Will Saddam go the same way as Milosevic?

If you want to know the reason why there is so little liberal opposition in America to war on Iraq – and why, indeed, some on the left here approve of it – look to the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. There, after all the years of the Cold War and the humiliations of Bosnia and the shame of Rwanda, was a "just war'" where force not only worked to stop a case of brutal aggression in Kosovo but ultimately led to the downfall and current trial of the Serbian dictator.

The relevance of Serbia to Iraq is closer than many of the opponents, or proponents, of war against Saddam Hussein like to admit, as the series on The Fall of Milosevic now being broadcast on BBC 2 makes clear. It's a series (the climax is in the last episode on Sunday) before which a print journalist can but sit and gawp. Within two years the producers have managed to get all the main participants in the drama, and most of the secondary figures, to contribute. There they all are – Clinton, Chirac, Blair, and Milosevic's army and police chiefs, and his wife – talking on the record about what happened, when and why.

One thing that comes through loud and clear from the narrative was how close-run a thing it was at key moments. At various points – the fracturing of the alliance after the first months of bombing, the entry of the Russians to persuade Milosevic to give up Kosovo, the decision of the opposition to force the election results after the war – events hung in the balance.

The allies could easily have been forced to the point of having to use of ground troops if the Russians hadn't stepped in. The opposition could easily have failed to impel Milosevic's resignation if it had not been for the strike among the miners, and even then it was touch and go whether they'd be forced back to work. History is only a foregone conclusion a century after, rarely at the time.

The other theme that comes through is the overwhelming power of the United States when it applies itself to a problem. The Bush administration has been inclined to dismiss its predecessors as lacking will and ruthlessness. But on this account, President Clinton and his advisers were as intent on facing down Serbia, as ready to act outside the United Nations and as willing to use force as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are today.

And, having forced Milosevic out of Kosovo, Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, made it absolutely clear that she wanted regime change and quickly. Serbian opposition heads were banged together, $30m was given to fund their campaign, Clinton market researchers were leant, and Milosevic was defeated at the polls. No one looking at this series could deny that outside pressures can effect the outcome even in countries as nationalistic as Serbia, or that even the most entrenched dictator is vulnerable to them.

The difficulty of extrapolating from the Kosovan experience to the Iraqi situation today is in determining just what the balance of outside intervention and internal power structures is. Initially at least, the bombing of Serbia united the public behind Milosevic and forced opposition leaders with any apparent leanings toward the West to dive for cover. Over time the bombing of bridges, power stations and water facilities may have sapped the will. But the biggest determinant of domestic opinion was probably that the Serbian public simply didn't share Milosevic's attachment to Kosovo. When push came to shove, they weren't prepared to see their sons die for it.

In that sense, Clinton, Blair and Chirac were all right in their own way during the arguments that developed in the initial failure of bombing. Blair was correct to say that the West had to make real its threats. But then Clinton was justified in arguing that a direct commitment to ground forces would have split the alliance and caused insuperable problems in Congress, while Chirac proved accurate in his assessment that no deal could be done without the Russians.

When it came to the consequent fall of the Serbian leader, the lessons become even harder to read. In one sense Milosevic fell because he gambled and lost in Kosovo, thus humiliating his own people. But in another sense he lost for the more mundane reason that the corruption and bullying that had kept him in power eventually turned most of the public, and some of his key supporters, against him. When the opposition convoys converged on Belgrade in the final showdown, what did him in was not the guards who supported him but those who didn't.

If there is one obvious lesson here for Iraq it is this: to succeed, the outside world has to talk as one. Once it became clear that Nato was co-ordinated around the concept of "whatever it takes", President Yeltsin felt he had to intervene to stop a war (with a little trick of his own to try and get an area of control in Kosovo). And once the Russians put the screws on Milosevic, he had to give in.

Saddam Hussein's support is probably as hollow as Milosevic's, although the opposition is nothing like as organised or ready to take over. You could see a situation where the pressure mounts and an Arab delegation goes to him in the way that Viktor Chernomyrdin went to Belgrade on behalf of President Yeltsin. But the pressure only works if there is not a whiff of division, or even foot-dragging, in the UN Security Council.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk