Europe’s SOS

WASHINGTON —  With bombs falling on Belgrade, the Clinton administration is finally edging toward a policy that may succeed in bringing a stable peace to the Balkans. It is about time. For most of the decade, the United States has been caught in no-man’s-land in the Balkans, caring too much to ignore the bloodshed, but not enough to run the risks necessary to stop aggression and eliminate its sources. By attacking Serbia, the Clinton administration is facing up to the reality that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is at the center of the twisted nationalist ideologies that have plunged Yugoslavia into war. North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces are now going after the cause of virulent nationalism, not just its symptoms, holding out a realistic prospect of shutting down the third Balkan war of the century.

But President Bill Clinton is not yet out of the woods. Indeed, he will again have taken only a half-measure unless he immediately confronts the possibility that air power alone will fail to convince Milosevic to withdraw his forces from Kosovo. For historic reasons, the region is a centerpiece of the Serb national identity; even if Milosevic wants to back down, he may find himself trapped by the nationalist zeal he has whipped up among his unfortunate populace. There is an all-too-real prospect that NATO ground troops will be needed to drive Serb forces from Kosovo and effectively strip Serbia of its southern province.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has enjoyed a cheap brand of internationalism. Clinton has repeatedly sent forces into combat, but has dramatically limited the loss of American lives by relying on air power and restricting the scope of the missions. The United States may not be so lucky in this escalating battle with Milosevic. Far from folding, the Serbs appear to be responding to NATO air attacks by stepping up their murderous offensive against Albanians in Kosovo. Clinton must therefore muster the courage to admit it may well take U.S. ground forces to stop Milosevic and the southward spread of the war.

Now that the air campaign is underway, the president has no choice but to prepare the country and America’s armed forces for a major ground war in the Balkans.

In laying the political groundwork for the air campaign against Yugoslavia, Clinton has consistently led with the humanitarian card, insisting that the United States has a “moral imperative” to save innocent lives. This argument may elicit top scores among focus groups, but it will not wear well if U.S. soldiers begin to die. Clinton should lead with his strongest suit: the threat to national security posed by a spread of war.

U.S. interests at stake in Southern Europe provide ample reason for Clinton to put American lives on the line in Kosovo. The border between Kosovo and Macedonia served as a critical firewall throughout the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, preventing the spread of fighting into the south Balkans. If this firewall is breached, and the war moves into Macedonia, Albania and Greece will more than likely enter the fray. Turkey may be next. At stake would be U.S. interests throughout the Mediterranean, including the Middle East. The United States could not afford to stand by were Southern Europe to be embroiled in war. Clinton is thus on target when he argues that a small sacrifice in Kosovo today will prevent a huge sacrifice down the road.

Taking military action to shut down Milosevic is also an investment in the future of the West. The European Union and NATO have transformed Europe’s landscape and its relationship with North America, effectively making warfare among the Western democracies unthinkable. But these institutions, which took decades of close cooperation to nurture, would be put at risk through Western inaction in the Balkans. NATO could hardly pull off its 50th-anniversary summit next month in Washington if Southern Europe is in flames. So, too, would a spreading war in the Balkans undermine the legitimacy and momentum enjoyed by the European Union as it seeks to deepen political integration and embrace the new democracies of Europe. Only recall the political paralysis and mutual recrimination that tainted the West as it shamefully watched the slaughter in Bosnia a few years ago.

Opponents of U.S. military involvement in the Balkans assert that the spread of the Balkan war is unlikely; the Vietnam War taught us that dominoes do not fall. But we know dominoes fall in the Balkans because they are doing so before our very eyes. The fighting has spread from Slovenia to Croatia to Bosnia to Kosovo. It is heading toward Macedonia and Albania. Furthermore, previous wars in the Balkans have led to wider conflict. World War I attests to that. Whether because of geography, ethnicity or history, wars in the Balkans spread like wild fires.

Other critics charge that NATO attacks on Yugoslavia, far from containing the war, only increase the likelihood that fighting will spread south. An independent Kosovo, they claim, will fuel calls for a Greater Albania and incite the large Albanian community in western Macedonia to pursue secession.

But this is a misreading of the region’s politics. It is Milosevic’s repression and killing of the Albanians in Kosovo, not some spontaneous groundswell of Albanian nationalism, that continue to radicalize Albanians throughout the south Balkans. The real threat to Macedonia stems from the prospect of a massive influx of refugees from Kosovo, tipping the fragile ethnic balance inside the country. These refugees will continue to flee south until the Yugoslav offensive in Kosovo is stopped. The best way to prevent the spread of war to Macedonia is to make Kosovo a safe place for its Albanians to stay put.

