After the Rain : how the West lost the East Part 20

And so? "Milosevic should go" - he is adamant - "we paid enough." He leans back and lets fatigue take over. His wife interjects: "He drives a milk truck. He collects milk from the villages and delivers it to Nis. The company he works for makes 1000 DM daily - and his salary is 80 DM monthly. How can you survive on 80 DM? I don't work. So, one has to steal." "There is nowhere to steal from" - I say. A moment of comic relief, bringing identical sad smiles to their faces. "During the war (he means the Kosovo conflict), I drove the truck - it is a big truck, you see - and was bombed from behind by NATO planes. It was like that every day, for more than three months but I had to deliver the milk to town." Matter of factly, he lights a cigarette, his hand unshaken.

"All the politicians benefited from these wars, except Arkan (the infamous militia military commander - SV). His son joined us and fought with us as our commander..." - the sentence tapers off among blue clouds of cheap smoke. "And what did NATO achieve?" - his brother in law (who is married to a Macedonian and lives in Skopje) asks. "NATO went in for a year and is stuck for a decade in Bosnia." "And that is the way it is going to be in Kosovo." "They (the West - SV) don't know what they want and they don't know how to achieve it, they have no plans, they stumble, only making matters worse among us. They are ignorant and ill-prepared."

I sound incredulous: "Do you seriously think that there would have been no wars without NATO? After all, when Yugoslavia started falling apart, the West (with the exception of Germany) tried to preserve its unity.

America was very unhappy and discouraged the independence of the const.i.tuent states." "Don't you believe it" - he is livid but not aggressive, there is more pain in his voice than threat - "Croatia would have never embarked on its war against us had it not been for the West. I was there, I know. And we were winning the war there when suddenly Belgrade ordered us to stop. The commander in chief of the whole front came to us, tears in his eyes, and said: I didn't give this order, I want you to know. It comes from above, from Belgrade, not from me."

"But couldn't all this have been settled differently, without bloodshed?" - I wonder. "Of course it could, without the meddling of the West and its two puppets in the region (Milosevic and Tudjman - SV)." And then, somewhat incoherently - "They (the world - SV) should have let us fight it out. Winner takes all the territory, that's the only way to settle it. But Serbia has no friends anywhere in the world and we trust no one." "And Kosovo?" "Maybe that could not have been prevented" - he concedes - "because Milosevic regarded Kosovo as the cornerstone of his regime."

We talk about nothing else. The wounds are too fresh and too prominent to politely ignore. We enter the New Millennium with the blood dripping baggage of the old one. He fought three years in Bosnia, in Sarajevo, near Banja Luka. He is a war criminal, wanted by the international tribunal in The Hague. "Milosevic determined our ultimate borders in Dayton" - he spits the words bitterly, a look of bewilderment in his eyes - "Who gave him the mandate to represent us? Someone else should have gone there, like Karadzic, maybe..." "But Milosevic gave you weapons and food and supplies. Without him surely you could not have survived as long as you did?" "No weapons" - he protests - "Weapons we appropriated, we took them ourselves, from the JNA depots, he deserves no credit for that. Food, maybe... But this does not give him the right to determine our borders and our future without as much as consulting us. He sold us to the West. Now look at the situation. I can't go back to my home in a town that was 100% Serb and now is 100% Moslem and the Moslems can't go back to their towns who are now 100% Serb. And all towns - Serb and Moslem alike - are deserted ghost towns, where no one lives and nothing grows. Now I have to live in Serbia."

I don't ask him what he did to become wanted and hunted by the Hague tribunal. I can't imagine him murdering cold bloodedly or raping. He has a good face, the wrinkles of many smiles and kindly eyes. When he laughs softly, they light up in black fire and his handshake is warm and firm. Instead I say: "And now it's Montenegro's turn should they declare independence?"

There is uneasy silence. The Serbs among us move in their chairs, glance warily at each other, as though co-ordinating an as yet unspoken answer. Finally: "There will be no war in Montenegro. The Serbs will not attack the Montenegrins - but there will be a civil war among the Montenegrins themselves, if they declare independence."

"Today" - says the ex militiaman - "they are all better off than the Serbs in Serbia. The Slovenes, the Croats. Look what we achieved in a decade of 'Great Serbia' - shortly, only Belgrade will remain in the Federation, even Sandjak and Vojvodina will leave." "The problem is that we have no leadership. There is no one to replace Milosevic.

Avramovic is way too old. Dzindzic and Draskovic we cannot trust..."

"Political wh.o.r.es" - says someone - "Once with Milosevic, once without..." "...and who else is there? All the young, capable people are out and away, far far away as they can get..."

Like in all the other countries of transition, they are adherents of the cult of youth. The belief that the old - old people, old culture, old inst.i.tutions - have been so heavily corrupted that they must be discarded thoroughly and mercilessly. That all has to start over again.

That only the young can cope with the timeless riddles that Balkanian sphinxes are in the habit of posing. That the young are the only bridge to the promised land of the zeitgeist of capitalism.

