Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan: in the early days of Tony Blair’s administration, liberal interventionism was on a roll. Robin Cook’s promise in 1997 of a foreign policy which at least had a nodding acquaintance with the values on which Labour, in the domestic sphere, had been elected was greeted with some scepticism, but these three quick military victories silenced the critics. In the early – pre-Iraq – days overthrowing tyranny and ousting dictators looked easy. But was it really?
In an excellent short book, Why Kosovo Still Matters, Labour MP and former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane looks at the troubled Balkan state and reminds us of the difficulties to be faced when challenging the violation of human rights or search for post-conflict resolution.
The book begins with a concise history of the largely Muslim Kosovo which has, seemingly, been bullied by its bigger, largely Christian, neighbour Serbia since time immemorial.
MacShane quotes Trotsky with approval – rare this for a very New Labour MP – who reported for a Ukrainian newspaper in the 1900s that the Serbs were “engaged in the systematic extermination of the Muslims” in Kosovo. But few cared.
When Britain’s longest serving Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, was cabled before the Great War about Serb atrocities he made no reply. While Grey, who seldom travelled outside the United Kingdom, and never further than Paris, may be forgiven, his successors in the Foreign Office had no excuse.
MacShane retells the dreadful events which followed the collapse of Yugoslavia, the inter-ethnic hatred and the rise of new fascists such as Franjo Tudjman in Croatia and Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia.
The then Tory Foreign Secretaries Malcolm Rifkind and Douglas Hurd not only sat on their hands but even, disgracefully, tried to talk others out of taking any action. Some honourable Conservatives MPs – including Bill Cash, MacShane reminds us in another rare departure – were vocal critics of their own Government’s pusillanimity.
Milosevic succumbed to international pressure at the end of 1996 to lay off Bosnia but, before long, he was harrying Kosovo.
But where John Major’s Government had been spineless, the new Blair Government was steely and, at this point, the book comes into its own. MacShane uses his own diary entries to take up the story and these contemporaneous notes made by an insider – he was then parliamentary private secretary to Foreign Secretary Robin Cook – provide us with the kind of freshness and insight which other history books cannot reach.
Those who believe that ministers and their advisors are mindless of the consequences when they take decisions about military intervention should read these chapters if no others. MacShane describes in gritty detail some of the meetings in the Foreign Secretary’s grand office and the agonised conversations in the marble corridors which I, as Cook’s special advisor, also remember well. The international community had a moral duty to try and protect Kosovo. But could we succeed?
As always, the bigger questions were the unanticipated ones. Serb aggression was checked more easily than expected but the process of finding a new, enduring political settlement turned out to be far more complicated than had been assumed.
By now a Foreign Office minister with responsibility for policy in the Balkans, MacShane records his frustration with endless negotiations about the new status of Kosovo and politicians in the region who “simply won’t accept any responsibility to govern at all”.
This book is useful for those who want to bring themselves up to date with Kosovo – but it is more than that. As a lively account by a well-intentioned decision maker trying to make things stack up when the forces of political gravity are pulling them down, it is a must.
