Greater Surbiton

Before the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I was one of many people from a left-wing background who felt greatly alienated from ‘the Left’ as it had come to be: anti-progressive, nihilistic, callous toward the suffering and the struggles of foreign sisters and brothers, and obsessively anti-American. Only, I did not realise how far I was from being alone. Since the eve of the Iraq War, dissident and heretical leftists such as myself have coalesced into a current of opinion often referred to - not always satirically - as the ‘Decent Left’. For me, the essence of the Decent Left is its absolute commitment to democratic and Enlightenment values and to their universality; its insistence upon internationalism and solidarity with those abroad who are struggling for these values; its absolute rejection of any tolerance of or collaboration with fascists, fundamentalists, dictators or other ultra-reactionaries; and its refusal to compromise these principles in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’ or ‘left-wing unity’.

The Decent Left is a growing phenomenon, for the simple reason that progressive people all over the world are increasingly dissatisfied with the form that traditional left-wing politics is taking. We do not necessarily agree over what the answers are, but we broadly agree about the questions. In fact, ‘Decent’ left-wing discourse will remain fruitful only so long as there is plenty of debate and disagreement, and no restrictive new orthodoxy comes into being.

As a former-Yugoslav specialist, it has been an eye-opener for me to become acquainted with Sarah Franco and her blog Cafe Turco, now appearing in English. Sarah is a scholar with considerable first-hand experience of the former Yugoslavia, and has spent time recently in both Kosova and Serbia, where she was able to witness at first hand the former’s celebration of its independence and the consequent rioting in the latter. She brings an entirely original approach to commentary on the subject. One of the reasons that I welcome Cafe Turco is that it represents an informed, insider’s viewpoint on the former Yugoslavia from a genuinely independent progressive standpoint. And there aren’t that many of those around.

Another reason is that Cafe Turco is reevaluating issues relating to the Left in Sarah’s native Portugal, such as the legacy of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution. And if it has been a relief for me to discover in recent years that I am far from alone in feeling that there is a desperate need to reevaluate left-wing politics and to ask difficult questions about it, so it is an inspiration discovering those who are asking similar questions from outside the English-speaking world, particularly from a country such as Portugal, with such a proud left-wing heritage, but one that is too often neglected in our Anglocentric intellectual universe.

We may not all agree, but the more of us there are that are asking such questions and trying to provide answers, from as many perspectives and traditions as possible, the better. The revolution in left-wing intellectual thought, for which the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq provided such a catalyst, is only going to spread.

They told us that the Serbian people were not like other Europeans. They told us that the Serbian people were so outraged over international recognition of Kosova’s independence that they would turn their backs on Europe and rally behind the nationalists. They told us that Serbia and Europe were parting ways because of Kosova. They told us that the Serbian people were crazy.

They were wrong.

Some of us had more faith in the Serbian people. After the riots in Serbia that followed the Western recognition of Kosova’s independence, when Serbia appeared to be descending into darkness once again, I wrote this:

Serbia’s suspension of diplomatic relations with Western states that are recognising Kosova conveniently burns the bridges to the democratic West and creates the isolation that the nationalists crave. This is not what most Serbian people want. It is one thing to be unhappy about the loss of Kosova, but to favour turning Serbia into an isolated, impoverished Cuban- or North-Korean-stye satrapy of Russia, under a repressive regime that condones mob rule and murders dissidents, is quite another. The opinion of the majority of Serbians is probably best represented by Tadic: angry about losing Kosova, they nevertheless do not want this issue to stand in the way of Serbia’s European integration.

In yesterday’s Serbian parliamentary elections, despite the Western recognition of Kosova’s independence less than three months ago, the Serbian electorate failed to punish the pro-EU parties or reward the nationalists. The results of the election have not yet been fully confirmed or broken down, so any conclusions here are only tentative. But it appears that, whereas the neo-Nazi Serbian Radical Party received approximately the same share of the vote as in the last Serbian parliamentary elections in January 2007, i.e. something over 28.5%, there has been a swing away from the nationalist faction of Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica (Democratic Party of Serbia - New Serbia), which has seen its share of the vote fall from 16.55% to something over 13.5%. Conversely, the parties that make up the coalition ‘For a European Serbia’ (Democratic Party, G17+, Serbian Renewal Movement, League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina and some smaller parties) have received 36.69% of the votes according to the provisional calculations of the Republican Electoral Commission, which is a rise of at least 2.5% compared to what these same parties received in 2007. The wild card is the success of the Socialist Party of Serbia, which received 5.64% of the vote when standing alone in 2007, but whose coalition of parties, which includes the Party of United Pensioners of Serbia, yesterday received over 9% of the vote.

I emphasise again that my conclusions here are tentative. But the results appear to show that the Radicals, although remaining the largest single party, are incapable of breaking out of their existing electoral base, even in circumstances that are apparently most favourable from the nationalist perspective. By contrast, Kostunica’s faction, which has become more overtly nationalistic, xenophobic and anti-European since Western recognition of Kosova, has done so at a cost to its electoral support, part of which has deserted it for the pro-European bloc. Kostunica put all his money on the Kosovo card, and lost.

We do not yet know what kind of coalition government will emerge from the new parliament. But there is no doubt about it: this election represents a watershed; despite the recognition of Kosova, the danger of a Serbian backslide into popular extreme nationalism has been averted. There is no Kosovo factor in Serbian electoral politics.

Zivela Srbija !

In the parliamentary elections taking place today in Serbia, the neo-Nazi Serbian Radical Party looks set to win the largest number of votes, as indeed it did in the last parliamentary elections in 2007. Only this time, it is more likely to have a chance actually to enter government, as it is now likely that the nationalist faction headed by the incumbent prime minister Vojislav Kostunica will be ready to defy Western pressure and form a coalition with it.

The Radicals present themselves as patriots who will take a hard line in resisting Kosova’s independence, and who will redirect Serbia away from the EU and toward Russia. However, the tradition of ‘patriotism’ from which the Radicals derive was that which expressed itself through collaboration with the Nazis and Italian Fascists during World War II, against those Serbs and other Yugoslavs who were fighting the occupation of their country.

The leader and founder of the Radicals is Vojislav Seselj, currently indicted for war-crimes by the UN tribunal in The Hague. In 1989, Seselj visited the US and was awarded the honourary title of ‘Vojvoda’ (warlord) by Momcilo Djujic, President of the ‘Movement of Chetniks of the Free World’. Djujic was an Orthodox priest and Chetnik warlord who, during World War II, had distinguished himself by having fired not so much as a bullet against the German or the Italian occupiers. He was one of a number of Serb warlords who had sprung up in 1941, when the Croatian fascist Ustashas had begun a genocide against the Serb population of Croatia and Bosnia and the Serbs had risen in resistance. The epicentre of the resistance was the Serb-majority area of western Bosnia and central Croatia (Banija, Kordun, Lika and northern Dalmatia), where Djujic among others operated.

On 1 September 1941, the Yugoslav Partisans convened a mass assembly, in the town of Drvar, of the overwhemingly Serb guerrilla detachments of western Bosnia and the adjacent Croatian region of Lika. Djujic attended the assembly - at this point in time, the rebels had not yet split into the rival camps of Partisans and Chetniks. The assembly was convened to represent the ‘Liberation struggle of the Serb nation’ from ‘Proud Bosnia and stout Lika’. It declared that ‘we Serbs are fighting for the national liberation of our nation from the occupiers and their hirelings.’

