Bisenic: Hill's statement may represent a turning point in the US attitude toward NATO bombing

Foreign political journalist Dragan Bisenic said, commenting on Ambassador Christopher Hill's statement on the occasion of the 24th anniversary of the bombing of the FRY that the American diplomat had softened his previous rhetoric regarding those events and that he made peace with it and accepted that the Serbs would not forget that terrible time.

Bisenic believes that the statement of the US ambassador to Serbia, Christopher Hill, on the occasion of the 24th anniversary of the NATO bombing, can represent an essential turning point in the American understanding and attitude towards the bombing of the FRY, and that Serbia should not miss this opportunity that is now presenting itself.

Bisenic says that "the place where there is a clear self-criticism and sense of acceptance of responsibility is Hill's assessment that diplomacy has failures" and notes that the diplomat's statement about the bombing of the FRY is the first such statement by an American ambassador, which, he says, will cause a storm of dissatisfaction "among very strong and noisy crowds of American interventionists who claim that missiles are America's best ambassadors".

"Ambassador Hill's statement can represent an essential turning point in the American understanding and attitude towards the bombing of Serbia, then Yugoslavia, and we should not miss this opportunity that appears now. The words of the American ambassador represent not only his opinion, but the opinion of the State Department and maybe the White House, but even if they are only his personal opinion, it binds the American administration," Bisenic wrote in his author's text for Tanjug.

Before concluding too quickly that words are just words and that they cannot replace the days under the bombs, says Bisenic, it is necessary to pause and reanalyze what Ambassador Hill said and whether it can be considered that his words represent at least a mild form of apology Serbia for the bombing in 1999.

Bisenic points out that Hill said yesterday on the occasion of the bombing that he had learned that diplomacy sometimes failed, while last year during a tour of the bombed part of the RTS building, he said that he had not wanted to reconsider 1999, recommending that the Serbs "remember" who had led Serbia then and what that person had done to other people in the Balkans, expressing regret for the casualties and losses.

Bisenic believes that yesterday's statement contains "only one additional specification", but that it opens up new possibilities for further improving the positions of the American and Serbian sides on what really led to March 24, 1999, and the event that fundamentally changed the history of American-Serbian relations. 

"It seems that Ambassador Hill is clear that, when it comes to the Serbian understanding of those causes, there is almost no chance that the American and NATO version of "preventing genocide" will be accepted, at least not after Iraq, Libya, and Syria. That's why Ambassador Hill is making peace with that, he accepts that the Serbs will not, nor should, forget that terrible time," Bisenic said.

Bisenic says that Hill's assessment that "diplomacy has failures" is a place of clear self-criticism and a sense of accepting responsibility.

"Although he leaves it up to us to imagine more what he meant by that, since one, two or all parties in the diplomatic process can be responsible for failures, based on the context of the statement and what was happening in 1999, we can assume that Hill meant precisely to his country and his diplomatic mission from that time," he points out.

Hill did not use the conventional word "failure", but chose a more precise and much more difficult qualification - "failure", the journalist points out, explaining that a failure is something that may have had a good idea and plan, but in the end, it did not work, and a failure is a failure from the beginning to the end.

As a result, Bisenic concludes, the possibility opens up that this kind of assessment in the context of Ambassador Hill's entire statement and career has entered the territory of better American-Serbian understanding, which the American foot has not been on recently.

"It may seem to some that this is little and insufficient, that it is just one word that can have multiple meanings, but we should not forget that it is the first such statement by an American ambassador, which we can be sure will cause a storm of discontent among a very strong and noisy crowd of American interventionists who claim that the missiles are the best American ambassadors. This word opens the door to a long corridor through which the Serbian and American sides need to pass in order to reach and restore the mutual understanding that existed throughout the long history of diplomatic relations, not the one that ends only with the significant figures of that history, in the form of decorated fair trinkets, but with the renewal of the real economic, cultural, and military cooperation that existed for decades. This requires a change in the American opinion, but especially in the Serbian perception of the bombing 1999," Bisenic writes.

Ambassador Hill, for his part, took the first step and it should not be neglected and ignored, concludes Bisenic and assesses that Serbia, for its part, should help in the evolution and development of this American opinion, to begin with by listening, understanding and appreciating this statement by Ambassador Hill in the right way.

"We are not counting on any bias here, but on the personal credibility that Christopher Hill possesses in front of the Serbian public. He is certainly the last American diplomat in the State Department who belongs to the "golden string" of American Belgrade diplomats that was started by Hamilton Fish Armstrong and finally shaped George Kennan as the American ambassador in Belgrade from 1961 to 1963, and we would not be completely honest if we did not say that we would like that line to continue even after Ambassador Hill," the journalist said.

He recalls that in 1961, as an eight-year-old, Hill attended the International School in Belgrade, and his father was a Kennan’s diplomat and that he experienced his diplomatic "baptism" in Belgrade in 1978 with another Kennan ambassador and later state secretary, Lawrence Eagleburger whom he calls his "first mentor".

In the 1990s, Bisenic continues, Hill was ambassador to Macedonia and a participant in all American diplomatic initiatives until Rambouillet in 1999, and to date, he has collected 7 ambassadorial positions.

In order to better understand why he is here and why he shows understanding towards Serbian feelings in this way, says Bisenic, the evaluations made about him by the "Washington Post" in 2012 can help us:

"Hill is wary of using military pressure and believes it is important to find financial levers that "really get the attention of the leadership" rather than simply imposing economic sanctions that are harmful to the country's poor. Hill has gained experience from his work in Kosovo, North Korea, and Macedonia. He said he understood the complexity of ethnoreligious politics. "You can't wave your hand (and demand), 'Do this, do that,' Hill believes. Instead, he emphasizes solving local problems."

It also recalls an anecdote from Hill's private life when he advised his driver Rade, who could not open the door, to "try something else" and that there is a reason why the door does not work, indicating that Serbia should consider that advice today.

"So, after 60 years, unlike Rade, let's take a second chance and be open to the advice of, now an adult, Christopher Hill, and 'try something else’," Bisenic said.