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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (2540)	4/7/1999 7:12:00 PM
From: George Papadopoulos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

>Your problem is that you can only see actions, and not consequences. If you deny that threat of a conflict engulfing the entire eastern Mediterannean, including two NATO members (attacking each other), and the possibility of a general European war erupting out of the Balkan situation is a threat to European security, then there is no point even responding to your posts. As far as the two NATO members (Greece and Turkey) attacking each other over the Kosovo conflict (the systematic genocide of 2,000 Serbs and Albaninans) engulfing the entire eastern Mediterannean...Please, gimme a break. After the bombs started falling, you got thousands of Albanian refugees about to overran FYROMacedonia and Albania, you got US troops in Albania, you got other nuclear powers opposing you, you got the Greek govt trying to walk a very fine line trying to be a good nato member AND please its citizens, you got Serb and Albanian refugees suffering, and, most importantly, you got US credibility shot for decades to come... I think I preferred the Serbs and Kla massacring each other inside Kosovo, thank you very much<g>.

To: D. Long who wrote (2540)	4/7/1999 7:17:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

If you deny that threat of a conflict engulfing the entire eastern Mediterannean,... If indeed there were such a conflict, and it directly affected NATO countries or realistically threatened to, and those countries asked for NATO defense assistance to protect themselves, then I would agree with you. As it was, the only fighting there was was entirely within the borders of one non-Nato country, and the only bordering NATO country, Hungary, was nowhere near the area of fighting and nobody has realistically claimed that Hungary's soverienty was endangered. What gives you any reason to believe that Serbia/KLA conflict would spill over into "the entire eastern Mediterannean," by which I assume you include Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, etc. I have seen NO credible argument by ANY expert that Yugoslavia had any intention of expanding the war to any of those (still non-NATO) countries. The only NATO country which realistically was in any danger of the conflict spreading to its borders is Greece, and they did not call for any help from NATO; indeed, they have been strongly against the bombing, which they believe has increased, not decreased, the danger of their involvement. I suppose Italy could be concerned if Yugoslavia had any navy to speak of, but they don't, and anyhow Italy was not a supporter of the bombing either. They apparently didn't see the Yugoslav conflict as any danger to their territorial integrity. As far as I know, Turkey has not even suggested that they needed NATO help to prevent the Yugoslav conflict from spilling over into their country. Yugoslavia is a long way and many mountain ranges from Turkey. Do you really believe that Yugoslavia was planning to invade Italy, or Germany, or France, or Poland, or . . . So again, what NATO country's borders were realistically threatened by the civil war within Yugoslavia? I asked you to name one, and you didn't. You talked about generalities, but I want the name of a NATO country which was or felt realistically threatened to such a degree that it invoked the mutual defense provisions of the NATO treaty.