The Washington
Times
www.washingtontimes.com
Martyr for a democratic SerbiaTod Lindberg
Published March 18, 2003
The only time I ever saw
Zoran Djindjic, the prime minister of Serbia who was assassinated as he
stepped out of a car in front of his Belgrade office last week, was at an
off-the-record appearance he made in Washington not long after Slobodan
Milosevic gave up as ruler of Yugoslavia. One appearance was enough,
however, for him to make a lasting impression as one of the most serious
and brilliant politicians on the world stage. What happened last week was
a timely and shocking reminder that even the serious and brilliant are
sometimes not serious and brilliant enough for the tasks they
face.
Mr. Djindjic studied philosophy in
his youth, and I will offer from memory one quotation the ground rules of
the meeting, which took place at the American Enterprise Institute, having
expired with his death — that beautifully captures the depth of his
thinking about politics. He was emphasizing the need for economic
development and investment in the former Yugoslavia. As he explained it,
"Without money, there is only politics. And when there is only politics,
there is hate."
That is as concise a
summary as one could wish of the way in which civil society, including the
marketplace, tempers the passions of politics that lead people to try to
kill each other to get what they want. When people exchange goods for
money in a properly functioning market, they are engaging in a transaction
that is mutually beneficial. The importance of this goes beyond the
economic. They in effect voluntarily treat each other as equals in that
they share the same end of benefiting by working together in the
transaction. Multiplied across the whole of society, these transactions
make for a social fabric of at least a formal equality, at least in
relation to the transactions. This may in turn lead to a fuller sense of
equality; at a minimum, though, this bourgeois life opens a space in which
people can be free from participating in political conflict and also tends
to tone political conflict down to something less than life-or-death
struggle.
Djindjic understood this. And
he understood the task before him. The first was to engineer the downfall
of Mr. Milosevic, the Serbian strongman who had set what remained of
Yugoslavia on a disastrous course since the end of the Cold War,
culminating in NATO's air campaign forcing him from Kosovo in 1999.
Djindjic, as he described it, knew that a united opposition could win a
majority in an election Mr. Milosevic had called for September 2000,
apparently in the belief that his popular support remained high. The
trick, however, was to settle on a candidate against whom Mr. Milosevic
could not call out the army once defeated.
Mr. Djindjic knew he was not that
candidate. Someone with stronger Serbian nationalist credentials was
necessary. The opposition rallied around Vojislav Kostunica. The strategy
worked brilliantly. Mr. Milosevic was initially defiant, but found that he
lacked the popular support, and more important, the muscle in the form of
the army to annul the election
results.
Mr. Djindjic became prime
minister of Serbia, with Mr. Kostunica serving as president of Yugoslavia.
The clash between the two was emblematic of the extraordinary political
task Mr. Djindjic had set for himself: reversing a decade of suicidal (and
murderous) Serbian nationalism and aligning Serbia once and for all with
the West.
The Djindjic event I attended
took place in spring 2001. One therefore was looking at the world through
that pre-September 11 prism. As I walked out, I remember thinking, now
here was a politician with a mission worthy of his talents. If you looked
around the world, few leaders, especially in the West, faced anything even
remotely comparable. In mature, stable democracies, the greatest challenge
for most was merely the gaining and keeping of power. The new democracies
in Central and Eastern Europe had required greatness, and some produced it
sooner than others, but most seemed to be on their way. True, the United
States had vast security responsibilities around the world, but at the
time it was rather unclear what threatened us, and anyway, I had
concluded, such was the overwhelming character of American power that even
Bill Clinton could wield it relatively effectively, as in
Kosovo.
But Mr. Djindjic. If Mr. Djindjic
got it right, I thought, he would be remembered as really the father of
the modern Serbia that would be emerging, its redeemer against the
depredations of the Milosevic era.
And
now Mr. Djindjic is dead. He made vast progress, but Serbia's future
remains an entirely unsettled question. He turns out to have been a martyr
to the cause of a liberal, democratic Serbia, not the one who brought it
into being.
Mr. Djindjic didn't get it
right. I thought he would, and I think he did also. And maybe that is the
reason he didn't: an insufficient respect for the abyss, which can yawn at
any moment, whether it's the twin towers coming down in Manhattan or two
bullets in Belgrade.
Tod Lindberg is editor of Policy Review magazine and a
research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His column appears Tuesdays.
Copyright © 2003
News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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