Tamara Straus

Russian specialists disagree about what Moscow’s latest moves mean. But
most are united in dismay at the Clinton administration’s current policies
toward the former Soviet Union. Salon asked two Russia experts to talk
about the current state of American-Russian relations and the war in
Yugoslavia. Stephen F. Cohen is a professor of Russian studies and history
at New York University and a contributing editor to the Nation. Dimitri K.
Simes is director of the Nixon Center and served as a policy advisor for
the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations. He emigrated from the Soviet
Union in 1973.

Could the war in Yugoslavia mean a return to the Cold War?

Cohen: The short answer is yes, absolutely. The reason is that the
bombing has aroused latent Cold War feelings on both sides, in Moscow and
in Washington, but more so at the moment in Moscow. The anti-American
feeling there is authentic and widespread and is being expressed by both
the political elite and ordinary citizens. Now you can’t replicate the Cold
War. The circumstances were different. But certainly driving Russia out of
the West, out of Europe, and erecting some latter-day variant of the Iron
Curtain between the countries is possible. It is not inevitable, but the
bombings have been a substantial stride in that direction, a stimulus to
that kind of development.

You want to remember there is no one Yeltsin administration, no one Russia,
no one set of Russians, and that there are different groupings and points
of view that are struggling over this very issue. Based on what I know, on
firsthand discussions in Moscow on a fairly regular basis and on reading
the Russian press, there is no one point of view. Even within the Yeltsin
administration there are several. There is the viewpoint that there should
be a very hard, even military, reaction to the American bombing, which
would be strengthened if ground forces were introduced. There is the
viewpoint that under no circumstances should the Russians resort to any
kind of military reaction; i.e, that Russia should remain rhetorically
engaged but practically laid back in order to A) avoid spoiling the
relationship with the West, and B) hold Russia in reserve for an
important diplomatic role when it becomes clear that a military solution is
in the making.

Simes: Russia is a country which throughout history has been slow to
adjust to new foreign policy situations. But once it begins to change it
unfortunately also begins to change with great speed and goes beyond
reason. And what you see in the making is a serious anti-Western, and
particularly anti-American, political wave in Moscow. Up until now, the
Russian government and Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov were trying to
control this wave by offering a lot of pseudo-patriotic rhetoric, but
substantively doing very little that would harm the United States. I do not
know where the red line is beyond which Primakov would make a choice
between losing domestic legitimacy and starting to create problems in the
U.S.-Russian relationship. But I think we are moving in the direction of
this invisible line and perhaps are very close to it.

I think our relations with Russia depend very much on how this war ends. If
this war ends with a negotiated solution, in which Russia is invited to
play a role and has helped to bring about a settlement, I think we can
limit the damage and create perhaps not a new foundation but at least a new
impulse for the U.S.-Russian relationship. If NATO prevails on the
battlefield through air strikes and Milosevic is forced to surrender, it
would do a lot of damage to the U.S.-Russian relationship. It would move
Russian public opinion and the Russian political process in a more
nationalistic and xenophobic direction. But hopefully it still would be
controllable, at least in the short run. If contrary to our hopes,
Milosevic resists and the war continues on the ground for a couple more
weeks, then all kinds of political scenarios may become possible. You have
to understand there is a potential for a very dangerous escalation of
global tensions. We do not want to start the 21st century by prevailing in
Kosovo but losing Russia and China.

But is this conflict about more than Yugoslavia?

Cohen: What you’ve got is a bombing arousing conflicts within the
Kremlin and the Russian political class coming at a moment when a political
succession struggle is under way. Yeltsin won’t be around too much longer.
Therefore a struggle for power and policy is underway, which affects
Russian reactions.

Simes: The anti-Americanism that we see in Russia today did not begin
with the bombing. It originated in the disastrous impact of Yeltsin’s
economic policies — of so-called shock therapy — which fairly or unfairly
millions of Russians believe were made in America. That was the origin of
the current anti-American sentiment. It was exacerbated by the expansion of
NATO. It was further exacerbated by the bombing of Iraq. And now it is
greatly exacerbated by the bombing in Yugoslavia.

