CHAMBERLAIN ASKS `WHAT COULD WE DO;' WHILE WEST FIDDLES, SARAJEVO BURNS

Hopes were high for "the new world order." The crushing defeat of communism argued well for a peaceful, rational, more civilized planet. Democracy had won. Decency had prevailed over dictatorship. Freedom loving people could sit down and, as Lyndon Johnson used to say, "reason together." Harmony would reign where once there was terror and threat.

Oops. Slow down. Removing the constraints of communism also took off the lid on all the ancient hatreds that afflicted Europe. In Yugoslavia, Titoism gave way to centuries-old prejudices that long predated Karl Marx.

In the Balkans, every group has its murderers and its murdered. In World War II, the Croats joined hands with Hitler and slaughtered Jews, gypsies and Serbs. Now Serbs slaughter Croats and Muslim Slavs. Close to 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes. In Yugoslavia, Croats, Muslim Slavs, Macedonians, Albanians and Hungarians are all on the run. Even the Serb oppressors find themselves, at times, to be the oppressed.

In Phase I of the bloodbath, both the Serbs and the Croats used terror and torture to establish unitary ethnic areas. "Ethnic cleansing," it's called. No horror was off limits for utilization; no one was to be spared.

In Phase II, it's primarily the Muslims in Bosnia that are to be cleansed. Mass slaughter, deliberate starvation, concentration camps all the horror of World War II have returned to Europe. The Red Cross states: "Whole populations are being terrorized, minorities intimidated and harassed, civilians interned on a massive scale, hostages taken and tortured." Last week in Sarajevo, when Muslims tried to bury their dead children, the Serbians lobbed mortar shells into the graveyard just to provide a funeral blessing.

The United Nations and the European Community wring their hands in distress. Well-intentioned mediators like Lord Carrington and Cyrus Vance fly in and out of the region. Cease fire agreements are made in the morning and violated in the afternoon.

The new world order is the old world order of nationalism, turf and power. In erstwhile Yugoslavia, power lies with the Serbs and their army, the third largest in Europe. The new world order is the old world order of the bully prevailing over the defenseless. The new world order is the old world order of the League of Nations standing by and trembling while geopolitical rape is in progress.

NATO stands and watches. Its old military adversary is gone and it isn't about to contemplate a new one. Better to be a relic of the dead past than a player in the real world.

Diplomats will ultimately find a solution. After the cleansing has taken an even more tragic toll, Serbia will have gobbled up the land that it wants. In time, Serbia will be recognized as the de facto dominant power in the region. The new world order is the old world order. Collective security is Britain, France and Germany, with all of them bickering, pulling in different directions. As Neville Chamberlain would say, "I ask, under the known difficult circumstances, what could we do?" While the West fiddles, Sarajevo burns.