The central issue in the former Yugoslavia revolves around an individual: Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav President. Eager to avoid mistakes committed in the confrontation with Iraq - where Western governments identified the removal of Saddam Hussein as a major war objective, only to fail at every step - the West has not targeted Milosevic himself.

Officially, the dispute is only about the fate of the ethnic Albanians, and even here Western governments continue to accept Milosevic's claim that Kosovo should remain part of Yugoslavia.

But the reality is the Kosovo problem helped make Milosevic. The final chapter in his peculiar career of corruption, nepotism and ruthless violence, is now being written.

To all appearances, Slobodan Milosevic (or "Slobo" as he is affectionately known by some semi-literate Belgrade taxi-drivers) is a classic product of the communist system which operated elsewhere in Eastern Europe over the last five decades.

Born in 1941 close to Belgrade into a relatively poor but educated family, he joined the communist youth movement, spent most of his time at university attending party meetings and joined every conceivable committee or "discussion group" ever since.

He also married well. Mira Markovic, his partner, came from the local communist "aristocracy" of war-time partisans and has remained a staunch Leninist.

By the early 1980s, Milosevic was the archetypal East European leader on the make, complete with powerful allies, impeccable ideological credentials and the determination to climb up the party's greasy pole. He even started sporting the classic brushed-back hair style and ill-fitting brown suits which were the prerequisites of every top communist boss.

But in many ways, he was always Eastern Europe's exception. His youth consisted of one tragedy after another: his father left him when he was a baby and committed suicide in 1962; his domineering mother took her own life 10 years later. Milosevic has never referred in public to this experience, but it has left its mark on the Yugoslav dictator; his defiance of all odds and a fatalistic approach to life have been his hallmarks.

Furthermore, Yugoslavia did not operate a classic East European communist regime. By the 1970s, experience in running some of the country's "self-managing" economic units was a requirement for party promotion.

Milosevic duly worked in a local energy company, and was then a director of a major bank. By the time he came to power, he was better educated and more experienced than his communist counterparts throughout the region.

And, most importantly, he was the first leader in Eastern Europe to realise communist ideology had no future; if he was to survive, he had to invent a new rationale, and nationalism provided him with the perfect substitute.

He was not the only leader to resort to nationalism. Yet he benefited from some unique advantages. Firstly, he operated in a country in which ideology was already fading since the death of Tito; the shift towards nationalism was therefore less startling and more convincing.

Secondly, he was often just responding to the rising nationalism of other Yugoslav republics. His appeal to ordinary Serbs was therefore couched in terms of "historic justice"; if Croats and Slovenes wanted their own states, the Serbs must have one too. He did not want the disintegration of Yugoslavia. But he was determined that, if Yugoslavia was to survive, it would only do so by becoming an ill-disguised Greater Serbia.

He co-operated with the leaders of the other republics - all of them his former party colleagues and all seeking to apply the same nationalism at home - in destroying the federal government's attempt to reform the country's institutions. He plundered the federal bank in order to boost the salaries of Serbian industrial workers.

And he slowly introduced Serb nationalists into all the supposedly federal institutions in Belgrade, primarily the armed forces and the security services.

HIS control at home is not that of an ordinary dictator. He was always careful to nurture more extreme nationalist movements, and use them in order to tell the West he is indispensable. He has also been good at attracting a particular kind of voter: the millions of first-generation peasants, turned into industrial workers, people who no longer have ties in the countryside but who detest the intellectuals in towns. They were the shock troops he used to disperse demonstrations which periodically erupted against his regime.

Milosevic is also good at diverting threats issued by the West against him to destroy his opponents at home. The leading generals in the Yugoslav military instinctively know that, unless they support their leader, they may find themselves before an international tribunal for war crimes.

And every opposition leader who tries to offer an alternative policy inside Serbia is immediately accused of being a "foreign agent" - a plausible accusation since most of the things the West wants are against the wishes of a majority of ordinary Serbs.

Finally, when everything fails and opposition proves too strong, Milosevic co-opts it in order to destroy it later. This was the method adopted in the winter of 1996, when a united platform of small parties won the local elections in Serbia's main towns. They were allowed to take power, only to disintegrate immediately thereafter.

A confusing pirouette of frequent institutional changes completes the picture. For a while, Milosevic was Serb president, and Yugoslavia had a "federal" head of state who did nothing. Then he changed tack: he had himself elected as Yugoslav president, and the Serb presidency was reduced to insignificance. Now you see him, now you don't: Milosevic is known to disappear from sight for months when it suits him.

He almost certainly knows now Kosovo is, to all intents and purposes, lost. But he is not convinced that he has to give up the entire province. Western air strikes may cause the breach between NATO and Russia which he always hoped for. And, even if a peaceful agreement is hatched, he will insist on the introduction of Russian troops - with those of other countries - to police the deal. The result will be a de facto partition of the province, with Serbia remaining in control of the territory on which Russian troops may be stationed.

But ultimately Milosevic knows he cannot make too many further concessions: Kosovo is where his rise to power began, and it will be his last stand. As they say in the Balkans: "He who mounts the tiger cannot dismount." The choice for Milosevic now is simple: either he manages to continue riding, or he is devoured, probably by his own military.

The author is Director of Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London.