So it is a process, a process of the Russian backlash against American
policies. Part of that is an enormous disillusionment by the generally
pro-Western middle-class intellectual professionals, who believed that, if
nothing else, America was a humanitarian nation that would not do the kinds
of unhumanitarian things the Soviet regime had done over the years.

How could Russia escalate the current conflict?

Cohen: There is a powerful view in Washington that Russia has no
options, that Russia is on her knees, and even though Russia is hollering
and bitching and complaining, there is nothing Russia is going to do about
it. This is a mistaken view. Russia has options. The problem is we won’t
like any of the options.

In the short run, for example, if provoked, or if the more militant
factions in Russian politics win, the short-term option for Russia would be
to break the weapons sanctions against Yugoslavia and possibly against
Iraq. In the long run, if America decides to punish Russia by refusing to
let Russia into the West, by cutting off financing, Russia could become an
arsenal on a long-term basis to all those nations that the United States
does not want to see undergo a military build-up. That would mean Iran,
Iraq, China, perhaps India, Pakistan and maybe even Libya. And Russia could
earn billions of dollars doing this, a lot more than the pittance that the
IMF is offering. So Russia has options, but none of them good from the
American point of view.

If you want stability in the Balkans you must have: A) a stable Russia, and
B) Russian cooperation. And if you’re bombing Iraq because you’re worried
about weapons of mass destruction, the great number of weapons of mass
destruction that you should be worried about are in Russia. So this
priority makes no sense from America’s own interests.

Simes: If Russia wanted to, I think it would be very easy for them to
stop the NATO alliance. The question is: What price would they be willing
to pay? If President Milosevic appears in Moscow to sign a defense treaty
and President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Primakov announce that Yugoslavia
is now a part of Russia’s vital national security interests, if Russia puts
its strategic nuclear forces on increased alert, it is very difficult for me to
imagine that NATO would be willing to risk World War III over Yugoslavia.
Needless to say, if Russia were to accomplish that, it would pay an
enormous price: isolation from the West, no new Western loans. Essentially
Russia would be put outside the global mainstream. One very much hopes that
they will be smart enough and pragmatic enough not to allow something like
this to happen. But history is not just about pragmatic relations. History
is also about political processes, about emotions, about leaders trying to
enhance their domestic standing. And if this situation in and around Yugoslavia
continues much longer, there is a risk of escalation and miscalculation on
all sides.

There is no way Russia can make a difference on the ground in Kosovo, if
for no other reason than that there is no way for them to have either an airlift
or to deliver forces by train or by ship. Even if they wanted to move their
air defense missiles into Yugoslavia, and NATO for some strange reason
decided to allow these missiles to arrive without bombing Serbian
airfields, I don’t know how they could be delivered.

What role could Russia play in securing peace in the Balkans?

Simes: I think Primakov is not going to do the bidding of the Clinton
administration. If Vice President Gore asks him to go to Milosevic and
persuade him to accept NATO positions, I don’t think that Primakov would
want to do it. And even if he wanted to do it, he couldn’t do it. If
Milosevic wants to surrender, on the other hand, it might be easier for
Milosevic, psychologically and politically, to surrender to Primakov than
to the United States. But as along as Milosevic does not want to surrender,
I don’t think Primakov will be pressuring him to do so.

What worries me is not how Russia may meaningfully help Milosevic, but the
escalation of tensions around Yugoslavia. Remember, Russia is a weak and
sleeping giant, but it is still a giant. And if you provoke the Russians,
as they were provoked many times in their history, you may find their
responses very surprising. Russia started World War II with humiliating
defeats. Russian campaigns against Napolean initially resulted in defeat
and surrender after defeat and surrender. Most Americans don’t talk about
history when it comes to situations like this. History is important.

