Word: washingtonization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...week later, little has changed. The outcome of NATO's Balkans adventure still remains in Milosevic's hands. What most officials in Washington hope will happen is, by definition, wishful thinking. They hope he will now agree to something like the autonomy deal the Kosovars have already signed and will simply blame NATO for forcing him into it. (Oddly, one thing NATO and Milosevic do have in common is a belief that Kosovo should not be an independent state.) But few people think that is about to happen...
...once immoderate and capricious, Milosevic has made himself one of the West's most difficult enemies. Lessons learned from one encounter do not necessarily apply to the next. Washington concluded after Dayton, when NATO bombers seemed to bring him to the negotiating table, that he respected what he feared and would give in to force and threats. Milosevic learned something different: how to exploit the West's 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...
...these contradictions have kept Washington and its allies guessing. Few believe Milosevic's attachment to Kosovo is more than skin deep. Some Serbs say he stirred up the crisis to distract attention from the foundering economy. Yet in considering whether to placate the West or defy it, he is operating according to his own calculus of the risk to himself and his regime. The issue comes down to his feeling about the place where the myth of his own power was built. "He doesn't know," says a top U.S. official in Belgrade, "whether caving in makes him lose face...
Milosevic has miscalculated disastrously before, but he has also brilliantly calculated his hold on power. Which will it be this time? There are those in Washington and Europe who hope that he has gone too far in presiding over death and destruction. Perhaps all those NATO missiles and bombs may finally convince the Serbs that they do not need Milosevic ruining their lives any longer. But reports from Belgrade suggest that the air attacks have Serbs rallying to Milosevic as never before. Once again, in Milosevic's Balkans, it is far from clear who has calculated best...
...luck would have it, both were imminently returning to London--Lewinsky to continue her book tour, McKellen to attend the British premiere of his film Gods and Monsters. When he found himself dateless, McKellen decided to ask Washington's most famous consort. "She was coming to London," said the ever chivalrous knight, "and I thought, 'We want to give her a good welcome...