News Release

April 30, 2001

Macedonia crisis reveals fatal flaws in Balkan policy, study says
U.S. should let Europeans sort out ethnic disputes in region

WASHINGTON-The recent eruption of fighting in Macedonia and in Serbia's Presevo Valley has shown the bankruptcy of Washington's Balkan policy, according to a new study from the Cato Institute.

In "Waist Deep in the Balkans and Sinking," Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, argues that NATO's Kosovo intervention has been a disaster from the beginning. Interventionists wanted to stop ethnic cleansing and prevent the Kosovo conflict from triggering a wider war in the Balkans. But on both counts, U.S. policy is a failure, he says.

"Since NATO assumed control of Kosovo, there has been a massive reverse ethnic cleansing as Albanian nationalists have driven nearly 90 percent of the province's non-Albanian people from their homes," Carpenter says. But interventionists have grasped at straws to show that the operation is going well. "In reality, there are many more refugees from Kosovo living outside the province now than on the day before NATO's bombing campaign started," he says. "Only the ethnicity of the victims has changed."

Interventionists have also turned a blind eye to the nature of the KLA, Carpenter says. "The mounting evidence that the KLA was a motley collection of nationalist fanatics, unrepentant communists and common criminals was simply brushed aside," he argues.

Instead of recognizing these failures, policymakers have sought to place much of the blame for the unrest on Macedonia and Serbia, Carpenter says. But "the Albanian nationalist agenda…is to create an expanded, ethnically pure Albanian state," he argues. "Detaching Kosovo from Serbia's control was the first stage in that campaign-foolishly aided and abetted by NATO. Detaching the Presevo Valley and destabilizing Macedonia so that the fragmentation of that country becomes likely is the next stage."

The solution, Carpenter says, is to disengage and let the European countries grapple with the hard decisions. "America has no legitimate interests in the Balkans than even remotely justify baby-sitting that region." he argues. "Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that the United States and its NATO allies went into the Balkans together and they will leave together. But U.S. foreign policy should never be a suicide pact. It is time to pass the tainted chalice to the Europeans," he concludes.

"Waist Deep in the Balkans and Sinking: Washington Confronts the Crisis in Macedonia"