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.