The assembly entrusted Djujic with the task of resisting an Italian advance against the rebels from his native Knin. Upon receiving this task, this great Serb patriot, Seselj’s hero, made an agreement with the Italians that granted them free passage through his fiefdom. His troops carried Italian flags to indicate their loyalty to the occupiers. With resistance sabotaged by Djujic and other traitors, the Italians occupied on 25 September the rebel base of Drvar, where the rebel assembly had declared its task of Serb national liberation less than a month before.

For the rest of the war, Djujic, as a Chetnik commander, loyally served the Italians and Germans while persecuting and killing Croats and anti-fascist Serbs. He was no mere opportunistic collaborator, but an ideological fascist-sympathiser and anti-Semite. A recent Serbian biographer of Djujic has this to say about him: ‘During 1944 Momcilo Djujic was in contact with Milan Nedic, the president of the government of Serbia. Of him, Djujic spoke only good words. He deemed that Nedic, along with Ljotic and Dragoljub Mihailovic, are doing the same work for the Serb nation, but each in his own way.’ (Veljko Dj. Djuric, ‘Vojvoda Djujic’, Belgrade, 1998, p. 49). Nedic was the Nazi-quisling Serbian leader who served Hitler directly and who helped implement the Holocaust. Ljotic was the Serbian fascist leader, whose Serbian Volunteer Corps formed part of the Nazi SS during 1944. Mihailovic was the Chetnik commander, therefore Djujic’s leader. Djujic described the Yugoslav Communist leaders as ‘paid Jews’ and ‘Communist Jews’, whom he pledged to ‘crush’.

In late 1944, Djujic, with his force of Chetniks, stood shoulder to shoulder with the troops of the German Wehrmacht and the Croatian Ustashas - the same Ustashas who had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs over the course of the previous three and a half years - in a defence of Knin from the attacking Yugoslav Partisans. The Partisans were victorious despite enormous losses; Djujic was routed and retreated alongside the Germans. He eventually emigrated to the US, where he would bestow his decoration upon Seselj in 1989.

Djujic’s story was far from exceptional. The Chetnik movement, of which he was a part, collaborated with the occupiers throughout the war.

Chetniks and German soldiers posing together in a village in Nazi-occupied Serbia.

Another expression of Serb patriotism on the part of the Radicals’ Chetnik forebears.

Seselj honoured the Chetniks by naming his own militia after them. Seselj’s Chetniks murdered and raped their way across East Bosnia in 1992, under the command of Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslav People’s Army.

Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, wearing a Chetnik hat.

Should the Radicals, under Seselj’s underlings Tomislav Nikolic and Aleksandar Vucic, take power in Serbia after today’s general election, they will not recover Kosova, which everyone knows is permanently lost to Serbia. But they are likely to expand the existing Serbian government policy of selling the country to the Russians, thereby patriotically serving Putin as Djujic once patriotically served Mussolini and Hitler.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the Radicals’ likely front-man, Vojislav Kostunica.

With Serbian parliamentary elections due on 11 May, this chilling little film about the neo-Nazi Serbian Radical Party, starring its baby-faced general secretary Aleksandar Vucic and some of his comrades, is brought to you by Hattori of Parapsihopatologija, a Serbian artist who understands what his country is facing. It lasts three minutes, but you need to watch it to the end, particularly if you’re one of those left-wing ’anti-war’ types who are inclined to view the Serbian Radical Party’s sympathisers as members of their ‘extended family’. The Serbian Radical election caption at the end reads ‘On your side - Vucic’.

With thanks to Andras Riedlmayer and Jonathan Davis.

On a happier note, Greater Surbiton yesterday reached the figure of 50,000 page-views. I’d like to say a big thank you to all my readers, and in particular to those from among the brave citizens of the Republic of Macedonia, who have shown the world how to stand up to a bully with courage and dignity.

Smrt fasizmu - sloboda narodu !

In its dealings with Serbia, the EU has never been very competent in balancing the stick and the carrot. Serbia’s signing of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU is facing resistance from the Netherlands and Belgium because of Serbia’s failure to cooperate over the arrest of war-criminals indicted by the UN tribunal in The Hague. It now appears that the Netherlands and Belgium are softening their resistance to the SAA with Serbia, though without ending it altogether. While the Low Countries’ insistence that Serbia must cooperate fully with the Hague Tribunal is commendable, it is also problematic: the anti-Western nationalists grouped around Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica would anyway prefer Serbia not to join the EU and are opposed to signing the SAA even if it is offered, so are likely to view a veto of the agreement as a reward rather than a punishment. Conversely, the pro-EU elements around President Boris Tadic have not the power to arrest war-criminals against the will of the nationalists, however much they might like to. And the longer the impasse over the SAA continues, the more the the anti-Western nationalists strengthen their hand vis-a-vis the pro-Europeans, and the closer Serbia drifts to Russia.

The best elements in Serbian politics are the ones keenest for the SAA to be signed. Yet for all this, there are strong arguments against signing it at the price of Western capitulation on the issue of war-criminals. Serbia has a long way to go before it achieves the political and democratic standards to make it a suitable EU member. Easing the pressure on Serbia would reduce the incentive for it to reform, thereby paradoxically slowing its achievement of these standards. All the evidence, painfully gathered since the early 1990s, overwhelmingly points to the conclusion that Serbian nationalism cannot be appeased: making concessions over the issue of war-criminals will not result in Serbian leaders making concessions in return; rather, it will be perceived as a sign of weakness and an invitation for Serbia to demand further concessions from the EU. This is particularly dangerous for two reasons.

Firstly, even if they perform well in the Serbian parliamentary elections scheduled for 11 May - which is by no means certain - the pro-EU elements around President Tadic and the Democratic Party are far from being model Europeans and democrats; they staunchly align themselves with Kostunica’s faction in opposition to the independence of Kosovo, and have shown themselves to be every bit as pettily and small-mindedly anti-Kosovar as the more anti-Western nationalists over this issue. Tadic has disgracefully stated that Serbia should join the EU in order to prevent Kosovo from joining, showing that he, his party and his country all still have a lot of growing up to do before they are fit for EU membership. Give them a carrot over the war-criminals issue and they are likely to take the whole sack, indeed bite the hand that feeds them. In other words, concessions over the war-criminals issue are likely to encourage Tadic and the Democrats to play a more destabilising role over Kosovo, thereby setting back the Balkans’ Euro-Atlantic integration.

The second reason why we should be wary of giving Serbia concessions over the war-criminals issue is that this could be the thin end of the wedge, given the bad faith with which some of our European allies approach South East Europe. At the NATO summit in Bucharest earlier this month, both France and Germany, in particular, showed themselves ready to sacrifice Europe’s principles and interests, and to let down NATO aspirants Ukraine, Georgia and Macedonia, in order to appease Russia and Greece. The fact that there was absolutely no justice whatsoever in Russia’s objection to a NATO Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgie or to Greece’s opposition to Macedonia’s membership of the alliance, and the fact that keeping Macedonia out of NATO is actively destabilising the Balkans, mattered nothing to our Machiavellian allies. To appease Serbia over the war-criminals issue is an open invitation to France and, in particular, to pro-Russian Germany to offer further concessions to Moscow and to Belgrade at the expense of Balkan stability, British and US interests and the interests of the Western alliance as a whole. So long as we are firm with Serbia, we limit the possible scope of such French and German mischief-making.

How, then, to square the circle: to avoid appeasing Serbia and avoid pushing it away from the West at the same time ?

