NATO STARTED BOMBING TO HELP MILOSEVIC
Kjell S Johansen (kjellsjo@online.no)
Tue, 27 Apr 1999 10:27:33 +0200
>------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
>Date sent: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 13:45:22 -0700
>To: ccpa@policyalternatives.ca
>From: Sid Shniad <shniad@sfu.ca>
>Subject: NATO STARTED BOMBING TO HELP MILOSEVIC
>
>The Sunday Telegraph 25 April 1999
>
>NATO STARTED BOMBING TO HELP MILOSEVIC
>
> by Edward Luttwak
>
> "We will keep bombing until Milosevic steps down", insisted your
>Prime Minister last week. He was instantly corrected by Jamie Shea,
>NATO's spokesman: "We will keep bombing," he stressed, "until
>Milosevic backs down". The tumble over terminology identifies a
>fundamental fissure in NATO - a fissure running through not just the
>means to be employed in the war, but what the point of it is.
> When the war began, NATO's aims were clear and limited. The
>aim of the war was not an independent Kosovo, or the overthrow of
>President Milosevic, the man now routinely referred to as the Butcher
>of the Balkans, the new Hitler, and a genocidal war criminal. It was, in
>fact, to reinforce Milosevic's position within Serbia.
> The United States, led by Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of
>State, persuasively argued that only Milosevic could deliver an
>agreement on Kosovo. The Serbian opposition was and is much more
>determined to hold onto Kosovo, at whatever cost, than he is. If
>Milosevic was to be able to sign the Rambouillet agreement, which the
>Kosovar Albanians had ratified, he would have to have the excuse that
>he had no alternative. NATO bombing would, it was thought, be
>enough to show the Serbs that their President had "no alternative".
> The limited aim of an autonomous, but not independent, Kosovo - a
>Kosovo with its own law-courts, but without its own army or Foreign
>Ministry - had a series of very clear and specific implications for the
>means by which NATO was to fight the war. First, the Kosovo
>Liberation Army (KLA) was not to be armed or trained. Second, the
>force used against Serbia should be deployed in a very measured way.
>Its point was not to destroy Milosevic, but to persuade him back to the
>negotiating table. Far from being regarded as an enemy of humanity, he
>was believed, when the war started, to be an indispensible figure to
>NATO: for he was the only Serb politician capable of resolving the
>Kosovo question on NATO's lines.
> There was, therefore, no question of attacking Milosevic's
>apparatus of power or his political infrastructure, still less his person.
>So NATO's plan of attack was extremely gentle. There were less than
>50 targets on the original first phase bombing offensive. Most of them
>were minor, remote air defence targets. If you wondered why, in the
>first two weeks, all those bombing missions were cancelled because of
>a few clouds, here's the reason: the aim was not to hurt Milosevic, but
>to give him an excuse for capitulating to NATO on Kosovo. That aim
>suited Western politicians perfectly for another reason: none of them
>wanted to see any of their pilots get hurt. A campaign which did no real
>damage to Serbia would also be one which did not risk the lives of any
>NATO pilots.
> "War lite" was therefore to everyone's taste. Unfortunately,
>Milosevic refused to walk down the path NATO made out for him.
>Instead of rushing into NATO's open arms, he sent his police units into
>Kosovo and proceeded to evict as many Kosova Albanians as possible,
>as quickly as he could. Milosevic's failure to behave according to plan
>has caused a rapid re-appraisal of NATO's war aims. It has also
>dramatically altered the means which must be used to achieve them.
> What is the aim of the war now the original justification for it, and
>the strategy behind it, have both been shredded? NATO has started
>bombing Milosevic's power base. It has targeted his home, his TV
>station, and his party's headquarters. But let us be clear: the change of
>tactics has not come about because politicians like Clinton and Blair
>have suddenly "discovered" that Milosevic is guilty of genocide.
>Everyone with any involvement in policy towards the Balkans has
>known for years that Milosevic was guilty of mass murder. His
>behaviour in Kosovo, though hideous, is so far relatively mild
>compared to the genocide he perpetrated in Bosnia. There is some
>evidence that he over-ruled some of the real ultras who recommended
>the "Bosnian solution" to the Kosovo problem: massacring all Kosova
>Albanians, rather than just expelling them, which has been Milosevic's
>policy.
> No, the targetting of Milosevic is simply a reflection of frustration
>at his failure to act as he was supposed to. It is a familiar pattern: a
>dictator is demonised as a monster only when Western foreign policy
>fails, and he ceases to respond in a predictable way to threats and
>offers. It happened with Saddam, with whom the US and Britain were
>happy to "do business" when he behaved as predicted - despite his
>hideous cruelty and use of chemical weapons against his own people.
>Only when statecraft failed, and he did something quite unpredicted -
>invaded Kuwait - was he turned into "the new Hitler".
> The motives behind targetting Milosevic are no more "moral" than
>they were in the case of Saddam. NATO's aims are in disarray as a
>consequence. Everyone recognises that Milosevic remains the least
>horrible Serbian leader amongst a very horrible bunch. Removing him
>would make the situation worse, by ensuring he was replaced by a
>harder line nationalist. So what is the aim of the war?
> There are two competing answers to that question. One is the
>creation of an independent Kosovo. This could not be done without a
>full scale invasion by NATO. It does not seem very likely. A NATO
>which is unwilling to fly planes below 15,000 ft because of the risk to
>its pilots' lives is not going to risk the deaths of thousands of ground
>troops. That aim is opposed by some NATO members, and does not
>yet have US backing. Without the US, it will remain a gleam in Tony
>Blair's eye.
> The other alternative is much more likely. It is to persuade
>Milosevic to agree to some compromise. The hope is that the bombing,
>if it is intense enough, will force Milosevic to turn to the Russians,
>empowering them to negotiate a settlement with NATO. Any deal
>would inevitably involve the partition of Kosovo, with the Serbians
>hanging on to the resource-rich north, whilst the south would be an
>international "protectorate" run by a mixed force of NATO, Russians,
>and "non aligned" countries.
> That would, of course, be a victory for Milosevic. But that does not
>stop many NATO leaders from fervently praying for it. It would allow
>NATO to exit the war with some dignity intact: it could be "spun" to
>suggest that NATO had achieved a homeland for the Kosovars and
>peace in the Balkans.
> A great power congress to solve Kosovo would be like the great
>19th century congress of Berlin, which re-drew the map of Europe. It
>would not have much to do with ethics. But then no foreign policy ever
>does. It is the greatest of your present Government's illusions, or its
>most chilling cynicism, to pretend that its foreign policy is, or could be,
>any different.
>_____________
>
>Edward Luttwak is a member of the National Security Study Group of
>the US Department of Defence.
>
>