Kosovo Crossing: American Ideals Meet Reality On The Balkan Battlefields.

FROMKIN, David.

Item Number: 138551

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

First edition of this work by the award-winning historian. Octavo, original half cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, “August 1999 To Archer- Best of friends and colleague- Yours David.” Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Tom Stvan.

"The positions taken by President Clinton in the 1990s," Fromkin argues, "are those staked out for the United States by President Wilson eighty years ago." He goes on to assert that those positions, which require the United States to support Eastern European "self-determination" in principle but oppose actual nationalist movements that it fears would undermine the region's political stability, have not--and likely never will--succeed in the long run. "Serbia's apparent surrender in June 1999 was a triumph for the United States. But it was the easy part," Fromkin concludes. But ending the war is not the same thing as bringing about peace. "It may be a long time, if ever, before we are justified in breaking open the champagne" (Ron Hogan).