On the Balkans

There's an interesting comparison between Libya and the Balkans... probably an important one because the Balkan adventures (and the Rwanda disaster) were likely on the Clinton's mind as the Libya crisis unfolded. That basic thought I'll leave as a stub.

For my part, at the time I was in graduate school at Chicago, studying history, but being pulled gradually and reluctantly into the orbit of Chicago's arch-realists: Walt and Mearsheimer particularly.

I remember now, one thing I found particularly perplexing was their expectations about the Balkans, and particularly their carping about 'the mission,' about 'European dithering,' and, inevitably, about the inherent pusillaminity of anything French. Whatever.

The big problem I always had: people -- both the TV talking heads and Chicago's scholars -- would talk about the 'tragedy of Sarajevo,' and generally they'd be talking about how a cute little tourist town and ex-Olympic resort had become war zone. Concerned bleeding-heart that I was, I always had a hard time swallowing the term 'foreign policy disaster in the Balkans' -- a term that came bubbling up from time to time.

I am a historian, perhaps as much by avocation as profession. I could never accustom myself to thinking of a 'Tragedy of Sarajevo' as anything but the event of June 28, 1914, 'foreign policy disaster in the Balkans' as anything but the Guns of August: the onset of war that sent three generations of Europeans to -- or through -- Hell. Or, perhaps, the scenario set out in Sir John Hackett's 1982 novel, The Third World War , a novel that seemed -- by 1993 -- eerily prescient about incipient disaster in Yugoslavia.

Given my impression of the stakes involved, I tended to be far more respectful of Europeans' diplomatic efforts in the Balkans. To my mind, things were turning out well if Russians, Germans, and French were not shooting each other, or, for that matter, if Turks and Greeks remained at peace. I guess my colleagues tended to think I was not sufficiently critical.

Part of the reason this I'm thinking about this now: I find myself again at odds with most opinion about events in Libya. From my perspective, most of the commentary mis-perceives what is at stake, which is not so much the stability/democracy/welfare of Libya itself. Rather, really, the danger is that turmoil in Libya -- and particularly the threat of refugee exodus from Cyrenaica -- might disrupt and distract Egypt from the crucial chores of domestic reform and political reconstitution.