Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 30 April 1999
There can be no doubt now that the political leaders of NATO miscalculated badly when they launched their aerial bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia more than five weeks ago.
Bill Clinton, Tony Blair et al decided to rely on bombing raids alone to make Slobodan Milosevic stop his military assault on the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo and accept a NATO-led "implementation force" in the province. So sure were they of the efficacy of air strikes – and so afraid of domestic public opinion if the body bags started coming home – that they even announced that there would be no need to send in ground troops to force Milosevic to concede.
Milosevic, however, having seen NATO's hand, upped the stakes. Instead of pulling back his forces from Kosovo, he unleashed a ferocious pogrom against the Albanian population of the province. Within a week of the air raids starting, more than half the 1.9 million Albanians in Kosovo had been forced from their homes. What little there was of opposition to Milosevic in Serbia rallied to his side.
In response, NATO increased the scope of its aerial bombardment – and as a result started to kill civilians, including Kosovo Albanians, in significant numbers. The bombardment has now gone on more than 30 days. A substantial part of Serbia's military capacity and much of its communications infrastructure have been "degraded". Even the presidential palace has been hit.
Yet still Milosevic has not yielded. His support at home — insofar as it is possible to measure it — has apparently remained solid. Ethnic cleansing has continued unabated in Kosovo. The number of refugees has risen inexorably. Ethnic tensions in the main countries the refugees have fled to, particularly Macedonia and Greece, are at crisis point. Russia, which was from the start opposed to the NATO action, is now so antipathetic that serious commentators are talking about the danger of a new Cold War. Although it is still just about possible to argue that, given a little more time, the air strikes will force Milosevic to back down, it is looking increasingly as if they will not.
So what should happen next? Some on the Left argue that the bombing campaign has been so counter-productive that it should be stopped at once, with the cessation of hostilities to be followed by diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis.
The proposal has a certain superficial appeal. Diplomacy is generally a better means of pursuing foreign policy than war. If doing something has the opposite effect of that intended, it usually makes sense to stop doing it.
Yet stopping the air offensive and opening talks would amount to conceding victory to Milosevic – and that is unthinkable, not because NATO's honour is at stake but because a victory for Milosevic would be a victory for ethnic cleansing. Milosevic now has effective control of a depopulated Kosovo, and there is nothing to suggest that he could be talked into giving it up if NATO calls off its bombardment. Indeed, everything suggests that he will not give it up unless he faces the prospect of imminent military defeat. If NATO is serious about standing up to ethnic cleansing, it must prepare to inflict such a defeat.
As has been clear since long before the air offensive began, this means planning to deploy ground troops, if necessary in a combat role. Yet NATO continues to insist that a forcible intervention with ground troops is not an option. Of course, that might just be a sophisticated bluff – but all the indications are that it is not, and that although Tony Blair is now convinced that ground troops might be necessary, Bill Clinton, backed by the German and Italian governments, is unpersuaded.
My hunch is that, eventually, public outrage at the nightly television pictures showing the desperate plight of the Kosovo Albanian refugees will push Clinton into accepting the argument for ground troops. That would hardly be a cause for celebration: ground troops should have been a central part of NATO's plans since military intervention in Kosovo was first mooted. But for the sake of Kosovo's Albanians, I hope that he changes his mind sooner rather than later.
