So many events come across our radar which are really insignificant. And not (pace media bluenoses) just the Gary Condit story.
But the events spinning out of control in Macedonia over the last 48 hours could scarcely be more important or grave. As anyone remotely familiar with 19th and 20th century history knows, Macedonia is a latent hotbed of overlapping irredentisms and a firecracker folded into the creaky joints of Balkan stability.
From the outset of the greater Yugoslavian war, American diplomats have recognized this importance and Macedonia’s relative placidity over the last decade has been a marked success as other parts of Yugoslavia skidded into destruction. As a recognition of that importance Americans soldiers have made up roughly half of a thousand strong UN peace-keeping force along the Macedonian border for most of the 1990s — placed there by Bush’s father long before Americans seriously considered deployments in Bosnia and Kosovo.
The reasons for Macedonia’s centrality and importance are complex. But briefly, at least four countries would quickly be pulled into the fray if Macedonia were to spin out of control — Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece — and the last two of those are NATO member states. In short Macedonia’s implosion could trigger the regional Balkan war which it has been the aim of American foreign policy for the last decade to avert.
The Bush administration comes late to this problem. But if things do go bad they’ll share a large measure of the blame. It’s not at all clear that America could defuse this situation. But Bush and the Rumsfeldian wing of administration foreign policy have been lazily, stupidly, arrogantly indifferent to this building crisis. And those who are in a position to do good and do nothing bear great blame when things go bad.
It’s at times like these when Mr. Rumsfeld’s ugly, Blimpish foolery becomes a very serious matter.
