Word: balkanized
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President Bill Clinton, looking pleased at having some good news to report, presided over the ceremony and found it "a moment of hope." His flowing phrases and lavish praise for a host of negotiators ended with a quote from a 19th century Balkan poet, Ivan Jukic, who wrote, "Only those are heroes who know how to live with their brothers." Like Christopher, Clinton hoped "the Serbs will join in this effort for a wider peace. We invite them and urge them to do so." Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic shrugged, saying Croats and Muslims can "decide the way they want...
...Wednesday night, the road to Gary Pattengill's house in Laguna Beach looks like something out of a Balkan war zone. The Pacific Coast Highway is wreathed in billows of ebony smoke. "My God!" Pattengill exhales, watching flames engulf a nearby luxury residence that had once boasted a killer view of the Pacific. Along the highway stand some of the Laguna Beach refugees. They have packed all the belongings they could salvage and are now stranded -- in their Mercedes-Benz and Cherokees...
Though his recent readings include Balkan Ghosts, which warns against getting involved in places like Bosnia, he is supervising NATO planning for air strikes there and, a former aide says, "is not quite so reluctant to use force" -- a hawkishness that separates him from the more conservative Powell. While he meets the President's first requirement -- what Defense Secretary Les Aspin described as "somebody who can run military operations" -- the general is virtually unknown to the public and untutored in the ways of Congress and public relations. That could prove doubly attractive if it makes him more compliant than...
There is still time, however, for action to prevent a larger Balkan war. "One option is containment in a southern direction," says Zalmay Khalilzad, director of strategic doctrine at the Rand Corp. "If the Serbs win in Bosnia, the prospect of the war spreading increases." He calls for more energetic involvement in Macedonia, where the U.S. has deployed a token force of 300 soldiers to join a Nordic battalion already in place. So small a unit is nothing more than a "trip wire," a warning to would-be aggressors that an attack would bring in much greater U.S. military power...
Yours is a legacy not to be thrown away. In the U.S. there are those prepared to dispense with the American approach to ethnic diversity and begin counting by race. It is a dangerous, thoughtless course that we will one day regret with Balkan intensity. Similarly, the Canadian solution of dignified if sometimes disputatious coexistence between two great peoples is one too precious to throw away. Save the best...