The Kosovo war, as wars are wont to do, spread well beyond its theater of operations. Three weeks ago, in Beijing, a senior Chinese official mused on Kosovo’s significance for the geopolitics of Taiwan and Mongolia. Certainly, when the bombing started, few would have thought that it could end with the Western powers respectfully listening to the views of China on the proper deployment of political and military power in southeastern Europe. And as was made abundantly clear in last weekend’s chaotic events, Kosovo has revealed deep and deeply troubling divisions in the power structure–one hesitates to use the word “government”–of Russia.
For all those reasons, there is now much hard thinking to be done. This week, with luck, the audit of Kosovo will commence at the G8 summit in Cologne, where the seven leading industrial democracies meet with Russia. The arrangements for the reconstruction of Kosovo–and, indeed, of the Balkans as a whole–must be finalized. The Western powers will seek at least some explanation from Boris Yeltsin of what, in heaven’s name, he thought he was doing when he allowed his troops to march into Pristina last week. And the representatives of Japan–the only Asian member of the G8–should take some time at Cologne to tell their colleagues how Kosovo looked from the other side of the world.
Everyone has something to learn from Kosovo. But the keenest students of the war should be those who live in Western Europe. Other places in the world–central Africa, say–have seen as much or more bloodshed since the end of the cold war. But only in Europe has medieval hatred taken hold so close to the heart of what boastfully supposes itself to be a rational, sophisticated civilization. Nowhere else has naked terror been such a near neighbor to smug prosperity.
Nor is that all. The rich nations of Western Europe have shown themselves incapable of preventing the bloodshed on their doorstep. It is no endorsement of American policy in the Balkans (such an endorsement is well nigh impossible) to say that without Washington’s assistance, neither the Bosnian war nor the Kosovan one would have been brought to timely conclusions. In Bosnia, it was American diplomatic arm-twisting that did the trick; in Kosovo, it was the immense scale of American air power. West Europeans are entitled to think that America’s way of waging war is ugly, for it involves putting thousands of civilians at risk while minimizing the dangers to its own armed forces. Yet the European method is even uglier; it is to pretend that war is such a horrible thing that it can always be avoided so long as men of good will are prepared to talk, and talk, and talk to each other. But sometimes men of good will are nowhere to be found. Then war may be necessary; but modern Europe isn’t ready for it. So for nearly a decade, Europeans have been unable to stop a succession of brutal conflicts in the Balkans. Even as it sneers at the reluctant cowboys of the United States, the Old World has had to rely on the New World’s muscle.
Kosovo, perhaps, will bring this mind-set to an end. Fitfully, it is dawning on West Europeans that they live in a dangerous world. Even if the Balkans settle down–a big “if,” given the potential for yet more violence in Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia, Vojvodina and even Serbia proper–a crescent of poverty and instability laps the south and eastern borders of “rich” Europe. Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasian nations and statelets, the Middle East, the Maghrib–any of them could, in the next decade, see another round of bloodletting.
It is a fantasy to think the United States will take upon itself the duty to police all such conflicts. Nor should it; Americans are quite unpopular enough (sometimes for good reason) without incurring the additional enmity that would doubtless flow from a constant series of military adventures. It is in the interests of both the United States and the European Union for Europe to shoulder a larger burden of peacekeeping–yes, and warmaking–in the world of the future.
At the highest levels, this message is sinking in. With the recent decision of the EU to appoint Javier Solana–the very best person for the job–as its de facto foreign and Defense minister, Europe’s leaders have taken a leap forward into responsibility. They now have to fund bigger and better armed forces, and to do so must convince their electorates that it is worth paying the modest price this entails.
Which it is. For two generations, West Europeans got fat and happy while their near neighbors in the communist half of the continent led stunted, fearful lives–lives which, in the Balkans, turned into horror. Rich Europe, belatedly, should prepare to discharge a moral debt to its neighbors.
