Misha Glenny, a formidable British journalist, was in an America Online chat room the other evening and asked how many folks thought U.S. troops should go to Bosnia.
“There was an outpouring,” he told me Thursday. “Not a single person supported the idea.”
The next day, Glenny was beckoned to a breakfast with 30 members of Congress to discuss the matter. He told them that for the sake of European security and U.S.-Europe relations, we must be part of a peacekeeping deployment.
But, he told them, “Americans will be lost in a matter of days. Somebody will step on a land mine. Then, you’ll find yourself in a firefight, and suddenly you’ll get casualties.”
And if that happens, with public opinion mirrored by the on-line resistance he discerned, “That’s the presidential election gone in a puff of smoke. Clinton’s finished,” he told the pols.
Last week was a good moment for anyone, especially a confused reporter, to seek insight from Glenny about the Balkans mess.
The key parties trekked to an Air Force base near Dayton to start negotiating a possible peace accord. Some Americans, given our general impatience and naivete regarding international affairs, surely assumed that all might be wrapped up in time for Sunday’s pro football.
Glenny, 37, knows better.
A British subject, his dad was a renowned Russian language translator. His own work, especially for the British Broadcasting Corp., has gained him repute as possibly the stellar chronicler of the Balkans. His book, “The Fall of Yugoslavia,” is the best on the topic, and I’ve encountered true believers on various sides of the debacle who’ll concede that Glenny gets it right.
Lucky me, he’s momentarily settled in Washington on a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center at the Smithsonian Institution.
Listening to him rattle off the issues can be confusing because of the utter, ethnically driven complexity of it all. But for those seeking a brief synopsis of a true expert’s take, you could distill all this way:
“My absolute conviction is that the whole (chief U.S. negotiator Richard) Holbrooke peace plan is driven exclusively by American domestic politics and that the Bosnian government itself has been playing a game of Washington politics, threatening Clinton that unless he did something on their behalf, they’d throw in their lot with Bob Dole.”
In part, he referred to the Bosnians pushing the U.S. into doing something serious for them, such as airstrikes against Serb positions, holding out the threat of backing the Senate majority leader’s push to end the arms embargo.
“Of course, Dole, too, is utterly cynical,” Glenny said. “He says give them the arms, then wash our hands of this whole situation.
“Clinton’s problem is that when you are president, taking an isolationist position has deep implications.
“If you say, `We are getting out of Europe,’ and talking of a war in the middle of Europe, your European allies get nasty quickly. It’s why Clinton is between the devil of isolationist sentiment in the U.S. and the deep blue sea of a crisis in European security relations.”
If there were to be a peace agreement in Dayton, and the U.S. would then back off its commitment to support NATO with thousands of troops to maintain the peace precisely because it jeapordized Clinton’s re-election, then “you have a mega-crisis in European relations.”
What does Clinton do?
Stall, says Glenny.
“You notice that Holbrooke keeps saying this will take a long time. My feeling is that it drags out until at least November of next year. There’ll be talk of `tremendous progress’ on some issues but `a long way to go.’ You cannot believe how cynical and calculating this whole thing is.”
At its heart, the bargaining is about “creating what will effectively be a new constitutional idea in the middle of Europe. Holbrooke and his lawyers are trying to create a state which, at the outset, agrees to hand over some of its authority to other states. It’s horse-trading among different national groups.”
One would assume the biggest problem is dealing with the Serbs. Glenny says that’s wrong.
Forget Western demonization of the Serbs. The troublesome party is the Croats and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, whom he describes as an underappreciated political strategist who has succeeded in booting the Serbs out of Croatia and wants to prevent a Bosnia-Herzegovina with a Muslim majority (“He hates Muslims more than he hates the Serbs.”).
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“The Serbs,” Glenny declares, “have been defeated.” Muslims may be the big losers so far, but the Serbs come next.
“There is a perception of the Serbs clearing everything up and (Bosnian President Slobodan) Milosevic being a manipulative bastard. But that must be revised because any attempt to create a greater Serbia has been smashed.”
In particular, Glenny points to Croats booting 170,000 Croatian Serbs out of the Krajina, the Serb-held area of Croatia, in August.
“Croatian Serbs had been there for three centuries,” Glenny said. “That community was obliterated over four days and it was condoned by the West, in particular the U.S. and Germany. It was the first instance of ethnic cleansing not condemned by the Western community.
“The Serbs have rolled back a lot of territory and are international pariahs subject to stringent UN economic sanctions which have gutted Serbia proper’s socioeconomic structure.
“That means that Serbia has not only lost what its strategic aims might have been, but its society is deeply traumatized. Milosevic knows that if the war continues, and such distortions in Serbian society continue, he will eventually fall. His main aim is to keep his (butt) on the Serbian throne, given the rich tradition of regicide in Serbian history.”
While noting Serbian military outrages, Glenny is sympathetic to their sense of grievance and double standards. How is it that nearly every person who has been indicted by an international tribunal as a war criminal is a Serb?
“If you’re a Serb and you look at the number of war criminals indicted and all the Croats who should have been, but have not, you gotta look at that and say, ‘It’s a bit funny, this. A slight imbalance.’ “
GOP armed for fun
If you’re a hotshot lobbyist-type, the Congressional Forum of the National Republican Congressional Committee and its chairman, Rep. Jack Fields of Texas, invite you to a congressional forum trap & skeet shoot on Monday at the Prince George’s Trap & Skeet Center.
A letter says you can “compete in a fun day of shooting with your colleagues and members of the House of Representatives. There will also be a tournament and prizes awarded to the best team, individual male and individual female.”
If you’re interested please contact them and please inform them if “you will be bringing your own firearm” and, if you are, “what size shotgun shell will you need? 12 gauge, 20 gauge, 28 gauge or .410 gauge?”
Cokie Watch
NBC News has decided that since “the credibility of any news organization is paramount” and even appearances of conflict must be avoided, employees can no longer take fees, honoraria or other gifts from for-profit firms, trade groups that lobby or take public positions, or groups that have been, or could be, subjects of a story by the employee.”
This does leave open taking money from non-profits, which is a distinction without a difference, given the political nature of many.
Meanwhile, Cokie Roberts of ABC News speaks Dec. 12 to the Integrated Waste Services Association.
Its Washington gathering will include discussion of federal standards for new and existing municipal waste combustors.