C. Heartfield,
You wrote that :
"I said that Yugoslavia was merely reacting. I meant it. This process was set in train in Washington, Bonn, Paris and London, but its consequences are felt in the Balkans." Does "this process" logically include the dispossessing of Albanian Kosovars by the Serb-dominated (and specifically so since Albanians were thrown out of the army en masse, back in the days when the West considered the Albanians the trouble makers) army? You are intellectualizing and thereby leaving out the essential element of intent. What is the intent of the Serb army as shown by their actions? Is it, as you would have us believe, some vain effort to re-solidify Yugoslavia or is it an effort to *redefine* Yugoslavia as Serbian? I think it is clearly the latter. Again, there is nothing you can demonstrate to be inherent in NATO bombing that forces Serb soldiers to dispossess Albanian civilians.
Going farther on that matter of intent, what you characterize as my "racial stereotype" of the Balkan people is, first of all, hardly "racial" unless you are using some Aryan eugenic definition of the word "race" and is, instead, a political judgment. The Balkans fall victim to ethnic politicking very easily and that politicking has led to war after war, atrocity after atrocity. That it may be provoked from outside does not excuse it. The fact that Albanians hates Serbs for being Serbs and Serbs hate Albanians for their ethnicity, and that this hatred has led to separatism, repression and violence time after time, is clear evidence that these people have a brutal outlook on what is appropriate political intercourse.
When you say is responsible for "engendering" the political fragmentation of Yugoslavia, you really mean that the West was responsible for *encouraging* that breakup. "Engendering" implies that the West can control the intent of the warring factions and that is not true. Could the West "engender" the breakup of the United Kingdom? The obvious truth is that
there never was a politically stable Yugoslavia. There was Tito and now there is not. If the people of the former Yugoslavia had adopted tolerance and good will they would still be together. They haven't and this is not the first time, by an stretch of the imagination. Obviously there are people of good will in the Balkans and probably a majority. So there are in any bullying state you might care to name. The fact remains that enough of the people of the Balkans can be convinced quickly enough that neighbors of other ethnicities are not desirable to provoke conflict. Again, this is not the first time.
As a separate matter, the great powers have used this easily-provoked ethnic conflict for this and that petty political gain over and over. That's obviously wrong as this present bombing is obviously wrong. The two questions: 1. The politics of the Balkans 2. Whether and how outside forces are using the politics of the Balkans. are separate and quite distinct. The West did not pick the Balkans at random. They picked that area because it has a history of ill will among its various ethnicities. You don't stage a cock fight with pigeons.
Since the questions are two, the solution is two-pronged. The foreign powers should clearly stop their provocation. However, and this will ultimately decide the matter, the people of the Balkans have stop doing the Punch and Judy routine every time somebody pulls on the string. They have to decide that they prefer living in a peaceful, multi-ethnic region or they never will. To use another example, England and the IRA may provoke the people of Northern Ireland to fight, but the people of Northern Ireland are themselves responsible for the fact that they are essentially the only region in the world where Catholics and Protestants consider each other opponents and not fellow Christians.
What is the contrary position? Are we to believe that the people of the Balkans have no capacity to decide for themselves that these ethnic differences aren't important? Will they always fall prey to provocation? If that is true, if they have no capacity to resist outside agitation, then the West must decide their fate anyway.
I think it is not true and I think the people of the Balkans will find out - too late, that they have been acting like hateful brutes and hooligans and that, because of that, they have been made fools of for centuries. When you say that