The US view on post-war Yugoslavia is that the Balkan country must be reorganised and rebuilt by the victor, NATO.
No one else will have a say in the matter - not the United Nations or the Russians, particularly not the Russians who stole a march on the Brits by seizing the strategic airport at Pristina and have so far refused to return it. What will NATO do now? Bomb Russia?
Commentary on the Yugoslav situation suggests that everything is in a mess at the moment, but at least the aerial bombardment has stopped and people can try to rebuild their lives and count themselves lucky they have lives to rebuild: the British Foreign Office says 10,000 ethnic Albanians were murdered by the Serbs.
One has the feeling the former allied combatants of NATO are engaged in stiff competition for the profits that will follow rebuilding the battered country. NATO, or, if you like the USA, will have the final say in how it's to be done and who will benefit from the rebuilding financially.
The "peacekeepers", as the New York Times and Washington Post call the victors, "have been at pains to stress that they are a neutral force, trying to preserve Serbs as well as Albanians." It's a delicate balancing act with rebel Albanians on the streets "brandishing their weapons and new-found authority."
This, one knows, has been the pattern in the Balkans over the centuries as one set of conquerors replaced another. In the matter of massacres, the Albanians were the victims yesterday. Today it is the turn of the Serbs.
Grisly stories are relayed about killings and burnings and burial places of the victims. But so far there is no estimate of the dead and wounded following NATO's 11-week aerial bombardment of Serbia - apart from what happened at the Chinese embassy because of "out of date maps".
China rejects that explanation and has tossed out the high-level US diplomatic delegation that offered the excuse. Apart from the Clinton administration's kow towing to China, with good reason, no apologies have been made so far for the slaughter of the innocent and the guilty in Yugoslavia. It can't be all blamed upon Slobo Milosevic, or his wife or his cabinet. The New York Times reports other changes in post-Kosovo Europe. For the first time since the second World War Germany is the leading military power in Europe. This is "galvanising attempts to forge a common European defence policy and altering Europe's relationship with the United States," a Times reporter, Roger Cohen, writes.
The 79-day bombardment of Yugoslavia was "dominated by the United States". No other power can match its war technology and equipment. It has exposed Europe's need for new military technologies, such as laser-guided bombs, according to the New York Times. Europe's dependence "on the United States for strategic reconnaissance and its lack of aircraft", was made obvious in the past 11 weeks.
EUROPE'S "growing dependence on the United States and its failure to keep up with new technologies has become a subject of wide public discussion", the New York Times correspondent adds in a shrewd analysis of post-Kosovo European conditions. He suggests a link between the killing of two German journalists in Serbia and the shooting to death of two Serbs in Prizren by German soldiers. Clinton's attempts to rein in Yeltsin have been unsuccessful so far. The Russian president is not a member of Clinton's team. Why should Clinton try to chastise the head of the once powerful Soviet Union as if he were an Apache chief who wandered off an Indian reservation in the 1870s? A sense of proportion is sadly lacking.
Like post-second World War Germany, Kosovo province is now divided into sectors: American, British, German, French and Italian. Russia hasn't even a walk-on role. They grabbed it anyway, seizing the key strategic airport at Prizren. President Clinton said after talking to President Yeltsen: "There are still some matters to be resolved." The Russian Prime Minister has said Moscow intends to play a "substantial role in the Kosovo operation under the auspices of the United Nations," not NATO mind you. The 200 Russian soldiers remain at Prizren airport. Who ordered them in? They ordered themselves in, perhaps. NATO plans to base 100,000 troops in the Balkans to keep the peace. Dan Morgan, the Washington Post's Belgrade correspondent from 1970 to 1973, recalled another Yugoslavia this week. "Yugoslavia was thriving economically, and, in many ways, politically, too," he wrote. "Serbs vacation on the Croatian coast, married Slovenes and Bosnians and generally fit into a pleasant Balkan melting pot." Josip Broz Tito, the communist leader and war hero, was president.
What happened Yugoslavia, according to Morgan, was the growth of "virulent Serb nationalism", and "the decision of Croatia and Slovenia to unilaterally declare their independence in 1991. . . Washington eventually followed Germany's lead in recognising Croatia."