If certain strategies and tactics seem familiar, that’s because they are over 20 years old

如果某些战略和战术看起来很熟悉，那是因为它们已经有20多年的历史了。

The emotionally charged and often hyperbolic terms used by the US and its allies to describe the conflict in Ukraine gives the notion that it is something unprecedented and unseen since the Second World War. That is quite literally not true.

美国及其盟友在描述乌克兰冲突时使用的情绪激动且往往夸张的术语，让人觉得这是二战以来前所未有的。这完全不是真的。

If anything, the behaviors, tactics and even strategies embraced by the government in Kiev and its Western patrons bear an uncanny similarity to the conflicts that destroyed Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In sharp contrast to all the reminiscing – though nowhere near enough remorse – on the recent anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, even the critics of the Western establishment seem to have forgotten about the Kosovo War, which began on March 24,1999.

如果说有什么不同的话，那就是基辅的政府及其西方赞助人所采取的行为、战术甚至战略，与上世纪90年代摧毁南斯拉夫的冲突有着惊人的相似之处。在最近的美国入侵伊拉克周年纪念日上，与所有的回忆形成鲜明对比的是，即使是西方体制的批评者似乎也忘记了始于1999年3月24日的科索沃战争。

After all, Operation Allied Force (NATO’s official name for the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia) is proof that NATO’s claim of being a “defensive alliance” is a lie. So is the notion that changing borders by force is something that is simply not done in the “rules-based world order,” what with the US-led bloc occupying Serbia’s province of Kosovo and endorsing its “independence” in 2008. The West was so law-abiding, it tried to justify the unjustifiable by inventing the doctrine of “responsibility to protect” and setting up an “independent” commission to declare the war “illegal but legitimate.”

毕竟，盟军行动(北约1999年轰炸南斯拉夫的官方名称)证明了北约所谓的“防御性联盟”是一个谎言。还有一种观点认为，在“以规则为基础的世界秩序”中，以武力改变边界是根本不可能的。2008年，以美国为首的集团占领了塞尔维亚的科索沃省，并支持科索沃“独立”。西方是如此遵纪守法，它试图通过发明“保护责任”理论来为不合理的行为辩护，并建立了一个“独立”委员会，宣布战争“非法但正当”。

No wonder, then, that the “international community” wants this forgotten, to the point where they are trying to pressure Serbia to legitimize it by threatening sanctions, isolation, and “internal turmoil.”
In May 1999, after weeks of failing to bomb Serbia into submission, NATO sought to shore up its unity and credibility by having its pet tribunal in The Hague charge President Slobodan Milosevic with war crimes. Parallels with events of the past weeks write themselves.

因此，难怪“国际社会”想要忘记这一点，以至于他们试图通过制裁、孤立和“内部动乱”来迫使塞尔维亚使其合法化。
1999年5月，在连续数周未能将塞尔维亚轰炸至屈服后，北约试图通过其在海牙的特别法庭以战争罪指控塞尔维亚总统斯洛博丹·米洛舍维奇来巩固其团结和信誉。与过去几周发生的事件有相似之处。

Arguably, the “arrest warrant” for Russian President Vladimir Putin was the logical endpoint of the narrative spawned back in June 2014, when two think tank ‘experts’ penned a piece in the New Republic accusing Putin of “behaving in Ukraine like Milosevic did in Serbia.” When one looks at the actual policies embraced by Washington and its vassals, it is glaringly obvious they took this very narrative to heart.
For example, take the early talk about a “no-fly zone,” coming from Kiev and some Western capitals. Such a thing was actually established in Bosnia in 1992, and enforced by NATO on behalf of the UN, after the Serbs were falsely accused of shooting down an Italian humanitarian flight. It ended up being a backdoor for military intervention – just like in Libya in 2011.

可以说，2014年6月，两位智库“专家”在《新共和国》上撰文指责普京“在乌克兰的行为就像米洛舍维奇在塞尔维亚的行为一样”，对俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京的“逮捕令”是这种说法的逻辑终点。当人们看到华盛顿及其附庸所采取的实际政策时，很明显，他们把这种说法牢记于心。
例如，早些时候，基辅和一些西方国家的首都就在讨论设立“禁飞区”。在塞尔维亚人被诬蔑击落了一架意大利人道主义飞机之后，1992年波斯尼亚就设立了这样一个机构，由北约代表联合国执行。它最终成为军事干预的后门——就像2011年的利比亚一样。

Then there is the narrative about Ukraine as an innocent victim of aggression and a plucky underdog defending Western values, in need of money, weapons and volunteers – that’s exactly how the Western press painted Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s. Being an actor, Vladimir Zelensky is just better at reciting the same lines as Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic.
Zelensky’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba is also working off a scxt lifted from his Bosnian counterpart Haris Silajdzic. He too was a globe-trotting media fixture, demanding everything from food to weapons and accusing the “aggressor” of war crimes, rapes and genocide. To give Kiev some credit, it at least sacked the official who made fake claims of mass rape; Silajdzic never disavowed his accusations. In every other respect, Ukraine has far exceeded Bosnia in terms of projecting a sense of entitlement.

