The man long-reviled as the Butcher of Belgrade - or even a quasi-Nazi dictator, despite his regular election victories - has already been convicted in the court of western public opinion, not only for the war crimes charges he now faces, but for a decade of slaughter in the Balkans.

Shamelessly bought with $1.3bn of aid for a country ravaged by sanctions and Nato bombing, Milosevic's extradition had to be forced through by decree, in defiance of Yugoslavia's constitutional court, by a government which knew it stood no chance of getting the decision through parliament.

That is presumably why - as the new Belgrade administration dug up corpses to order - the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, described the cash as a "dividend of democracy".

But, supporters of the Hague tribunal argue, even if the former Yugoslav president was effectively kidnapped on behalf of those western states which like to describe themselves as the international community, that was a necessary price to pay for justice to be done. What they seem unable to grasp is that justice will never be seen to have been done, because the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia cannot seriously be regarded as a genuinely independent court.

Although nominally UN-sponsored, it was the baby of the then US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, and has continued to dance to the tune of US foreign policy - or, as the tribunal's former president, Antonio Cassese, put it, to "take into account the exigencies and tempo of the international community". It works intimately with the FBI and Nato - rather than the UN - while relying heavily on US government, foundation and corporate funding, in contradiction of its own charter.

Given that the current charges against Milosevic relate to the 1999 Kosovo war, waged between Yugoslavia and Nato, the compromising nature of these relationships could hardly be clearer. Milosevic was first indicted, with brazenly political timing, at the height of the bombing.

This is a court which itself lays the charges it judges, accepts hearsay evidence and is heavily staffed by political appointees of the very states which led the onslaught against Milosevic's Yugoslavia - attacks which were not supported by the UN, are widely regarded as having been illegal and are themselves the subject of war crimes allegations.

Instead of investigating Nato leaders for their assaults on civil targets, covert backing for KLA terror and reckless disregard for civilian lives, the last tribunal prosecutor, Louise Arbour, accepted a job from one of them: the Canadian prime minister, Jean Chretien.

To hope, as supporters do, that the tribunal will rise above politics in the Milosevic case, is wilfully to disregard experience. It cannot do so because it is a creature of politics - to all intents and purposes, the legal arm of Nato in the Balkans.

Nor will it do to cite the Nuremberg precedent. The allied trial of leading Nazis was certainly a case of victors' justice, but one which reflected a consensus across the international political spectrum, as well as a determination to settle accounts with the most aggressive and genocidal regime in human history. Parallels with the ghastly dismemberment of Yugoslavia are non-existent. No such global consensus exists on responsibility for the Yugoslav wars - which all took place within the borders of Tito's republic - or on the western role in them.

The impact of that intervention began to be felt in the 1980s, with the corrosive effects of IMF and World Bank "restructuring" on Yugoslavia's social fabric, intensified with German encouragement of Croatian separatism and reached a nadir with logistical US backing for the massacres and ethnic cleansing in the Krajina region of Croatia in 1995.

War crimes indictments in the latter case are, needless to say, not expected. Six years on, the former Yugoslavia is a network of undemocratic Nato protectorates, western-fuelled Albanian irredentism has set Macedonia alight and the underlying causes of 10 years of inter-ethnic war have not been resolved because there has been no internal settlement.

Milosevic clearly shares political responsibility for the country's immolation, with his opportunist pandering to rapacious nationalism. And if evidence is produced directly linking him to killings and deportations, that responsibility would also be criminal. But far better for the future of Yugoslavia if such evidence had been tested in a Belgrade court. His trial at the Hague will be seen both in Serbia and beyond for what it is - a demonstration of power more than of justice.

s.milne@theguardian.com