Kosovo: The PR Problem is the War Itself

Remarks Presented to Cato Institute Conference
NATO's Balkan War: Finding An Honorable Exit
May 18, 1999

Introduction

The war against Yugoslavia is going just fine, according to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and U.K. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. "Our military campaign is working," they declared in a joint article in the Washington Post on Sunday, May 16. While things may seem to be taking a bit longer than expected, "We have the shared resolve to see it through," they assured us.

What war, one wonders, are they talking about? As columnist Michael Kelly has observed: "It is too much to ask that the initial plans of any war be met with swift success. But it is not too much to ask that the planners do not lie, to themselves and to the public, about how their plans are failing. And what is going on with the plan in Yugoslavia is that it is failing, catastrophically."

Shortly before the appearance of the article by Albright and Cook, more civilians--Kosovar refugees, at that--were killed by allied air strikes. NATO has destroyed China's embassy in Belgrade, dropped cluster bombs on a Serb market, shredded relations with Russia, blasted the Yugoslav economy into rubble, triggered escalating violence against Kosovars, created massive refugee flows, and destabilized all of Southeast Europe. This is success? One hates to imagine what Albright and Cook would call failure.

Yet allied attacks continue. And not just continue, but intensify. Bill Clinton's war has proved to be one of the worst foreign policy debacles in American history. So what does the administration do? It hires a public relations specialist. Leslie Dash, vice chairman of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, has signed on for 30 days to advise the administration on Kosovo. "There's a feeling that the next month is critical in terms of American public opinion," one unnamed administration official told the Washington Post.

Instead of playing PR games, the administration should end the war--now. If necessary, Congress should use its funding power stop the bombing and bring U.S. forces home.

Dubious Justifications

The President launched an unprovoked war of aggression against a small, distant state. He cynically wrapped his campaign in humanitarianism while ignoring worse slaughters elsewhere. He arrogantly assumed that foreign officials would genuflect before him. He attacked their nation when they didn't.

How to justify it? President Clinton tried in his recent speech at National Defense University. He likened events in Kosovo to those in Nazi Germany: a "vicious, premeditated, systematic oppression fueled by religious and ethnic hatred."

This is pure cant, however. The administration has nothing against "vicious, premeditated, systematic oppression" if committed by allies, like Croatia and Turkey. Or if committed against black Africans.

Moreover, as ugly as was the Kosovo conflict, it was no Nazi Holocaust, but a minor civil war, with casualties a fraction of those occurring in such places as Kashmir and Sri Lanka. Where real genocide results, like Rwanda, President Clinton studiously averts his gaze.

Once it became clear that the administration was intent on effectively stripping Yugoslavia of the province of Kosovo, however, the Yugoslavs unsurprisingly lashed out. Indeed, allied bombing turned all Kosovars--whose leaders publicly lobbied for NATO intervention--into enemies of the Serbs.

Belgrade wasn't gentle before. It certainly wasn't going to be gentle after being pounded from the air.

Before the bombing there were about 45,000 refugees in Albania and Macedonia. Now there are 640,000.

At the same time, the allied war quickly turned into a war on civilians. Never mind the accidental bombings of hospitals, markets, and refugees. Accidents may be unavoidable, though they are least excusable in a supposed humanitarian war. But NATO is now striking everything from bridges to electrical plants to television stations. NATO is dismantling Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure, building by building.

Having spent nearly two months attacking a small country, the only way NATO can continually intensify the bombing is to widen its target list. And that means more dead civilians.

Even this isn't enough for some observers. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman ranted: "Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1398? We can do 1398, too."

How many innocent Serbs deserve to die in the attempt to enable refugees to go home? Ethnic cleansing is ugly; premeditated murder is worse.

Insecurity Magnified

Of course, Bill Clinton also argued in his speech that reducing Yugoslavia to ruins "is the right thing for our security interests over the long run." But few serious people believe this.

The conflict in Kosovo, however messy, was contained until NATO began bombing. The Serbs were attempting to hold onto what they had, not expand. Yugoslavia's earlier civil war did not explode Europe because none of the major powers saw any interest in intervening.