The Russians are already desperate and angry and there is a great
accumulation of anger against the West. Until now, in the competition
between pragmatic national interests and public indignation in Russia,
national interests were prevailing. But we cannot take for granted that if
this conflict continues, this situation could prevail indefinitely. A
victory of common sense in Russia is not something one can ever take for
granted.

What about Russia’s historic and religious ties with the Serbs?

Simes: Religious and ethnic ties are important. However, I would not
overstate the importance of these ties. Historically, the Russians have had
difficult relations with Yugoslavia. Under Tito, Yugoslavia if anything had
a pro-American rather than a pro-Soviet orientation. But Russia did
traditionally protect the Serbs — against the Ottoman Empire, against the
Germans, against the British Empire.

I think to appreciate the Russian response to Yugoslavia, you have to
consider two other factors. The first thing is that the Russians have had
their own experience with the United States and with American policy. They
do believe that the United States backed radical reformers in Russia, using
the IMF as a proxy, and in this way contributed to Russia’s financial and
economic disaster. They do feel that the Clinton administration, while
talking about strategic partnerships with Russia, was careful to reduce
Russia down to size and limit Russian international effectiveness. In the
case of Yugoslavia, they do feel that the Clinton administration did
whatever it wanted in Yugoslavia, and that helping Albanians was much more
important than taking Russian views into account. It is this sense of
humiliation mixed with impotence that emerged in Russia vis-`-vis the U.S.
before the current crisis, which explains the extreme radicalism of some
Russians in response to the war.

Cohen: So long as images of Slav cities burning are being broadcast back
into Russia, it generates a profound revulsion against America on two
levels. One, it’s sentimental: “My God, they’re bombing Slavs.” Second,
it’s fear-inducing: “They’re bombing closer and closer to Russia. We could
be next.” Some people think that the anti-American sentiment to the bombing
in Yugoslavia is not authentic. They think it is all for show. And
admittedly, some people are showboating, namely Zhirinovsky and that crowd.
But for the people I know in the political establishment as well as
ordinary rank-and-file citizens, it’s a horrifyingly authentic reaction.

Does the war affect the internal power dynamics for Yeltsin and Primakov?

Cohen: First, physically and probably mentally, Yeltsin is not capable
of sustaining the energy necessary to be a day-to-day leader. We’ve known
that for the last two to three years. What he does seem to be capable of is
periodic interventions. But bear in mind something else: It is widely
understood in Russia that Yeltsin was part of the pro-American faction in Russian politics. It was Yeltsin who conceived of
the idea of My Dear Great Friend Bill and My Dear Great Friend Kohl. It is
now American and German warplanes that are bombing Serbia. Therefore,
Yeltsin’s political position, not to mention his health position, are in
shambles. A poll last week, for example, shows that 6 percent of Russians
support Yeltsin.

Simes: Prime Minister Primakov is no friend of the United States. But he
is no friend of Slobodan Milosevic either. I am sure he resents Milosevic
almost as much as he resents Clinton because, after all, it is Milosevic
who put him in this terrible predicament, where he has to make a choice
between surrendering to NATO demands and alienating Russian public opinion
or moving against NATO and the United States and risking his vital American
connections. I think Primakov is a man in a very difficult position. He did
not have any plan when he went to Belgrade. He was sent there by President
Yeltsin, which is an important reminder that Yeltsin cannot govern but
still can give orders and fire prime ministers. Primakov left Belgrade
empty-handed and since then he has been trying to cool the situation, while
proceeding with vicious and often totally unfair criticisms of NATO
actions. To some extent, his rhetoric was designed for domestic
consumption, to allow him to do little that would damage the U.S.-Russia
relationship beyond repair.

