Withdrawal Pains

AMEL EMRIC/AP

ON THE MOVE: E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana will face a raft of problems when U.S. peacekeepers leave the region

Plenty of places in the world have heard the cry "Yankee, go home!" But in the Balkans a great many people might soon be saying, "Yankee, please stay." It would be hard to overstate the impact of U.S. involvement in the region during the past decade. The U.S. helped end the Bosnian war and later tamped down conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia. America pressured the Serb opposition to oust Slobodan Milosevic and forced his extradition to the international tribunal in the Hague. Along the way, the U.S. won friends in unexpected places, notably among the region's Muslim population. Those alliances are...

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