Since his arrest by his own former police force, ex-Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has gone public with a revelation that should have surprised no one who has read a newspaper in the past seven years. He admitted—actually, bragged—that he had supplied the Serbian irregular forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina with money and weapons when the Serbian side was trying to destroy the Moslem and Croat communities. That was not news. It was clear that the well-equipped Serbian forces were an extension of the Serbian government, acting in support of the policy of a Greater Serbia. It was also quite clear at the time of the brutal war that the men who would become its chief indicted international war criminals, Radovan Karadzic of the Bosnian Serb Republic, and the chief commander, General Ratko Mladic, were subordinates under marching orders from Belgrade, specifically Milosevic. So the question is: Why did the Europeans and the Americans deal with Milosevic at the Dayton peace conference and later on? The answer is that this was a pure example of real politic, the practice of putting practicality over principle. It was not invented by Richard Holbrooke or any of the Western mediators, nor even by Henry Kissinger, one of its foremost practitioners. The tactic goes back to Lao Tze, Macchiavelli, Bismarck and Neville Chamberlain and anybody before who discovered that direct confrontation is not the easiest way to try to solve a problem. What is different now is that democratic governments claim to be acting on principle and international law. Dealing with Milosevic had only a brief, limited success in halting the general war in Bosnia, but in the long run, it hurt the credibility of the governments who denounced the war crimes but not the man they knew was the chief war criminal. Recall that these crimes were not minor misdemeanours committed in the heat and anger of battle. These were cold blooded massacres, a policy of using rape as a weapon of war and the random shelling of Sarajevo and other civilian targets. It will not take a very bright defence attorney at the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague to argue that his client-no matter how culpable-is the victim of selective prosecution, of being targeted because he is a small fry, rather than a major war criminal, who had some temporary utility for the Western powers. The thing about a pragmatic policy of real politic is that it doesn't work very well in a world that is becoming increasingly transparent and increasingly concerned with things such as universal respect for human rights. There are other recent examples, such as U.S. support for Zairean president Mobuto Sese Seko, a world-class embez zler. It was common knowledge in the U.S. government that Mobuto was a monumental thief, but he was useful in funnelling weapons to the man the United States was backing in neighbouring Angola, Jonas Savimbi. That arrangement ended with the end of the Cold War, but it left a heritage of misery, poverty and civil war in the heart of the African continent. Such arrangements—with Milosevic or other unsavoury characters—might have a short-term utility, but they leave a lasting cumulative stain on the credibility and reputation of those who held their noses and made such deals. And that makes it all the harder to deal with the next generation of war criminals. What is the main idea of this text?