The USA and, to a lesser degree, the UK, France and Germany are fine examples of the third way. A majority of minorities united by common rules, beliefs and aspirations. Those are tension filled structures sustained by greed or vision or fear or hope and sometimes by the very tensions that they generate. No longer utopian, it is a realistic model to emulate. It is only when ethnic cleansing is combined with self-determination that a fracturing of the solutions occurs. Atrocities are the vile daughters of ideals. Armed with stereotypes - those narcissistic defence mechanisms that endow their propagators with a fleeting sense of superiority - an ethnic group defines itself negatively, in opposition to another. Self-determination is employed to facilitate ethnic cleansing rather than to prevent it. Actually, it is the very act of ethnic cleansing which validates the common identity, which forms the myth and the ethos that is national history, which perpetrates itself by conferring resilience upon the newly determined and by offering a common cause and the means to feel efficient, functional and victorious in carrying it out. There are many variants of this malignant, brutal, condemnable, criminal and inefficient form of ethnic cleansing. Bred by manic and hysterical nationalists, fed by demagogues, nourished by the hitherto deprived and humiliated - this cancerous mix of definition by negation wears many guises. It is often clad in legal attire. Israel has a Law of Return, which makes an instant citizen out of every spouse of every Russian Jew while denying this privilege to Arabs born on its soil. South Africa had apartheid. Nazi Germany had the Nuremberg Laws. The Czech Republic had the infamous Benes Decrees. But ethnic cleansing can be economic (ask the Chinese in Asia and the Indians in Africa). It can be physical (Croatia, Kosovo). It has myriad facets. The West is to blame for this confusion. By offering all three solutions as mutually inclusive rather than mutually exclusive - it has been responsible for a lot of strife and misery. But, to its credit, it has learned its lesson. In Kosovo it defended the right of the indigent and (not so indigent but) resident Albanians to live in peace and plough their land in peace and bring forth children in peace and die in peace. But it has not protected their right to self-determination. It has not mixed the signals. As a result the message came through loud and clear. And, for the first time in many years, people tuned in and listened. And this, by far, is the most important achievement of Operation Allied Force. (Article written on July 4, 1999 and published July 12, 1999 in "Central Europe Review" volume 1, issue 3) Return The Balkans between Omerta and Vendetta On the Criminality of Transition In a State Department briefing on Thursday, August 5th, 1999, the spokesman of this venerable and ever-so-truthful organ of the American administration, James Rubin, said: