McDonald's Were In Belgrade

My godson, Stuart Jones, posts on Facebook:

In 1991, the JNA go into battle to ostensibly defend the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious state known as Yugoslavia. 

The "West", starting with Germany, and then followed eventually by everyone else, opposes this, and defends the right of secession of Slovenia and Croatia, even though there is every sign that the people pushing hardest for secession, especially in Croatia, are not exactly hot on multi-cultural states. 

Some Croats wave Ustashe flags, others express legitimate concerns about whether the JNA are really defending a Greater Serbia rather than the old Yugoslavia. The former get rather more prominence in Croatia itself, the latter get more prominence in certain sections of the Western media. 

This makes Serb-majority areas in Croatia feel a bit uneasy, with Jasenovac still a live memory, so they demand the rights of self determination too, some because they want to save something of the old Yugoslavia, some because they really are Greater Serbian nationalists. 

The "West" refuses this. Internal borders created by Tito are sacred, but external borders created by Tito are not. The Queen of Hearts, the Red Queen, and the Mad Hatter now take control of Western definitions of international law as applied to the country formerly known as Yugoslavia. Repeat for Bosnia. 

Multi-cultural Yugoslavia must go, but a supposedly multi-cultural Bosnia must be preserved, so Western pseudo-liberals can have their cake and eat it, even when there are disturbing signs that there are just as many supremacist nutters (this time of the Islamist variety, flush with Saudi money) on the side of the Sarajevo regime as on the Croat and Serbian sides. 

Then after condemning ethnic cleansing in the abstract after all sorts of appalling massacres in Bosnia committed by everybody, cue Operation Storm: Croatia expels about a quarter of a million Serbs from Krajina. This is "good ethnic cleansing", so the "West" doesn't object, and actively supports it. 

The refugees end up in the rump Yugoslavia, and Milosevic, to cause mischief, sends a lot of them to Kosovo. Croatia is left one of the most mono-ethnic of the former Yugoslav republics. Cue Dayton. After a bit of bombing, we end up with a de facto partitioned Bosnia, which everyone pretends is still really one country because after it all, it still has one football team. 

Virtually no refugees get to go home on any side. After everyone has declared the whole business over, and that Tito's internal borders are sacrosanct, and have triumphed over Tito's external borders, we start again in Kosovo, as a grubby little conflict between a bunch of ex-Maoists turned drug traffickers, who have shoved Rugova aside for being too pacifist, have a dirty war with the rump Yugoslav authorities, who sometimes harbour Greater Serbia sentiments, and sometimes not. 

Then we discover Tito's internal borders aren't sacrosanct after all, demand NATO occupation of the whole of rump Yugoslavia at Rambouillet, is unsurprisingly refused (although we don't tell the public), and so NATO bombs away, with predictable consequences.

Squabbles in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia occur in due course, but then Tito's internal borders have suddenly become sacred again, so the Albanians are now told to shut up and go home as Camp Bondsteel has now been built and they are now no longer required. Kurds everywhere sigh with recognition. 

Then Kosovo declares UDI. The "West" says this is all fine. The Russians then say that this means that Transdinestria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia have a right to UDI from Moldova and Georgia. The "West" says no, this is not acceptable, but the Chechens have a right to UDI from Russia. 

The Georgians attack South Ossetia, the Russians repulse them, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief that John McCain has not yet got Georgia into NATO. Lots of nationalist tub-thumping on all sides while the workers get screwed and a few weeks later the world economy collapses. 

Now, a decade later, the Balkans are popular again, after an amusing interval when the "West" suddenly rediscovers the sacredness of internal Eastern Bloc-era borders and objects to Crimea returning to Russia (it was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukraine SSR by Kruschev in 1954), and now there is a proposal for a land swap between Kosovo, and what is left of Serbia to solve the ongoing crisis. 

This is denounced by the "West" as tantamount to creating mono-ethnic states. The former Viceroy of Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown piously proclaims: 'Paddy Ashdown oversaw the aftermath in Bosnia, as the international High Representative. He has co-authored an appeal to the European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, to stamp out any talk of a territory swap.

"Moving borders like this will not solve divisions, it will deepen them," said the letter, warning that nationalist politicians might use a territory swap to agitate for the break-up of Bosnia. "Sustainable peace can only come when we learn to live in multi-ethnic communities, rather than re-drawing borders to create mono-ethnic ones. [There is] no policy more likely to lead us back to division and conflict in the Balkans than the one which some are apparently now supporting."' 

Can we go back to 1990 please? These people really are just making it up as they go along. But hey, the arms dealers everywhere have made a hell of a lot of money. And at least 1999 proved that Thomas Friedman was talking utter crap. McDonald's were in Belgrade.