There is, in fact, a very simple way: to change the stick. Rather than withholding the SAA, which ultimately damages Western interests as much as it punishes Serbia, we should respond to Serbian non-compliance over the arrest of war-criminals by dismantling Bosnia’s Serb Republic (Republika Srpska), something that would serve our interests well and uphold our principles at the same time.

The Republika Srpska is a destabilising factor in the Balkans. It was created by Serbian aggression and genocide against Bosnia in the early 1990s, a genocide that has now been recognised by three different international courts: the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; the International Court of Justice; and the European Court of Human Rights. The Republika Srpska’s existence as a sectarian, apartheid state represents a gross injustice to the nearly 50% of the territory’s population that was made up of Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs at the start of the 1990s - it is because this entity’s territory was nearly half non-Serb until it was ethnically cleansed that it has no legitimate right to secede from Bosnia, or even to exist. The Republika Srpska was recognised by the Dayton Agreement in November 1995, at a time when Western diplomacy was at its most ignominious, Serbian military capability was most grossly overestimated and British policy was determined to appease the insatiable aggressor.

There is no reason why we should feel bound to honour our earlier, disastrous mistake. Dayton was an agreement, and the simple truth is that the leaders of the Republika Srpska have not honoured their side of the bargain. War criminals have not been arrested. Muslim and Croat refugees have, for the most part, not been allowed to return. Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik responded to the ICJ’s recognition of the Srebrenica genocide by rejecting its verdict, revealing his contempt for international law. He attended the anti-Western, Serb-nationalist rally held under Kostunica’s leadership in Belgrade following the recognition of Kosovo’s independence, when the US embassy was set on fire, and publicly mooted a Republika Srpska  UDI. The Republika Srpska, meanwhile, obstructs the functioning of Bosnia-Hercegovina as a state, hindering its Euro-Atlantic integration and economic reconstruction.

Responding to the Serb failure to arrest war-criminals by dismantling the Republika Srpska, instead of by withholding the SAA from Serbia, would serve our interests in every respect. It would allow us to punish the Serb nationalists for their behaviour while holding the EU door open to Serbia. It would serve Belgrade notice that Serb nationalism will pay a very real penalty for each and every act of obstruction, while rewarding the loyal, pro-European Bosnian (Muslim-Croat) Federation. It would remove a major element of instability and bridgehead of Russian influence in the Balkans, strengthen Bosnia-Hercegovina as a reliable pillar of the European order and reverse the Western alliance’s earlier disgrace in allowing the country to be emasculated in the first place.

Decoupling Serbia’s EU accession from the war-criminals issue would simplify future EU relations with Serbia, whose EU accession could be more straightforwardly linked to its good behaviour over Kosovo. We could then set before Tadic and his pro-EU faction in Serbia a set of conditions for the signing of the SAA that they could reasonably be expected to fulfill: an end to all instability and violence on the Serbia-Kosovo border and among the Kosovo Serbs; an end to all Serbian obstruction and destabilisation of Kosovo as a self-governing entity; and a commitment that Serbia’s dispute with Kosovo will be resolved only through peaceful, consensual means. This would pave the way toward a de facto acceptance of Kosovo’s independence on Serbia’s part, while the final, formal Serbian recognition of Kosovo would be a precondition for Serbia’s final, full membership of the EU.

It might be objected that dismantling the Republika Srpska would provoke Bosnian Serb resistance, therefore instability. The Western alliance has spent much of the last two decades flinching before the Serb-nationalist paper-tiger, and there is no reason for it to continue to do so. The dismantling need not take the form of a formal abolition of the Bosnian Serb entity, but of its transformation into a shadow entity which would continue to exist on paper, with its own administrative borders and flag - helping to mollify Serb popular sentiment - while all real power would be transferred to the central Bosnian institutions. Republika Srpska politicians would be likely to resist, but only up to a point: their refusal to participate in the reconstituted Bosnian state would leave all power in Bosnia in Muslim and Croat hands, while economic sanctions would make prolongued obstruction extremely costly to them. In fact, there is a precedent for this: Bosnian Croat nationalist politicians have repeatedly attempted to rebel against the Bosnian constitutional order, and each time the international community has successfully faced them down. The firmness that worked with the Bosnian Croat nationalists can equally work with their Bosnian Serb counterparts.

A second objection might be that dismantling the Republika Srpska would be ‘anti-Serb’; i.e., objectively unjust. This is true only if one views treating the Serbs exactly the same as every other Balkan nation to be ‘anti-Serb’. In Bosnia, the Croats were deprived of their own sectarian, ethnically pure, self-proclaimed ‘republic’ by the terms of the Dayton Agreement, while the Serbs were allowed to keep theirs. This application of double-standards, to the benefit of the Serb nationalists and at the expense of the Croat nationalists, did not produce any qualms among Western politicians. Likewise, the Ohrid Agreement that brought an end to fighting between the Macedonian government and Albanian rebels in 2001 granted the large Albanian minority in Macedonia very reasonable, substantial rights that fell short of territorial autonomy, thanks to which Macedonia has enjoyed seven years of internal peace and functions as a state much better than Bosnia does. Alone in the Balkans, it is the Serb nationalists who have been allowed to carve out a sectarian entity, where none previously existed, from a multiethnic, unitary republic, on territory - it is worth repeating - that was barely more than 50% Serb prior to the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s.

Far from being a violation of Bosnian Serb self-determination, the ideal of a unitary, self-governing Bosnia-Hercegovina as the common homeland of Serbs, Croats and Muslims was one that successive generations of Bosnian Serb politicians upheld. When the Bosnian republic originally came into being in 1944-46, its president and prime-minister were both Serbs, and both champions of Bosnian unity and self-rule. Conversely, the goal of dismembering Bosnia is one that Serb nationalists have begun to follow, consistently and openly, only more recently. As late as 1990, when the Communist regime in Bosnia fell, the Bosnian Serb nationalists who campaigned successfully for the Bosnian Serb popular vote did so without ever saying that their goal was the dismemberment of Bosnia - the war of destruction they launched against the Bosnian republic in 1991-92 had no democratic mandate from the Bosnian Serb people. Of course, the traditional Bosnian Serb support for a united, self-governing Bosnia always presupposed a close link with Serbia - a desire that was satisfied so long as the Yugoslav Federation existed. But in this respect, we can satisfy Bosnian Serb national feeling: as fellow members of the EU, Bosnia and Serbia will be as closely linked as they ever were within Yugoslavia.

The present author is not the only one to favour a reform of the Bosnian state along such lines. On 25 September 2007, Republican Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey, supported by Democratic Representatives Russ Carnahan and John Olver of Missouri and Massachussetts respectively, sponsored a resolution in the US House of Representatives (H.Res. 679) for Bosnia’s reorganisation on a basis similar to that which I have suggested here.

For the past two decades, the Balkans have suffered the effects of Western policies that were ad hoc, short-termist and reflected the lack of will of their initiators. With Russia increasingly aggressive and assertive in the region, Serbia on a knife-edge between democracy and a reversion to nationalist extremism and authoritarianism, and Kosovo and Macedonia fragile and vulnerable, such dilettantism can no longer be afforded. It is time for both a stick and a carrot that are worthy of the names.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

Hat tip: Domagoj Margetic, Necenzurirano.com.

Image posted on the BNP’s website, 20 February 2008

The British National Party (BNP), Britain’s largest and best-known fascist party, has been running a series of articles denouncing the international recognition of Kosova’s independence from Serbia. On the day Kosova declared independence, 17 February, the BNP’s website ran an article entitled ‘Kosovo - the EU and USA get their way !’, claiming that the move represented

the successful takeover of part of a Christian country by a bunch of Islamic terrorists, and Albanian thugs. Aided and abetted by useful dupes who are themselves being manipulated by their puppet masters, pulling strings as ever behind the scenes! What we are left with is an embryonic Islamic state in the Balkans. It will cause destabilisation throughout the region.

