GUILTY AS CHARGED: MILOSEVIC IS A WAR CRIMINAL WHO SHOULD BE ARRESTED, NOT FTED IN DAYTON

Precis: Fresh revelations point to the intimate
involvement of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in genocide
and other war crimes as recently as three months ago in
Srebrenica. Under the circumstances, it is appalling that the
United States would be hosting him in Dayton, Ohio this week —
to say nothing of casting him in the role of lynchpin for a
Bosnian peace agreement. There is unlikely to be any peace in
the Balkans until Milosevic is removed from power and
incarcerated. Congress should not consider approving the
deployment of U.S. forces in Bosnia before that has been
accomplished.

(Washington, D.C.): The practice of doing diplomatic deals
with despicable regimes, usually justified on the grounds that
U.S. economic or strategic interests will be advanced, has a name
— realpolitik — and a checkered history. Among other
dubious contributions to world history, practitioners of realpolitik
have brought us: Chamberlainian appeasement of Hitler at Munich;
U.S.-Soviet detente that arguably kept the USSR a going concern
for a decade or two longer than might otherwise have been the
case; and Western kow-towing to China that is, even today,
encouraging and facilitating the worrisome global ambitions of
Beijing’s unreconstructed communists.

With the publication on the front-pages of Sunday’s Washington
Post and New York Times of lengthy exposés of Serbian
atrocities in Bosnia, however, a new term should be added to the
lexicon of diplomacy: surrealpolitik. After all, these
articles appeared just as Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic
was due to arrive in the United States where he has been scripted
by the Clinton Administration to play the role of man of peace
and lynchpin of negotiations on the future of Bosnia.

We’ve Got the Goods on Milosevic

Yet, the articles offer the latest, damning evidence that
Milosevic is not only personally responsible for unleashing the
horrifying conflict that has laid waste to much of the Balkans
over the past few years in the pursuit of his mad dream of a
“Greater Serbia.” They also document the extent to
which Milosevic’s forces, his lieutenants and his proxies were
directly involved in acts of genocide as recently as three months
ago in Srebrenica. Among the lurid findings:

• Tanks from the Milosevic-controlled Yugoslav army
  participated in the bloody assault that enabled the
  Bosnian Serbs to capture Srebrenica last July. In the
  course of the attack, the 300 Dutch peacekeepers assigned
  to this so-called UN “safe-haven” were directly
  and purposefully targeted. This is, of course, but one of
  myriad indications of the direct aid Milosevic’s regime
  has continued to provide to the Serbian aggression in
  Bosnia — his routine disavowals and formal commitments
  to sever such ties to the contrary notwithstanding.
• Milosevic also unleashed “Arkan” — the nom
  de guerre of Zeljko Raznatovic, a singularly brutal
  commander of a militia which depends upon Belgrade for
  intelligence and materiel. Arkan’s thugs have played
  a prominent role in the murders, rapes and plundering
  that have been deliberately employed by the Serbs to
  terrorize and “cleanse” captured regions of
  their Muslim and Croat populations.
• Then there is General Ratko Mladic, a Yugoslav army
  general hand-picked by Milosevic to lead the Bosnian Serb
  armed forces. Mladic personally ordered and
  supervised some of the mass executions perpetrated by
  Serb forces after Srebrenica fell. With the same sang
  froid exhibited by Hitler’s henchman, Joseph
  Goebbels, Mladic was captured on film shortly before he
  presided over the liquidation of truckloads of Muslim
  prisoners saying — as he handed a candy bar to a child
  — “No panic, please. Don’t be afraid. No one will
  harm you.”

The Fruits of Appeasement

To be sure, Slobodan Milosevic maintains that he was in no
way involved in the genocide at Srebrenica. According to a U.S.
reporting cable obtained by the Washington Post, in
response to a diplomatic demarche by Washington on 12 July,
Milosevic said, “Why blame me? I have been unable to contact
Mladic.” He nonetheless told the American chargé
d’affaires that he had been “assured that the Bosnian
Serb forces would not harm UN peacekeepers or Muslim
civilians.” By simultaneously disavowing any ability to
influence events in Srebrenica and making unwarranted
representations about the safety of those in the enclave,
Milosevic literally got away with murder.

This is thanks in no small measure, though, to the Clinton
Administration’s practice of surrealpolitik. The
Administration has gone along with the creation of a war crimes
tribunal in The Hague, modeled after the Nuremberg trials that
brought top Nazis to justice fifty years ago. It has even agreed
with the indictment of Mladic and his civilian counterpart,
Radovan Karadzic, for genocide. But the Clinton team wants to do
a deal with Milosevic and therefore appears to have signaled to
the prosecutors in The Hague that he is not to be indicted. As
one of them put it to the Economist‘s Gary Bass,
“What we have done so far [in the way of indictments] is all
right, but thus far and no more.”

This gives rise to the bizarre anomaly: If Karadzic came to
America for the Dayton “proximity talks,” according to
a top State Department official quoted by Bass in an op.ed.
article in Sunday’s Post, “we’d throw him in
jail.” By contrast, when Milosevic — the man who has called
the Bosnian Serb shots from the beginning — comes to Dayton, he
will be treated royally, probably for weeks on end and certainly
at considerable expense to the U.S. taxpayer.

A Question of Judgment

In fact, had it been up to Clinton’s Bosnia honcho,
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and his boss,
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Milosevic would have
obtained the thing he desires most — the immediate and
unconditional lifting of international sanctions against Serbia
— as a reward for just showing up in Dayton. Amb.
Holbrooke’s insistence on the substantial elimination of U.S.
bargaining leverage at the outset of the proximity talks raises
significant questions about his negotiating acumen, to say
nothing of his judgment.

The Bottom Line

No less suspect will be the judgment and morality of the new
congressional leadership if it sits on its hands as the executive
branch dignifies, coddles and ultimately rewards Milosevic the
megalomaniac. Congress must not become party to the Clinton
Administration’s surreal attempt to transform Milosevic from the
agent of genocidal aggression into the catalyst for a genuine and
durable peace in the Balkans. Milosevic — whom even his old
friend, Lawrence Eagleburger, was obliged while President Bush’s
Secretary of State to identify as a war criminal — should be incarcerated
and tried.

Such a step would have the salutary twin effects of
ending Milosevic’s despotic rule at home and terminating his
personal involvement in the conflict in Bosnia. Under no
circumstances should American military personnel be injected on
the ground there until those essential preconditions for a real
peace in the region are achieved.