Milosevic’s ‘Tolerance’ of Marches Is Part of His Game to Stay in Power

With demonstrations in Belgrade entering their ninth week, it is tempting to view Slobodan Milosevic as the last tottering pillar of communism. The people rise up, and dictators go down. Diplomats in Washington and in Europe take credit for strong-arming the “butcher of the Balkans,” using the threat of sanctions to dissuade him from cracking down on the protesters. After Milosevic’s nine years of unchallenged rule, it is understandable that the noisy opposition in the streets is widely seen as the best hope for democracy in Serbia.

If only it were so simple. Milosevic has not used force for a variety of reasons, but none of them neatly square with conventional wisdom. For starters, consider the claim of diplomatic pressure: We’ve got him on the run.

Yes, Milosevic needs Western trade and credits. Sanctions helped force him to the bargaining table in Dayton, Ohio, and they remain a potent weapon for keeping the peace and the war-crimes trials on track. But those who know Milosevic well say foreign influence is, at best, limited. His first imperative has always been political survival. The moment the Serbian president feels more threatened at home than from abroad, he will act, probably as harshly as when police and special forces broke up similarly large rallies at Belgrade University in 1991.

If diplomatic pressure doesn’t adequately explain his behavior, then maybe Milosevic has not cracked down simply because he can’t. “The demonstrations have grown too large,” says Veran Matic, editor of Radio B92, Belgrade’s only independent broadcaster and the media voice of the opposition. He and other opposition leaders claim that the protests have “isolated” Milosevic, that “cracks” within his party have emerged, that he can no longer count on the army and police to do his dirty work.

Certainly, it’s one thing to disperse several thousand demonstrators by force, and quite another to scatter 100,000 marchers. Fissures have indeed surfaced within the ruling clique: The Serbian Orthodox Church has criticized Milosevic’s handling of the elections, as has the government of Montenegro, the junior partner in what remains of the Yugoslav federation, and senior military officers have spoken out against hard-liners advocating force to end the protests.

But none of this decisively weakens Milosevic. A vast majority of Serbs still back him. His opposition, which lacks united leadership or shared objectives, hardly amounts to a “movement.” Nor has Milosevic’s police become “politically unreliable.” Milos Vasic, a security analyst at Vreme, the independent print counterpart of B92 in Belgrade, reports that Milosevic, over the last few years, has supplanted the army as the guarantor of his rule with a police force estimated between 80,000 and 120,000. Among them is a special riot force whose numbers may be one-third of the total. Well-paid and well-trained, they are anything but a cadre of amateurs fed up with their lot.

What, then, explains Milosevic’s forbearance, if not political weakness or diplomatic suasion? As always, political calculation based on self-interest. Milosevic is playing a long-term game that seeks to circumvent a more serious challenge than demonstrators: His second term as Serbian president expires at year’s end. The constitution prohibits him from staying another, so he is casting about for ways to hold on to power.

Recently, Milosevic broached one possibility. Because his first term was interrupted by early elections precipitated by the war, he suggested in an interview, it would be only fair that he be granted a third full term. Belgrade political circles have also been buzzing with a second scenario: Milosevic becomes president or prime minister of Yugoslavia, both largely ceremonial posts left over from the prewar federal republic. This would, in turn, require him to strip the powers of the Serbian presidency and confer them on his new job in order to retain full personal control over his socialist party, the government and its ministries.

The demonstrations have complicated these stratagems but not thwarted them, which helps explain Milosevic’s handling of the unrest. The institutional moves he contemplates would mean amending the Serbian or federal constitutions, requiring a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Milosevic simply wouldn’t get the votes he needs to stay in power if he were perceived to be a dictator or, worse, the man who sent thugs into the streets to beat Serbs senseless. After all, it was Milosevic who launched his career with the nationalist promise, “Serbs will never be beaten again.”

The implications are intriguing. Milosevic’s restraint suggests he feels confident enough to bide his time and wait for winter weather to cool the protesters. Not even optimists such as Matic think the Serbian president will be driven from office. The best the nascent opposition can hope for, he says, might be to share power with Milosevic’s socialists in some municipal offices in some cities.

Ironically, Milosevic’s reputed schemes may, in some ways, carry greater potential for dramatic change than those marching in the streets. For instance, if Milosevic were to become president of Yugoslavia, and hoped for more than a brief time in office, he would have to solve the problem of the “rotating” presidency. By law, the presidency passes from republic to republic. In the old days, that meant Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro. Now, only Serbia and Montenegro remain in the federation. But a Montenegrin president, following Milosevic? Unthinkable, for Serbs at least.

To deal with the unthinkable, Milosevic may be considering recreating the old Yugoslavia in miniature, once again with as many as five independent or quasi-independent republics--Serbia and Montenegro, plus new republics of Kosovo, Sandjak and possibly Vojvodina. The president of this new Yugoslavia might be elected on the basis of one-man, one-vote. Since Serbia is the most populous republic, that would ensure a Serb president. Milosevic, presumably.

This is more than inside diplomatic baseball. Washington has been trying for years, and especially after Dayton, to strike a deal on Kosovo, where several million Albanians are chaffing for separation from Belgrade. Now, it appears that Milosevic himself may be willing to grant the separation, as well as create the conditions for his fellow Serbs to accept it. There’s also the ever-troubling matter of Balkanization, a process of atomization that seems to be going sub-molecular. The old Yugoslavia has broken up; long live the new, in ever smaller denominations. An independent or autonomous Sandjak? Find that on your globe.