There are countless reasons democracy fails to take root, or why some military coups succeed and others fail. None of these reasons are based on ethnicity or geography. Our governments are human constructs, as are our traditions and beliefs. As Milton Friedman said, “Society doesn’t have values. People have values.”
We must decide what we value and decide what is worth fighting for and then—the most important part—we must fight for it. If we fail to do this we will lose to those who believe in other things, in worse things. We will lose to those who don’t believe in the value of human life or liberty, and who are willing to fight to impose their dark vision for humanity on others.
We may call the rights we cherish inalienable or universal, but this isn’t the same as being entitled to democracy, or even to basic human rights. No, these things must be fought for. And if it takes brave students in Hong Kong to remind the world of this, then their protest was a success, however brief it may have been.
BORN IN BLOOD
There were two wars in Europe in 1999, both sequels to wars that had concluded just a few years earlier and both with considerable impact on the future of Russia. The second to begin was in Chechnya, and it played a key role in the rise to power of Vladimir Putin. The first I have already discussed: the Kosovo war in Yugoslavia where the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo was attempting to gain independence from the Serb-dominated central government still controlled by the unrepentant and unrestrained Slobodan Milosevic. NATO bombing had finally forced him to agree to the Dayton Agreement in 1995, ending the war in Bosnia. But the Kosovo Albanians still struggled under repression and were out of patience waiting for their own independence.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began attacking Serb security forces regularly in 1998 and they were met by the brutality and indiscriminate use of force that the Serbian forces had become well known for in Bosnia. By September, a quarter million Albanians had been displaced, many without shelter. The UN Security Council issued a resolution expressing that most famous phrase in the dictionary of diplomatic impotence: “grave concern.” In October, a NATO peacekeeping mission arrived but achieved little of lasting effect as both sides violated a cease-fire almost immediately.
As in Bosnia, it took a massacre of civilians to spur the great powers to act. Forty-five Kosovo Albanian farmers were rounded up and killed in the village of Racak in January 1999. This led directly to Clinton’s speech to the American people and nearly three months of NATO air strikes and cruise missile attacks against Yugoslav forces. (And, in one tragic incident, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three. NATO blamed the accident on an outdated map.)
By April, leaders of NATO nations were discussing an invasion of ground forces, which would have changed a great many things. Russia was openly advocating for the Yugoslav side in the conflict and the sight of NATO troops, especially American troops, on the ground as part of an offensive would have been very inflammatory in Russia. Russian weapons and supplies were also finding their way to the Yugoslav side. It was revealed in later reports that the main reason Milosevic held out as long as he did was the hope that Yeltsin would intervene militarily on his side.
Milosevic’s vicious calculations were based on the belief that conflict with the West would strengthen his position in Serbia and that desperate refugees would destabilize neighboring countries, including Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, and probably even Bosnia. The Balkans would be set on fire again and Western public opinion would prevent NATO from sending in ground troops. Then the Serbian military would play a decisive role in resolving the chaos, and of course reap the spoils.
Events, fortunately, did not turn out as he had hoped. The prestige of the free world was saved by the united actions of the major democratic powers. An impressive air campaign and the efficient organization of refugee camps sent a clear signal to every quarter in the world that the West was capable of supporting its moral claims with advanced logistics that totalitarian regimes simply lack.
Kosovo also demonstrated that the United Nations in its current form was, and is, irrelevant when it comes to solving such crises. It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to predict the fate the Kosovars would have met had it been left up to the United Nations, where Russia and China have a veto, to deal with Milosevic.
This brings me back to the role of Russia in the events in the Balkans. It seemed obligatory in the Western capitals to give Boris Yeltsin and his special envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin credit for convincing Milosevic to accept the terms dictated by NATO. (That the G7 had so quickly become the G8 made it clear some sort of payoff had gone on.)
In my view this public appraisal contained serious flaws. If Milosevic had accepted the Rambouillet peace deal months earlier, he could have prevented the creation of over a million refugees, the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, and the destruction of Serbia. President Milosevic torpedoed this deal with the open support of Russia, which categorically objected to the presence of an international police force in Kosovo.
Later, after Serbian resistance was shattered by NATO air-power, Russia changed its view on foreign troops entering into Kosovo and decided to play the role of “impartial” broker. Imagine someone jumping onto the train just a few seconds before departure and then arguing with the conductor about the ticket price.
If one assumes that Russia did have serious influence over Belgrade’s decisions, then Yeltsin’s government should have been held partly responsible for Milosevic’s stubbornness in conducting his murderous policy of ethnic cleansing. If Russia’s influence was being overestimated, what was the point of US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s overanxious shuttle diplomacy?
European and American leaders once again proved eager to salve Russia’s “great power” ego and anxiety, and for what? It was a classic form of enabling an abuser, even if in Yeltsin’s day it was more petty crime than major felonies. Russia was in denial and acting in a self-destructive fashion that also had impact abroad. Had the Western powers been firm about Russia’s true status and used that as leverage to encourage transparency and reform, we would all be much better off today.
Instead, with their Serbian ally in ruins and Yeltsin exposed as a mass murderer, the Yeltsin administration and the Russian media were desperate to create some angle that would salvage their dignity. While Russians in the country’s far east and northern territories were gravely concerned about obtaining a regular supply of food and fuel that coming winter, the Russian government was actively working to equip ten thousand peacekeepers for Kosovo.
In my Wall Street Journal op-ed after Kosovo, I had rare words of praise for Western leaders for their decisive action. I ended with a reminder that Kosovo would not be the last such intervention needed unless they combined their power to create a more stable world order. The United Nations had been created in 1945 to cement a political order following the Allied victory. But quickly the organization became a body of compromises in which the superpowers could veto any resolution deemed against the interests of their clientele. With the collapse of the Soviet Union this system no longer served the purpose of international peace and stability.
UN-crafted compromises were no longer necessary, and often dangerous. Indeed, strict adherence to the UN’s resolutions by President Bush in 1991 ultimately spared Saddam—and prolonged the Gulf crisis indefinitely. Milosevic tried to play a similar game by involving Russia as a mediator (ironically Yevgeny Primakov was the broker of choice there, as with Iraq) and demanding UN authorization for any Alliance action.