Instead of acknowledging the legitimate needs, concerns, and demands of nations in the Balkan - they proclaimed two untenable principles: borders must not change and populations must stay put. They dangled the carrot of European Union membership as an inducement to peace. In other words, even as virulent nationalism was erupting throughout the Balkan, they promoted a REGIONAL set of principles and a REGIONAL inducement (EU) instead of a nationalist orientated one. Yet, as opposed to the past, the remaining Big Powers were unwilling to actively intervene to enforce these principles. When they did intervene feebly, it was either too late (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1995), too one-sidedly (Kosovo, 1999), or too hesitantly (Macedonia, 2001). They clearly lacked commitment and conviction, or even the military ability to become the guardians of this new order. The Big Powers (really, the West) would have done well to leave the Balkan to its own devices. Clearly its inhabitants were intent on re-drawing borders and securing ethnic homogeneity. Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Kosovars - were all busy altering maps and ethnically cleansing minorities. The clumsy and uninformed intervention of the West (led by the USA) served only to prolong these inevitable conflicts. By choosing sides, labelling, providing military and diplomatic succour, arming, intervening, cajoling, and imposing ill-concocted "solutions", the West internationalized local crises and prevented attrition and equilibrium - the prerequisites to peace. The West's artificial arrangements, served on the bayonets of SFOR and KFOR are unlikely to outlast SFOR and KFOR. Moreover, humanitarian military interventions have proven to be the most pernicious kind of humanitarian disasters. More people - Kosovars included - died in Operation Allied Force than in all the years of Serb repression combined. The Balkan is simply frozen in geopolitical time. It will re-erupt and revert to old form when Western presence is reduced and perhaps even before that. The West should have ignored the Yugoslav wars of succession. But it would have done well to offer the combatants - Serbs, Croats, Albanians - a disinterested diplomatic venue (a benign, voluntary Berlin Congress or Dayton) to iron out their differences, even as they are fighting. The agenda of such a Congress should have included minorities and borders. There is no doubt that sporadic fighting would have punctuated the deliberations of such a congregation. It is certain that walk-outs, crises, threats, and break-ups would have occurred regularly. But the participants could have aired grievances, settle disputes, discuss differences, judge reasonableness, form coalitions, help each other to multilateral give and take, and establish confidence building measures. With the West keeping all cards close to its chest, such a venue was and is sorely lacking.