The final objection to NATO attacks on Yugoslavia is that they violate fundamental principles of international law. Yugoslavia is a sovereign country, critics contend, and NATO has no right to intervene, especially without the authorization of the United Nations. To be sure, it would have been preferable to receive the blessing of the U.N. Security Council before proceeding with the air campaign. But the certainty of a Russian and Chinese veto precluded playing by the rules. Furthermore, Yugoslavia hardly deserves to be accorded the same rights and protections as other nations. Milosevic has spent most of the decade carving up the Balkans by force. His is a criminal government that has defected from the international community. He must now pay the price.

In short, boxing in Milosevic and cutting his military down to size are essential to prevent the war from spreading and jeopardizing the vital national-security interests of the United States. Belgrade remains the region’s control center for nationalist myth making and war making. Unless Milosevic is neutralized, the Balkan war will widen.

Just what it will take to neutralize Milosevic is the critical question. Clinton seems to have had NATO’s experience in Bosnia on his mind in launching air attacks against Yugoslavia. The Bosnian Serbs folded after a sustained air campaign and went to the negotiating table, producing the Dayton accords.

But the campaign against the Serbs in Yugoslavia is a far different affair. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that air power alone will not do the trick. The Serbs are now fighting for Yugoslavia, not for a chunk of Bosnia. And Kosovo is viewed as the cradle of Serb civilization. The Yugoslav army is better trained and organized than the Bosnian Serb army and has far more equipment and ammunition. Furthermore, Milosevic’s stranglehold over the media may enable him to rally the Yugoslav army and populace behind him as he seeks to stand up to NATO and the United States. Indeed, there are no signs that his regime is cracking; the army is only increasing the severity of its attacks in Kosovo.

For these reasons, the standoff between NATO and Yugoslavia looks more like the war against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait than the coercive bombing of the Serbs in Bosnia. Air attacks will no doubt weaken Yugoslav defenses and soften up the units operating in and around Kosovo. But it may take ground forces to expel them from Kosovo and stop the killing of Albanians. Furthermore, a presence on the ground ready and able to do battle will be essential to keeping Milosevic in line and to patrolling the border between Kosovo and a rump Serbia.

Clinton thus made a fundamental miscalculation in moving forward with air attacks without simultaneously deploying a robust ground force in the region, one capable of moving quickly and decisively into Kosovo. Indeed, his unwillingness even to discuss the issue in public constitutes not just an omission in military strategy, but a tactical error in dealing with Milosevic. What better way to encourage Milosevic to hang tough than to tell him that ground forces will enter Kosovo only if he signs a peace agreement? Without a credible threat of being driven from Kosovo by NATO ground troops, Yugoslav forces have every incentive to lay low during the nightly bombing raids, prosecute their war by day and simply wait out the West.

It is not too late to begin rectifying this fatal flaw in Clinton’s strategy. But doing so means sending to the Balkans the capability to move sizable ground troops into Kosovo. The 12,000-man peacekeeping force that NATO has deployed in Macedonia is a good starting point, but it must be significantly augmented in size and firepower. Clinton must start to shoot straight with Congress and the American people to ensure they are prepared for the sacrifices entailed in bringing an end to Milosevic’s reign of terror.

Arming the Albanians in Kosovo, a proposal floated on Capitol Hill last week, is not a viable alternative. The Yugoslav offensive is under way; there is no time to arm and train the Albanians. The Yugoslavs would try to interdict incoming weaponry, making it likely that NATO troops would be needed anyway. And the firepower and superior quality of NATO forces will be necessary to overwhelm the Yugoslav army.

An end game in the Balkans is in sight. It entails the effective independence of Kosovo. Formal separation from Yugoslavia is, at this point, the only way to ensure the physical security and basic political rights of the Albanians living there. And the end game entails the strict containment of a rump Serbia, keeping Milosevic at bay until he falls from power. The entire region, including Bosnia, will be the beneficiary.

But the air war against Yugoslavia is likely to be only the first step in realizing these goals. Before the West again retreats into complacency, and Milosevic again makes a fool of NATO, Clinton needs to finish the job by preparing Americans and NATO for a ground war in Kosovo. This may well be Clinton’s, and the Balkans’, last chance.

Clinton is in the waning months of his presidency. Political scandal and the paralysis of partisan politics make foreign policy the arena in which he is likely to leave his biggest mark. The West has arrived at a critical turning point in its decade-long effort to deal with the breakup of Yugoslavia. The decisions of the coming week may well determine whether Clinton goes down in history as the president who stopped Milosevic or the leader who presided over Southern Europe’s descent into war.*