Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s decision to play the Serbia card is winning him temporary friends at home at the risk of long-term friendships abroad. In pursuit of a role on the world stage it no longer deserves, Russia is encouraging Serbia’s latter-day Cossacks as they scythe through women and children in Kosovo. In the end, this could bring disaster not only to Serbia and Albania, but to Russia itself.
HERE IS A BALKAN story you have not heard. It is the tale of separatist uprising in Serbia and a response so brutally ignorant that it backfired, turning a demand for autonomy into a cry for freedom and independence.
It began with a simple petition to Serbia’s rulers asking that the forces of the government “respect of life, religion and honor” of the people it ruled. Taking this as a provocation, the governing authorities in Belgrade rounded up and slaughtered 150 of the most prominent people in civic life. Seventy four of their heads were mounted on pikes in Belgrade as a warning to future “separatists.”
What’s that? You have never heard of this particular atrocity? It may be because happened in 1804 and the victims were Serbs who dared challenge the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The far-off Sultan had actually agreed to the demands, ordering his local “Janissaries,” as his elite colonial troops were known, to respect the rights of the Christians they ruled. But the local administration in Belgrade had other ideas. In the Balkans, that is often the way.
The terror the Ottoman Turks unleashed on the Serbs — so often cited by modern Serbs in defense of their extremism — begot two things that remain with us today. The first was reinforcement of Serbia’s ancient credo of self-reliance: ”Samo sloga Srbina spasava” — “Unity saved the Serbs.” To this day, Serbs easily discount the advice or opinions of the outside world.
The second thing born of that terror nearly two centuries ago was a pact with Russia, the only country in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars which could spare troops to aid the Serbs against the Turks. Russia had already been the cultural and spiritual center of the Slavic world and suddenly, in Serbia and across the Balkans, Moscow became identified with these nations’ hopes for liberation from the Muslim Turks.
BIG BROTHER, BAD INFLUENCE
The view of Russia as Serbia’s protector and the idea that Serbia is alone in the world may seem like a paradox. In fact, it is the starkest of realities. Russia has often rallied — rhetorically, at least — to Serbia’s support, and it is doing so again doing over Kosovo. But Moscow has always proven powerless to extend its “protection” as far west as Serbia. The Serbian view of themselves as standing alone against the rest of the world is not an exaggeration. Whether the enemy was the Austro-Hungarian Empire (World War I), the Nazis (World War II), the Turks and Bulgarians (in various Balkan wars) or NATO in the 1990s, the reality has been the same — the Russian cavalry never arrives. Even in 1804, when Moscow did send troops, they were quickly withdrawn when Napoleon invaded Russia.
In all of this, Russia has much for which to answer. Czar after czar encouraged Serbian nationalism out of a mystical sense that somehow Serbia’s interests were in synch with its own. Czar after czar then proved unable to make good on promises of support, leaving Serbia to face the consequences of its inflated sense of power. (Perhaps because he was a Croat, Tito risked all to reject Soviet advances. Butcher that he was, Tito at least kept his country from joining the East bloc’s gulag economy).
JUST LIKE OLD TIMES
Now, Russia — post-czarist, post-Soviet — is at it again. Moscow seems intent on ignoring its strategic interests in Europe — sensible goals like joining the European Union, attracting foreign investment, establishing itself as a force for stability in the Balkans. It is far easier, and far more politically rewarding, for Russian policymakers to wallow in a dream world of the good-old-days that never existed, czarist, Soviet or otherwise.
Miffed that the West ignored Russia’s objections to NATO expansion and its interests during the recent Gulf crisis, and with the newly minted Russian stock market under fierce attack from currency speculators, Yeltsin sees Kosovo as a chance to score points, both at home and abroad.
On the home front, Yeltsin knows the deteriorating position of the ruble and the plummeting price Russia can charge for oil is souring more people than ever on economic reforms. The decision last week by Russia’s Duma, the communist- and nationalist-dominated lower chamber of parliament, to shelve debate on verifying the 1993 SALT II nuclear arms treaty is a shot across Yeltsin’s bow. Prospects are dim that Yeltsin can win the Duma’s support on other key issues — land privatization, the 1999 budget and a host of legal reforms.
The same factions blocking progress on these and other issues are the fiercest critics of Yeltsin’s cozy relationship with the West. In the Kosovo conflict, these factions find three reasons to back the repressive Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Serbia is a traditional Russian ally.
Serbia is an enemy of the West.
Serbia is an enemy of the Albanians, who may as well be Chechens to Russia’s nationalists.
DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR
On a grander scale, Yeltsin has allowed Russia’s foreign policy to be taken over by his Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, a former KGB Baghdad station chief who bears a grudge against the West for the collapse of the Soviet power.
Primakov’s strategy has been to browbeat the West into respecting Moscow’s word. Realizing he can no longer realistically threaten “to bury” the West, the foreign minister instead wields the two weapons left to Russia: its veto in the U.N. Security Council and the threat that disrespect for Moscow will lead to the country’s collapse and a new Cold War.
Primakov makes his case eloquently and chooses his spots well. He sensed the Clinton administration’s weakness in last winter’s Gulf crisis even before Clinton’s enemies in Congress did. He knows the United States won’t back up its threats over Russian missile deals to India because of U.S. missile deals to China.
Yet unlike Russia’s nuclear deals in India, its missile sales to Iran and Moscow’s hope that sanctions will be lifted in Iraq, there is no great financial benefit to Russia in supporting Serbia. It is purely a reckless pose, a blustering play at a world-power status Russia no longer deserves. Worst of all, Russia is feeding Serbia’s own unrealistic view of itself as a victim, even as its own ignorant brutality turns Kosovo’s plea for autonomy into a fierce war of independence. Mr. Yeltsin: Serbia’s latter-day Cossacks are on a pogrom. Stop it or stand aside and let NATO do it for you.
Michael Moran is MSNBC's International Editor.
