>Michael,
>
>>Unfortunately a lexis search of the times for "kaplan" and "imperialism"
>>turns up nothing for the last year (except for a chapter from his book,
>>excerpted on the web). Can you think where else you might have read it?
>
>Though I am never absolutely positive about anything, I am *almost*
>absolutely positive that it was in the New York Times that this Kaplan
>article appeared. It could be that Hartung is quoting something different
>than that, but I do distinctly remember this sounding familiar to me and
>that it was from a Kaplan piece in the Times. I meant to hold on to the
>editorial, to wave it in the face of my friend who recommended the guy, but
>I didn't. Wish now I had, to help you out.
Lexis must be falling down on the job, since it's in their web archive. Though you have to wait til the last sentence to find the phrase.
Doug
----
New York Times - April 7, 1999
In the Balkans, No Wars Are 'Local'
By Robert D. Kaplan
The humanitarian nightmare in Kosovo may be reason enough for NATO's involvement in the former Yugoslavia, but for the United States there are vital strategic stakes involved as well. These stakes justify the use of any NATO measures needed to defeat Serbia, including the use of ground troops, because nothing less than the future contours of Europe are now being decided.
When the East-West division of Europe was erased in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a new division immediately began forming: that between Central Europe and the Balkans. Even before the outbreak of fighting in Yugoslavia in 1991, the Central European states of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were pulling dramatically ahead of Balkan countries like Romania and Bulgaria in terms of progress toward stable, democratic rule.
These northerly states of the former Warsaw Pact had several advantages: they were heirs to the traditions of the Hapsburg Empire, and they had sizable middle classes prior to World War II and Communist rule. The Balkan states were burdened by centuries of Byzantine and Turkish absolutism, and even before the Communist takeovers their middle classes had been mere specks amid vast seas of peasantries.
The admission of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has formalized this dangerous historical and religious redivision of Europe: between a Roman Catholic and Protestant West and an Orthodox Christian and Muslim East.
However, Slobodan Milosevic's campaign in Kosovo has now given the West a chance to reverse this process. A real NATO victory, one that not only gives the Kosovars protection but also knocks Serbia off its perch as the region's military threat, would go a long way toward stabilizing the continent.
This is because the immediate impact of the current fighting is being felt well beyond the states of the former Yugoslavia, which all told constitute only a third of the Balkan peninsula. Three major Balkan countries -- Romania, Bulgaria and Greece -- though not directly threatened by the flood of refugees roiling Albania and Macedonia, are nevertheless at a pivotal point of political destiny. In Romania, the largest and most populous Balkan state, there is a tenuous peace between the Orthodox Christian majority and the ethnic Hungarian minority, which is mixed Catholic and Protestant and lives in the northwestern region of Transylvania. This relative calm is a significant achievement given that in the course of this century each group has occupied the other's territory.
Yet social peace is threatened by the lack of modernization in the countryside and Cabinet chaos in Bucharest, where economic reform is in slow motion and investor confidence is eroding. In Romania only the military is well run. Though Romanians are Eastern Orthodox, the horrible memory of dark Stalinist decades makes them desperate for NATO membership, which would keep the military out of politics, stifle ethnic nationalist politicians and energize the elite in the direction of good government.
The same goes for Bulgaria, where the democratically elected Cabinet is valiantly working toward economic reform but is besieged by criminal groups with links to Russian businesses and mafias. These groups operate as a state within a state and control large parts of the economy, including banks, car insurance and energy companies, tourist businesses and agricultural exporting. They put tremendous pressure on the Government and effectively push the country into Russia's fold.
The Bulgarian elite is fighting back but is legitimately afraid of being stranded at the far end of the Balkans, spurned by NATO and severed from Central Europe by instability in Kosovo and Macedonia. If the West cannot pacify the region, Bulgarian politicians will have to survive through deals with Russophile criminals.
Greece is the most misunderstood Balkan country. The West demands that Greece behave exactly like the other members of the alliance because it is middle class and a member of NATO. But it can't, because it is in the Balkans and must adjust its foreign policy relative to its geographical position. Greeks know that they are fated to live next door to the Serbs long after any NATO troops leave.
Moreover, throughout the long centuries of Turkish occupation, Greeks were supported by their Orthodox co-religionists in Serbia and Russia -- a fact of history with effects that run deep. And, having never experienced Soviet occupation or Communism, Greeks have a romantic attachment to Russia that doesn't exist in Romania or even Bulgaria.
The Greek Government is supporting the United States as best it can, given the pressures upon it from both the political left and right. But if the Serbs humiliate NATO, Greeks will act in self-interest: their NATO ties will be reduced to an official trapping, even as they deny this very fact and quietly intensify links with their fellow Orthodox in Moscow and Belgrade. After 47 years of NATO membership, Greece could be lost.
Appeals to conscience will not keep Greece a de facto as well as a de jure member of NATO, nor will they keep Romania and Bulgaria from slipping into the sway of Russia. What is required is nothing less than a complete NATO military victory. Indeed, while the Greeks and the Macedonian Slavs despise each other, as Orthodox Christians they equally despise the Muslim Kosovars. Few in the region can be expected to feel sympathy for the Islamic refugees, who disrupt the fragile religious and ethnic balance in neighboring countries, already burdened by weak governments and high unemployment.
Thus, if the bombing campaign fails and NATO gives up at the negotiating table, it would seal Europe off according to medieval lines, with the newly expanded NATO a mere variation of the old Holy Roman Empire -- the old Christian West, that is -- and with the Near East beginning where the old Ottoman Turkish Empire once did, roughly on the border between Croatia and Serbia and somewhere in Transylvania where ethnic Hungarians meet Romanians.
In 1834, entering the autonomous Ottoman principality of Serbia from the Hapsburg Empire, the English travel writer Alexander Kinglake wrote, ''I had come, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the Splendour and Havoc of the East.'' That same demarcation between East and West will re-emerge unless Mr. Milosevic is crushed with air and ground troops and a NATO protectorate is established in Kosovo and Macedonia. Only Western imperialism -- though few will like calling it that -- can now unite the European continent and save the Balkans from chaos.