The alliance of nations fighting Slobodan Milosevic could use some of that luck. In the hours that followed the embassy attack, NATO officials confessed that it had mistakenly targeted the building and scored a direct hit. NEWSWEEK has learned that targeters believed the embassy building was the Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement, an arms-trading company known by the initials SDPR. The SDPR, part of the military-industrial complex the bombing campaign has been seeking to destroy, is about 250 yards from the Chinese Embassy.
Friday’s accidents are tragic reminders of the hollowness of NATO’s policy in Yugoslavia–its desire to wage a war whose cardinal strategic objective is the safety of its own pilots. From the start of this campaign, Western leaders have hoped that they could get the benefits of war without its costs. They have delighted in standing tall, speaking in Churchillian tones and issuing demands to Milosevic. But leaving aside ground troops, they have been reluctant even to order the military to fly low, risky missions against Serb forces in Kosovo. This combination of lofty goals and puny means will have to change to bring a decent end to our Balkan misadventure. At last week’s meeting of G-8 foreign ministers, the yawning gap between NATO’s rhetoric and reality began inching smaller. Western leaders stopped insisting that after the war Kosovo could be policed only by NATO forces and agreed to an international “civil and military presence,” involving Russia, neutral countries and the United Nations. (The latter will be possible only with Chinese support.) At the same time, NATO is waging a more intense bombing campaign–Friday’s raids were the heaviest so far.
The start of an endgame would, however, bring several unpleasant questions back to the fore. For seven weeks NATO and the media have been obsessed with how the Yugoslav war has been going–how many targets were being hit, what planes were being used and so on. Now they must ask again why exactly we went to war. Only if we are clear about our interests and goals can we know whether we have achieved them. Otherwise, having stumbled into an ill-considered war, wewill preside over an unworkable peace.
The debate over whether America has interests in the Balkans is now somewhat irrelevant. Our commitments have created interests, even though in foreign policy it should usually be the other way around. We have two sets of concerns relating to Kosovo, humanitarian and strategic. Sadly, in both our goals will end up being to undo the consequences of the war. The humanitarian goal is to reverse the flow of refugees out of Kosovo. The strategic goal is to stabilize the region–particularly Macedonia and Albania–which is straining under the weight of the refugees and the war.
NATO began bombing, let us remember, not for the refugees but to get Yugoslavia to sign the Rambouillet accords. And once the war began, several Western leaders, most prominently Britain’s Tony Blair, suggested that their war aims had expanded to include Milosevic’s head. Those original goals are now in tatters. Milosevic has been strengthened at home and even abroad, where most countries see him as the victim of an arbitrary exercise of Western power. The Rambouillet accords are dead. The Kosovo Liberation Army announced last Friday that it rejects them because they do not provide for an independent state. For their part, the Serbs are unlikely to agree to a referendum on independence in three years, and NATO is no longer even demanding that they do so. The requirement that NATO disarm the KLA seems increasingly farfetched. Providing Kosovars with some protection and autonomy is now the best NATO can hope for.
The Clinton administration’s overriding objective is to stop the exodus of refugees and have them return to Kosovo in safety. This does not figure in any of the original statements on the war, and for a simple reason. There was no refugee exodus until the bombings began. NATO angrily denies the connection, but the facts are clear. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that there were 45,000 Kosovars in Albania and Macedonia the week before the bombing. Today they number about 640,000.
As the Serbian sweep through Kosovo began and tens of thousands of refugees poured into Albania and Macedonia, Secretary of Defense William Cohen asserted, “We are not surprised,” making one wonder why NATO was so utterly unprepared for something it had expected. In fact, a high-ranking administration official admits frankly, “Anyone who says that we expected the kinds of refugee flows that we saw is smoking something.”
What Milosevic planned was a campaign called Operation Horseshoe. It was to be a larger version of a brutal offensive in 1998 that attacked and destroyed KLA strongholds and killed, terrorized and expelled civilians in areas that supported the group. Most Western observers–including the CIA and the United Nations–estimated that this ugly action would result in an outflow of a maximum of 100,000 refugees abroad.
The decision to wage an air war against Milosevic involved a fateful preliminary move. The 1,375 international observers posted in Kosovo had to abandon the province, as did all Western journalists and diplomats. Brussels and Washington may not have recognized what this meant, but people on the ground did. As one Kosovar said to a departing British journalist: “From now on it’s going to be a catastrophe for us, because the [observers] have gone.”
