The racist
case for partition
by Marko Attila Hoare
05 June 2009
Montgomery
William Montgomery, former US ambassador to Bulgaria, Croatia and
Serbia-Montenegro and former advisor to President Clinton on Bosnia, has
an article in today's International Herald Tribune, arguing for the
partition of Kosova and Bosnia:
In both Kosovo and Bosnia, we need to consider
different solutions - ones which we may not like and which will have
complications of their own, but which will be really.achievable. This is
the only way the international community can bring its involvement in
the Balkans to an end. In Kosovo, this probably means some form of
partition between the Albanians and the Serbs combined with joint
recognition, pledges of full rights for minorities and a variety of
sweeteners from the EU. Bosnia is more complicated. There, a solution
probably involves shaping a different relationship within Bosnia and
permitting the Republika Srpska, the Serbian portion of the divided
country, to hold a referendum on independence. This would have to
include a lot of guarantees about future relationships, and be done as a
complete package led and implemented by the international community.
Montgomery admits that adopting this position
represents a policy turn-about on his part. He justifies it thus:
The reality is that no amount of threats or
inducements, including fast membership in the European Union or NATO,
will persuade the Bosnian Serbs to cede a significant portion of the
rights and privileges given them under the Dayton Agreement to the
central government, as the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and the
international community are determined to bring about. The Bosnian Serbs
are determined to have full control over their own destiny, and fear
that if they continue to transfer authority to a central government, the
more numerous Bosniaks will end up in control. The end result is
continued tension between the two Bosnian entities, a dysfunctional
country, and the prospect of many more years of efforts by Western
politicians - like Vice President Joe Biden on his recent visit - to
pound a square peg into a round hole. I know of what I speak: For more
than 15 years, I was one of these pounders. I finally came to understand
that the historical experiences in this region have implanted a mind-set
very different from our own. We keep expecting the people in the Balkans
to think and react as we do: It is not going to happen.
The last two sentences are worth re-reading:
I finally came to understand that the historical
experiences in this region have implanted a mind-set very different from
our own. We keep expecting the people in the Balkans to think and react
as we do: It is not going to happen.
In other words, Montgomery is saying that the Balkan
peoples are oriental savages who will never accept the values of
civilised humanity. This being so, he feels that their problems can't be
solved by civilised solutions, and the only option is to let the savages
wear their grass skirts and bones through their noses, and to enjoy
their traditional right to dance round idols and cook other savages in
large pots.
It was ever thus. The supporters of
appeasement/partition have long tended to justify their abandonment of
principle with reference to the fact that the Balkan peoples are
supposedly 'not like us' and don't think like 'we' do, but are just a
bunch of savages in the grip of 'ancient ethnic hatreds', to which
civilised standards of right and wrong cannot be applied.
But who is this 'we' ? In Montgomery's case, the 'we'
is the former servants of the Clinton Administration in the US. It is
this group of people that bears a very large share of the blame for the
mess that Bosnia is currently in. In defiance of mainstream US opinion,
Clinton sided with the pro-appeasement Europeans over Bosnia. In the
autumn 1995, he rescued Republika Srpska from the jaws of defeat and
imposed the Dayton settlement on Bosnia that gave the Serb nationalists
most of the territory and autonomy they wanted, and that has ensured
Bosnia has never been able to function as a state since. After Dayton,
the Clinton Administration refrained from arresting Radovan Karadzic and
other war-criminals, being basically content to let the country rot.
This was probably related to the fact that Clinton's envoy Richard
Holbrooke made a deal with Karadzic, promising he would not be arrested,
and also because Clinton viewed Milosevic, right up until Milosevic's
rejection of the Rambouillet Accords in March 1999, as a partner in
maintaing order in the Balkans.
First Clinton's people create a mess in Bosnia. Then,
after the mess has remained a mess for over thirteen years, they blame
it on the fact that Balkan peoples don't 'think like we do'.
But Montgomery is wrong: there are plenty of people in
the Balkans who think like 'we' do. In Bosnia, they are Republika Srpska
Prime Minsiter Milorad Dodik and the Serb nationalists, who share
Montgomery's thinking about allowing Republika Srpska to secede. Just as
the indicted war-criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic shared
Clinton's thinking about the need to establish Republika Srpska in the
first place.
Montgomery's 'we' is not the 'we' of the principled
democratic West. It is the 'we' of the war criminals and their
appeasers. |