History indicates that those who make and lead wars are driven by ideas, not emotions. And only when the visions binding the passions of people to their leaders are addressed can a lasting peace be established. America will never be able to bring about a lasting settlement in Bosnia if it only seeks to reconcile the bitter enmities brought about by ethnic cleansing and massacres. A settlement can only come if it acknowledges the visions of former greatness that have fired the imaginations of all three warring peoples. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, a professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, has authored numerous books on foreign politics and has traveled extensively through the Balkans.

As the prospect of 25,000 American peace keepers in Bosnia grows more imminent, the question of what is fueling the war hits close to home. Most Americans would blame the war on ethnic hatreds. Serbs, Croats and Muslims, on the other hand, would insist that each side is fighting for a higher idea.

There have been plenty of bloody outbreaks of ethnic or religious hatred in history but few have lasted very long. Once the rage is vented, it doesn't take long for the enraged to quiet down. But when mass murder goes on for a prolonged period, one can be sure that a grander idea is causing it.

Such is the case of the wars ravaging the former Yugoslavia. Here is a land drenched in remembered history. All three warring peoples -- Serbs, Croats, Muslims -- were subjects of great empires for many centuries. Nevertheless, each felt destiny had promised them greatness. For each, historical memory evokes the pain of lost greatness.

This is the historical memory, passed down from generation to generation, that fires the current visions of Serbian, Croatian and Muslim leaders.

For five hundred years the Orthodox Christian Serbs were subjected to the rule of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. At its high point, the empire's rule extended over Southeastern Europe, the Near East and North Africa. Yet before then the Serbs were once on the verge of becoming a great European power, inheriting the Crown of Caesar from the Eastern Roman Empire then in the last stages of decline. Their historic defeat at the legendary battle of Kosovo in 1389 marked the end of their dream but the beginning of the Ottomans' flight to historical glory.

When the Ottomans reduced the Serbs to rustic peasants, their Bosnian neighbors, converting to Islam, rose high in the Ottoman hierarchy. Their towns became places of great culture. The names of certain Bosnian families still evoke memories of former greatness in a region where most people use the same Slavic language.

When national liberation movements erupted in the early 19th century, the Serbs started knocking down their "Turk" neighbors. In the current war they have slaughtered thousands in the areas they have occupied, wiping out every human or material trace of an Islamic history. They want to build a new Greater Serbia on the ruins of a defeated Turkdom.

The Croats are a warrior people descended from a Scythian nomadic tribe. To this day the Croats not only see themselves as ethnically distinct from Serbs, despite their common language, but as superior. The Croats were subjected for hundreds of years to Austrian and Hungarian rule. But unlike the Serbs who wanted to be rid of the Ottomans, the Croats passionately sought to become the knight-paladins of the Austrian empire, the main defenders of the Habsburg throne, more loyal even than the empire's German and Hungarian subjects.

Just as the Serbs historically gravitated towards Russia, the Croats desperately wanted to become a part of Western Europe. In World War II the Croats were loyal supporters of Hitler's Reich and their leader, Ante Pavelic, was called Poglavnik (Fuhrer). The country Croats identify closest with is Germany which now democratically dominates Europe as never before in the continent's history.

When early this century the Turks were expelled from virtually the entire Balkan region, Muslims in those countries were hurled into the dust. Many retreated deep into their religion (fezzes and veils were common even in Tito's Yugoslavia). But now consciousness of their history, religion and distinct national character is soaring. Many see Bosnia emerging as Europe's first Islamic nation.

If these three peoples are looking for reincarnations of the earlier empires they once served, their search is futile. Austria is now a small country, Turkey is not much bigger, Russia is too chaotic to become an empire again. Germany may dominate Europe but is not likely to turn imperial again. The only new empire on the horizon is the United States, with its mandate of global responsibility and leadership that grew out of World War II.

A hallmark of the world's great empires has been their ability to make ethnic diversity work. The Clinton Administration now appears to believe it can bring the three warring peoples together into a peace agreement. Its success may hinge on whether it can establish a pax Americana under which all three peoples can retain some fragment of their former greatness -- in effect a reincarnation of the Ottoman Empire in American form.

The U.S. has already moved much farther in this direction than most Americans realize. In the last two years U.S. military advisers have played key roles building up the Croatian and Bosnian armies. Six hundred fifty American soldiers are stationed in Macedonia. Washington now calls the shots on peace talks. And under U.S. prodding, NATO (which includes Greece and Turkey) is expanding into Eastern Europe. America's political and military presence in the Middle East is also growing.

If America with its roots in Western Europe stays friendly with Orthodox Russia and most of the Muslim Middle East, it is quite thinkable that Serbs, Croats and Muslims will eventually find their place as knight-paladins in this new American order.