Sydney Morning Herald
Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd
Friday, April 2, 1999
News And Features
The Hard Road To A Kosovo Solution
Henry Kissinger Dr Henry Kissinger Is A Former Us Secretary of State.
The US and NATO must redefine their aims in the Balkans to have any
hope of an agreement with Slobodan Milosovic, writes Henry Kissinger.
THE war in Kosovo is the product of a conflict going back over
centuries. It takes place at the dividing line between the Ottoman and
Austrian empires, between Islam and Christianity, and between Serbian
and Albanian nationalism. The ethnic groups have lived together
peacefully only when coexistence was imposed on them, as it was under
foreign empires or the Tito dictatorship.
President Clinton has asserted that, after a brief period of NATO
occupation, the ethnic groups will be reconciled. There is no realistic
basis for that assumption. Ethnic groups in Bosnia have not been
reconciled after three years of NATO peacekeeping.
When American forces are engaged in combat, victory is the only exit
strategy. And that requires a definition of issues that can survive
scrutiny. The Clinton Administration, in pursuit of symbols that
resonate with the public, has put forward three categories of
argument.
The most convincing is that suffering in Kosovo is so morally
offensive that we will use force to end it, regardless of traditional
considerations of our national interest. But since this leaves open the
question of why we do not intervene in East Africa, Sri Lanka,
Kurdistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan - to name just a few of the places
where infinitely more casualties have been incurred than in Kosovo -
Clinton has invoked historical analogies or current threats that are
extremely dubious.
Slobodan Milosevic is not Hitler but a Balkan thug, and there is no
analogy between the crisis in Kosovo and the events preceding World War
I. Neither Milosevic nor any other Balkan leader is in a position to
threaten global equilibrium, as Clinton constantly asserts. Milosevic
bears a major responsibility for the brutalities in Bosnia, and I
strongly supported the American deployment there. But unlike Bosnia,
Kosovo is a war for territory considered by the Serbs as a national
shrine. This is why there have been few, if any, signs of opposition in
Belgrade to Milosevic.
World War I started in the Balkans not as a result of ethnic conflicts
but for precisely the opposite reason: because outside powers intervened
in a local conflict. The assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria by
a Serbian led to a world war because Russia backed Serbia and France
backed Russia while Germany supported Austria.
World War II did not start in the Balkans, much less as a result of
its ethnic conflicts.
It is absurd to allege that the economic wellbeing of the European
Union, with a GNP exceeding America's, depends on the outcome in
impoverished Kosovo.
The cohesion of NATO is threatened primarily because it was staked on
the unsustainable Rambouillet agreement. It remains to be seen how long
it can be maintained when public reaction to the scale and duration of
the bombing sets in, and when it becomes apparent that the long-term
consequences of the campaign have to be policed by NATO ground forces.
I respect the humanitarian motive for intervention but it does not
absolve the democracies from the necessity of coming up with a
sustainable solution. The Rambouillet agreement does not meet that
test. Negotiating on the basis of an agreement drafted entirely in
foreign chancelleries and seeking to impose it by the threat of air
bombardment has only exacerbated the crisis in Kosovo.
The Rambouillet text was sold to the Kosovo Liberation Army as a
device to bring the full force of NATO to bear on Serbia, and it may
have tempted Milosevic into accelerating the repression of the KLA
before the bombs fell. Now it risks involving NATO and US ground forces
in policing an agreement neither side really wants. It was a grave error
to abandon any effort to strengthen the observers already in Kosovo in
favour of NATO peacekeepers who will find no peace to keep.
Clinton, in a speech to the Serbian people, declared: "The NATO allies
support the Serbian people to maintain Kosovo as part of your country."
He added that the agreement would "guarantee the rights of all people
in Kosovo, ethnic Serbs and Albanians alike, within Serbia." This is why
the Rambouillet agreement provides for the KLA to surrender its arms to
a NATO force. Some 10,000 Serbian policemen are to maintain security;
some 1,500 Serbian soldiers are to safeguard the frontiers.
None of this was achievable by agreement, only by imposition. The
Serbs rejected the Rambouillet agreement because they saw it as a
prelude to independence for Kosovo. They also saw the presence of NATO
troops as the sort of foreign occupation Serbia has historically
resisted. Even if they are bombed into capitulation, they can hardly be
expected to be willing supporters of the outcome.
Meanwhile, the KLA's goal remains independence, not autonomy; acceding
to Rambouillet was a tactical device to unleash NATO air power against
the Serbs. The KLA is even less likely to agree to autonomy under a
Serbia weakened by the air campaign. The KLA will not turn in its
weapons to NATO forces. And NATO forces will have no domestic support if
they have to fight the KLA to impose dis- armament. Nor will the KLA
acquiesce in Serbs policing Kosovo's frontiers. The role of Serbian
police and military forces in the proposed agreement is unclear and
incapable of being implemented.
The ironic outcome of the Rambouillet agreement is that the NATO
peacekeepers will replace the Serbs as obstacles to the national
aspirations of the Kosovo Albanians, especially if Serbia is too weak to
provide a counterweight.
Moreover, as Kosovo moves toward independence, the pressures on
Macedonia, a third of whose population is Albanian, will increase. Why
should they not be granted the same self- determination as their
brethren in Serbia? And that will risk expansion of the conflict, as
Bulgaria claims its own ethnic nationals in Macedonia, comprising at
least a third of the population, and Greece perceives an opportunity to
curtail or to eliminate a state whose very name it has rejected.
The US Administration must redefine its objectives. NATO cannot
survive if it now abandons the campaign without first ending the
massacres. The Rambouillet agreement should therefore be stripped of its
more esoteric components. The terms for ending the air war should be: an
immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of Serbian forces introduced after
the beginning of the negotiations at Rambouillet, and the immediate
opening of negotiations over autonomy for Kosovo.
These negotiations are likely to be prolonged and bitter. But, at
their end, Kosovar independence in some form is inevitable unless NATO
insists by force on the kind of Serbian suzerainty which Clinton has so
far promised, a course neither the alliance nor the American public will
support.
If a ceasefire on such terms is rejected by Milosevic, there will be
no alternative to continuing and intensifying the war, if necessary
introducing NATO combat ground forces, a solution which I have
heretofore passionately rejected but which will have to be considered to
maintain NATO credibility.
Whatever the outcome, stationing of some NATO ground forces in either
Macedonia or Kosovo will be necessary, to serve not so much as
peacekeepers as to prevent the Balkan conflict from widening. I have
consistently warned against such an outcome. But, as a result of
hesitations and confusions, NATO now has little choice if it wants to
avoid a larger war.
For someone who has supported every military action of the Clinton
Administration and who has criticised it for acting too inconclusively,
as in Iraq, the war on Yugoslavia inspires profound ambivalence.
Serbia fought at our side in two world wars, and stood up to Stalin at the height of his powers. We cannot ignore Milosevic's brutality, yet the disappearance of Serbia from the Balkans equilibrium may tempt
eruptions in other neighbouring countries containing ethnic minorities.
Even more importantly, the problem of Macedonia's integrity will be upon us, threatening a wider Balkan war. Let us hope that it will be handled with greater foresight than the prelude to the current crisis.
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