Primakov is a Russian patriot and he does not like the idea of the United
States being the only superpower and NATO acting unilaterally without a
U.N. mandate, meaning without consultation with Russia. It is also clear
that Primakov’s domestic power is limited. He has high public opinion
polls, but Yeltsin now resents him, precisely because of that popularity.
His domestic economic results are modest at best, and he can survive and
have whatever effect on the system he has because the Russian parliament
supports him. So if it appears that he goes against the Russian political
mainstream, he may survive but he would not be able to do anything. He
would not be able to continue with reforms. That is why he is maneuvering.
That is why his conduct appears inconsistent. I think he will avoid radical
steps as long as he can. His instinct essentially is: “Do as little harm
as possible but don’t take chances, don’t stand tall in the name of some
higher objective.” Primakov is not sufficiently strong politically — and I
think it is not in his very flexible and pragmatic nature — to take tough
positions and risk his political neck.

“If we are bombing Serbia in the name of the human rights of the Kosovars, what about the rights of the Serbians whose rights are ignored by our bombs?” said Margot Light, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Politics. “Indeed, what are Kosovar rights if there are hundreds of thousands more refugees now, as a direct and indirect result of the airstrikes?”

International relations and human rights scholars like Light are worried that claims for universal human rights will be much harder to prove after the war. They are responding not only to a potential backlash against the NATO bombing but to a prominent 1990s debate launched by Asian governments and Western cultural relativists, who argue that human rights as defined by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights are culturally specific and based upon Western traditions of Enlightenment philosophy, Christianity and individualism.

Also high on human rights defenders’ worry list is whether the NATO campaign can be deemed a legal war, as it is being waged without the authorization of the U.N. Security Council or any other international governing body. “Now NATO has become a competing force that may circumvent the United Nations — which includes China and Russia, the ‘less friendly members’–in wars and interventions,” said Micheline Ishay, human rights director of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

The question of legality is complicated, however, by whether the NATO intervention can be deemed a just war, since the laws of the United Nations abetted bureaucratic wrangling rather than a stop to the bloodshed. “[W]hen the drafters of the U.N. Charter set its limits on state power, they responded to the crises precipitating World War II,” University of California Davis Law Professor Michael Glennon wrote in the recent issue of Foreign Affairs. “The recurrent problem today is intrastate violence, which is not addressed effectively in the Charter.”

Bryan Hehir, a professor at both the Harvard Divinity School and its School of International Affairs, agrees that the events of the late 20th century call for a reevaluation of the laws of war. He believes that atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and the failure of the international community to prevent them have obligated the United States and its allies to take action for moral and ethical reasons. “My support of Kosovo as a just cause is part of a larger argument, which calls for recasting the moral-legal-political calculus of policy in the direction of justifying some interventions for humanitarian reasons,” he argued.

Yet many human rights defenders are convinced that the United States and its allies are not capable of this kind of humanitarian arbitration. Jan Olberg, director of the Swedish Transnational Foundation for Peace, has said: “One is increasingly led to believe that the whole catastrophe was caused by leading decision makers ignoring early warnings from the region and top-level military expertise, by the U.S. president being ‘distracted’ and by bad judgment and a gross underestimation of the complexity of what is at stake. Or, you may say, by a dangerous combination of hubris and human folly, of too much military power combined with too little intellectual power.”

There is also fear that NATO’s campaign may set a precedent for a dangerous and propagandistic form of military humanism. Noam Chomsky has warned: “The right of humanitarian intervention is likely to be invoked in coming years, now that the Cold War pretexts have lost their efficacy. There is no serious doubt that the NATO bombings further undermine what remains of the fragile structure of international law.”

The human rights community is certainly tearing along political and philosophical lines, but nowhere are divisions more acute than along geographical ones. Southeastern European human rights groups, such as the Greek Helsinki Monitor, have denounced NATO and are calling for a cessation to the bombings. And members of human rights organizations in the new NATO countries of Central Europe are questioning whether the traditional human rights position of neutrality may be outmoded if the NATO campaign leads to the permanent expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, or worse, a wider Balkan war.

