Global Policy Forum

By Steven Erlanger

History, like Günter Grass's rat, continues to gnaw away at what's left of Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milosevic is in jail, and given world enough and time, will almost surely end up in the dock in The Hague. Once he was blamed by the West for every malign event in the Balkans. Now his departure has clarified matters by stripping away any notion that outside intervention or the removal of one man alone can end splintering and feuding in the Balkans.

The stresses of history and ethnicity have not stopped with Mr. Milosevic's exit, in either Serbia or the other nations that were once Yugoslavia. The region, while more democratic than before, remains ripe with possibilities for conflict, mischief and feuding, both tribal and political.

The West fought a war with Mr. Milosevic over Kosovo in 1999 and made the lives of Kosovo's Albanians significantly better. But even this intervention, like the other great- power interventions in the Balkans of the last century, may have done more to destabilize the region than to stabilize it. "It's the triumph of hope over experience," said a senior American diplomat. "Why do we think we're going to get it right this time?" Despite the presence of NATO troops, he said, the West is unlikely to be able to freeze the situation now.

The West intervened on behalf of Kosovo's mistreated Albanians, but that intervention changed the environment, as in any experiment. Today, in southern Serbia, armed Albanians still take shelter and kill Serb policemen in the border buffer zone set up by NATO. Along Kosovo's border with Macedonia, other armed Albanians, based in Kosovo and affiliated with the Kosovo Liberation Army, are fighting a flawed but democratic, multi-ethnic state. In Kosovo itself, the international community and its armies try to ride out an Albanian political push for independence without getting hurt.

History isn't stopping in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Bosnian Croats don't seem to like the American-engineered federation any more than the Serbs do. History isn't stopping in Montenegro, either. It has elections next Sunday, and the most basic of questions about post-Milosevic Yugoslavia are still in the air. Will the federation, even in its reduced form, continue to be one state? Or two, Montenegro and Serbia? Or three, including Kosovo?

Tiny Montenegro is Serbia's last partner in the Yugoslav federation, and Milo Djukanovic, its president, wants out. During the Kosovo war and since, he has been aided handsomely by the West as a willing cat's paw against Mr. Milosevic. But now he is seeking new support in parliamentary elections, to be followed by a referendum on independence, probably this June.

The new president of Yugoslavia, Vojislav Kostunica, wants to give Montenegro greater autonomy but preserve the Yugoslav federation, as does the United States and its partners in the West. In this, he is also concerned about his job. Without Montenegro, there would be no Yugoslavia, and no need for a Yugoslav president. Washington and the West care less about Mr. Kostunica than the future of Kosovo and Bosnia. Under the United Nations resolution that ended the 1999 war, Kosovo remains in Yugoslavia, but its final status is subject to an international agreement to be concluded somehow, somewhere.

If Montenegro secedes and Yugoslavia evaporates, the pressure from Kosovo for rapid independence will grow enormously and Bosnia-Herzegovina could fall apart, with its Serbian and Croat entities demanding their own sovereignty.

The first President Bush thought he could keep the Soviet Union together, and failed. He thought he could keep Tito's six-nation Yugoslavia together, and failed. It is unlikely that the second President Bush will be able to keep Montenegro together with Serbia — if he even wants to try.

The impact of Montenegro's election and referendum could be even greater. What happens in Montenegro could define who prevails in Serbia, where Mr. Kostunica is in a political struggle with a nominal ally, the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic. Mr. Kostunica has begun saying that Montenegro's independence, while regrettable, may be inevitable. He does not want to prolong the agony. Serbia needs stability for foreign investment. And he needs to know what will happen to Yugoslavia before next year's elections for a new Serbian president.

If Yugoslavia disappeared, Mr. Kostunica would almost surely run for and win the Serbian presidency. He would also call for a new Serbian constitution, and then new Serbian elections for a new Serbian state. But Mr. Kostunica's great political rival, Mr. Djindjic, wants to delay a resolution of Montenegro's status and any constitutional changes.

MR. DJINDJIC is more practical, less principled and less preachy than Mr. Kostunica, and Washington and the West side with him on Montenegro, as on many things. It is Mr. Djindjic who implies that he would be willing, after a decent interval and a domestic trial, to see Mr. Milosevic in The Hague, while Mr. Kostunica opposes extradition. But Mr. Djindjic's concerns in keeping Yugoslavia together for now are not so much Montenegro's future or Kosovo's, but his own. In this, he and Mr. Kostunica are brothers. Keeping Yugoslavia together would leave Mr. Djindjic and the powerful Serbian government, elected only last December, in place. Mr. Djindjic wants the Montenegro question postponed so he can keep Mr. Kostunica in his relatively powerless post as Yugoslav president.

Despite the Bush administration's desire for a quiet life after the fall of Mr. Milosevic, divisive history won't stop in the Balkans. Nor will the interplay of nationalism and politics. Standing in Kosovo or on the Macedonian border, the idea of a modern Europe, where frontiers don't matter and the rights of minorities are sacrosanct, can seem very far away. "Milosevic's going has many benefits," the American diplomat said. "If nothing else, we can see things more clearly now." Such clarity might finally bring with it a small dose of humility.