The creation of a new world in Kosovo

Writing for Kosovo Online: Dragan Bisenic, journalist

I was in Germany when the bombing started, where I regularly attended the Leipzig Book Fair in the last week of March. I left Belgrade in an atmosphere of anticipation of the bombing. Some time ago, I visited the Aviano military base, where the pilots under the command of Michael Short and Wesley Clark were training at full speed to fly over Serbia and announced that they were ready to fulfill all the tasks assigned to them.

First, on the afternoon of March 23rd, I visited Bonn and Wolfgang Ischinger, the Deputy German Foreign Minister of the time,  Joschka Fischer. I was most interested in whether there would really be a bombing. "If the envoys Holbrook and Majorski leave Belgrade, that means that it will be," replied Ischinger. Not even five minutes had passed, and the phone rang when he was informed that the American and Russian mediators had left Belgrade. He kindly offered to help if I needed it.

The next day, from 7 p.m., I was in the Munich studio of TV Bayern, together with "Cajta" editor Jozef Joffe and historian Mari Zanin Calic. Although I was informed about the bombing by a man who, by the nature of his work, knew it with perfect precision, I said at the beginning of the show that I believed there would be no bombing. I did not see or understand its meaning, just as I did not think that anyone should approve and justify it - neither then, nor today.

The bombing started a little later and the presenter asked me what I was thinking now. It was already clear to me then that this was a new beginning of the use of force in international relations and the legalization of the "right of the stronger". So, whoever is stronger, can freely decide to attack the weaker one. Today NATO, but tomorrow China, the day after tomorrow Russia. That's what I said. Madeleine Albright then formulated it with the question: "What is the use of the strongest army in the world if we are not going to use it?". But that did not attract the attention of the participants, they were much more interested in my describing the bridge in Novi Sad that was hit as the first NATO target.

The following days were also intense and filled with interesting encounters. Then, on March 27, the Council of the European Union was held in Berlin, and on the same day, the presentation of Monica Lewinsky's autobiography, directly opposite the Congress Center, in the large department store KDW (Kaufhaus des Westens), which allowed me to be at both events. For many, Clinton's sexual scandal with the intern at the White House at the time was an additional, bizarre reason for the bombing of Serbia, especially since just such a story had already been announced two years earlier, about the president starting the bombing, (Look at the miracles!) nowhere else than in Albania. to cover up the sex scandal, with Barry Levinson's film "Wag the Dog" starring Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman.

The US Secretary of Defense at the time, William Cohen, claimed under oath that Clinton had never used the military to cover up private scandals, which half of America had believed at the time. "I would like to state for the record that under no circumstances did President Clinton ever call in the military and use that military to serve a political purpose," Cohen vowed in Congress, commenting on the allegations. But even then he was talking about short bombing campaigns in Sudan and Afghanistan, not Yugoslavia. It will be a curious phenomenon worth noting in the following decades after 1999. After the American occupation of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the nature of military interventions, their causes, justification, and the role of NATO were widely discussed, but conferences and TV shows only discussed Afghanistan and Iraq, and later Libya and Syria, but not the bombing of Serbia. Serbia was not mentioned at the conferences in Berlin, Washington, London, or in Moscow.

I don't think it's a matter of conscience, but I believe it's a matter of "planned forgetting", because the less said, the less chance there is of widespread public scrutiny and perhaps a condemnation of this precedent. When the time came for similar cases to be repeated, but with the main role being played by other countries, for example, Russia, referring to the example of the NATO bombing of Serbia, many, including American President Obama, repeatedly stated that it had been a "unique case" and not a precedent, as if it depended more and as if it would depend on their opinion in the future. The NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia will lose its artificial gilding in silence.

While she was signing my books, Monica Lewinsky confirmed that she condemned the American president and the bombing of Yugoslavia, and that night, March 27, in the press center of the EU Council, I called numerous acquaintances in the world, and especially in America, to present to them what, in my opinion, means this attack on Serbia, since telephone calls were free and free like everything else in the press center.

I also called Zbigniew Brzezinski, whom I interviewed several times and with whom I did not agree, but we talked about it openly. There was a strange part of pan-Slavism in him, only that he would have arranged the Slavic world much differently, with a large role for Poland and a small role for Russia. He first said that he was sorry that the bombing would harm many innocent people, but that it would not last long. He asked if it was true that an American stealth plane had been shot down that day, and when I confirmed it, he replied that it was bad news. Then I told him that the fact that NATO was bombing Serbia would sometime in the future be a reason for Russia or China or anyone else who was stronger and more powerful to do the same. He replied that one of the strategic reasons for bombing FR Yugoslavia was precisely to deter others from doing so. After three days, he published an article in the "Washington Post" that became programmatic in America's relationship with the territory of Serbia. He claimed that "the Milosevic dictatorship has now lost any moral or political right to continue sovereignty over Kosovo", and even the "nominal" one that was the originally proposed formula.

The purpose of the continuation of the bombing must now be the political self-determination of Kosovars". Brzezinski then moved the boundaries like pencils on his desk.
That same night, I had a long conversation with the British Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair's spokesman, Julian Braithwaite. Julian honestly explained that there was no other way out and that even if everything were to change, Milosevic would never leave. In the morning, at the end of the Council, by a strange coincidence, I found myself within half a meter of Tony Blair and Robin Cook and walked with him for a good 500 meters. I believe that photographs of those scenes must exist somewhere. Blair told me to write that it was enough for Milosevic to call him, to say that he accepted the conditions and the bombing would stop.

After two days, I returned to Belgrade, barely saving copies of the book signed by Monika Lewinski from the excited customs officials, who examined me as the only passenger on a large bus with Nis registrations from Budapest to Belgrade.

It seemed, indeed, that space and territory no longer meant anything. Paul Virilio, who strongly condemned the NATO bombing, believed that "history is no longer about expanding territories." This French geopolitician got carried away with attractive ideas. "But in this day and age, vast territories are worth nothing!" Today, everything revolves around speed and real-time. We are no longer interested in actual space. Hence, there is not only a crisis of geopolitics and geostrategy, but also a shift towards the emergence and dominance of chronostrategy", Virilio said enthusiastically.

The others also said that in a united Europe, borders were not important, and that territory was not important. But, again, why take territory from Serbia? It is about 11,000 square kilometers. Why then, when the EU members want Kosovo to separate from Serbia, don't they decide to compensate each of them with 400 square kilometers of their territory that they would give in exchange for an independent Kosovo? It goes without saying that no one even considers it but does not even think that someone would even dare to ask this question.

Today's world of Ukraine and Crimea says, however, something else, that territory and national sovereignty are really important to everyone. The statements that territories and natural resources will be less important than financial or digital capital in the future; that the importance of military force is declining, are obviously incorrect. The last session of the UN General Assembly in many ways reaffirmed the issue of territorial sovereignty.

Virilio was right about something. He claimed that there were no more winners and losers in wars. There were only losers. This is why the bombing of 1999 looks more and more like a real prelude to today's entry into the global impasse. His role can be truly pivotal, far greater than anyone cares to admit. In everything, it can be a true picture of the world we will face in the coming decades. Whatever it will be, it will have to be recognized that this world was born in Kosovo.