The Next Phase in the Balkans

The end of one phase of the multi-year, multi-phase breakup of Yugoslavia may be approaching. But before the next phase, which will certainly involve a large and open-ended American military commitment and may well prove ugly, a few points.

When people said an air-only war wouldn’t work, most of us meant an air war against military targets. We firmly believe our forces tried mightily to avoid collateral damage (read “killing civilians”) and given the number of sorties over Yugoslavia, they appear to have succeeded better than anyone might have expected.

The end of one phase of the multi-year, multi-phase breakup of Yugoslavia may be approaching. But before the next phase, which will certainly involve a large and open-ended American military commitment and may well prove ugly, a few points.

When people said an air-only war wouldn’t work, most of us meant an air war against military targets. We firmly believe our forces tried mightily to avoid collateral damage (read “killing civilians”) and given the number of sorties over Yugoslavia, they appear to have succeeded better than anyone might have expected. But the bombs we dropped on the Serbian people made it less likely, not more likely, that the populace would oppose Milosovic. And until two weeks ago, our actual military war against Serb military forces in Kosovo was a failure.

Then something changed. Ground forces.

The fact that NATO did not use NATO soldiers on the ground doesn’t mean there weren’t any ground forces. In 1995, Croatian ethnic cleansing of the Serb population in the Kraijna (400,000 Serbs expelled) dovetailed with NATO air strikes against Serb positions in Bosnia leading to Serb acceptance of the Dayton Accords. In 1999, KLA activity on the ground – coordinated with NATO – flushed out Serb troops and allowed NATO to target them successfully for the first time since the war began. Madeleine Albright acknowledged her communications with the KLA leadership.

This leads right to the next problem.

According to press reports, the agreement leaves Milosovic in power in Belgrade and Kosovo nominally within the Yugoslav Federation. The first should be unacceptable to us and the second will no doubt be unacceptable to the KLA – which is independence-minded, armed, expanded, hell-bent on revenge, and not a party to the agreement. It should be recalled that the KLA makes its money in the drug trade and has been in armed opposition to rule from Belgrade for years. (More than a decade ago, the NYT ran an article about ethnic-Albanian Yugoslav soldiers who turned their guns on their Serb counterparts.) It would be astounding if, after NATO has driven out the enemy for them, the KLA disarmed itself and docilely remained inside the Federation. The U.S. and NATO acknowledge little, if any, ability to pressure the KLA.

We said at the outset of the war that America’s goal should be a unified Yugoslavia under different leadership. This agreement looks backward to us. Milosovic is a war criminal, not a partner with whom we should be determining the Federation’s future. And an independent or even autonomous Kosovo under the KLA is a recipe for long-term warfare and continued instability even beyond its own borders.

As plans for the peacekeepers advance, we worry about the peace they would keep.