All of this made it clear that the world needed an international decision-making mechanism not hobbled by the ideological baggage of the Cold War. The UN’s goal of freezing the status quo between two nuclear superpowers was obsolete. Democracy was ascendant and it was time to formally recognize this and to press the advantage. The indictment of Slobodan Milosevic by a war crimes court was an excellent first step toward such a new world order but, as we now know, precious few steps were taken afterward.
In his definitive book on the Yugoslav wars, American journalist David Halberstam wrote an insightful passage about what led Milosevic to ruin and, eventually, to die in jail in 2006 while on trial for war crimes in The Hague.
Milosevic had managed to retain the view of many a totalitarian figure before him. He believed that if democracies were slow to act, it was a sign of weakness; if they were affluent, then they were also decadent. In addition, because their politicians and their citizens feared paying the price of war, they could be bullied. He once told the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, “I can stand death-lots of it—but you can’t.”
He was proved wrong eventually, but only after hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions more wounded and traumatized. Sadly, we can add to Halberstam’s first sentence, “and like many a totalitarian figure after him.” Putin performed the same ruthless calculus in his dealings with the free world over his invasion of Georgia in 2008 and over Ukraine today. Terrorists of every kind use this reasoning. They believe that democracies—our slow, affluent, fearful democracies—cannot stand up to suicide bombers and bloody massacres. They also believe the values of the modern world are both its weakness and a threat to their survival, and they are correct on both counts. Our challenge is to overcome our weaknesses without losing the values the enemies of the free world fear so much.
The type of evil Milosevic represented has always been difficult to understand. He was urbane, intelligent, and able to present himself to different people in ways that flattered them and made them trust him. The Bush 41 foreign policy team was reportedly baffled by how “their friend” Milosevic transformed from a well-mannered banker and bureaucrat into a fire-breathing Serbian nationalist who championed ethnic cleansing campaigns against his own citizens. This prompts a key question for this book and for our current world order: Are monsters born or are they made?
I do not intend to open a “nature versus nurture” debate about the genetic makeup of psychopaths or the long-term impact of a difficult childhood on personality. I have spent far too much of my life asking and answering questions about the origins of my chess success, and the only conclusion I’m confident in is that I was lucky to find a game that suited my talents perfectly very early in life. I’m happy to leave those theories to the psychologists and geneticists.
I’m referring to potential evil versus actualized evil and society’s role in preventing the former from becoming the latter. At what point do others have to accept some of the responsibility for the crimes of a murderer? Crimes they could have prevented? Not in the sense that a murderer is not responsible for his actions, of course. There is already far too much excuse making for criminals of every sort, as if the concept of personal responsibility can be suspended as long as a motive can be concocted. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is no more tolerable if you believe he felt threatened by NATO expansion than if you don’t believe he felt threatened. Telling Ukrainians they provoked Putin by rejecting him and moving toward Europe is like telling a harassed woman she should wear longer skirts. Do not lose sight of who is the offender and who is the victim! If we fail to maintain that moral balance and our perceptions of what is right and what is wrong, we are too vulnerable to propaganda.
The caveat is on the practical side of the matter. It is foolish to let down our defenses against an attack simply because we will be in the moral right should that attack come. Condemn, prosecute, and punish the violators, absolutely, but do not make it easy for them. Orson Welles’s modern fable of the scorpion and the frog is a memorable lesson. The frog carries the scorpion across a river on its back, convinced by the scorpion’s logic that it will not sting him because if it does, they will both die. In the middle of the river the scorpion stings the frog, who says, dying, “Logic?
There is no logic in this!” The scorpion replies, “I know, I can’t help it. It is my character.”
The practical moral is not to trust a scorpion because logic and being in the right doesn’t help you very much when you’re dead. Another lesson is that not everyone acts in mutual best interest, or even in their own best interest, and that true nature can override logic and self-preservation. I think of this whenever I hear European diplomats talking about wanting to reach a “win-win” scenario with Putin over Ukraine.
This attitude is admirable in some ways, and it is the definition of diplomacy to at least say that is your goal. It would be wonderful if every crisis or conflict could be ended to mutual benefit, or at least to mutual satisfaction. But assuming that can happen with Putin or with ISIS ignores the true nature of the enemy. Putin’s only goal is to stay in power and he has moved beyond needing cooperation with the free world to do that. He needs conflict and hatred now, and how do you negotiate with that without betraying your ideals and your people? Al-Qaeda and ISIS want to cut off and destroy the modern world of rights and freedom. How does a pluralistic liberal society negotiate with that worldview to mutual benefit? It cannot.
When the logic of assumed mutual benefit keeps failing, it is time to try something else. We are not condemned to expose our backs to the world’s scorpions over and over in the hope that next time, for once, they won’t sting us.
Few humans are truly scorpions—complete psychopaths. Since the end of the ages of monarchy and empire, rising through political ranks to the highest stations requires at least some subtlety and intuition. (North Korea is one of the few modern exceptions and the result is obvious.) The crux of the “born or made” argument is potential meeting opportunity. Slobodan Milosevic probably would have been just another party boss had the revolutions of 1989 not given him the chance to seek greater power through inciting hatred. Milosevic was allowed to flourish in that role long enough to become responsible for the first genocide on European soil since the end of World War II. He should have been removed from power by force in 1995, but he was given another chance, which he naturally interpreted as weakness in his opponents, and he struck again a few years later.
As I said at the start of this chapter, there were two wars in Europe raging in 1999. Both were civil wars, both were fought largely along ethnic and religious lines, and both saw horrible war crimes and acts of terror against civilian populations. And in both Kosovo and Chechnya, the war was part of a fight for political power in a distant capital.
By the end of summer 1999, a new glow of Russia-facing optimism could be detected from Western policy and financial circles. The Clinton administration and international financial institutions had declared the government of Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin one they could “do business” with.
Not only did Russia appear to have averted the total economic implosion many feared during financial crisis, but the market had recovered to around its pre-August 1998 levels, and international creditors were returning. But the fourth firing of a government in less than eighteen months put the lie to such superficial indicators of health.