult for educated people in countries with a robust constitutional tradition to understand why people should think it a fundamental human right to be governed by people of their own race. Such has been the fate of very few peoples for long stretches.
Paradoxically, where people have been able to be ruled by their own race for a long time, in cases such as Britain or the United States, they have tended to legislate constitutional settlements protecting minorities against majoritarian dictatorship. For that reason it is as important for us to export our democratic best practice as it is for us to supply development assistance.
Until the peoples of the Balkans learn to live under the governance of mixed race administrations there will be no permanent peace. In the meantime, what is called for is self-interested generosity and an attempt to build up constitutional governance and a strong civil society. Better to plough now in the stony ground than conjure a phoenix as the bombers fly back to base.
Nobody who has read my columns can think for an instant that I am a supporter of deposed President Milosevic of the remains of Tito's Yugoslavia. Sadly, I have to make this introductory reminder because partisanship is always assumed to be the prime motive for any argument in favour or against a course of action or a retrospective analysis.
It is a pity that the Albanians in their own country and outside it have apparently learned nothing from Serbia's fate.
It should not, to begin with, mistake NATO's collaboration with Albanian fighters in Kosovo for affection. The KLA was, is and shows every sign of continuing to be, a bunch of ruthless, criminal thugs bordering on the psychotic.
Thanks to a substantial degree of manoeuvring on the part of the Western powers they did not receive the share of power in the liberated Kosovo that they thought their bravery deserved, so they have turned their attention to Macedonia.
NATO will no more countenance a Greater Albania than a Greater Serbia. The lesson, surely, is one which the United States seems fated never to learn, that it is much cheaper to put economic aid into a country before a crisis rather than engaging the military in expensive operations and then pouring in the aid afterwards. Rich people make poor partisans.
| |
|
Travel
Radio Channel |
| MY GLASS HOUSE | THE PREVIOUS EVENT | COMING ATTRACTIONS | THE WRITERS/GUIDELINES | |
