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Serbia After Milosevic
March 13, 2006 23 39 GMT
Summary
In the aftermath of the March 11 death of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia stands on the precipice of dramatic change. For what it is worth, the negative aspects of that change are unlikely to stretch too far beyond Serbia's borders.
Analysis
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack in detention in The Hague on March 11. There is no shortage of theories as to how it came about, nor of circumstances tending to support each one. No matter what led to Milosevic's death, Serbia -- and the Balkans -- remains radically changed from how it was at the onset of Yugoslav wars in 1991.
Among the various theories, the first postulated was suicide, a view reinforced by the twin facts that not only did both of Milosevic's parents take their own lives, but on March 5 so did former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, the star witness in Milosevic's trial,.
The second theory, supported by Serbian nationalists, is that the tribunal arranged to have Milosevic killed because it did not believe it could convict him.
The third, asserted by the Dutch toxicologists who completed Milosevic's autopsy, is that Milosevic secretly and purposefully took rifampicin, an antibiotic that conflicted with his blood pressure medication. As this theory goes, Milosevic knew he was about to be convicted and so attempted to sabotage his own health in an attempt to force the tribunal to ship him off to Russia for medical treatment. But the rifampicin had the unintended side effect of killing him.
That last theory -- officially still a theory -- fits particularly well when one considers Milosevic's penchant for risk taking. He maximized his personal power by starting four wars -- in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo -- by creating the impression of Serbs as victims of oppression and otherwise drumming up trouble. The end results in all four wars were catastrophic losses for Serbia. In less than a decade, he took Serbia from the region's central power to an impoverished, truncated backwater.
And the region will never be the same.
In perhaps the best example of political ignorance this year, Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, noted that Milosevic's death would not have any significant political repercussions in the region.
By all rights, Serbia should be the economic and political hub of Southeastern Europe. It sites astride the Danube River -- the region's primary water-traffic route -- and astride the only major highway and rail link connecting Greece to the European core. It has a decent infrastructure (excellent, considering the 1999 NATO bombings) and a well-educated, internationally aware population. Add in relatively pro-business tax and regulatory policies and a broadly multilingual population, and if any European country should be experiencing a rapid economic takeoff, Serbia should.
Unfortunately, Milosevic's untimely death will likely prevent this, at least for the next couple of years.
Most obviously, Milosevic's death deprives the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of its legitimacy. Milosevic was likely only weeks away from being formally convicted, and now the primary rationale for forming the tribunal in the first place has evaporated.
Which means that, back home, perhaps a majority now think of Milosevic as having been promoted from hero to martyr.
The best that can be hoped for at this point is that the Serbian Socialist Party (which was Milosevic's) and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) will dominate cleanly and legally. While elections are not scheduled until 2007, the likely secessions of Kosovo and Montenegro this year will at the very least force a revisiting of the Serbian Constitution -- necessitating new elections, likely by early next year. In the aftermath of those elections, domestic political power would likely be concentrated in the hands of the SRS. In the last elections in 2003 -- before Kosovo and Montenegro teetered on the brink of internationally recognized independence and before Milosevic's heart attack -- the SRS captured one-third of the National Assembly's seats.
That, of course, assumes that all goes well -- during Milosevic's reign, the SRS was broadly considered too nationalist even for Milosevic's taste.
Perhaps the one hopeful thing in all of this is that Serbia is not the power it once was. Even before one takes into account the watchful eyes of NATO and the European Union, Belgrade's ability to cause problems in its neighborhood are limited. Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria are robust enough to resist any trouble, while nearly all Serbian influence has been eliminated in Croatia, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo. Outside of Serbia, and really just the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, Serbian nationalists could only stir up trouble in Montenegro and the Serb-populated sections of Bosnia.
That might not be pretty -- and considering the trends in play it will not be pretty -- but it is a far cry from the fire that engulfed the region in the 1990s.
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Serbia After Milosevic
March 20, 2006 20 52 GMT
Summary
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was buried this past weekend, though controversy over his life -- and death -- lives on. The timing of Milosevic's passing will circumscribe, not nurture, Serbian nationalists' ability to reassert and project power.
Analysis
Slobodan Milosevic was buried in his hometown of Pozarevac, about 45 miles east of Belgrade, on March 18. The former Yugoslav president died of a heart attack March 11 in the custody of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
First thoughts paint a rather bleak picture for Serbia's future. The Serbian Radical Party, which during the 1990s was the junior and more nationalist member of Milosevic's ruling Socialist-Radical coalition, is the largest force in the Serbian parliament, with one-third of the legislative body's seats. With Kosovo and Montenegro likely to achieve internationally-sanctioned independence by year's end, even under a best-case scenario Serbia is about to develop a new electoral scheme. Judging from nationalist fervor, it seems a Radical government, perhaps supported by the Socialists, is about to take power.
But take a closer look.
Of Theories and Sundered Dreams
Among the various theories postulated for Milosevic's death are suicide; murder by the tribunal, which allegedly decided to have Milosevic killed because it could not convict him; or accidental death caused by Milosevic's attempt to sabotage his own medical treatment in order to win a medical evacuation to Russia where he could claim asylum.
