The leader of Serbia has been called a despot, a genocidal maniac, and most famously, "Hitler." (President Clinton, speech to the American people on the eve of bombing)

One of the most raucus, uninformed (not many sources cited except for NATO pronouncements), violent and inflammatory articles written. Boston Globe, 31 Mar 99. "Stop Milosevic Now."

"(Hitler) Parallel cited by US (Clinton) is Doubted." Boston Globe, 26 Mar 99.

A personal glimpse of President Milosevic New York Times, carried by San Francisco Chronicle, 1 May 99

(Hitler) Parallel cited by US (Clinton) is Doubted." Boston Globe, 26 Mar 99.

By Colum Lynch, Globe Correspondent, 03/26/99

UNITED NATIONS - President Clinton is using a familiar rationale to justify intervention in Yugoslavia: US credibility in the world is at stake and inaction would allow the conflict to spread and encourage Hitler-like dictators to commit massive atrocities.

The Adolph Hitler of the 1990s, in Clinton's analogy, is Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But while Milosevic may be a brutal, even genocidal, ruler, the comparisons with the Nazi leader are a stretch, according to historians and political analysts.

His self-styled Serbian empire, far from expanding, is shrinking every day. Indeed, he is faced with an insurgency that has used its own dirty tactics, including targeting Serb police, in its pursuit of independence.

''Germany and Japan were imperialist powers. Milosevic has no grand plan except to hold on to Serbia,'' said Francis X. Winters, professor of ethics and international affairs at Georgetown University. ''As far as I know the Albanians in Kosovo have thrown down the gauntlet. They want independence and they are going to fight for it.''

Analysts say the administration's policy on Kosovo has been shaped by the West's appeasement of Nazi Germany before World War II, and more recently by the human cost of inaction in the face of Serb atrocities during the Bosnian civil war.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, the daughter of a Czech diplomat, has been deeply influenced by the West's abandonment of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, analysts say.¹ And the State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, recently attacked critics of US action in Kosovo as favoring the ''appeasement'' of Milosevic.

''Sarajevo, the capital of neighboring Bosnia, is where World War I began. World War II and the Holocaust engulfed this region,'' Clinton said in defense of military action. ''In both wars Europe was slow to recognize the dangers.''

Peter Galbraith, US ambassador to Croatia from 1993 to 1998, said the administration's fear that Kosovo is the ''powder keg'' that will ignite the entire Balkans in war is overstated.

In 1914, the murder of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist sparked World War I because powerful European nations had conflicting territorial ambitions in the Balkans.

While Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin threatened to provide military assistance to the Serbs, a traditional Russian ally, analysts doubt Russia has the power to challenge NATO.

''The world has changed since the beginning of the century and I think this cannot spread beyond Macedonia and Albania,'' Galbraith said.

''All the actors from 1914 are now on the same side. The Russians disagree with the tactics but there is nothing they can or will do.''

Some critics of the administration are concerned that the NATO attack may lead Washington into a Vietnam-like quagmire that will require a long-term military commitment, including US ground troops, in Kosovo.

''The American people have good reason to fear that we are heading toward another permanent garrison of Americans in a Balkan country where our mission is confused and our exit strategy is a complete mystery,'' said Senator John McCain, a Republicanfrom Arizona.

Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the administration has exaggerated the threat Milosevic presents to stability in the Balkans. And he added that Clinton and his advisers need to limit the public's expectations about what airstrikes are likely to accomplish in Kosovo.

He said the United States should limit its objectives to degrading Milosevic's military and to minimizing his ability to conduct ethnic cleansing. Otherwise, he said, the administration is setting itself up for failure.

''You've got to be realistic in not setting goals that militarily you can't achieve,'' said Kerry, a Vietnam veteran. ''We don't have the power to bring him to the peace table.''

This story ran on page A14 of the Boston Globe on 03/26/99. © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.

Jane Perlez, New York Times
Saturday, May 1, 1999

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic insisted in an interview released yesterday that his countrymen are ``willing to die'' to defend their rights. But at the same time, he outlined what he described as a six-point plan to settle the war.

Giving some apparently carefully timed insight into his thinking, Milosevic rejected outright an armed international peacekeeping force in Kosovo but said that the ``United Nations can have a huge presence if it wishes.'' Questioned more closely by Arnaud de Borchgrave of United Press International, Milosevic said these U.N. peacekeepers could bear sidearms for self-defense and include troops from non-NATO nations.