Furthermore,

After today, the future balkanisation of other countries, including Britain, is no longer a flight of fancy. It will happen, unless you turn to the BNP: The last remaining political party willing to stand up to the growing Islamic threat within this country!

Playing on an ‘anti-imperialist’ theme, the BNP also claimed that Kosovo’s independence

wouldn’t have been possible without the full backing and support of America and the European Union.

The BNP condemns Kosova’s independence because most Kosova Albanians are Muslims, and because it identifies them with the Muslim immigrants in Britain. On 14 February, the BNP website published an article citing Kosova as an example of

What happens when a government loses control of immigration and gives special preference to immigrants for political reasons.

On 24 February, the BNP website ran an article accusing British church leaders of being determined to ‘appease Islam’, and linking the alleged Islamic threat in Kosova to that in Britain:

It seems incredible to us that those leaders of the Christian Church here in Britain so determined to appease Islam in our country, appear so apparently ignorant of the suffering of their co-religionists in the Serbian province of Kosovo!

Are they not aware, for instance, that since KFOR took responsibility for the province that around two hundred Christian churches, monasteries, shrines and other sites of worship have been systematically destroyed or otherwise desecrate, in what can only be seen as an organised campaign of cultural cleansing?

Can they really be unaware that quite apart from the great many Christians who have been murdered, raped, robbed and mutilated over the last nine years, that hundreds of thousands more have been driven from their homes and forced to flee for their lives by the adherents of the very religion that they go to such lengths to defend? Many would regard this as ethnic cleansing!

Do they seriously believe that Kosovo marks the end of Islamic expansion in Europe and are truly ignorant of Islamicist designs on adjoining areas of Serbia and Macedonia – both having very significant Islamic communities?

The BNP identifies the Kosova Albanians not only with the Islamic threat, but also with organised crime - as it does with ethnic minorities in the UK. On 8 March, it republished an article entitled ‘Kosovo - just one step in the Islamification of Europe’, which claimed:

Albanians are spread all over Europe and especially in the criminal underworld. They are notorious for their effectiveness, unpredictability and incredible cruelty. Their main advantage to the other organized crime is the fact that they speak language nobody understands, their organization is based on family ties and if someone dares to speak out that person is being brutally murdered. In Europe, today the Albanian mafia is the main engine of traffic of drugs and humans, theft and falsification of passports, weapons and human organs trade, abductions, extortions and executions. In London these people control the entire network of prostitution, in Italy and Greece they deal with weapons and drugs’ smuggling. There are entire towns in Italy where the business is controlled by Albanians. In the US there are more than 150,000 Albanian immigrants from Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania.

The article concludes:

I am just trying to explain why independent Kosovo is so dangerous for the cultural and social integrity of Europe. The Albanians and other Muslims for that matter have been refusing for years to integrate in the European society. The problems they have created in the UK, Italy, France, Germany, the Balkans and many other places are countless.

In its agitation against Kosova’s independence, the BNP has unambiguously adopted the ‘anti-imperialist discourse’ of the ‘radical left’, as in this article of 23 February, warning of the danger of a conflict with Russia over Kosova:

The blood thirsty warmongers of Washington, along with the self serving bureaucrats, and politicians of Brussels, and elsewhere, have now brought us closer to the brink of a major conflict, centred upon the Balkans, than at any time since the days of the cold war!

On 27 February, I wrote here at Greater Surbiton how right-wing anti-Muslim bigots were aligning themselves with the West’s enemies in opposition to Kosova’s independence. I cited articles by Melanie Phillips and Julia Gorin. Both of these articles have been reproduced on the BNP’s website, in support of its line on Kosova.

Interestingly, the BNP has also adopted the entire ‘anti-imperialist’ narrative of alleged Western victimisation and demonisation of Serbia, promoted by publications such as Counterpunch and Living Marxism.

On the alleged Western demonisation of Serbia:

Showing any sympathy for the present plight of Serbia is swimming against the tide of received opinion, which was largely generated by the successful propaganda of the West, particularly concerning Bosnia and Kosovo. The demonization of Serbia was taken to grotesque proportions and, in general, faithfully and uncritically repeated in the mainstream media.

Concerning the alleged German engineering of the break-up of Yugoslavia:

So, a clerico-fascist [Croatia's Franjo Tudjman] and an Islamic extremist [Bosnia's Alija Izetbegovic] were supported by Western intelligence agencies, governments and armed forces as bearers of “European values” to the benighted Balkans. To do this, the EU member states broke their obligations under the UN charter and the Helsinki Accords by which they had guaranteed to accept existing national borders in Europe. They recognized Slovenia and Croatia diplomatically. This was done principally at Germany’s instigation and the German government regarded this sudden about turn by the other EU states as a triumph. The Foreign Minister was cock-a-hoop “By this, Germany has regained diplomatically everything lost in Eastern Europe as a result of two world wars”. It opened the way for the new “Drang nach Osten”.

Note the reference to Western imperialism’s supposed violation of international law - a popular theme of the ‘anti-war’ left.

And concerning the alleged ‘invention of a genocide’ in the Balkans by Western propaganda, a favourite theme of John Pilger, Richard ‘Lenin’ Seymour and others:

Wartime “information” from NATO told us that at least 100,000 young Albanian men from Kosovo were missing, presumed murdered. Yet the Spanish forensic team, sent to look for mass graves was gravely embarrassed. In late 1999 its leader complained that he and his colleagues had become part of “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machine because we did not find one, not one mass grave”. The Wall Street Journal concluded that NATO stepped up its claims when it saw “a fatigued press corps drifting towards the contrary story – civilians killed by NATO bombs… The war in Kosovo was cruel, bitter, savage. Genocide it wasn’t.” The Spanish forensic team found 2108 bodies in 1999.

The BNP’s rhetoric over Kosova and the Balkans is therefore in line with that of both the ‘anti-imperialist’ left and the anti-Islamic conservative right. One would have been surprised if it were otherwise.

Image posted on the BNP’s website, 14 February.

Croatia and Albania have now been invited to join NATO. This was the one mitigating factor for South East Europe in last week’s otherwise mostly dismal NATO summit in Bucharest, in which the hopes of Macedonia, Georgia and Ukraine for NATO membership were let down. But while Bush was not able to press his NATO allies into showing greater solidarity with the East Europeans, yet he was at least able to deliver a rousing speech in the Croatian capital of Zagreb following the summit, expressing the kind of solidarity with the South East European nations of the kind which West European leaders currently seem incapable. Leaving aside the references to God and religion, I endorse every word of Bush’s speech, here reproduced in full:

Dobro Jutro. (Applause.) Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very much. I’m honored to be here with the leaders from Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia. The United States appreciates the leadership you have shown in the cause of freedom. We’re pleased Albania and Croatia have been invited to join NATO. And we look forward to Macedonia taking its place very soon in this great alliance for freedom. (Applause.)

Laura, who has joined me today, and I are proud to stand on the soil of an independent Croatia. (Applause.) Our countries are separated by thousands of miles, but we’re united by a deep belief in God and the blessings of liberty He gave us. And today, on the edge of the great Adriatic, we stand together as one free people. (Applause.)

