Tony Blair has conducted himself with dignity in the wake of what may or may not prove to be an agreement that ends the war in Kosovo. The same cannot be said of his cheerleaders in the press (or perhaps, we should say, his spin-doctors). Where the Prime Minister has carefully avoided triumphalism, issuing no injunctions to "rejoice, rejoice" and emphasising that there is no cause for satisfaction until the refugees are safely back in their homes, his supporters can scarcely contain their delight that critics of the war have been (as they see it) proved so utterly wrong. And they eagerly await what they regard as the ultimate defeat for the Pilgers, the Chomskys and the Benns: the discovery of mass graves in Kosovo.
Yet it is entirely plausible to take the events of recent days as a vindication of anti-war, not pro-war opinion. Slobodan Milosevic was always likely to return to the negotiating table - and that is what he has done, despite Nato's attempts to portray it as an unconditional surrender - once he judged the moment favourable to him. Look at it from his point of view. Almost all the Kosovar Albanians have been expelled, killed or dispersed from their homes. His neighbours, Albania and Macedonia, have been destabilised. The threat of a plebiscite, which could lead to an independent Kosovo, has been withdrawn. The Kosovo Liberation Army is to be "demilitarised". The foreign forces that will occupy the province must include Russians, thus creating at least the possibility of distinct zones of control and, therefore, a partition of the province, which has probably always been the Serbian president's ultimate aim. The extraordinary demand at Rambouillet that Nato forces should be allowed to roam freely throughout Yugoslavia has disappeared. (The importance of the Rambouillet demand is accepted not just by John Pilger, whose account of it in the New Statesman was widely dismissed as the fantasy of an unreconstructed left loony, but by such pillars of the community as Lord Owen.) Most important of all, Nato is desperate to end its campaign, partly because it fears for the continuing unity of the alliance, partly because it fears a repeat of the Chinese embassy disaster, perhaps involving some even more sensitive target such as a primary school. The only surprise should be our surprise that Milosevic wants to talk.
All this, to be sure, could still turn out badly for Milosevic. The Serb minority may flee Kosovo, fearing Albanian reprisals. The momentum for an independent Kosovo may then prove unstoppable. Further, Milosevic's country is half in ruins, with roads, bridges, government buildings and power stations heavily bombed, and he himself faces the prospect of a trial on war crimes charges. But none of this was part of Nato's original war programme. The aim was to prevent ethnic cleansing. In this, Nato failed utterly. Indeed, according to the critics, it actually provoked the atrocities (see Noam Chomsky, page 11) and, in that sense, every new body now discovered in a Kosovan grave strengthens the anti-war, not the pro-war case. Be that as it may - and the likelihood is that we shall never know the truth - it is Nato that still has all the hard pounding in front of it. The status quo suits Milosevic. Until the refugees return, Nato has achieved less than nothing.
Beyond that, the outcome of the long Balkan tragedy is impossible to predict. It is all too probable that the occupying forces will end up fighting the Albanian majority to protect the Serb minority; we know from Northern Ireland that "peacekeeping" troops can quickly mutate from saviours into agents of repression. It is possible that Milosevic will open up some new front - in Bosnia, for example - or that he will be replaced in an internal coup by an even more aggressive nationalist. All the evidence of the past decade suggests that - whether it is bombing, peacekeeping or brokering agreements - western meddling simply makes things worse. Now, alas, there is no going back.
The war, then, is not won in Kosovo, even if, by the time you read this, the bombing has stopped. To talk of victory, indeed, is indecent. A humanitarian war must be judged by humanitarian results and there can be no victory when thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, in Kosovo and Serbia itself lie dead. A kind of victory may be claimed when the Balkans at last enjoy a measure of peace, prosperity and stability. The west has taken upon itself the enormous burden of achieving these things. The determination with which it sees that task through - even at a cost to its own prosperity - will be the true test of its humanitarian concern, not its readiness to drop bombs from 15,000 feet.
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