*OT* Troops Toward Kosovo
President Clinton has repeatedly said he would not send ground forces into Kosovo, but behold, NATO is now debating whether to move 50,000 ground troops to the borders of Serbia for "peacekeeping." General Wesley Clark, NATO commander, was in Washington last week warning that time is running out to return refugees by winter and discussing "forcible-entry options." And indeed, the President now denies his no-troops pledge, rallying the nation with an op-ed piece in the New York Times saying in passing that "I do not rule out other military options."
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While we are not such fools as to predict that any Clinton policy will last longer than one news cycle, the President is being pushed toward leadership inch by inch. For all the faltering, a new and tougher era in foreign policy may yet emerge from Kosovo, 1999--just as the Reagan build-up that ended the Cold War started under Jimmy Carter with Afghanistan, 1979. Mr. Clinton and all of NATO are now so deeply committed in Kosovo there is no way out but victory. There is no longer any way to "spin" defeat as victory, even for one news cycle. Whatever the face-saving devices, either Milosevic will control Kosovo or he will not.
As usual, events have been the great educator, but they have had a manly assist from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the de facto leader of the alliance. He started the ground-troops debate by advocating sending ground troops into Kosovo whether or not a settlement is reached beforehand, or, in other words, invading Serbian territory if necessary. He also has been the most outspoken NATO leader on the need to hold Milosevic to account for the crimes committed in Kosovo.
Nor is the Prime Minister's talk cheap. He has deployed more ground troops around Kosovo--in Albania and Macedonia--than any other country. Of the roughly 24,000 NATO troops in those countries, some 6,000 are British and about 5,000 American, with French, German and Italian forces making up the remainder. This, by the way, does not include an additional 30,000 troops, overwhelmingly from NATO, already in Bosnia.
Mr. Blair's outspokenness has annoyed some of his partners, including Bill Clinton, who prefers to portray the Allies as united, just as he claims the air war is working, though so far refugees are still fleeing Kosovo rather than returning. Yet Italy is calling for a 48-hour bombing pause to allow Milosevic to withdraw his troops from Kosovo, and Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini talks of "a negotiated solution to the conflict." Even more importantly, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declared last week that he will veto any NATO action that deviates from the alliance's current policy of relying solely on air strikes. Asked about ground troops, the politically shaky chancellor told a press conference that Germany "will not participate in this specifically British debate on war theories."
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Mr. Schroeder would not respond that way, of course, to leadership from the President of the United States. But like the Duke of Plaza-Toro in Gilbert and Sullivan, Mr. Clinton prefers to lead his regiment from behind. Touring American television studios, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook found himself showing a "united front" with Madeleine Albright. When asked about ground troops, Secretary Albright said she thought the bombings would do the trick; Mr. Cook emphasized the Alliance's preparations on the ground. Mr. Cook returned from Washington announcing that the 50,000-strong contingent would be "more than just a peace-keeping force," and would be prepared for a "non-permissive" environment. From Washington, the response from Secretary Albright's office was swift: "Those troops are going to go in a permissive way."
Even so, the crucial decision of the moment is whether to mass the troops, and NATO is expected to give official approval this week. The decision to have them cross the Serbian border would logically come after they are in place. And the drift of official talk is instructive. We note that reports of General Clark's briefings even raise the possibility of mounting an invasion from the NATO territory of Hungary, considered shocking when it was suggested on these pages by retired General William Odom only seven weeks ago. While we have reached the point where the air campaign produces one mistake per news cycle, it surely is succeeding in degrading the Serbian military. Conceivably for the first time in history it will force a capitulation, and surely makes any ultimate invasion easier.
Events are in the saddle. As ground forces are now massed, it becomes increasingly likely that they will ultimately be used, and indeed increasingly clear that the key to peace in the Balkans is the defeat and overthrow of the Milosevic regime. |
