President Clinton has emphasized humanitarian concerns as a prime rationale for the NATO bombing of Serbia. In fact, the Serbian regime will only use the bombing as an excuse to step up repression and consolidate its power. Given this pattern one might even ask whether the U.S. views Milosevic as an enemy or as a partner. PNS commentator Eric D. Gordy is a sociologist at Clark University who has lived and worked in Serbia.

When President Clinton explained the reasons for bombing Serbia to the American public, he emphasized humanitarian concerns, and argued that the United States could not afford to let repression in Serbia continue. Yet judging from the responses of the Serbian regime to international actions and threats of action, the bombing is likely to have just the opposite effect.

The last time the United States and NATO threatened air strikes against Serbia, the bombing did not take place. But the regime responded by banning the broadcast of independent news programs and then forcibly closed three independent newspapers and rammed a new Law on Public Information through the Parliament.

The Law on Information imposes drastic financial penalties on news media for any infractions. It requires charges to be heard by a court within two days, and sentences to be handed down one day after that. It requires the fines to be collected immediately. If media outlets are not able to pay the fines, police confiscate their publications and equipment.

This time, the threat of bombing has turned out to be real, and the regime's response has been more severe. In the morning before the bombing began, police closed down Radio B-92, the only independent radio station in Belgrade, and arrested Veran Matic, the station director. During the first day of the attacks, the regime used the state of emergency to prevent foreign journalists from filing reports, to harass them and keep them away from sites which were targeted for bombing, and to deport several of them.

More repression should be expected. The government in Montenegro has refused to support Serbia's military adventure in Kosovo and its parliament has refused to accept the state of war declared by the Yugoslavian federal government. Expect Milosevic to take the opportunity to disqualify the Montenegrin government as traitors and to try to depose them.

Vojislav Seselj, the neofascist deputy prime minister of Serbia, built his political career as an organizer of paramilitary groups in Croatia and Bosnia. He has a history of engaging in physical attacks on his political opponents. Expect these attacks to intensify, and expect public figures whom Seselj and his supporters consider to be insufficiently patriotic to be arrested, harassed and beaten.

The attacks being carried out by the Yugoslav army and the Serbian police against the civilian population in Kosovo will not be affected by the NATO air strikes. These are low-tech repressions, and the destruction of missile silos, radar stations and airports will not degrade the ability of their perpetrators to act in the least. Expect the repression in Kosovo to intensify, as the passion of the perpetrators is enhanced by their sense of victimhood. The fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) will be equally encouraged by the sense that they now enjoy strong international military and political support.

The bombing has fulfilled the dream of every right-wing nationalist in Serbia, by offering them the opportunity to justify any repressive measure on the grounds of defending the country against a powerful alliance. Milosevic and Seselj will have no difficulty persuading people in Serbia that they ought to feel bitter and angry.

Bombing is the most recent of a series of measures advocated by the United States to punish the Milosevic regime, all of which have had the effect of helping the regime consolidate its power. Economic sanctions have worked to prevent the opponents of nationalist hysteria from communicating with one another across the borders which divide them. Threats of force have given the regime a stick with which to beat political opponents who have tried to insist that Serbia has something to gain by cooperating with international powers. The open political support which the United States has offered the KLA has persuaded even moderates in Serbia that there is no place the country can turn for impartial mediation.

Since the beginning of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, it has been unclear whether the United States regards Slobodan Milosevic as an enemy or a partner. Ironically, the effect of every effort to isolate him as an enemy has been to consolidate his status as a partner. The current bombing campaign is no exception.