The not-so-implicit deal in the case of the USSR and the Czech Republic was simple to grasp and very effective. "You will peacefully break up into ethnically homogeneous units – and we will support you financially and initiate you into our economic superstructures." It worked. It still is working. But it was not the deal offered to the former Yugoslav republics. To them the West's message was: "You will peacefully break up into ethnically HETEROGENEOUS units – and we will support you financially, subject to painful and sustained reforms."
It is time to recognize the folly and the fallacy of this last message. Yugoslavia in particular and the Balkans in general must be "re-designed" into ethnically homogeneous political units. If this necessitates the re-drawing of now dangerously obsolete borders – let it be so. It would make a lot more sense to dismantle Bosnia and unite the Republika Srpska with Yugoslavia (Serbia) and the Croat bit with Croatia. The Muslims can have their political unit, if they wish. Parts of Kosovo must go to Albania. The borders have to be redrawn. The result should be a series of ethnically homogeneous states – viable, cohesive, peaceful and able to concentrate on economic warfare rather than on the economics of war.
To achieve this goal, colonialism must be revived. Operation Allied Force is a colonial war without the mercantilist emphasis of days gone by. It is a coalition of rich countries, led by a superpower, attacking and subduing a regional bully. As in the good old days, borders are effectively redrawn (Kosovo's "extensive self government"), new political entities formed, alliances with one group of natives against another abound, military hardware coupled with economic prowess are pitted against local aspirations which do not conform with a moralistic "global view" of the world. The absurd is that – because colonialism is not politically correct and is condemned by all with great vehemence – the colonial powers of today are castrated. These eunuchs of geopolitics do not dare to carry their military and economic clout to its logical and beneficial conclusion. In other words: they do not dare to DICTATE a solution and impose it rather than engage in endless consultations with local parties and amongst themselves.
We need a new Berlin Congress. We need a new Bismarck. He said that the whole Balkan is not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier – but this did not prevent the newly born (and recently victorious) Germany from engaging in the redesign of South Europe. Unfortunately, the Berlin Congress was a shoddy job, more influenced by the narrow self-interests of the participants than by any grand vision or integrity of intentions. To the reshapers of Europe of that time it was more important to adversely affect the interests of Russia and Turkey than to create a long lasting peace and the conditions for prosperity. It was bound to fail and it did and it still does.
This is the second chance (not counting communism). This is the time to redefine South Europe and the Balkans. This is the time to draw logical borders, which reflect not whims and eccentricities, paranoias and ignorance, condescension and malice – but demography and history, national aspirations and disparate cultures and narratives. Let each ethnic group live within safe and internationally guaranteed borders. Let them work in harmony across borders – rather than engage in conflicts within them. Let the Albanian lands go to Albania, the Serbian lands to the Serbs – as the Czech lands are to the Czech and Russian lands are to the Russian. Only then will peace prevail as it does in Western Europe and in Scandinavia today – the scenes of centuries of battles and bloodshed.
(Article published May 31, 1999 in "The New Presence")
[Millenarian Thoughts about Kosovo]
"English persons, therefore, of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer."
("Black Lamb and Grey Falcon – A Journey through Yugoslavia" by Rebecca West – Penguin Books 1994 edition p.20)