Dimitrina Petrova, a former member of the first post-communist parliament in Bulgaria who now heads the European Roma Rights Center in Budapest, said:

The human rights community in the region is confused. We have been trying not to abandon our traditional political neutrality, but we must not overlook that our silence on the issue is interpreted as continued support for NATO military strikes. At this stage, I strongly oppose further military action of whatever kind. The continuation of the NATO air campaigns–and even more so a follow-up of ground forces in Kosovo — is likely to cause a greater loss of life and more severe violations of human rights than if an immediate cease-fire is opted for today.

Not surprisingly, human rights advocates in the Balkans, and especially Serbia, are most outspoken in their condemnation of the NATO intervention. Vojin Dimitrijevic, former vice-chairman of the UN Human Rights Committee and spokesperson for the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, wrote in an open letter:

We regard NATO’s decision “to use violence for humanitarian reasons” as a sign of the incompetence and impotence of the U.S. and EU policies in regard to Kosovo, rather than an unavoidable move after all other efforts have failed. The airstrikes erased in one night the results of 10 years of hard work of groups of courageous people in nongovernmental organizations and the democratic opposition.

“Obviously you cannot bomb people into democracy,” said Dusan Makavejev, the Belgrade-born film director and human rights advocate. “Let us recall that the Berlin Wall fell from inside and by itself.”

In light of these arguments, American human rights defenders are finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of either endorsing the NATO bombing mission in the hope that it will lead to a diplomatic resolution — as Physicians for Human Rights and Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights have done — or remaining neutral, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, while witnessing an increasingly conflicted humanitarian mission led by their country.

“The intervention can be regarded as a double-edged sword,” said Karis Hall, a member of the Balkans Coordination Group of Amnesty International. “To the extent it is regarded as successful and fair, it will further the possibility of such interventions in the future. If, however, NATO uses the human rights issue to justify actions that are viewed as excessive or flawed, future international human rights initiatives will be tarnished.”

The recent proposal by the G-8 countries — which include the largest NATO powers and Russia — to reach a U.N.-monitored compromise in the Kosovo conflict could bring an end to the current impasse. But nationalism will remain the primary barrier to peace in the Balkans.

Salon News asked Milosz to talk about nationalism in the former Yugoslavia and the wars that it has inspired.

You once said: “People have an enormous need for mythology.” Would you apply this statement to the Serbs today?

I grew up in Lithuania, where the past was very much alive, even a pagan past, the traces of which can be found in some folk songs and beliefs. Nations mythologize their past, and sometimes the grip of local mythologies is so strong that they are unable to liberate themselves. In Serbia and Montenegro those mythological images of the past were maintained for centuries by literature. Scholars who wanted to find out how Homer’s Iliad was written, for example, traveled to Serbia and Montenegro before the Second World War, and in remote villages they tape-recorded the old tellers of poems, who acted precisely like the Greek tellers in the time of Homer.

In Serbia all those epic songs were centered around the battle of Kosovo of 1389. That battle, which was won by the Turks, resulted in Serbia’s loss of independence and a centuries-long domination of Serbs by the Turks. So if we think of the durability of the myth of the battle of Kosovo, we can understand why Kosovo has such symbolic meaning for the Serbs. This myth has been a permanent ingredient of Serbian nationalism.

What were the results of the Turkish domination of Serbia?

For 500 years, Serbs resisted the Turks and the conversion to the Muslim religion, which the Turks tried to foster. Those Serbs who converted to Islam enjoyed numerous privileges, but they were hated by those who didn’t and labeled traitors; they were called “Turks.” The ethnic cleansing that began in Bosnia in 1991 was perceived by the Serbs as revenge against the Muslims, i.e., against the traitors, even though the ancestors of these “traitors” had embraced Islam centuries ago. This feeling of revenge as historical justice explains how the Serbs can commit crimes and feel innocent.

How can Serbs still feel innocent, given the atrocities they have committed?

