It seems that the Americans haven't chosen the time to extend the sanctions with some specific message in mind: for example they didn't try to undermine Milutinovic, or show Seselj that they are ready to take his challenge, responding to his spiteful statement that he would have won even more votes had the Americans called him a fascist before the unsuccessful second round of the elections for the president of Serbia. Supposedly, that would have brought him many more defiant domestic votes. Simply, it seems that Bill Clinton, the president of the USA, simply tried to finish off all the routine tasks before the Christmas holidays, one of which was the extension of sanctions against a state with 11 million wretched inhabitants. Also, there is the trouble in Kosovo.
It could be that the Yugoslav dossier in Washington said, as the academician Kosta Mihajlovic, our determined succession negotiator [refers to the negotiations about the division of the assets help by the former Yugoslavia] for the last five, six years (God willing, those negitiations could drag out for quite a few more) noticed, that during the last year nothing in Yugoslavia had changed for the better; consequently, the youthful American president had no other choice but to change nothing on his part and sign the extension of the "outer wall" of sanctions against FRY. Maybe some time soon, after the holidays, the next Spring, or when he finds some free time, he should figure out what to do with the country which doesn't know how to help itself and which resolutely refuses to change, as if everything there were perfect.
The decision about the extension of Yugoslavia's "financial quarantine" had actually been made before someone brought to the office of the American president a pile of documents which required his signature. The pile which contained a printout of the two year old decision about the "outer wall" with new dates added by an official in the State Department after he had seen that this year the situation in "Serbia on the move" hadn't moved forward at all: "separate communities" in Kosovo with an increase in fear and the number of corpses, Kosta Mihajlovic who continues to be intransigently "cooperative" in the negotiations regarding the succession of the former Yugoslavia (from here to eternity), and that the person in command in the battle for transition and democracy in Serbia is still Seselj. Therefore, some more of the quarantine, until a better medication for the sick man on the Morava river can be found.
The evidence that this decision had been made earlier can be found in the American magazine "Institutional Investor" which, as the Belgrade paper Ekonomska Politika explains, based on the data provided by several hundreds of leading world banks twice a year ranks the credit rating of all countries on the globe. In that magazine's list, before the White house extended the "outer wall" of sanctions for another year, Yugoslavia was ranked 127th in the world with 10.2 points out of possible 100. Albania is slightly better with 11.6 points and 125th place in the rankings. Croatia is 71st on that list with three times better marks, and "Viennese stable boys" from Slovenia are ranked 37th with five times better marks. World bankers who usually make good predictions, guessed that the "outer wall" would remain and left us in the third class waiting room. Because, our train still hasn't arrived, it is hopelessly late.
It seemed at the start of this year that something would change. The Italians and Greeks bought Telekom Serbia for decent $800 million. Milosevic probably had good reasons to believe that that was a sign that the "outer wall" would get leaky every time his regime ended up in trouble and was endangered by those even less palatable to the West than his old fashioned climacteric leftists. Immediately, the "privatization process" was approved and several managers who at least know how to wear a tie and talk about efficient economy in passable English were thrown into "reform policy". But "our dearest leader" who this year "rose" to the function of the formal chief of Yugoslavia, later made many bad moves. The problems with Montenegro, Banja Luka, Pale appeared; there were even problems with the elections for the Serbian parliament, and the last few weeks marked the beginning of a low intensity armed conflict in Kosovo. Something in the "principled policy" which had destroyed this country had to be changed. That was too much for his ability and patience.
Telekom "carrot" turned out to be too small a reward for the recognition of the opposition victory in the local elections, after the several months long demonstrations during the last Winter. Therefore, Milosevic replied to the "sadists from Washington" with the new offensive toward Beijing and Moscow. There, he obtained a loan for oil, gas, and repair of Yugoslav air force fighter planes and rocket systems. On the other, western, side he didn't get money which would allow him to avoid the loss of a third of potential GNP next year. Therefore, this year's foreign policy victories will cost us another $10 billion in the lost production next year (besides several millions of dollars in Chinese and Russian loans which we will have to pay back). Namely, that is the annual cost of sanctions, but our citizens still haven't understood that.
In that sense even concrete examples are not extremely helpful. For example, is it hard to understand that ten years ago the Czech car company "Skoda" and our "Zastava" produced the same number of cars: about 180,000 cars annually. This year, "Skoda" will produce 340,000 cars, while "Zastava" will have to stop at 10,000. True, the Czech workers and their state will receive their salaries and taxes, respectively, from the German owners of the company, while our workers in "Zastava" will receive their miserly salaries from our state, because the company is still owned by the state which cannot renew its production. These are all consequences of the "principled and sovereign policy" from the years past.
A majority of political decisions essentially have clear consequences for the economy. Judging by the election results our people still cannot grasp the connection between Milosevic's decisions, Seselj's intentions, Karadzic's petitions validated in the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts etc. on one side and national losses in the economy on the other. In that sense, it is difficult to find politicians in whom as much money has been invested as in ours. According to official estimates, these people have cost us more than $100 billion during the last ten years. We should find a different team of politicians which will better correspond to our limited means.
Actually, even very educated and so-called modern Serbs are these days wondering what to do when now the demands have reached the "impossible": we are supposed to "cede Kosovo", to allow to be "robbed" by the other members of the "Yugoslav family" in the succession negotiations, to deliver our war heroes to the Hague tribunal for war crimes, where they could even be found guilty? All that seems foreign to our nature. And poverty has been a domestic animal in this region for a while and we can stick it out until those guys abroad get bored with us.
The person who, for our own sake, would publicly state that we can offer to Albanians personal and territorial autonomy, without loosing anything of Serbian "statehood"; that we can immediately divide wit h the other members of the former Yugoslav federation gold and cash reserves, archives and embassies, and for the rest we can litigate for the next 50 years; that we could at least as a "demonstration", try our citizens from the "Hague list" in Belgrade, so that they could at least get our verdict whether they are guilty or not, well, that person would probably be regarded as the political simpleton and ignoramus, and almost certainly be attacked as a national traitor and foreign spy or even put into an asylum as a dangerous lunatic. Because, as Kosta Mihajlovic precisely stated, with such proposals, that person "would weaken our negotiating position" in the negotiations with the rest of the planet.
Essentially, that wouldn't weaken our negotiating position, but would lead to the questions regarding the responsibility of a certain team of Serbian politicians, both those in power and in opposition, who failed to understand the time in which they lived, who failed to create a new, realistic and healthier political strategy for the end of the century, but instead continued with some ancient national "principled" policy which has wasted material prosperity of several generations without getting anything in return. In any case, those politicians can at least console themselves that they have won for themselves everything they desired.