IN THE PAST TWO MONTHS, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic has learned the hard way that flying in the American orbit can be dangerous to a dictator’s health.

When he signed the Dayton peace agreement last year, Milosevic wanted to end a war his ethnic allies had begun to lose in Bosnia. But that goal was secondary to his chief priority in Dayton: winning his way into Washington’s good graces. “As a pragmatist,” one Serbian politician explained at the time, “Milosevic knows that all satellites of the United States are in a better position than those that are not satellites.” Serbia’s shattered economy needed a reprieve from international sanctions — the sanctions Washington had insisted on imposing. His country needed help from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — the institutions controlled by the United States. And Milosevic himself needed an international seal of approval to bolster his shaky hold on power — approval only the United States could grant.