还有一种说法是，乌克兰是侵略的无辜受害者，是捍卫西方价值观的勇敢弱者，需要资金、武器和志愿者——这正是西方媒体在20世纪90年代对克罗地亚和波斯尼亚穆斯林的描述。作为一名演员，弗拉基米尔·泽伦斯基更擅长背诵波斯尼亚穆斯林领袖阿利亚·伊泽特贝戈维奇的台词。
泽伦斯基的外交部长德米特里·库列巴也在按照波斯尼亚外长哈里斯·西拉伊季奇的剧本工作。他也是全球媒体的常客，讨要从食物到武器等一切物资，并指责“侵略者”犯下战争罪、强奸和种族灭绝。为了让基辅具备一些信誉，它至少解雇了一名谎称大规模强奸的官员；西拉伊季奇从未否认自己的指控。在所有其他方面，乌克兰在展现权利感方面远远超过了波斯尼亚。

The current US and EU sanctions against Russia also had a precedent in the 1990s UN sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro, down to the ban on international sporting competitions. Had they thought to cancel Serbian cats or trees, they probably would have, too.
The UN also placed an arms embargo on all Yugoslav republics. The US skirted it during the early 1990s, to send weapons to Muslims and Croats. At the Dayton, Ohio peace talks in late 1995, US envoy Richard Holbrooke sought to sweeten the deal for the reluctant Izetbegovic by offering to “train and equip” the Muslim military after the armistice. The current push to create a Western-armed force in Ukraine is basically the same, only on steroids.

美国和欧盟目前对俄罗斯的制裁，在上世纪90年代联合国对塞尔维亚和黑山的制裁中也有先例，甚至包括禁止国际体育比赛。如果他们想过取消塞尔维亚猫或树，他们如今可能也会这样做。
联合国还对所有南斯拉夫共和国实行武器禁运。美国在上世纪90年代初避开了该条约，向穆斯林和克罗地亚人提供武器。1995年底，在俄亥俄州代顿举行的和谈中，美国特使理查德·霍尔布鲁克提出在停战后“训练和装备”穆斯林军队，试图为不情愿的伊泽特贝戈维奇提供更好的条件。目前在乌克兰建立一支西方武装部队的努力基本上是一样的，只是更极端。

In fact, Jens Stoltenberg’s January 2023 argument that “weapons are the way to peace” is but an echo of Holbrooke’s “bombs for peace” from September 1995, during a NATO aerial bombardment campaign that Time magazine described as “bringing the Serbs to heel.”
Named ‘Deliberate Force’, that NATO operation dovetailed with Croatia’s Operation ‘Storm,’ an assault on Krajina, in August 1995. Serbs living in the historic borderlands of present-day Croatia had set up their own republic in 1992, which Zagreb denounced as “aggression” from Serbia itself – much like how Kiev, in 2014, reacted to the independence claims by the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk by denouncing it as Russian "aggression". The US had armed, trained and advised the Croatian military for the 1995 attack, and Holbrooke even revealed that Washington had told Zagreb what to hit and when – in a preview of the US and NATO providing intelligence to Kiev.

事实上，延斯·斯托尔滕贝格在2023年1月提出的“武器是通往和平之路”的观点，与霍尔布鲁克在1995年9月提出的“炸弹换和平”的观点如出一辙。当时，北约的空袭被《时代》杂志描述为“迫使塞尔维亚人就范”。
北约的这次行动被命名为“蓄意武力”，与克罗地亚1995年8月对克拉伊纳的“风暴行动”相吻合。生活在今天克罗地亚历史上的边境地区的塞尔维亚人于1992年建立了自己的共和国，萨格勒布谴责这是塞尔维亚本身的“侵略”——就像2014年基辅对顿涅茨克和卢甘斯克顿巴斯共和国的独立主张的反应一样，谴责这是俄罗斯的“侵略”。美国为1995年的袭击提供了武器、训练和建议，霍尔布鲁克甚至透露，华盛顿已经告诉萨格勒布袭击什么和什么时候袭击——这预示着美国和北约将向基辅方面提供情报。

Operation 'Storm' ended with a forced "reintegration" of Krajina into Croatia, having left thousands of people dead and over 200,000 driven from their homes. In recent years, officials in Ukraine – from presidential adviser and top prosecutor Yury Lutsenko to PM Vladimir Groisman – have publicly argued for a “Croatian solution” to the Donbass “problem.”
Another commonality is that the West has insisted on enforcing the 1991 borders of Croatia, Bosnia, and Ukraine, even though they were drawn by Communist governments that the very same West worked for decades to overthrow. Lest you believe that indicates a principled position, the US and its allies declared an exception for the borders of Serbia when they carved away Kosovo in 1999. The whole point of the “rules-based order” is that they are the ones making the rules.
The obvious problem here is that Russia today is not 1990s Serbia, and the notion of recycling is not supposed to apply to policy, foreign or domestic. Yet Washington persists in believing its unipolar moment hasn’t ended, the “end of history” is just around the corner, and a “benevolent global hegemony” is still within reach.

“风暴”行动以迫使克拉伊纳“重新融入”克罗地亚而告终，造成数千人死亡，20多万人流离失所。近年来，乌克兰官员——从总统顾问和最高检察官尤里·卢岑科到总理弗拉基米尔·格罗伊斯曼——都公开主张用“克罗地亚解决方案”来解决顿巴斯“问题”。
另一个共同点是，西方国家坚持执行1991年克罗地亚、波斯尼亚和乌克兰的边界，尽管这些边界是由共产主义政府划定的，而正是西方国家花了几十年时间推翻了这些政府。恐怕你会认为这表明了原则性立场，美国及其盟友在1999年割让科索沃时，曾宣布塞尔维亚的边界是一个例外。“基于规则的秩序”的全部意义在于，他们是制定规则的人。
这里明显的问题是，今天的俄罗斯不是上世纪90年代的塞尔维亚，回收利用的概念不应该适用于外交或国内政策。然而，华盛顿坚持认为其单极时代尚未结束，“历史的终结”即将到来，“仁慈的全球霸权”仍然触手可及。