Croatia is a very different place than it was just a decade ago. The Croatian people have overcome war and hardship to build peaceful relations with your neighbors, and to build a maturing democracy in one of the most beautiful countries on the face of the Earth. (Applause.) Americans admire your courage and admire your persistence. And we look forward to welcoming you as a partner in NATO.

The invitation to join NATO that Croatia and Albania received this week is a vote of confidence that you will continue to make necessary reforms and become strong contributors to our great Alliance. Henceforth, should any danger threaten your people, America and the NATO Alliance will stand with you, and no one will be able to take your freedom away. (Applause.)

I regret that NATO did not extend an invitation to Macedonia at this week’s summit. Macedonia has made difficult reforms at home, and is making major contributions to NATO missions abroad. Unfortunately, Macedonia’s invitation was delayed because of a dispute over its name. In Bucharest, NATO allies declared that as soon as this issue is resolved, Macedonia will be extended an invitation to join the Alliance. America’s position is clear: Macedonia should take its place in NATO as soon as possible. (Applause.)

The NATO Alliance is open to all countries in the region. We welcome the decisions of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro to take the next steps toward membership called Intensive [sic] Dialogue. And we hope that soon a free and prosperous Serbia will find its rightful place in the family of Europe, and live at peace with its neighbors. (Applause.)

With the changes underway in this region, Europe stands on the threshold of a new and hopeful history. The ancient and costly rivalries that led to two world wars have fallen away. We’ve seen the burning desire for freedom melt even the Iron Curtain. We’ve witnessed the rise of strong and vibrant democracies and free and open markets. And today the people of Europe are closer than ever before to a dream shared by millions: A Europe that is whole, a Europe that is at peace, and a Europe that is free. (Applause.)

The people of this region know what the gift of liberty means. You know the death and destruction that can be caused by the followers of radical ideologies. You know that, in a long run, the only way to defeat a hateful ideology is to promote the hopeful alternative of human freedom. And that is what our nations are doing today in the Middle East. The lack of freedom and opportunity in that region has given aid and comfort to the lies and ambitions of violent extremists. Resentments that began on the streets of the Middle East have resulted in the killing innocent people across the world. A great danger clouds the future of all free men and women, and this danger sits at the doorstep of Europe.

Together the people of this region are helping to confront this danger. Today soldiers from Croatia, Albania, and Macedonia are serving bravely in Afghanistan — helping the Afghan people defeat the terrorists and secure their future of liberty. Forces from Albania and Macedonia are serving in Iraq — where they’re helping the Iraqi people build a society that rejects terror and lives in freedom. It’s only a matter of time before freedom takes root across that troubled region. And when it does, millions will remember the people of your nation stood with them in their hour of need. (Applause.)

At this great moment in history, you have a vital role. There are many people who don’t appear to understand why it takes so long to build a democracy. You can tell them how hard it is to put in place a new and complex system of government for the first time. There are those who actually wonder if people were better off under their old tyranny. You can tell them that freedom is the only real path to prosperity and security and peace. And there are those who ask whether the pain and sacrifices for freedom are worth the costs. And they should come to Croatia. And you can show them that freedom is worth fighting for. (Applause.)

The great church in this square has stood since the Middle Ages. Over the centuries, it has seen long, dark winters of occupation and tyranny and war. But the spring is here at last. This is an era in history that generations of Croatians have prayed for. It is an era that Pope John Paul the Second envisioned when he came to this land, and prayed with the Croatian people, and asked for “a culture of peace.” Today in this square, before this great church, we can now proudly say: Those prayers have been answered. (Applause.)

(Turns to interpreter.) They can’t hear you. Don’t worry about it.

May you always remember the joy of this moment in your history. And may the hopeful story of a peaceful Croatia find its way to those in the world who live as slaves, and still await a joyful spring.

May God bless Croatia. And thank you for coming.

On this occasion, too, Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader delivered a speech that likewise stressed the theme of South East European solidarity:

Croatia knew how to realize its future even when it seemed to be uncertain. Today we are at the threshold of Atlantic Alliance and European Union. The power of this success encourages us to continue to support our neighbors in their efforts. This is why we are very pleased to have with us the leaders of Albania, Macedonia, Presidents Bamir Topi and Branko Crvenkovski, Prime Ministers Sali Berisha and Nikola Gruevski.

The peoples in our southeast neighborhood also have the right to realize their aspirations. In Macedonia, our friends also have full rights for our support and encouragement. We will find the solution for Macedonia to join us soon in NATO Alliance.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Croats, Bosniacs and Serbs have the right to live in peaceful, democratic European country in which all three peoples are coexisting, sovereign and equal.

In Montenegro, they have the right to incorporate their state goals in new Atlantic home. And in Kosovo, they have the right to live in a new democratic order which will protect minority communities and include them in public administration and political life.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, Serbia, too, has the right to its place in Europe and the world. It’s paid the price for its misdirected former politics, and not only has the right, but I’m convinced it will also demonstrate that it is ready for new future. This is why I repeat our neighbors don’t give up. The inclusion of the entire Europe southeast into the Euro-Atlantic integration will continue. The time is for future. Our partners are with you.

On this occasion, it was politicians of the Right who stressed the themes of internationalism and ‘brotherhood and unity’ in South East Europe, of a kind that is inclusive of every nation in the region, Serbia and Kosova alike. Yet our own former Labour prime minister Tony Blair was a pioneer in this regard, travelling to a Kosova Albanian refugee camp at the height of the Kosovo War to reassure the refugees: ‘Our promise to you, to all of you, is that you should return in peace to the land that is yours.’ It was an expression of solidarity coming from the centre-left that compared extremely favourably with the minimisation of Albanian suffering, and whitewashing of Milosevic, in which radical leftists were engaging at the time.

For anyone coming from a radical left-wing background, as I do, the ironies are there for all to see. Radical socialists, from the Balkans and from the West, have long spoken of a ’socialist federation of the Balkans’. Yet the unification of the Balkans as a tight confederation and military alliance of sovereign states is now being carried out by the EU and NATO (aka ‘Western imperialism’), on the basis of a political model that is the most progressive the world has ever seen (generally falling short in the Balkans in practice compared to that which exists in Western Europe, but there’s room for improvement).

Croatia has long been demonised by radical leftists as a ‘counter-revolutionary’ or ‘pro-imperialist’ nation, so it is ironic, too, that it has taken until 2008 for Croatia to be invited to join NATO. Pro-Milosevic radical-left rag-sheets like Living Marxism claimed during the early 1990s that the break-up of Yugoslavia was the result of Germany or ‘the West’ wishing to carve out a sphere of influence in the Balkans, which would include Croatia but exclude countries like Serbia that were further to the east, both culturally and geographically. Yet it transpired that Orthodox, ‘eastern’ Romania and Bulgaria made it into the EU and NATO before Croatia.

Now that Croatia has finally been formally invited to join NATO, it’s a good opportunity for…

‘Croatia, Western Imperialism and the Left’ - a Potted History, written by a left-wing defector to Croatian nationalism and Western Imperialism

1. During the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, Croats and Serbs fought side by side against Great German and Great Hungarian nationalism. Consequently, the Croats were a ‘counter-revolutionary nation’ in the eyes of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and other Great German nationalists (or ‘revolutionary socialists’, as some would have it).

2. Conversely, the fact that Croat fascists during World War II fought on the side of Great German and Great Hungarian nationalists, and persecuted Serbs, proved retrospectively to many leftists that Croats were a ‘pro-imperialist nation’.

3. The Croat fascists in 1941 declared war on the US. But they have never really been given credit for this by our contemporary anti-imperialists, who have likewise declared war on the US.

