Word: states
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Milosevic's war in Bosnia to expand Greater Serbia ended in another defeat. To save himself, he had to knuckle under to international diplomacy. Ever ready to discard what has become harmful, he dropped his backing for Serb kin in the breakaway state, eventually making peace at their expense at Dayton in 1995. He turned this humiliation into another kind of triumph when he paraded on the world stage as a peacemaker equal to the superpower leaders negotiating with him. Yet he was no more a man of peace than he was a communist or nationalist. He simply did what...
...months ago to obstruct the work of international monitors in Kosovo, it was clearly at his orders, a way of saying, notes a diplomat involved, "This is my turf, and I'm boss." He does not flaunt decorative symbols of office or stage showy ceremonies and cares nothing for state protocol. But if he shirks the glamour of power, he still loves delicious moments of control. When foreign diplomats appear at his door, he glows as he picks the chairs on which they will...
Above all, Milosevic is a crafty autocrat. He relies exclusively on his own judgment, and little is done without his consent. While other institutions of state exist--a government, an elected Chamber of Citizens, ministries--he has limited their capacity to function. Only the police force works--an organization full of "his guys" that is exhausting in its myriad forms of harassment. The state is Slobodan Milosevic...
Still, observers say he commands a solid 20% core of support. Some of that may be the result of the undiluted populist propaganda that is fed relentlessly through the state media. And some of it may simply be old-fashioned pride and nationalism, emotions no less powerful and gripping in Yugoslavia than in any other country. But that loyal core is enough, in the words of one Serb, to allow Milosevic "to steal any election." It also gives him the causes and crises that make him irreplaceable. "We are for Slobo because he is for us," explained Velimir Djurica...
...hesitation. Diplomats who thought that Dayton showed they "could work with him" discovered he rarely works well with anyone. He enjoyed his combat with Richard Holbrooke, whose status as special American envoy to the Balkans he considered worthy of attention. But he is said to detest Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as the archetype of all those trying to do in the Serbs. Pride drives the man, says a Western diplomat, "and rational analysis may not matter if he is humiliated in the process...