The speed and fury with which Yugolav President Slobodan Milosevic is destroying the country he claims he wants to save is shocking. It is not surprising.

Wholesale sacking of ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo, herding defenseless refugees into concentration camps, turning them into nonpersons by destroying birth certificates and property deeds, massacres, executions, now the kidnapping of three American servicemen in Macedonia — the NATO airstrikes have not caused Mr. Milosevic to commit these atrocities. They have merely compelled him to accelerate his brutal campaign against his own people, to compress into a week or two what otherwise would have been years of murderous endeavor. NATO did not create this monster; it has shone a light and exposed something evil.

By his own hand, Mr. Milosevic has stripped away the arguments against NATO intervention. He has forfeited his claim as the head of a legitimate government of a sovereign nation; he is a mob boss leading a criminal enterprise. Kosovo is not a civil war; it is an early skirmish in what, if left unchecked, inevitably would become a regional war. Or worse.

And now, thanks to this genocidal maniac, the NATO participants no longer need to argue whether this action is in their national interest. This is in humanity’s interest.

Only one point of debate remains: Is there hope for Yugoslavia in a post-Milosevic era?

Almost overnight, everyone has become an expert in the Balkans and its tragic history. The story of Prince Lazar, the 14th-century Serb ruler who sacrificed his Christian army to slaughter by Muslim invaders in exchange for a guarantee of eternal reward, has become almost as familiar as Washington crossing the Delaware. And, sadly, that martyrdom ethic and the 600 years of subsequent bloodshed is often cited as reason for hopelessness.

To argue that this region is preordained to be ruled by violence is absurd. If history were destiny, peace in Northern Ireland or the Middle East would be impossible. The American civil-rights movement would never have made it past the first barrage of fire hoses and onslaught of police dogs. The basic human instinct to live in peace and with justice can be thwarted but it inevitably will prevail.

Yugoslavia is, in the practical sense, a nation in its infancy. It was on auto-pilot for decades under Soviet domination. The trains ran on time, the tractor supply was plentiful, but the society itself was a sham. The aftermath of the Cold War will not produce the anticipated peace dividend until the free world meets its moral obligation to help create democratic structures in the former Soviet colonies.

Yugoslavia is not the first nation to fall into the grasp of a tyrant in the absence of those democratic structures. Foreign-policy experts say there are in Yugolavia leaders capable of forging a nation from scratch. Mr. Milosevic is hunting them down. NATO’s mission now is to get to them first.