But the administration's maladroit attempt to impose a solution unwanted by either side sparked the Serb crackdown, followed by mass refugee flows that destabilized Yugoslavia's fragile neighbors. The war has immeasurably strengthened the Kosovo Liberation Army, which both enjoys dubious ties with drug dealers and Islamic terrorists and holds expansionistic dreams-- to unite Albanians throughout the region--vis-a-vis Kosovo's more moderate political leadership. This genie will not be easily returned to its bottle.

To the extent that NATO successfully "degrades" Yugoslavia's military, it will dangerously reshape the region's balance of power. Albania, Bosnia, and Croatia all have potential territorial designs against one another and Serbia. As a result, the conflict in Kosovo is likely to be just one more, rather than the last, Balkan war. Every additional day of bombing makes another conflict more likely.

The NATO countries are fast dividing over continuation of the war. They have simultaneously confronted Russia in a region it considers important for its security as it slides towards political chaos. President Clinton has spilled gasoline across Europe.

End the War

It is time to end Bill Clinton's war. Current policy is doomed. NATO is no closer to achieving its objectives today than it was one week or one month ago. The alliance is not likely to move any closer after another week or month of bombing.

Continued bombing guarantees only continued killing, instability, and failure. Kosovars will suffer and Serbs will die for nothing. Potential conflicts and confrontations will multiply. The prospect of real peace will grow ever more distant.

What are the other options?

Invade on the ground. Inaugurating a ground war, as proposed by Sen. John McCain, British officials, and others, would be far worse. The logistics of such an operation are daunting: neither Albania nor Macedonia offers a good launching pad. Invading from Hungary would require the conquest of all Yugoslavia. The build-up in either case would take months.

Although NATO would prevail, the cost would be high: hundreds or thousands of dead allied soldiers, even more Yugoslav casualties, widespread economic devastation, and the entire region in chaos. The publics in America and Europe would be bitterly divided, given the lack of plausible, let alone serious, allied interests at stake in Kosovo.

Indeed, such an attack would split NATO and its friends-- Greece, Hungary, and Italy would almost certainly oppose it, the German coalition government would likely fall, Macedonia would probably refuse to cooperate. Then there's the inevitable long- term occupation. Republican presidential candidate Lamar Alexander speaks of "three-to-five decades of patrol" in the Balkans. The U.S. would be forever entangled the region's ethnic morass.

A ground attack would further inflame nationalist sentiments in an already unstable, potentially chaotic Russia. Although Moscow is unlikely to view its Balkan interests to be worth a direct confrontation with the U.S., Boris Yeltsin hardly offers a paragon of rational and stable leadership. Adding fuel to an already raging fire would be extremely foolhardy.

Finally, a ground invasion would ensure permanent European defense dependence on Washington. That would be a move in precisely the wrong direction.

The EU collectively possesses a GDP of eight trillion dollars, a population of 400 million, and an army of a million. Britain, France, and Germany alone spend more than Russia on defense. The Europeans are capable of defending themselves against any ongoing residual or future revived threats from Russia. They are certainly capable of turning Kosovo into a protectorate and occupying Belgrade, if they desire to do so.

The only conceivable argument for ground action is to maintain U.S. and NATO credibility. But credibility, like patriotism, is the last refugee of the scoundrel. The alliance's reputation is already in tatters. Observes Owen Harries of the National Interest magazine: "The secret of NATO's nervous, tentative and incompetent character is out, and its authority is significantly impaired."

Maintaining, nay, intensifying a manifestly failed policy will rend what little credibility is left. Especially if it is conducted by the spectacularly incompetent Clinton administration and subject to NATO's cumbersome decision-making process. Asks columnist Charles Krauthammer: "Do you really want this foreign policy team--Clinton and Albright and Cohen and Berger--running a Balkan ground war"?