"And Macedonia?" - I ask.

"Macedonia" - a Serb chorus around the dinner table - "Every village wants to become a country. Macedonia cannot survive on its own, it is too dependent on Serbia, it is too tiny."

"But only 17% of its trade is with Serbia" - I correct them, as gently as I can. "Including Kosovo?" - says one in great astonishment - "I see only Macedonian trucks in Serbia, it cannot be..."

"It cannot be" - they all conclude - "Macedonia is nothing without Serbia."

As the clock strikes midnight, we kiss each other on wine flushed cheeks and shake hands solemnly. In the rest of the world, a new millennium may have dawned. But in the Balkans it is perhaps the end of the beginning - but hardly the beginning of the end.

(Article written on January 8, 2000 and published January 17, 2000

in "Central Europe Review" volume 2, issue 2)

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After the Rain

How the West

Lost the East

The ECONOMY

Central Europe

The New Colonies

Mercantilism was the intellectual correlate of colonialism. The idea, roughly, was to physically conquer territories (colonies), subjugate their people, transform them into cheap labour, get hold of all the raw materials and ship them to the colonizer's territory, there to be processed to yield finished products. The beauty in the concept was the "closed circuit" logic. The inhabitants of the colonies (also known as "natives") had to consume finished goods and products. The colonial power forced upon them (through tariff and quota regimes or violence when needed) the finished products produced from their very own raw materials! Thus, the colonies were prevailed upon to sell cheap raw materials and to buy expensive finished goods.

If it sounds like colonialism and has the same economic effects - it is colonialism. The relationship between the European Union and Central Europe is colonialism. Central Europe provides the European Union with raw materials and cheap labour. It buys from the European Union finished goods, products and services. In the process, it incurs enormous trade and balance of payments deficits. Incidentally, it also serves as the EU's dumping grounds for anything from toxic waste to shoddy or outmoded products.

Let us examine the case of the Czech Republic. It is the a.s.sembly plant of Volkswagen and the export launching pad of other multinationals. And the workers are supposed to consume heavily subsidized agricultural produce (such as pork).

For this the Czech Republic is to blame. The previous government did everything it could to alienate its natural allies in the Vysehrad Triangle. It did a good job of it. Instead of negotiating with the EU as a bloc of c. 70 million consumers - it ended up representing an ever-diminishing number of Czecho-Slovaks. Its haughty and corruption-laden behaviour did not acquire too many friends in the West, either.

The approach should have been different. In the West, the client is always right. The Czechs are CONSUMERS. They are the clients of the huge corporation called EU. As a consumer club or group, they could have dictated terms, rather than be subjected to them. The current Hungarian government understands this. Consumers have a single, irresistible power: they can stop consuming. Imagine if 30-40 billion USD were to be deleted from the EU's books by angry consumers - it would have come begging and negotiating, instead of dictating and condescending. The EU does not hesitate to pull every lever - however illegitimate, ridiculous, or downright dangerous - in its negotiations with the new applicants. The new applicants did not a.s.similate yet their dual role as applicants (an inferior position) and as markets (a very superior position).

This inferiority complex has to do with history. The Hussite Wars were perhaps glorious - but they were also irrevocably destructive. Not only were the Czech Lands physically demolished - they were also cut from the rest of Europe for centuries to come. The only times they were reincorporated into it were traumatic (the n.a.z.i occupation, for instance). Having glimpsed the first real opportunity to become a part of the big west dream (and to be redeemed from the clutches of the wounded Russian bear to the East) - the Czechs lost all judgement, self-esteem, self-confidence and negotiating skills. So did all the other Central and Eastern (and Southern) European nations. It was security and safety they were after - not prosperity.

This basic misunderstanding underlies the great European project. The EU's thinking was mainly economic and marginally geopolitical (though it was presented differently). The Czech's motivation was mainly geopolitical and marginally economic (though it was presented differently). The resulting malentendues are worthy of Moliere's pen.

Moreover, the Czechs have always been a religious breed. True, they are the most vehement atheists in Europe - but this is because they adopted other deities. They have always been zealous, intellectual fanatics.

One of my Czech friends calls many periods in his nation's history "intellectual terrorism". The swings some people made lately from being youthful communists to being vengeful ultra-capitalists are indeed breathtaking. Personality cults are supplanted only by fanatic ideologies, which are replaced only by religious zeal. This, of course, does not tend to enhance the realpolitik instincts of the nation.

Czechs have always been a few years too early. They had their own reformation long before Luther. They had the Spring of 68 long before Gorbachev. Every such intellectual transition was followed by a Jacobin disposal and by purges of whole cla.s.ses and elites. These "new religion-personality cult-purges" cycles were not absent from the Velvet Revolution.

Simply, the EU got frightened. Excessive zeal can give anyone - let alone the Brussels amphibian bureaucrats - cold feet. Dates are being pushed back. Commitments hushed or rehashed. Now the Czechs "enjoy" the worst of both worlds: they are being treated as a colony and their date of entry is ceaselessly postponed.