As someone who believes deeply in the sanctity of human life, who opposes the death penalty and feels uncomfortable at best with abortion, I think I should feel guilty about this, but I'm happy to hear the news that Slobodan Milosevic has died. If there is an afterlife with any type of karmic retribution, his soul is now experiencing the punishment it deserves; and if there isn't, then the world became a better place the moment he was no longer in it.

I am aware that there are Serbs who disagree with me, who to this day see him as the savior of their people. Likewise, I am aware that his death cheats the war crimes tribunal of its biggest catch and reduces the possibility that the tribunal's work can achieve the goal of exposing the truth about the Yugoslav civil war. But neither of those are compelling reasons to mourn.

Slobodan Milosevic was an examplar of an all-too-common breed: the politician who sought to exploit ethnic and cultural tensions to bring himself to power by enhancing fault lines within the society and pitting different social groups against one another, not for the gain of one group or the other, but for his gain. He skillfully rose to power by manipulating Serb anger at, and fear of, the Albanian majority in the autonomous region of Kosovo. His most notable actions in the years before the revolutions of 1989 involved dissolving the autonomous self-governments of Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro. His promotion of a vibrant Serbian nationalism scared the leaders of the other groups in the Yugoslav federation; they were directly responsible for the final collapse of the Yugoslav ideal, and to the collapse of the cross-ethnic unity of the Yugoslav Communist Party.

Many Serbs think he did these things for them. There is nothing, other than wishful thinking, to support that view. He did these things because he was the most powerful Serb, and because enhancing Serb power within the federation would enhance his power. He, like all of the leaders of Yugoslavia in the last years of the Communist era, had a choice: he could ride Serb nationalism to power, seeking to control it and use it to improve his position; or he could stand against nationalism and for the ideal of inter-ethnic comity. He chose the former course despite warnings that the break down of ethnic comity would likely lead to an uncivil war. He failed his people in that moment. (This is not to claim that either Alija Izetbegovic or Franjo Tudjman were any less guilty; the question of their guilt does not ameliorate the degree of Milosevic's). His failures as a leader brought his country to the brink of war.

And then he compounded them.

Despite the deteriorating situation, so vividly described in Balkan Ghosts, there was still a chance to avert disaster as Yugoslavia hurtled into the abyss. Milosevic did not take that chance; indeed, by pushing for a "Greater Serbia", by encouraging the Serbs in the breakway provinces to form ethnically pure enclaves which could join with the rump Yugoslav state, he exacerbated them. It is true that a leadership bent on preventing the civil war might not have been able to stop it, given how inflamed passions were. But it is also true that Milosevic didn't try; rather than trying to put out the fire, he poured gasoline on it -- which was, perhaps, understandable: he had been one of the primary lighters of the fire in the first place.

Slobodan Milosevic was not the only villian in the Yugoslav tragedy. But he was the primary villain. He was not the only leader who failed; but it was his failures, ongoing over the course of almost a decade, which contributed the most to pushing his country into war. Whether or not he was technically guilty of war crimes, it was his decision to flame ethnic passions for political gain which invoked the spectre of civil war. It matters little whether or not he was directing and controlling the beast he had created, or if he had simply lost control of it entirely - for the ravenousness of the beast could have been predicted by anyone with even a passing familiarity with mid-century Yugoslav history. Even if his worst crime was negligence, he should have known what he risked wreaking.

The world, and Serbia in particular, are well rid of him.

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