Anyway, aggressors almost always believe their circumstances to be unique. America's war on Spain a century ago didn't prevent World War I from breaking out. U.S. intervention in the latter conflict didn't preclude World War II. America's participation in that war did not stop North Korea from assaulting the South. Washington's aid to Seoul didn't deter North Vietnam from subverting and eventually conquering South Vietnam. A variety of U.S. invasions and wars--Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Haiti, and Bosnia--did not cause Belgrade to capitulate over Kosovo.

Thus, there's no reason to believe that NATO's strategy towards Kosovo is likely to have much impact on the behavior of potential aggressors, whether Russia against the Baltic states, North Korea again against Seoul, China against Taiwan, Iraq again against Kuwait, or someone else. To paraphrase former House Speaker Tip O'Neill, with the end of the Cold War all aggression is local. "Whether America wins or loses a particular contest, the world will keep turning, bringing forth new dictators and new crises," observes Fareed Zakaria of Foreign Affairs magazine.

The situation is bad enough today. It would become far, far worse if Washington initiated a ground war.

Arm the Kosovo Liberation Army. The cheap solution in the view of some is to arm the KLA, which could then protect the Kosovars and/or liberate Kosovo. However, even successful guerrilla movements typically take time to triumph: hundreds of thousands of refugees would spend months or years in camps waiting to safely return to their homes.

Nor is there any reason to assume that the KLA will prevail, especially since so many of its natural supporters have been driven out of Kosovo. The guerrillas--even aided by the nation of Albania and the international Albanian diaspora--are an uncertain reed at best upon which to lean. After visiting Kosovo last year I guessed that the Kosovars were willing to pay a higher price than the Serbs for victory. But Belgrade has so far spent heavily and risked much to hold onto the province. The Yugoslavs will not be easily or quickly dislodged.

Moreover, the KLA is the most destabilizing force in the region. Aiding and arming the guerrillas does not mean they will stop after achieving autonomy for Kosovo. Independence is their minimum goal, something that worries most other nations in the region. But even Kosovo's independence is likely to be just the start. Ethnic Albanians inhabit portions of Serbia (north of Kosovo), Montenegro, Macedonia, and Greece. Weapons provided to the KLA for battling Serbs could eventually be used for battling Serbs (again), Montenegrans, Macedonians, and Greeks.

If there is one lesson of the administration's Balkans debacle, it is that governments have little control over where the dogs of war run after they have been loosed. Not that this should suprise anyone. The same lesson is painfully evident in Afghanistan, where guerrillas once supported and supplied by the U.S. continue to fight, on behalf of values antithetical to those of the West. So it would likely be in Kosovo.

End the war. Instead of maintaining or escalating the war, the administration should move in the opposite direction. The U.S. should stop the bombing. Today.

Washington should propose negotiations. But it should then quickly move into the background. Discussions need to be led by a country that hasn't warred against Yugoslavia; the NATO countries in the region, particularly Greece and Italy, should play leading roles; Russia must participate.

The conference needs to revolve around regional proposals, not U.S. dictates. Indeed, the negotiations should consider a range of ideas, however unpalatable to an administration that arrogantly believed that it could impose its will upon all parties. Among the possibilities: partition of Kosovo, a swap of independence for part or all of Kosovo for the incorporation of the Serbian portion of Bosnia into Yugoslavia, international protection of Serbian cultural sites in Kosovo, and a South/East European and Russian peacekeeping force.

The basic goals are simple enough: return of refugees, protection of Kosovars, presence of Western monitors, end of the guerrilla war, and political autonomy for Kosovo. Alas, none of these will be easy to obtain. All are likely to require significant compromise. Thanks to NATO the already deep hatreds in Kosovo have been intensified beyond imagination. But there is no palatable alternative to a political solution reached through agreement among all the major parties.

Conclusion

It should be tragically obvious by now that Washington cannot force peace. Not that the Clinton administration seems to have noticed. Who knows? Secretary Albright and Foreign Secretary Cook may next announce that they are implementing the Natural Law Party proposal to employ 7,000 practitioners of transcendental meditation. Doing so would have about as much chance of success as NATO's current policy.

The President does have a PR problem with his war. But the problem is the war. The solution is not to hire another media flack. It is to end the war.