We are all Serbians now

In the brief interludes between Mark Foley posts at National Review's The Corner, Mark Steyn and John Derbyshire offer historical sweeps:

Derb, [quoting past Derb]: "Half-consciously we know that the great wars of the future, if there are to be any, will be civilizational and racial. That white, European, Christian Germans made ferocious total war against white, European, Christian Russians will seem as preposterous to my children as it seems to me that English people once fought English people, that Britons fought Americans, that Americans fought each other. What on earth were they thinking of?"

Well, tell me I'm wrong, if you can, when even the Irish have stopped fighting each other!

Those late-90s spasms—Irish vs. Irish, Kosovars vs. Serbs—will be seen by our descendants as the last twitches of intra-communal conflict among white Europeans.

Mark Steyn: Derb ... is wrong to lump in Serbs vs Kosovars with the Irish vs Irish as part of the fag end of Euro-warmongering As I point out in my soon to be forthcoming book whose title escapes me, the Balkan collapse of the Nineties was a warm-up for the civilizational showdown:

"Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the 30 years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 per cent to 31 per cent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 per cent to 44 per cent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography - except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out – as other Continentals will in the years ahead: If you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em. The problem Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent."

So there'll still be plenty of war in Europe, just not between ethnic Europeans.

Leaving aside Derb's perhaps unintended post-dating of intra-Irish conflict, Steyn -- chomping at the bit to get the Serbian snipers and tanks back at work -- offers the more bizarre contribution, not least because missing from it is any role for nationalism. If Serbians simply had a problem with the loss of the demographic race to Muslims, they chose a strange way to show it: by picking fights with Croatians, Slovenians, and Macedonians as well. Each of whom decided that they wanted their own country and got out. Note also the equation of Bosnia's centuries-old Muslim community with North African immigrants and their descendents elsewhere in Europe.

In fact, the Balkans in general and Bosnia in particular was unusual in European terms precisely because three religions and even more nationalities intersect there. But it's not typical of what's dominating European geopolitical news these days (check out any day's Fistful of Euros to see): regional and ethnic squabbles and seemingly chronic political instability stretching from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary to Ukraine. And one example in the news today -- Austria, where politicians have tried playing the Eurabia card, and it hasn't worked very well. In short, anyone expecting an outbreak of peace from the Mourne to the Ural mountains as Europe unites to confront the Mohammedan Menace is in for a long wait.

UPDATE 5 OCTOBER: More evidence that the Serbs are now in with the US rightwing --

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, outspoken and influential televangelists in the US, are joining forces with Serbia's Christian Orthodox church to campaign against independence for the mainly Muslim province of Kosovo, according to the spiritual leader of the Serb minority there.

Bishop Artemije, the most senior Orthodox cleric in Kosovo, said the two Christian broadcasters had promised to alert their followers and exert their influence.

"They point out that they have friends at the highest level of government and will urge them to help us so that Kosovo remains in the borders of Serbia," he said.

UPDATE 14 OCTOBER: On a parallel track, evidence of ties between right-wingers and Serbian nationalists on the financial side as well. See also here.