- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

News

Wall Street lovefest
Outgoing Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is hailed as a friend of the rich and the poor, as the markets shrug off his departure.
By Anthony York
[05/12/99]

Giuliani flunks school-voucher test
Instead of helping the poor, he aims to dynamite public education.
By Samuel G. Freedman
[05/12/99]

Why the Chinese embassy was bombed
A senior intelligence official says the CIA team in charge of choosing targets has no recent Belgrade experience.
By Jeff Stein
[05/12/99]

Refugees protest treatment by Macedonians
Kosovar Albanians are clashing with police as refugee camps reach their saturation point.
By Rob Mank
[05/12/99]

Miami's vice
Crack cocaine is almost dead in many cities, but immigrants, suburbanites and teenagers have kept it alive in South Florida.
By Art Levine
[05/11/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Earlier this decade, as Vukovar, Sarajevo and Srebrenica were suffering, most of the major powers in Europe -- Britain, France, Germany and Italy -- were controlled by conservative governments not always noted for their internationalism or human rights concern. They dithered over what to do about the Balkans, as did their American counterpart, President Bush.

Now all those countries have elected social-democratic or Labor governments, and the world is finally taking steps to stop Milosevic. If not for the leftward move in Europe, Madeleine Albright would stamp her feet, the U.S. would act scary, the Serbs would act scared, the Kosovars would be sold down the river and Clinton would declare diplomatic victory.

Leftists in Europe and the U.S. are opposed to Clinton's handling of the conflict but for different reasons. Many Europeans, particularly Britains, think the prolonged NATO bombing is a Clintonian evasion of the need for ground troops to finish the job. Meanwhile the American left wrings its hands about Kosovar Albanians, but opposes all armed intervention to help them. In Thursday's New York Times, a coalition of peace groups led by the California Peace Action Education Fund took out a full-page ad decrying the bombing of Belgrade.

While a small minority of reflexively anti-American European liberals and leftists still see the New World Order looming in the dust of the NATO bombing, others see that Clinton has been dragged into this by allies who actually meant it when they said that the Serbs had gone too far this time.

Since NATO runs on consensus, the new European leftist governments were instrumental in dragging stragglers toward a military response once diplomacy failed. Their socialism may be attenuated in this era of global capital, but they have enough of an ideological core left to do the right thing, without waiting for focus groups to digest the latest CNN clips of refugees. And they have made it clear that their idea of doing the right thing means getting Milosevic out of Kosovo, if not out of office.

One can see the contrast between the right and left in the United Kingdom when looking at the positions of Douglas Hurd, the British Tory and former Foreign Secretary and Robin Cook, his Labor successor. Hurd famously dismissed ending the arms embargo for the Bosnians because it would "simply level the killing fields." Hurd cared about level cricket fields, of course, but as long as it was only Balkan people on the killing fields, why bother? In contrast to their conservative predecessors -- and indeed in stark contrast to President Clinton -- shortly after taking office the British Labor government ensured that its troops involved in NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia actively pursued indicted war criminals, even at the risk of sustaining British casualties.

It does help that European leaders generally have more popular support for military action than their American counterpart. That includes a greater acceptance that military involvement may lead to casualties. Europeans did not have to wait for "Saving Private Ryan" to restore a collective memory of World War II. Many of them remember that pandering to bloodthirsty dictators only postpones and prolongs the time of reckoning. Blair evoked those memories last week when he said that the Kosovar Albanians "are the victims of the most appalling acts of barbarism and cruelty Europe has seen since World War II. We teach our children never to forget what happened in that war. We must not allow ourselves to become desensitized to accept what is happening in Kosovo today."

Next page | Of Mumia and Milosevic