WITH Ukraine possibly on the brink of armed conflict and Crimea occupied by Russia it is only a matter of time before the International Court of Justice is called upon to make a ruling. Yet if the Croatia v Serbia case now being heard in The Hague is any indication, hearings would likely begin in 2037 at the earliest.

The case in which both Balkan states accuse each other of genocide, is widely regarded as utterly idiotic, benefitting only the handsomely paid lawyers of either party, many of whom are British. The hearings, which began on March 3rd, refer to events that took place in Croatia during the war years between 1991 and 1995. In 1991 local Serbs, backed by Serbia and the Yugoslav Army seized control of a third of Croatia. Local Croats fled, were ethically cleansed or murdered. In 1995 Croatia retook most of the territory, and some 230,000 Serbs fled or were ethnically cleansed. Many of those who risked staying behind were murdered.

In the meantime war ravaged Bosnia and Hercegovina. In 1993 the Bosnian government appealed to the ICJ, accusing Serbia (then still officially the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) of genocide. Behind this move was a specific aim, namely to get the United Nations Security Council to lift its arms embargo on the country.

The court only decided on the matter 12 years after the war had finished. In 2007 it ruled that genocide had taken place in only one instance, in Srebrenica, in 1995, when 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered in a few days. Significantly it ruled that Serbia, as a state, as opposed to Bosnian Serb leaders, was not guilty of this crime, though Serbia was faulted for not having prevented it.

Although the conflict ended in 1995, Croatia filed its suit against Serbia for genocide as late as July 1999. Croatia’s wartime leader, Franjo Tudjman, was by then almost at his deathbed. He was said to be obsessed with the issue.

Few noticed when it was launched three weeks after NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo war. Some speculated that this was an opportunistic kick at Serbia while it was down. It also contained the allegation that Serbia was guilty of genocide against Serbs in Croatia because it had encouraged them to leave as Croatia attacked and retook Serb-held areas.

In 2010 Serbia filed a counter-suit against Croatia alleging that Croatia was actually the genocidal party. More than that, what happened during the 1990s had to be understood in the context of the real genocide of the Serbs at the hands of the quisling Croatian state during the Second World War.

“Unless the court has a collective aneurysm,” says Marko Milanovic, an international lawyer at Nottingham University, "the outcome (of the case) is already predetermined. There was no genocide, full stop.” Almost certainly, he adds, the ICJ will find “that terrible atrocities were committed, but that none of them qualify as genocide”. In an opinion in 2008, Peter Tomka, now the president of the ICJ, even gently tried to dissuade the parties from continuing with the case.

For the last few years Serbian and Croatian leaders have said they wanted to drop the case, but for political reasons they have been unable to do so. The current Croatian government, which does not have a nationalist background, found itself unable to drop the genocide claim for fear of being branded as weak by the opposition. Likewise the Serbian government (which has nationalist credentials) has also been unable to drop the case unless Croatia did so. Both sides, says Mr Milanovic, “are wasting millions in taxpayers money for nothing, and a public airing of the atrocities of the 1990s will have no impact on public opinion, beyond solidifying what people already believe and want to believe.”