It must be deep-seated, genuine moral conviction. He didn't need to do this. The British leader also has been unequivocal in condemning Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. And earlier this week, he guaranteed ethnic Albanian refugees in Macedonia that they would return home. But whatever his personal convictions, Blair has been so outspoken largely because he has been able to politically.
Public opinion is solidly behind the military action in the Balkans.
The differing German and British stances on Kosovo reflect the lessons of the Second World War, too. For Blair, as for British politicians from Winston Churchill to Margaret Thatcher, the imperative has been to avoid appeasing authoritarian opponents. Schroeder, whose father was killed in the war when he was an infant, heads a country that learned different lessons from Hitler's genocidal expansionism. After decades on the international sidelines, Germany in recent years gradually has become more active. German troops serve in NATO units in Bosnia and the Luftwaffe is flying over Yugoslavia, its first combat role since the war.