4. Adolf Hitler supported a united Yugoslavia up until March 1941. He invaded Yugoslavia reluctantly, in response to a British-backed coup d’etat in Belgrade. Even then, he remained more interested in Serbia than in Croatia; Serbia was assigned to the Third Reich’s exclusive control, while Croatia became an Italo-German condominium, as the puppet ‘Independent State of Croatia’. This was nevertheless interpreted retrospectively by many leftists - and by many others - as evidence of a ‘historic German interest’ in Croatia, even though it was actually evidence of the exact opposite.

5. The Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito was a Croat. The Yugoslav Communists, under his leadership, endorsed the goal of Croatian independence at the start of the Partisan uprising against the Nazis in 1941. The Partisans’ strongest wing, for the best part of the war, was their Croatian wing - aka the ‘People’s Liberation Army of Croatia’. Throughout the war, the Communist Party of Croatia had more members than any other section of the Yugoslav Communists. The Partisans founded the Croatian republic as a sovereign and constituent member of the Yugoslav federation. Fortunately, most Western leftists were sufficiently ignorant of this history to enable them to overlook Tito’s Croatian deviations.

6. Tito and the Yugoslav Partisans were allies of Britain and the US. In 1944, Tito set up his base on the Adriatic island of Vis under British naval protection. Britain and the US provided Tito with massive military assistance in the form of arms supplies and air-strikes - the latter often carried out at Partisan request, with the help of information provided by the Partisans, even though the air-strikes often killed many Yugoslav civilians. Western leftists were able to overlook these sins in light of the Partisans’ left-wing credentials.

7. By contrast, during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991-92, Croatia received no military assistance whatsoever from the Western alliance. Indeed, the Western powers assisted the attacking Yugoslav army and Serb paramilitaries, by imposing an arms embargo that tilted the military balance at the expense of Croatia. Furthermore, they imposed a ceasefire in late 1991 and early 1992 that rescued the Yugoslav and Serb forces from defeat. Still, the belated German diplomatic support for recognition of Croatian independence from November 1991, and Croatian President Tudjman’s anti-Communist rhetoric, coupled with frequent Serbian mention of the WW2 Nazi puppet state, were taken as evidence that ‘Western imperialism’ was on the side of Croatia.

8. In 1994-95, Clinton gave small-scale, tactical military support to Croatia as a way of forcing the Bosnian Serbs to accept a peace agreement. This essentially took the form of US military training and intelligence, and a green light for Croatian military operations against Serb forces. After the signing of the Bosnian peace agreement in December 1995, US relations with Croatia cooled again on account of the US’s support for the war-crimes tribunal in the Hague, and its insistence that Franjo Tudjman’s regime in Zagreb collaborate with it. In 1998, Tudjman responded to US pressure over the tribunal by signing a declaration of friendship and cooperation with Russia, providing for military and other forms of cooperation. Croatia’s conflict with the tribunal was uncomfortable for many leftists, since both were supposed to be on the side of imperialism, so they tended simply to ignore it.

9. During the run-up to the Iraq War, Croatia was rather more wobbly than most other formerly Communist European countries in supporting US military action, even resulting in a US rebuke. In radical left-wing terms, this can perhaps be explained by the fact that Croatia was more an ally of German imperialism than US imperialism (US support for Operation Storm can at this point be forgotten so as to keep things simple).

Well, I suppose we Croats can only resist our genetically programmed inclination to support imperialism for so long; I personally gave up a while ago. After all the twisting and turning we’ve had to do, throughout our history, to prove that we’re a ‘counter-revolutionary nation’, it’s a relief that we’ve finally been admitted to the club.

We were warned that recognising Kosova’s independence would open a Pandora’s box, triggering global chaos by encouraging innumerable other secessionist territories across the world to declare their own independence in the hope of recognition. The threatened consequence was always something of a non-sequitur, since the secessionist territories most frequently cited - Northern Cyprus, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria - had all already seceded from the countries to which they formally belong. How could recognition of Kosova’s independence spark the secession of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), when the TRNC had already declared independence from Cyprus back in 1983, twenty-five years before Kosova was recognised ? It’s a riddle to which President Vladimir Putin of Eurasia no doubt has the answer, one that he may reveal to us in the course of his current propaganda war against Oceania. Putin is himself fond of the supposed Kosova - TRNC parallel. It is therefore particularly poignant that the recognition of Kosova’s independence appears to be having the exact opposite result to the one that he and other prophets of doom predicted. Namely, on Friday, the Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat and Cyprus’s newly elected president Dimitris Christofias met and agreed to restart negotiations on reunifying the country.

There is reason to believe that this positive development is not unrelated to the independence of Kosova, as Professor Mehmet Ozcan of the International Strategic Research Organisation has persuasively suggested. Under Christofias’s hardline nationalist predecessor Tassos Papadopoulos, it was the Greek Cypriots, not the Turkish Cypriots, who were most to blame for obstructing Cypriot unity. In a referendum in 2004, the UN’s Annan Plan for Cyprus’s reunification was overwhelmingly approved by the Turkish Cypriot electorate but, on Papadopoulos’s urging, overwhelmingly rejected by the Greek Cypriot electorate. Papadopoulos believed that, with Cyprus entering the EU and able to veto Turkey’s entry, he would eventually be able to extract more favourable terms from the Turks than those represented by the Annan Plan. It is also entirely possible that he actually preferred a permanently divided Cyprus to one reunited on the basis of an Annan-style compromise; at the very least, he was prepared to postpone reunification for the forseeable future. From the perspective of most Greek Cypriots who would like in principle to see their country reunited, this strategy only made sense if it was indeed going to lead to unity on favourable terms in the long run. But the upcoming recognition of Kosova’s independence showed them that the international community could not be relied upon to uphold the principle of the inviolability of state borders indefinitely, particularly when it was a question of a country, such as Serbia or Cyprus, whose leaders were behaving consistently unreasonably. Hence the surprise electoral victory of the moderate Christofias last month. Symbolically, the first round of Cyprus’s presidential election, in which Papadopoulos came third and was therefore knocked out, took place on 17 February - Kosova’s independence day.

As leader of the Communist AKEL party, Christofias represented the non-nationalist option. AKEL has long upheld a cross-national ideology of brotherhood and unity between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and has a history of persecution at the hands of both Greek and Turkish extremists. When, prior to his meeting with Talat, Christofias was asked by a reporter whether they would be drinking Greek or Turkish coffee (they are the same drink), Christofias replied ‘Cypriot coffee, we will both be having Cypriot coffee’. Christofias and AKEL should not be viewed through rose-tinted spectacles; they opportunistically collaborated with Papadopoulos, helping to bring him to power and defeat the Annan Plan. Christofias continues to follow the Greek-nationalist line of insisting that Macedonia change its name. Nevertheless, under his leadership, Cyprus’s prospects for reunification seem incomparably better than they did barely more than a month ago.

The other element of the equation is that Talat did not respond to Kosova’s recognition by launching a new separatist drive, as the anti-Kosovar prophets of doom had predicted. Indeed, he explicitly rejected a parallel between Kosova and the TRNC: ‘We do not see a direct link between the situation in Kosovo and the Cyprus Problem. These problems have come up through different conditions.’ And he is right. Although it was the Greek side that was primarily responsible for provoking the crisis that culminated in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and although Turkey arguably had a legal basis for its invasion, nevertheless the form that this invasion took, involving as it did the dismemberment of the country and the ethnic-cleansing of the Greek population of the north, constituted an act of aggression and conquest. The Turkish Cypriot entity that became the TRNC in 1983 was therefore an artificial product of foreign invasion and ethnic cleansing - in contrast to Kosova, which was established as an autonomous region under the legitimate Yugoslav authorities, and whose Albanian demographic majority predated its conquest by Serbia in 1912.