I believe they feel they are innocent. You must understand the complex of innocence — of being an innocent victim — is extremely strong in Serbia. They have conceived of themselves as a heroic people who have resisted everybody — the Turks, the Germans. When the Serbs attacked the Croatian city of Vukovar, for example, they were absolutely convinced they were fighting fascists. They were absolutely convinced they were fighting a repeat sequence of World War II, because the fascists — not German fascists this time, but Croatian fascists — attacked them. I can tell you that the mythology of Kosovo is extremely strong in the subconscious of the Serbs. It is this mythology and the enormous force of history that can explain the innocence they feel. The Serbs do not realize what they are doing, but they know how they suffered in the past.

Do you think the West miscalculated in its negotiations with Milosevic?

I think historical mythologies maintained by a given nation should be taken into account. Kosovo is an extremely strong symbol that plays a major role in the Serbian political game. Milosevic took power 10 years ago precisely by playing the Kosovo card. And at Rambouillet that card was made an ultimatum. International pressure, an Albanian majority in Kosovo, and a plebiscite on the future of the republic in three years meant, in practice, the loss of Kosovo for Serbia. And in my opinion, no politician in Serbia could accept such a loss, because it would mean political death for him. So I would say some proposals went too far.

Was a nationalist crisis in Yugoslavia inevitable at the end of the Cold War?

I don’t know if it was inevitable. But in the 1960s I had conversations here with visiting Yugoslav intellectuals, and they were in absolute terror and panic at the thought of what would happen in Yugoslavia after Tito’s death. So they knew. They realized the nationalist hatreds. When I visited Yugoslavia after Tito’s death, in the early 1980s, I noticed already enormous tensions between nationalities. There was a saying then: It’s easier to trade with China than with a neighboring republic. So nationalist hatreds were already very strong. I then saw that immediately after the Yugoslavs liberated themselves from Marxism they embraced nationalism. This proves the strength of nationalism. It emerges after political crises — and in this case, after the opening of the void previously filled by Marxism.

Do you think the NATO bombing is a just military intervention?

The whole affair has been going on for 10 years now. What the Serbs were doing in Bosnia — ethnic cleansing and other atrocities — exacerbated Western European and American opinion because there was a feeling of impotence and great frustration in the face of the inhumanity of mass crimes. I believe NATO’s actions are morally, absolutely justified, except that perhaps when one is frustrated for many years, one can make mistakes out of frustration. I wrote a poem about Sarajevo, warning that inactivity — in this case, the inactivity of Western Europe to prevent crimes — can be punished by the fates. I don’t know whether the bombing was the best solution. But the Serbian responsibility for crimes should be clearly understood. Milosevic undoubtedly is responsible for the most atrocious crimes, which practically equal the crimes committed by the Nazis.

How hopeful are you for peaceful coexistence among different nationalities in the next century?

Peaceful coexistence is possible. If you take the area I come from — Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine — the Poles and Ukrainians should be murdering each other, because there is a long history of hatred and bloodshed. But relations between Poland and Ukraine are quite good at the present time. And this is the result of the conscious work of some intellectuals, who tried to bring about a mutual understanding and forgetting of the past. The same applies to the Poles and the Germans. Their relationship should be very bad, as a result of the Nazi onslaught, but relations are cordial now. So it’s possible.

What words of advice do you have for Western leaders in regard to the Balkans?

We should be very careful to make distinctions, and distinctions call for very attentive study of a given case, of a given area. We should not jump to conclusions and formulate general ideas about the Balkans or the Baltic states and so on. It is very dangerous. And undoubtedly there is a trend in America — as there always has been — to dismiss the wars in the Balkans as something that has been occurring constantly. That was the attitude of George Kennan, whose philosophy in this respect boiled down to: “Those people are barbarians who kill each other constantly. Why should we be involved?” Often in the attitude of many Americans there is scorn for little-known areas of the world. And this is dangerous.