Kosovo has become a latter-day Munich. Over the past decade, it has been stylish for advocates of American intervention in the Balkans to justify their trigger- happy meddling by invoking “Munich.” The argument runs roughly like this: Unless the “international community” (i.e., the United States under the guise of the U.N. or NATO) acts resolutely to stop and punish “aggression,” the culprits — most commonly Serbs—will be emboldened to continue with their transgressions, just as Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in Munich in 1938 only whet the latter’s appetite and soon led to World War II. Secretary of State Albright, for one, is an avowed adherent of this view.

What occurred in the Balkans this past October, however, is far more reminiscent of what really happened in Munich six decades earlier, in October 1938. Then, as well as now, a small state was forced by the great powers to give up control over a sizable chunk of its territory inhabited by air uncompromising ethnic minority bent on secession. In 1938, Czechoslovakia had to choose between giving up Sudetenland, inhabited mainly by Germans, or being attacked by the Reich. For today’s actors, read: Serbia, Kosovo, Albanians, and NATO, The agreement between Slobodan Milosevic and U.S. Ambassador-Designate to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke, signed in Belgrade last month, reminds us that “Munich” is not about “stopping aggression”: It is aggression.

When Milosevic and Holbrooke get together and spend many hours on that famous sofa in the former’s office, three things seem to follow. First of all, Serbian interests will be disregarded, Serbian territories given up, and Serbian inhabitants of those territories forced to flee. Secondly, the will of the Clinton administration will be imposed regardless of the proceedings: Holbrooke does not go to Milosevic to “negotiate” but to devise the precise mechanism for the application of a fait accompli. Last, but by no means least, Mr. Milosevic stays in power in his ever-shrinking domain with the tacit approval of his interlocutor, freer than ever to deal with his domestic detractors (especially the remaining independent media) as he deems fit.

The most important consequence of the October agreement is that Serbia has ceased to exist as an independent state. Kosovo has ceased to be de facto part of Serbia, and it is set to be detached de jure in the near future. Since the massive pullout of October 26-28, the remaining Yugoslav army and Serbian police units in Kosovo have been supervised from the air by NATO aircraft and on the ground by 2,000 foreign observers. Once a week, those security forces will have to submit reports about their activities. The observers will enjoy immunity. The law of the land will not apply to them, but the government in Belgrade will be responsible for their security. This makes them a tempting target for Albanian terrorists, who will be able to strike at anything and anyone with impunity—knowing that any Serbian attempt to strike back would be condemned by the “international community” as a violation of the agreement.

The agreement also allows officials of the Hague Tribunal to come to Kosovo to “investigate” alleged atrocities. The likely result of their deliberations is obvious from the fact that four-fifths of the indictments relating to the war in Bosnia and Croatia are against Serbs. The Tribunal is a political, not a judicial, institution, and its involvement has political objectives, ft will accordingly treat Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) crimes against the Serbs, as well as Albanians’ self-inflicted atrocities, as non-events. (Those who doubt this need only remember the Bosnian Muslims’ stagemanaged “bread line massacre” of 1992, the Markale marketplace “massacre” of 1994, etc.)

But the Tribunal’s involvement is significant since the rest of Serbia is now also coming under its jurisdiction. If the authorities in Belgrade still claim that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia—as they do—and yet allow foreign investigators and lawyers to do their thing there, they create a dangerous precedent. It may clear the way for an international force to burst into the Ministry of Defense in Belgrade in search of indicted persons or relevant documents. (The late Hapsburg Empire is having a belated laugh: The rejection of this same demand by the government of Serbia in July 1914 provided the pretext for the Austrian-Hungarian attack which ignited the Old Continent.) Slobodan Milosevic has succumbed to the demand that Serbia give up its independence.

In order to comply with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1199, Serbian security forces have withdrawn to such an extent that the KLA has had no problem reestablishing control in the areas it has lost since last spring, while spreading its brief to new territories. “We are seeing a lot of KLA coming back, particularly in areas where Serbian police were leaving. As long as they continue to observe the cease-fire . . . we have no concerns,” declared Shaun Byrnes, chief U.S. monitor in the multinational Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission, on October 27.

The effect on the remaining 200,000 Serbs in the province is predictable. “Kosovo Serbs, bitterly accusing Milosevic of betrayal, threatened to abandon the province for good,” according to Reuters. Their destiny is sealed: It will be the same as that of their compatriots in the Krajina, or in Sarajevo in the aftermath of another deal between Milosevic and Holbrooke, three years ago. Kosovo will be “Serbenfrei,” but nobody will mind much in the outside world.

Once the remaining Serbian civilians are gone, the precise constitutional formula for Kosovo’s eventual separation will become irrelevant. Current American strategy still envisages elevating Kosovo to the status of a federal republic in the rump Yugoslav federation, after next year’s provincial elections. The province would thus be formally detached from Serbia, and after a “decent interval” (a few months, perhaps; a year at most) the Croatian-Bosnian scenario for secession would be duly applied: The assembly in Pristina will call a referendum on independence, with the result a foregone conclusion.

This “solution” will shake the Balkans. It will undermine the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), where the Albanians comprise up to a third of the total population (as opposed to one-fifth in Serbia). The U.S. government swears by FYROM and supports Skopje’s policy of denying autonomy to its Albanians, but by enabling their cousins in Serbia to get full autonomy and paving the way for independence, the United States will unleash a revolution of rising expectations among Macedonia’s Albanians that cannot be contained. The Hungarians in Rumania (who are more numerous than Serbia’s Albanians) are bound to demand the same, as are the Russians in the Ukraine, and the Kurds in Turkey.

Leonid Brezhnev occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968 in accordance with the doctrine of “limited sovereignty” that applied, according to Moscow, to all members of the Warsaw Treaty. That doctrine is applied far more liberally by today’s proponents of the New World Order. NATO has acted unilaterally in Serbia, outside its zone and in the absence of any threat to any of its members. It has threatened war, and explicitly stated that it needed no U.N. Security Council authorization to wage one. Its apologists claim that its threats have imposed a “solution.” They have, of sorts. We have seen it all before, in Munich in 1938. It did not stop with the Diktat to the Czechs then, and it would be naive to believe that it will stop with the Diktat to the Serbs now.