Commentary

4th April 1999

The future of Russiale

By Mervyn de Silva

Bosnia is too much with the European media and the politics-cum-foreign policy-oriented western elite. Even the usually unflappable Reuters was sufficiently agitated to present what it called this human tragedy of epic proportions in the most stark and shocking language. It even spoke of ethnic cleansing, words generally reserved to ethnic conflict in the Third World.

While Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov announced a personal visit to Belgrade, his Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov rejected western charges to add that “the real genocide in Kosovo is happening as a result of the NATO action. The ethnic Albanian separatists were using the NATO air strikes as a cover to attack Serb targets”.

Predictably there was an instant rejoinder... the first denial of anti-Serb attacks by the USAF. And so the ethnic conflict, savage but limited to Serbs and Albanian secessionists, had rapidly acquired much larger dimensions... almost a Russian-American proxy war, a page or two from Cold War history rather than the Indian involvement in this island’s separatist armed struggle and the IPKF intervention albeit at the express request of Sri Lanka’s elected President.

The Americans doubtless plan to clean up and get the hell out.. no Vietnamese quagmire.. once is enough. But will a quick pull-out be that easy? Much will depend perhaps on the decision-makers in the Kremlin rather than the ailing President Boris Yeltsin, no Stalin, no the White House, the State Dept. and most of all the Pentagon are not looking for a Vietnam. What for ? Uncle Sam is the sole superpower, Monicagate or any other scandal notwithstanding. In the name of peace, human rights, democracy or devolution Uncle Sam can play global gendarme.

Isn’t there a challenger? How about China?

Ethnic Cleansing

Wednesday’s six-column headline read: “They will not stop until every Albanian is dead or driven out.”

Is this the heartland of European civilisation? Or how should we read these shocking events as we stand on the threshold of the 21st century?

Here is an answer from that wisest of high priests of “strategic studies.”

“Let us not deceive ourselves” he says. Prof. Michael Howard addressing the Wilson Centre Alumni Association at Fonteuraud, France.

“This audience hardly needs reminding that societies are not held together by abstract rational principles or convenient administrative arrangements but by deeply held habits of consensus and belief. Nothing has happened over the past two hundred years to invalidate the warnings of Edmund Burke issued, during the early months of the French Revolution, of the evils that were likely to follow if abstract principles, however admirable in themselves, were applied to the conduct of human affairs. There is an irrational dimension in all human relationships.

They will not stop until every Albanian is dead or driven out. In the face of such a murderous threat, this is fated to be one of the fiercest blood baths of recent times - UNLESS, benign, forceful intervention follows. The United States, alone or marching under the United Nations flag?

Results will be probably quick but the implications disturbing. There may not be much on sale in the Moscow marketplace but President Boris Yeltsin still commands quite a formidable war-machine. And Russian Nationalism/Patriotism will compel the ailing President Yeltsin to act after a few intimate conversations, I guess, with Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, the man who advises the man who issues the finial order.

Hulftsdorp Hill

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