The human tragedy that resulted should teach a sobering lesson to all those who goaded the administration to stop planning and start bombing, who urge that force be used as a first resort in such crises and who want military might used as an expression of moral outrage. Being righteous, it turns out, does not absolve one of the need to set clear and attainable political goals, relate your means to them and make backup plans. The philosopher Max Weber once noted that a statesman is judged not by his intentions but by the consequences of his actions. It is well and good to clamor for a blood-and-guts foreign policy, but until now it has been Western guts and Kosovar blood.
If only we would use ground troops, some hawks now respond, none of this would have happened. And certainly the decision to go to war carelessly and in haste, before massing ground troops in Albania and Macedonia, was a historic blunder. Ground troops would have proved a potent threat. But even with troops, the war would have begun with days of airstrikes. And it would have been near impossible to invade Kosovo while hundreds of thousands of refugees were swarming across its roads, bridges and mountain paths.
Those who still advocate the use of ground troops today speak of its military benefits, which are real. They do not, however, mention its costs, which are political. A ground invasion would fracture NATO. Germany, Italy and Greece are strongly opposed to the use of ground troops. A majority of Italians and more than 95 percent of Greeks are opposed even to the airstrikes. An invasion would probably split Germany’s governing coalition. Russia and China would both actively oppose it and veto any U.N. involvement with Kosovo.
These are staggering obstacles, and not because Washington should pander to Chinese or Russian prerogatives. The eventual settlement in Kosovo–even after an invasion–will have to be a political one, involving Yugoslavia, its neighbors and other major powers. (Remember the strategic goal was to bring stability to the region.) It will be a more durable, lasting settlement if it is not a unilateral American fiat. Even in the gulf war, even in World War II, the endgame was as much political as it was military.
Of course, Washington could just go ahead and do whatever it wanted. It is certainly powerful enough. But it would mean not just an American invasion of Yugoslavia itself, but also its occupation–it used to be called colonialism. The problem, of course, is that as America gets sucked deeper and deeper into the Balkans, one has to ask, is it worth it? Even if we have “self-created” interests in the Balkans, are they of a magnitude to justify a full-scale war, massive reconstruction and perpetual peacekeeping? Sen. John McCain urges that we fight the war “as if everything were at stake.” But everything is not at stake. One cannot simply manufacture a national emergency. For seven weeks now the war has been going badly, during which time the stock market has hit record highs, a powerful indication that most Americans do not connect even a faltering war in the Balkans with their security. (By contrast, markets everywhere reeled last July when Russia announced merely that it was defaulting on its debts.)
What about American credibility? Concerns about America’s reputation and resolve are serious–which is why we must end this intervention with some measure of success. But credibility is often the last refuge of bad foreign policy. When policy is no longer justifiable on its merits, people shift gears and say, well, if we don’t win at all costs we will lose face. But what about the loss of face in continuing a failing mission? A variant of the credibility logic holds that dictators around the world will be emboldened if America does not win decisively. But would they? America won a spectacular victory in the gulf war, televised live across the globe. It didn’t seem to deter the Serbs, the Croats, the Somalis, the Sudanese, the Azerbaijanis, among others. Whether America wins or loses a particular contest, the world will keep turning, bringing forth new dictators and new crises. Global deterrence against instability is a foolish and futile goal. It sets America up for failure.
In the weeks ahead, despite the Chinese disaster, NATO must intensify the air war–and hit tanks and troops. It must also intensify its negotiations. The careful use of diplomacy might well resolve what the careless use of force has not. (If the Senate acts speedily on his nomination as U.N. ambassador, Richard Holbrooke’s considerable skills could prove invaluable.) During this intervention, many have made analogies to the Vietnam War. Some are more appropriate than others. What is most relevant, however, is not how we entered that war but rather how we left it. After four presidents had made commitments to the people of South Vietnam, in 1973 Washington abruptly abandoned them to a terrible fate. This time let us be clear; our obligations now are not to vague notions of credibility and deterrence. We have a specific commitment to the people of Kosovo to negotiate a decent settlement for them and help rebuild their country. Western nations will have to provide assistance to the southern Balkans as a whole (minus Serbia for now). America having paid for most of the war, Europe should pay for most of the peace, but it must happen in any case. It is not a commitment that requires that we send in ground troops or pay any price, but it is one we cannot walk away from. There is an answer to the legitimate question: why should we be involved in this crisis? Because we made it worse.
