The "Inevitability" Cop-Out
KAGAN, ROBERT
The "Inevitability" Cop-Out by Robert Kagan In the past two months, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic has learned the hard way that flying in the American orbit can be dangerous to a dictator's...
...Call it "the inevitability theory of history...
...The new theory found its purest expression last week when President Clinton said it was "inevitable" that China would gradually and peacefully transform itself into a democracy—thus excusing himself and the United States from having to make any hard decisions or sacrifices to help bring about such an outcome...
...But that goal was secondary to his chief priority in Dayton: winning his way into washington's good graces...
...has been unwilling to press the point...
...As a pragmatist," one Serbian politician explained at the time, "Milosevic knows that all satellites of the United States are in a better position than those that are not satellites...
...it's a matter of when his era ends, not if, and how it does...
...But it is not unreasonable to imagine that with increased pressure from the United States and its allies, Milosevic could lose his grip on power altogether...
...The newly installed secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, declared that the fulfillment of the Bosnian peace agreement did not depend on any one individual, and U.S...
...One State Department official inadvertently offers a good example of the theory...
...President Clinton is dithering about whether to use American troops to catch Serb war criminals...
...warnings against any violent action by the Serb government...
...George Bush declared after the Gulf War that the fall of Saddam Hussein was inevitable...
...The "Inevitability" Cop-Out by Robert Kagan In the past two months, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic has learned the hard way that flying in the American orbit can be dangerous to a dictator's health...
...Be careful what you wish for, goes the saying...
...Milosevic had caught himself in a trap of his own devising...
...And possibly dead, since rumblings in his own military raised doubts about its loyalty to him in the event of a cataclysm...
...But life in the U.S.-led international order is more complicated...
...In other words, no matter what the United States does, the course of history is running against Milosevic...
...The inevitability theory gave Bush the justification for ending the Gulf War with Saddam still in power in Baghdad, and for standing by while the defeated Saddam turned around and crushed the internal uprisings that might actually have succeeded in toppling him...
...when he signed the Dayton peace agreement last year, Milosevic wanted to end a war his ethnic allies had begun to lose in Bosnia...
...When tens of thousands of Serbs took to the streets in Belgrade to demand the instatement of the victorious opposition politicians, Milosevic might simply have had the protesters mowed down by riot police...
...Some of our allies are opposed to such action for fear that it would unsettle things in Bosnia, and so far the U.S...
...Milosevic didn't care much about pleasing the British government, but he was desperate for the benediction of the world's sole superpower...
...In the aftermath of a crackdown, however, Milosevic would be poor, isolated, and impotent...
...Serbia's shattered economy needed a reprieve from international sanctions—the sanctions washington had insisted on imposing...
...But the real pressure on Milosevic is the threat that the West will reimpose sanctions...
...Now the protests in Belgrade have unexpectedly sparked protests for reform elsewhere in the region—in Bulgaria, to be precise...
...And so Milosevic has found it necessary to make some important if grudging concessions over the past few weeks...
...They overlook the fact that most of the progress achieved on the international scene in recent years has come from the willingness of the leading powers, above all the United States, to use power and take risks...
...The administration is taking a tougher line on Milosevic...
...Before Dayton, Milosevic was poor and isolated, but he was holding the world hostage with his power and influence over the fate of Bosnia...
...The administration is now offering some assistance to opposition organizations, if belatedly...
...policymakers seem to be seeking justification for their inaction in a spanking-new doctrine the president himself seems particularly enamored of...
...With all that we have accomplished in the Balkans, this is no time for timidity...
...The new secretary of defense, William Cohen, seems eager to assure his former Republican Senate colleagues that the United States will withdraw from Bosnia on schedule this year...
...Rather than get into a scuffle with Europe, U.S...
...It's easy to see why the inevitability theory is so alluring to the president, but to be fair, he didn't invent it...
...When Washington leads effectively, the international system can work miraculous changes in allegedly intractable places like the former Yugoslavia...
...officials told reporters last week that they wouldn't be sorry to see Milosevic go...
...And Milosevic himself needed an international seal of approval to bolster his shaky hold on power—approval only the United States could grant...
...All this helps explain why U.S...
...But as the protests persisted and found their way onto CNN, the prospect of a Balkan-style Tiananmen Square massacre caught Washington's attention and brought forth stern U.S...
...If he cracked down and offended Washington's sensibilities, he could be thrust back into the very isolation he had tried to escape at Dayton—only this time with 30,000 NATO troops nearby, policing the peace settlement in Bosnia...
...Milosevic is as good as gone anyway, he says...
...Some people both in and out of policymaking circles seem to believe that the present international order is a self-regulating machine that magically dissolves dictatorships, convinces war criminals to turn themselves in, forestalls aggression, and preserves peace...
...Robert Kagan is a contributing editor of The Weekly Standard...
...When the world's most powerful democracy brings the full weight of its influence to bear successfully, it shifts the ideological scales in democracy's favor in ways it can't even anticipate...
...Recent events there refute the arguments of the cultural deter-minists who insisted that ethnicity was destiny and that the peoples of the Balkans were uniquely incorrigible, resistant to reason and order...
...And in the case of Milosevic's tottering regime, the administration is hesitant to push too hard on the fragile European consensus...
...His country needed help from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—the institutions controlled by the United States...
...When municipal elections in November gave his opponents victories in 14 of Serbia's 18 largest cities, Milosevic first thought he could play by the old rules and simply ignore the results...
...Milosevic may have walked himself into this trap, but we still need to spring it...
...Milosevic is now resisting further concessions, and he may yet decide to abandon his search for Western approval and crush the democratic rebellion...
...envoy Richard Holbrooke succeeded where previous negotiators like Britain's David Owen had failed...
...He allowed a group of European monitors to come to Serbia and declare the elections valid, then conceded the opposition's victories in several of the cities, though not Belgrade...
...you'll surely get it...
...But the latest problems in the Balkans won't fix themselves, nor will the latest opportunities "inevitably" resolve themselves in our favor...
Vol. 2 • February 1997 • No. 21