Milosevic, who rarely speaks to his own public, made little reference to the more than 600,000 ethnic Albanians who have been expelled by his forces in the past five weeks and denied that Kosovar villages had been torched by Serb forces.

The proposal by Milosevic, which included a reduction of his forces in Kosovo as NATO withdraws its forces in neighboring Albania and Macedonia, was far from meeting the five demands laid out at the NATO summit last weekend. The alliance has said that it wants a heavily armed, NATO-dominated peacekeeping army to rule Kosovo.

De Borchgrave, a former prizewinning foreign correspondent for Newsweek who now is UPI's chief executive officer, allowed Milosevic to ruminate at length. The interview was conducted in English, according to UPI. Milosevic was a banker in New York for the Communist government of Yugoslavia during the 1980s and learned fluent English then.

The Clinton administration dismissed Milosevic's ideas on a settlement as ``falling far short of what's needed to end the bombing,'' according to David Leavy, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Leavy described Milosevic's statements as ``propaganda spewing from the highest source.''

The Yugoslav leader said that in order for a ``compromise'' to be worked out with NATO, he would demand that the alliance withdraw its troops ``now concentrated on our borders in Albania and Macedonia,'' and at the same time he would draw down Serb forces in Kosovo.

Milosevic gave a far higher number of Serb forces in Kosovo -- 100,000 -- than NATO has estimated. NATO has said Milosevic has about 40,000 troops in the province. Milosevic said he had boosted his forces in Kosovo after hearing ``NATO voices urging political leaders to order ground forces into action.''

Among the other points in Milosevic's proposal were ``the return of all refugees, regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliation.''

Many times in the interview, Milosevic said he could not accept any armed foreign troops in Kosovo because they would represent an ``occupation.''

Milosevic described the negotiations at Rambouillet in France, where Washington and four European countries failed to persuade the Serbs to agree to a 28,000-member peacekeeping army, as ``a Clinton administration diktat.''

He said the peacekeeping force of 28,000, including 4,000 Americans, was planned with tanks, armored personnel carriers and heavy weaponry and, hence, was unacceptable. ``Aid, not arms, is what Kosovo needs,'' he said.

Listing countries that he he would find acceptable in the U.N. mission, Milosevic named Ireland as a European country that was not a member of NATO. He also favored contingents from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Milosevic fell short of one of NATO's key demands, which states that Kosovo would be ruled by ``an international provisional administration'' with ``substantial autonomy'' within Yugoslavia. Serbia is the dominant of the two republics in Yugoslavia.

Some of Milosevic's most revealing comments came when he described his version of what had gone on in Kosovo. In some respects, his descriptions appeared to be the obverse of those heard in the West.

He accused the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army of wanting to achieve a ``racially pure state,'' adding: ``It is precisely the opposite of what is happening in the world. Ethnically mixed states is the trend in the new global village.''

President Clinton has frequently charged Milosevic with the ``ethnic cleansing'' of Kosovo by expelling nearly half the ethnic Albanian population in the past five weeks.

Milosevic denied that his forces had torched entire villages of ethnic Albanians. ``Individual houses, yes. But not whole villages as we saw on TV in Vietnam when American forces torched villages suspected of hiding Viet Cong.''

He allowed that his forces are ``not angels'' but that they are not the ``devils'' they have been portrayed as by NATO officials.

``Our regular forces are highly disciplined. The paramilitary irregular forces are a different story,'' he conceded. Painting a picture of the rule of law that Western governments say has not existed under Milosevic's authoritarian rule, he said: ``We have arrested those irregular self-appointed leaders. Some have already been tried and sentenced to 20 years in prison.''

Borrowing language from the proposed Rambouillet accords, Milosevic said, ``We want to achieve the widest possible autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia.''

On his interpretation of American strategy, Milosevic was sarcastic: ``Your leaders are not strategic thinkers,'' he said. ``Short term quick fixes, yes. They said let's bomb Yugoslavia and then figure out what to do next. Some said Milosevic would give up Kosovo after a few days of aggression from the air.

``NATO believes it can pick on a small nation and force us to surrender our independence. And that is where NATO miscalculated. You are not willing to sacrifice lives to achieve our surrender. But we are willing to die to defend our rights as an independent sovereign nation.''