This pretty much sums things up (Investors Business Daily):
NATIONAL ISSUE
WAS KOSOVO BOMBING NEEDED? Peace Deal Much Like One
Serbs Backed Earlier
Date: 6/15/99
Author: Brian Mitchell
Who says wars must be fought to the finish?
NATO's campaign against Yugoslav Serbs ended Thursday like many other wars - with a negotiated peace and concessions on both sides.
NATO wins control over Kosovo but gives up its demand for access to all of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia loses control over Kosovo but survives as an independent nation, its regime and army still intact.
So was the war worth it? Has NATO won too little? Could it have made Kosovo safe for Kosovars without two-and-a-half months of bombing?
Bombing killed more people than a year of fighting between Yugoslav forces and Albanian rebels. Before the bombing, fighting killed 2,000 people on both sides. NATO's refused to estimate how many were killed by its bombing, but Yugoslav officials admit to losing about 1,000 troops and 2,000 civilians.
Independent analysts believe military casualties are probably much higher. The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, based in Sweden, puts deaths as high as 15,000.
Bombing also sparked retaliation against Albanians in Kosovo. Many were driven from their homes. Refugees swelled to over 850,000, compared to less than 100,000 before the bombing.
The war may have demonstrated NATO's might and resolve, but it has left Kosovo a blackened land. Bomb damage to Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia has been estimated at $30 billion.
Military operations have cost billions more. Other countries in the region have suffered economic loss from disruption
of roads, railways and river crossings.
U.S. and NATO officials have consistently blamed the Yugoslavs for the war.
''It is tragic that intransigence has made it necessary for the international community to resort to airstrikes in order to
reach a settlement,'' said British Lieut. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, NATO's chief negotiator, in Macedonia Wednesday.
NATO began bombing when Yugoslavia refused to submit to a NATO ultimatum at Rambouillet, France, in February. The ultimatum demanded terms very similar to the peace settlement just reached.
The terms included an end to oppression of Albanians in Kosovo, withdrawal of all but a handful of Yugoslav troops, return of refugees, occupation of Kosovo by NATO forces and a plebiscite on Kosovo's independence in three years.
During the bombing, the U.S. and NATO insisted the bombing would end only when Yugoslavia accepted the Rambouillet ultimatum.
In the end, the Yugoslavs accepted much of it - withdrawal of troops, foreign occupation of Kosovo and autonomy but not independence for Kosovo.
But the Yugoslavs had agreed to much the same before the bombing. The only genuine dispute was over the makeup of foreign military peacekeepers.
There were already 600 civilian observers in Kosovo before the bombing. Yugoslavia had agreed to accept 2,000. But then bombing started.
''We could have gotten a multilateral (military) force (in Kosovo) if we had included the Russians at that time, but we were not willing to let them in,'' said Ron Hatchett, a former Balkan analyst for the Defense Department.
NATO still has not come to terms with the Russians, who were first to occupy Kosovo after the Serbs withdrew.
Hatchett and other critics say NATO's intransigence, rather than the Yugoslavs', made bombing inevitable.
Now director of the Center for International Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Hatchett met with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade during the bombing.
Hatchett said the Yugoslavs might have been more yielding at Rambouillet if NATO hadn't been so demanding. To win the support of Albanian radicals, NATO insisted that Kosovars be given a vote to secede from Yugoslavia.
NATO also demanded ''free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access'' throughout all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo.
This would have included ''the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations,'' according to the Rambouillet proposal.
Yugoslav officials objected that this provision would have amounted to unconditional surrender of their entire country to NATO - much like the ''quartering'' of British troops in colonists' homes Americans objected to before our own
Revolutionary War.
Such ''deal-breakers'' have prompted criticism that NATO did not negotiate in good faith at Rambouillet.
That criticism is bolstered by reports that State Department officials have bragged to reporters that they deliberately set the bar too high for the Yugoslavs to reach.
''What surprises me is the brassiness of these State Department people bragging that they went out to concoct a pretext for bombing,'' said George Kenney, former Yugoslav desk officer at State.
Kenney resigned in 1992 to protest the lack of U.S. involvement in Bosnia. Since then, he's often complained that U.S. policy is biased against the Serbs.
The final peace settlement limits NATO troops to Kosovo. It also makes no mention of a plebiscite on independence for Kosovo.
Instead, it recognizes Yugoslav sovereignty over Kosovo, though this may be little more than a way for Yugoslavia to save face. Real power in Kosovo will rest with NATO and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The peace settlement provides for ''demilitarizing'' the KLA, but U.S. officials have admitted that this does not mean disarming it. Instead, the KLA will assume the responsibilities of the vacating Yugoslav security police.
That's bad news for Kosovo, says Michael Beer, director of Nonviolence International.
Beer worked with Albanian moderates in Kosovo before the fighting undermined their efforts.
''We've seen a power shift in Albanian Kosovar society away from the old, mature leadership toward a young military leadership, which is very inexperienced at the very least,'' said Beer.
''You tend to have real problems in societies when the leadership is made up of 29-year-olds and all they know how to do is shoot a gun and give orders,'' Beer said. ''These are not the kind of people who make tatesman-like)
decisions.''
Not all of the war's outcomes are consistent with NATO's stated objectives. NATO officials had cast the war as a crusade for ethnic tolerance.
''There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states,'' said NATO's Supreme Commander U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark on CNN in April. ''That's a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.''
But even NATO now expects Kosovo to become solidly Albanian. The peace settlement is expected to create a new flood of refugees - this time as many as 100,000 Serbs fleeing Kosovo.
Many Albanian refugees aren't expected to return. ''I know that the White House spin is that they're all lined up, champing at the bit, and they're having to hold them back, but I can't find those guys,'' said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who was in Albania recently.
In fact, one challenge facing peacekeepers in Kosovo will be protecting Kosovar Serbs from retaliation by returning
Albanian refugees.
The war also has strained U.S. military capabilities and tarnished the reputation of the U.S. around the world.
''More than half the population of the world now regards the U.S. as the single greatest threat to their own countries,'' said Robert Hayden, director of the Center for Russian & East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
''We seem to think we can go in and destroy other people's countries and nothing will ever happen to us,'' he said.
In his TV address Thursday, President Clinton said, ''I can report to the American people that we have achieved a victory for a safe world, for our democratic values, and for a stronger America.''
Kenney said, ''One thing we can be absolutely certain about is that NATO is not going to bring democracy to Kosovo.''
He added: ''Another thing we can be certain about is that NATO will be camped out there for a very long time and it's going to cost a lot of money.'' |
