AS SERBIA NUTURES THE GREAT CONSPIRACY

To dream is to believe that high altitude airdrops of food and medicine will make a significant difference in the lives of the tormented and tortured Bosnian Muslims who have suffered as no other Europeans in half a century. Reality is something else.

To dream is to think that the U.N. Security Council's initiative to set up a Nuremburg-like war-crime tribunal will impose justified retribution on thugs like Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Reality counsels that these are the very men with whom the civilized world will have to negotiate the "final peace." "You killers sign the peace to end this horror and walk out the door to our hangman's noose." This would be the ultimate in diplomatic persuasion.

To dream is to hope that our new president can persuade an apathetic Europe to act with determination and vigor instead of sniveling through another year of indifference, bumbling and ineptitude. Reality is something else the mountains, munitions and muscle of Serbia are more than this world's most sophisticated armies want to tackle. Two years ago, Europe made it clear to Milosevic that it was willing to act forcefully and decisively just so long as there was absolutely no risk involved. Milosevic confidently acepted this tissue paper challenge.

The Serbs have won. Secretary of State Warren Christopher as much as said so a week ago. America's role is not to alter the outcome, but to hasten the conclusion. The Serbs will be dislodged from only a token part of what they have conquered. The Muslims will get something, but not all that much. Serbia is now the dominant force in the Balkana.

Of the Serbs, America has known little and cared less. Serbian immigrants went into our pot, but they didn't melt. Our intelligence information about possible Serbian terrorists in the United States and abroad is severely limited. When guesses, both educated and desperate, focused for a while on Serbian elements as the possible World Trade Center bombers, law enforcement agencies were stunned by how little they knew of plotting Serbs. It seems that the intelligence file begins and ends with "A Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914."

So it's time that we educate ourselves about the Serbs who appear poised to dominate the Balkans from here into the next century. In this era of fervent, mindless nationalism, the Serbs are the most fervent of the mindless. For centuries, the Serbs have suffered from an incurable victimization complex.

As a typical Serb views it, his people have suffered centuries of injustice inflicted upon them by a long series of historic enemies near and far. Worst of all were the Ottoman Turks who overwhelmed the Orthodox Serbs at Kossovo in 1389 and inflicted their heathen Muslim religion on the suffering Slavic peoples in the region of Bosnia.

Next on the despicable list are the Roman Catholic Croats who treated Serbs as an inferior breed. The Croats sided with Hitler in World War II and tons or even hundreds of thousands of Serbs were exterminated. Accordingly, the Germans as well are one of the top three on the most hated list.

An Oliver Stone-like conspiracy consisting of Roman Catholic, Muslim and imperialistic powers is the major component of the Serbian psyche. We see its consequence as the corpses pile up each day in Bosnia.