Talat may or may not recognise this distinction between Kosova and the TRNC. But he is undoubtedly aware of something of which the prophets of doom are not, but which is blindingly obvious: the fact that Kosova is being recognised internationally does not mean that other secessionist territories will be recognised internationally. The ’Pandora’s box’ model would only hold true if a secessionist territory, encouraged by Kosova’s recognition, could translate this sense of encouragement into international recognition. As there is no way for a secessionist territory to do this, the model does not hold. The prospects of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria for recognition by Russia may have improved, but this would be because of a conscious policy decision on Moscow’s part, not because the territories in question felt ‘inspired’ by Kosova’s recognition. Talat is no knee-jerk separatist but a rational, moderate politician who supported the Annan Plan; he has no reason to jeopardise the Turkish Cypriot community’s chance to enter the EU because of Kosova.

There is a final lesson to be learned from this. Although Cyprus has much more justice on its side vis-a-vis the TRNC than Serbia has vis-a-vis Kosova, yet it is Christofias who speaks the language of reconciliation and ‘Cypriot coffee’. Serbia’s leaders have never been able to speak in this way to the Kosova Albanians; they did not speak of Kosova and Serbia as lands that belonged alike to Serbs and Albanians, or speak of the fraternity of the two peoples. Christofias may understand something that Serbia’s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic clearly do not: that if you want to keep your country united and prevent one of its peoples from seceding, you need to treat the latter as your fellow countrymen and women, not as the enemy.

This is a lesson that should be learned by all regimes around the world whose oppression drives subject peoples to secede: if you want to avoid losing part of your territory, it pays to be reasonable. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Western alliance may congratulate themselves on having, with their decision to recognise Kosova, helped to promote stability and reconciliation in South East Europe and the resolution of an old conflict in their ranks.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

The democratic choice is an easier one for progressives to make in the UK than it is in the US. Over here, the ruling Labour Party is more progressive than the Conservative opposition on both foreign and domestic issues. But in the US, things are not so simple. Were I an American citizen, I would be inclined to vote Democrat over domestic issues - abortion, taxation, etc. But I have no doubt that the interests of South East Europe would be better served by John McCain as president than by either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Bill Clinton bears a very large share of responsibility for the problems faced by the Balkans and Caucasus today. These are, in particular, a dismembered, non-functioning Bosnia; an anti-Western, disruptive Serbia; and a dismembered Georgia. The problem was not that Clinton was a particularly reactionary president in world affairs, but that he simply was not very interested in them, something that resulted in a failure of leadership. The mess in Bosnia is above all the fault of the former British Conservative government of John Major and the former French Socialist regime of the late Francois Mitterand; they were the champions of appeasement and the architects, along with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman, of Bosnia’s dismemberment. Clinton could and should have insisted upon a change in Western policy vis-a-vis Bosnia upon becoming president. Instead, he chose to defer to his pro-Belgrade European allies, Britain and France, not wishing to fall out with them over something trivial like genocide in the heart of Europe. This was not only a moral failing, but a betrayal of US interests; the disastrous Anglo-French policy and Clinton’s vacillating support for it greatly damaged both transatlantic relations and the Balkans. There are times when Europe needs American leadership; Bosnia was one of them.

After the initialling of the Dayton Peace Accords in November 1995, Clinton continued to neglect Bosnia, allowing the indicted war-criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to escape arrest - primarily because he did not want to risk American casualties in arrest operations. Nor does Clinton deserve particular credit over Kosova; it is highly questionable whether the US would have acted to prevent the genocide there in 1999 had not Major and Mitterand been replaced in the meantime by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac. NATO’s liberation of Kosova should have been followed up by the prompt recognition of its independence, while the Russians were in no position to cause such trouble for us as they are today. We could have ’punished’ the Serbia of Milosevic with Kosova’s independence, instead of the Serbia of today, led as it is by the relatively pro-Western President Boris Tadic. But that problem, too, was allowed to fester; its resolution today is proving much more difficult than it need have been.

Over Russia and the Caucasus, too, Clinton, like George Bush Snr before him, showed a disastrous failure of leadership. With Russian politics in a state of flux, with the pro-Western Boris Yeltsin in power in Moscow and financially dependent on the West, a golden opportunity existed to push Russian policy in the Caucasus in a less imperialistic direction. The Western powers should have acted decisively to halt the dismemberment of Georgia in the early 1990s and prevent the break-away regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from falling under Russia’s exclusive control. We should have recognised the independence of Chechnya, preempting Yeltsin’s violent assault on the country in 1994. But as is so often the case, the dovish policy is the one most likely to lead to confrontation in the long-run - think of Neville Chamberlain and Munich. Our failure to engage in the Caucasus, and Blair’s shameful support for Vladimir Putin over Chechnya in 1999, have been richly rewarded: Georgia, an aspiring NATO member, faces perpetual dismemberment, while an aggressive, ungrateful Putin has reentered the Balkans with a vengeance with the deliberate aim of derailing the region’s Euro-Atlantic integration. Chechnya proved to be the poison of Russian democracy and Russian-Western friendship; a Russian president willing and able to use weapons of mass destruction against his Chechen citizens is unlikely to respect democratic freedoms in Russia proper, and an undemocratic, authoritarian Russian regime is more likely to be hostile to the West.

In fairness, Russia is not solely responsible for the mess in the Caucasus; Georgia’s brutally chauvinistic former president Zviad Gamsakhurdia was one of the architects of his country’s dismemberment, as was the Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, who supported the Abkhazians. The people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia had legitimate grievances against Gamsakhurdia’s regime and its successors in Tbilisi. These are all issues that a more forward-looking US policy could have helped to resolve, but did not. 

I fear, therefore, the consequences for South East Europe of a US president who is dovish, uninterested in or unserious about foreign policy. Hillary Clinton has always worked hand-in-glove with Bill in the political sphere, and should share responsibility with him for his disastrous Bosnia policy. Indeed, the story is that her influence made it worse; that she read Robert Kaplan’s truly dreadful book ‘Balkan Ghosts’ and passed it on to her husband; this book, filled as it was with crude stereotypes about the Balkans (along the lines of ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’), encouraged the perception of the Bosnian war as an expression of intractable ethnic conflict in which no moral issues were at stake, militating against any intention Bill might have had to resist Serbian aggression. Be that as it may, Hillary was more frank in welcoming Kosovo’s independence than Obama, who appears to see Balkan politics largely through the prism of his need to win the goodwill of the Serbian and Greek lobbies in the US. Hence his letter to the Serbian Unity Congress, in which he stated: ‘I support and shall help in every possible way development of the dialog between all sides in Kosova because I believe that peace and stability can be reached only by solutions acceptable for all sides’ - not far from an endorsement of the Serbo-Russian position on Kosova, which insists on a Serbian veto on any settlement. Hence also Obama’s endorsement of the Greek-nationalist position on Macedonia. These acts may be motivated by simple electoral opportunism, but they do not bode well for a principled and forward-looking US policy toward the Balkans should Obama become president. In flirting with the US’s Serbian and Greek lobbies, Obama is flirting with groups that encompass ultra-right-wing, Christian-fundamentalist, Muslim-hating bigots.

