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be recalled that in his November 1995 address making the

case for sending U.S. troops to Bosnia, President Clinton

assured the American public that the operation he was pro-

posing had a "clear, limited and achievable" mission and

that the total deployment "should and will take about one

year."39   Since then, the president has twice changed his

mind about U.S. troop withdrawal, and Washington now has

an open-ended troop commitment to Bosnia.

It should also be recalled that the Clinton adminis-

tration claimed that the Bosnia intervention would be a

strictly military operation.  As Deputy Secretary of State

Strobe Talbott explained in a November 1995 speech, "There

will be no 'mission creep'--from purely military tasks

into 'nation-building.'"40   But it is now known that

President Clinton allowed U.S. forces to be used to help

elect Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, and that the U.S.-

backed representative in charge of implementing the Dayton

Peace Accords designed Bosnia's first national currency,

imposed a national flag, and is working on a national

anthem--examples of nation-building at its most basic.41

Fourth, NATO intervention of any kind in Kosovo could

cause the already deeply flawed Dayton Peace Accords in

Bosnia to completely unravel.  Indeed, if it appears that

Washington is facilitating Kosovo's secession, Bosnian

Serbs could interpret that as a sign of a broader anti-

Serb Western agenda.  Not only would that expose NATO

troops stationed in Bosnia to possible acts of retribution

like those that occurred against the American Marines in

Beirut in the 1980s, it would also threaten to undermine

the fragile U.S.-brokered peace there as well.

On the other hand, if Washington appears to be fore-

stalling Kosovo's independence by enforcing some sort of

autonomy or republic status within Yugoslavia, NATO troops

could find themselves trying to contain a still independ-

ence-minded KLA.  That would mean that Americans would be

fighting Milosevic's battle for him.  And according to

Alexander Vasovic, a military expert with independent Radio

B92 in Belgrade, a war in Kosovo will "be like Algeria or

Vietnam. . . . [Soldiers will] be isolated in military

compounds.  The Kosovo Liberation Army will control the

rest."42

Encouraging the KLA

Another significant problem with NATO intervention of

any kind in Kosovo is that it might actually encourage the

KLA in its militant drive to break away from Yugoslavia.