All three theories are somewhat sketchy. Suicide may run in Milosevic's family, but the man has had five years in detention to ponder his fate. There is little reason to suggest he would have chosen to kill himself prior to any conviction. The tribunal had plenty of evidence to convict him, making it an unlikely assassin. As to self-sabotage, while Milosevic's actions as Yugoslavia's president show he was a risk-taker, nothing suggests he was deluded enough to think a first world country like the Netherlands would feel the need to send a patient in need of urgent care on a several-hour plane flight to a country with a less-than-stellar medical complex.
Which leaves us asking the simple question: Who stood to gain the most from the death of a pre-conviction Milosevic? One must imagine what a successful conviction would have meant to answer this question.
First, the people behind the war crimes tribunal wanted Milosevic convicted. While achieving a sense of justice was certainly a consideration, there is also the much broader issue of establishing the legitimacy of an international tribunal carrying out trials against the worst human rights abuses. If anything, the tribunal -- now denied its endgame and soon likely to be fighting for its existence -- is the entity most hurt by Milosevic's death.
Second, Milosevic's conviction would have ignited a nationalist firestorm in Serbia. Perhaps those with the most to gain from Milosevic's sentencing would have been his ideological allies back home. It is one thing to have your icon in chains at The Hague, quite another to have him martyred via a conviction and imprisonment.
Third, Milosevic foes throughout the Balkans not only would have celebrated Milosevic's official damnation, but also could have used the precedent to level numerous lawsuits against Serbia itself. To a large degree, the trial was not simply about condemning the actions of a single man, but about sentencing Serbia as a whole. Bosnia and Croatia, for example, have already filed lawsuits against Serbia at the International Court of Justice seeking tens of billion of dollars for Belgrade's role in the Yugoslav wars.
As it happens, none of these three developments will come to pass now. The tribunal is seeking to justify its continued existence; the nationalists have a memory but not a martyr, at least beyond their point of view, while Serbia has escaped the moral condemnation of the global community.
A Successful Failure
That last aspect of Milosevic's premature death possesses perhaps the most important consequences for the future. Serbians are not merely impoverished economically, they are emotionally exhausted. A convicted Milosevic would have implied a convicted Serbian population, while a Milosevic dead before conviction removes the cloud that has hung over Belgrade since the former president was hauled before the tribunal in 2001. Serbians can now treat Milosevic as an unfortunate part of their history, and not as a present -- and permanent -- ball and chain. The Serbs want to move on. With Milosevic dead and the tribunal meaningless, now they can. Imagine, in comparison, how fertile the ground would have been for Serbian nationalists had the entire population felt crushed under the weight of official international condemnation.
By all rights, Serbia should be a regional economic and political hub. It sits astride the only major road and rail network linking Greece to the European core, as well as the Danube, the region's primary water traffic route. It has a decent infrastructure (excellent considering the NATO bombings in 1999) and a well-educated, internationally aware population. Add in relatively pro-business tax and regulatory policies and a broadly multilingual population, and if any European country should be experiencing a rapid economic takeoff, it should be Serbia.
This hardly means the months ahead will be easy. Inflation is hovering dangerously high at 17 percent, eating into personal incomes approaching their lowest level in a generation. The rebuilding effort will cost tens of billions, and will take at least a decade.
Meanwhile, the government remains a rickety coalition of broadly discredited parties, only able to maintain power because of informal support from none other than Milosevic's Socialists. Even so, the coalition will likely last out the year. While the Radicals and Socialists are certainly enjoying a short burst in the public eye, the two parties know full well what is in the country's immediate future. No one wants to be in control when Belgrade is finally forced to release its legal grip (it long ago lost its actual grip) on Kosovo and Montenegro.
Besides, the Socialists are about to experience a bit of an internal uproar. So long as Milosevic was in charge, he led (in absentia) the party. Now, the messy and grueling process of selecting a leader and building a platform that consists of something broader than "Free Slobo!" must begin.
A New Serbia
But even should the nationalist tide resurge and the Radicals and/or Socialists regain power, Serbia is not the place it was before it lost four consecutive wars. The country's military capabilities are a pale shadow of what they were before the Kosovo war of 1999, much less the outset of the Yugoslav wars in 1991. Serbia maintains a well-educated populace capable of discipline and rebuilding, but it lacks the military capacity to do much more than supply irregulars in places such as Kosovo or the Serb portions of Bosnia.
In addition to being insufficient for the task -- particularly in Kosovo -- such actions would also draw direct attention from NATO, which has forces in both locations. Serbia's nationalists may be angry, but they are not mad.
All in all, Milosevic's untimely death thus has closed the sad chapter of the Yugoslav wars -- not opened a new one in Balkan history. With the European Union about to absorb Bulgaria and Romania, the region has more potential for stability and growth now than at any time since 1990. And it is doing so with a healing Serbia -- a Serbia that would not heal had the tribunal been allowed to issue its verdict -- at its heart.
The real question for you conspiracy theorists out there is this: whose best interests are served by that?