There are several reasons to believe that McCain would follow a more serious and principled policy toward South East Europe than either Clinton or Obama. He is aware of the importance of what he calls a ‘progressive Turkey’ as a strategic partner of the US and a beacon of Muslim democracy, and of the mutual inter-relatedness of democracy and stability in Turkey and Iraq. Turkey is both the most important Balkan country in world affairs and a state that borders on Iraq; the Balkans and the Middle East are adjacent, interlocking regions; McCain’s commitment to staying the course in Iraq is therefore most likely to promote stability in the Balkans.

McCain was correct to oppose Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide (here I break ranks with Norman Geras). The Ottoman Empire in 1915 was undoubtedly guilty of genocide against the Armenians, and Turkey should recognise this genocide. But it is not for an outside power like the US to single out this historic crime as uniquely totemic and worthy of recognition, particularly given that the US Congress has taken no parallel steps to recognise the genocidal crimes carried out by Russia and the Balkan Christian states against Ottoman and Caucasian Muslims during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Why should the US recognise the Ottoman genocide of one million Armenians, but not the Balkan Christian genocide of over six-hundred thousand Ottoman Muslims in 1912-13, when the latter crime was an immediate catalyst of the former ? The Turks would be entirely justified in taking offence at such double standards, and McCain is entirely correct that the US should be developing its relationship with Ankara, not creating new barriers to it - though he is also far from uncritical in his support for Turkey.

McCain was an early supporter of Kosova’s independence. He stood by the oppressed Kosova Albanians before it became fashionable in Washington to do so, and continued to do so despite the support given by many right-wing Republicans - largely for anti-Clinton and anti-Islamic reasons - to the anti-Albanian policies of Milosevic and subsequent Serb-nationalist politicians. A Republican president who is ready to put a combination of US strategic interests and morality above petty sectarian domestic feuds and religious hatred is more likely to act in South East Europe’s best interests.

Finally, McCain led a delegation of US senators to Tbilisi in August 2006, to express unconditional support for Georgia’s territorial integrity and to challenge the presence of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, suggesting they be replaced by a UN or OSCE force. Although Moscow likes to draw a false parallel between Kosova and South Ossetia, in reality, secessionist South Ossetia is more like the Serb-controlled enclave in northern Kosova - an expression of the imperialism of a larger neighbour that seeks to punish a former colony for seeking independence by dismembering it. Georgia is not Russia’s backyard, and any policy that treats it as being so will only bolster the anti-Western Russian neo-empire that has arisen under Putin to become a dangerous enemy of the West. McCain is entirely correct in his belief that in defending Georgia, the West will be defending itself. His suggestion that Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia be replaced by a UN force should be welcomed by all multilateralist opponents of unilateral intervention by great powers in the internal affairs of other countries. But don’t hold your breath.

I am half-Croatian, and I shall confess to having a specifically Croatian agenda for opposing the right of Bosnia’s Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) to secede from Bosnia, and for rejecting the idea that such an act of secession would be in any way equivalent to Kosova’s entirely legitimate secession from Serbia.

Namely, if one were to support the right of Republika Srpska to secede from Bosnia, one would have to support a similar right for the Croat-controlled part of the Bosnian Federation. This would lead, effectively, to the emergence of a Great Croatia. As an opponent of Great Croatian nationalism, this is not something I could accept. Every true Croatian democrat and anti-fascist is the sworn opponent of Great Croatian nationalism, consequently of the partition of Bosnia. Not only would this be an enormous injustice to the people of Bosnia, but it would reward the worst elements in Croatian politics - Ustashas, Tudjmanites and other chauvinists. It would be a betrayal of all those true Bosnian Croat patriots - Stjepan Kljuic, Ivo Komsic, Ivan Lovrenovic and others - who valiantly defended their Bosnian homeland against the Great Croats during the 1990s and thereafter.

Support for the right of national self-determination is about supporting democracy, but it is also about opposing oppression and injustice; about standing up for the rights of smaller, oppressed nations against colonial masters or predatory neighbours. It is therefore wholly at odds with the idea that such predatory states should be allowed to manipulate the right of national self-determination to expand their borders at the expense of those smaller and weaker than themselves. This is what Serbia attempted to do vis-a-vis Croatia in the 1990s. It is what both Croatia and Serbia, at the same time, attempted to do vis-a-vis Bosnia. It is what Russia is attempting to do vis-a-vis Georgia. And it is what occurred in the most notorious instance of the abuse of the right to self-determination: the 1938 Munich Agreement.

It could be argued, however, that no matter how one tries to justify it, this remains hypocritical. Let us take up the challenge and say:

1) We should recognise the right of Republika Srpska to secede from Bosnia - provided Republika Srpska recognises the right of its former Muslim- or Croat-majority areas to secede from it (with all those expelled and non-resident allowed to participate in the vote), and provided Serbia recognises the same right to Muslim-majority areas in the Sanjak and Hungarian-majority areas in Vojvodina;

2) We should recognise the right of the Bosnian-Croat-held areas to secede from Bosnia - provided Croatia recognises the right of its former Serb-majority areas to secede (again, with all those expelled and non-resident allowed to participate in the vote);

3) We should recognise the right of South Ossetia to secede from Georgia - provided Moscow recognises the right of North Ossetia to secede from Russia;

4) We should recognise the right of Abkhazia to secede from Georgia - provided Moscow recognises the right of all its autonomous republics in the Russian North Caucasus to secede.

I strongly suspect that once you insist that the strong be subjected to the same principles that they would like to impose upon the weak, then their own enthusiasm for these principles would vanish.

The right of nations to self-determination is an undeniably thorny issue, above all because there are so many areas where the rights of two or more nations overlap, and where it is difficult or impossible to grant the right to one nation without denying it to another nation - or even destroying the second nation altogether. This is why, when considering how to apply the right, so many factors must be taken into account - rather as in the case of a judge or jury weighing up numerous factors in a court case. I would, however, suggest two general rules of thumb:

1) The right of self-determination, since it is a democratic right, cannot belong to nations that have achieved an artificial majority through ethnic cleansing, since the right belongs to the whole population of the territory in question - including those expelled;

2) The right of self-determination should not be used by larger, stronger nations that already enjoy independent statehood, to expand their borders at the expense of smaller, weaker ones whose state would be consequently destroyed. Thus, although I sympathise with the Albanian minority in Macedonia, given its history of oppression and discrimination, I would not support its right to secede and join Albania or Kosova - simply because there are already two Albanian states in existence, because the Macedonians are a much smaller people than the Albanians, and because Macedonia would be unlikely to survive such an act of secession.

If anyone responds by saying that I have imposed too many qualifications, I would reply that democratic rights are never perfect or absolute. I support freedom of speech and expression - but not to inciters of racial violence or distributors of child pornography. I support freedom of assembly - but not for uniformed, private armies. I support freedom of the press - but not the freedom of newspapers to practice libel.

National self-determination, furthermore, is inherently imperfect - however one draws the borders, there are always likely to be some members of a particular nationality who are stuck on the wrong side. The very concept of majority-rule implies that someone has to be in the minority. The problem with national self-determination is in fact a problem with democracy itself.

Most of the objections to the idea of a right of nations to self-determination are made by people positing hypothetical, extreme cases - such as the supposed danger of a Muslim-majority part of London seceding, or the possibility of a ‘Kosovo in the Galilee’. One could oppose just about any democratic principle by citing hypothetical, worst-case scenarios.

The secession of a Muslim-majority part of London ? That’s a risk I’m prepared to live with. ☺