I have been invited to take part in a debate in London later this year to discuss the proposition that "Western Policy in the Balkans since 1991 has been a Disaster".

As someone involved in formulating part of that policy I am down to argue against this proposition. What to say?

The strong case for those who argue that it was a disaster is easy to make. War. Ethnic Cleansing. Siege of Sarajevo. Srebrenica and other unbelievable atrocities. More War. Mass explusions. NATO bombing. Failure to catch Karadzic and Mladic. Some EU countries recognise Kosovo – others don’t.

Phew. All (or most) brought about (or at least not prevented) by sustained Western dithering at a high level?

Masses of literature on all this. Brendan Simms’ book which lambasts British policy at the time is worth reading (not just because he interviewed me at the FCO as he was writing it).

How to answer all this?

I need to think. But let’s at least agree that the Balkan disasters of the past two decades are part of a wider drama of Bad Leaders. And how best to respond to them.

Bad Leaders are people who from ideology and/or mental instability accumulate formidable amounts of power, then (a) refuse to quit the scene after a reasonable time, and (b) start to brutalise and empoverish their own people and/or export instability.

These people are extremely hard to shift. By virtue of their Very Badness they are largely free from limits and disciplines of the sort our leaders have to respect. Bad Leaders draw on reserves of wickedness, corruption and improvisation which we can not match. Plus they control massive if not dominant domestic media firepower.

What to do about them? Tricky: 

  • They thrive on external criticism from pro-democracy countries, as it allows them to play a facile but vociferous populist card: "The world is against us – and we stand firm against this neo-imperialist bullying!"
  • Sanctions against the country concerned? "Bring ’em on! They’ll degrade the local honest middle class and empower my gangster pals very nicely, thank you."
  • Sanctions against Bad Leaders personally? "Pshaw. I don’t want to travel to your nasty countries anyway!"
  • Isolate them? "Great – now I can get on with being Bad without interruptions!"
  • Engage with them through ‘dialogue’? "Excellent – I knew they’d come back to me in the end! They always do…"
  • Actively support the local democratic opposition? "See?! I told you so. Foreign meddling in our domestic affairs. Oh, and what a pity that human rights troublemaker’s cousin had that nasty car accident…"
  • Topple a Bad Leader and help an outstanding democratic leader come to power instead? "You think that you have defeated me … but are you sure?" 

Ultimately (which can be a very long time) the misery somehow ends and more normal processes start again. Having been exhorted by whey-faced liberal do-gooders not to throw our weight around and try to topple the gangster regime concerned, Western governments are now urged to throw large amounts of taxpayers’ money at mopping up the mess someone else created. Ho hum.

(I once sent a telegram to London from Sarajevo, the punchline of which was:"we have no choice but to hang in here. The locals know very well that if we try to extricate ourselves they’ll start to cause massive trouble again – and it will be on TV". HM Treasury were not amused.)

So. If Western policy towards the former Yugoslavia collapse was a disaster, at least this time round it was not a Total Catastrophe.

And if anyone has some good ideas on how to shift Bad Leaders, please get in touch: mail@charlescrawford.biz