CLINTON'S KOSOVO COLLAPSE
KAGAN, ROBERT
CLINTON'S KOSOVO COLLAPSE by Robert Kagan THE SHAM DEAL ON KOSOVO that Richard Holbrooke struck with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last October has now definitively, and predictably,...
...The Clinton administration is once again hoping to use the "threat of force"—as opposed to force itself—to make Milosevic back down...
...Some NATO allies, like France and Greece, will want to make the terms easy for Milosevic to comply with, and the Clinton administration will have to compromise on some of its own tougher conditions or risk losing allied support...
...But NATO doubts its own resolve...
...Absolutely no one in the world is falling for this Clintonian bluff anymore, least of all Milosevic...
...Now the verifiers have become what many critics of the Holbrooke agreement predicted they would become: hostages...
...He has either ordered or permitted his troops to massacre some 45 civilians, including women and children, in what U.s...
...Like so many other feats of Clintonian diplomacy over the past few years— especially in Iraq—the bargain with Milosevic was a magician's trick to make a policy of retreat appear as a victory born of firm American resolve...
...In fact, the situation is even more complicated than it was in October...
...Some allies, like France, may want to declare that Milosevic had complied sufficiently to avoid military action, or will argue that the deadline should be extended further to give him more time...
...Milosevic knows all of this, of course...
...Next comes the question of compliance...
...Milosevic's actions over the coming weeks, therefore, are almost as predictable as NATO's...
...That would have required a real army, something which neither Clinton nor the NATO allies had the stomach to insist on...
...As it happens, however, even getting to the point where the "threat of force" can be made is going to be difficult...
...Another problem is that the "extraction force" is made up entirely of French troops...
...Milosevic thus scores a victory without moving a muscle...
...But this is precisely what happened last October, when NATO last went through this complex little dance...
...Thanks to Holbrooke's dubious agreement with Milosevic, there are now about 800 unarmed international "verifiers" in Kosovo...
...Neither the allies nor the Clinton administration actually want to go ahead with military action against Milosevic...
...This "civilian army," as Holbrooke made bold to call them, has of course been incapable of stopping the Serb offensive and atrocities...
...over the past two months Milosevic has violated the ceasefire agreement in almost every way imaginable...
...one might think that the abject failure of this tactic over the past year, both in Kosovo and in Iraq, would by now have convinced the administration to give up on it...
...But the deal was so bad, so unworkable, that it collapsed in a matter of weeks...
...He has significantly augmented his military forces in Kosovo, breaking through the already too-generous ceiling which Holbrooke's agreement had placed on those forces...
...For that, we'd have to increase the size of our extraction force in Macedonia...
...He will continue and perhaps even escalate his military offensive in Kosovo, in the hopes that he can do serious and lasting damage both to the Kosovo Liberation Army and to its civilian supporters...
...If this all sounds preposterous, it is...
...NATO is not "an intervention alliance," Naumann declared, "we are not global police...
...war crimes tribunal from entering Kosovo to investigate the atrocity...
...This is precisely what he did last October...
...Not General Clark, and not the Clinton administration...
...As the deadline approaches, Milosevic will probably have fulfilled some of NATO's conditions—late last week he was already hedging on the expulsion of Walker—but not all of them...
...Jamie Rubin insisted last week that "no one should doubt NATO's resolve...
...Or, if necessary, the verifiers could be quickly hustled out of Kosovo by an "extraction force" based in Macedonia...
...Getting all NATO allies to agree on what terms Milosevic would have to satisfy to avoid air strikes will not be simple...
...Now presumably Milosevic must face the consequences...
...He has demanded the expulsion of Walker from Kosovo...
...He has prevented the chief prosecutor of the U.N...
...And if the Clinton administration behaves true to form, it will also do what it did last October: Declare victory and hope that no one notices the magnitude of its defeat...
...Since France is skittish about carrying out military strikes in the first place, will it be willing to order its inadequate forces into action to clear the way for those strikes...
...The "activation order" will be accompanied by an ultimatum to Milosevic, giving him a set period of time to meet whatever terms NATO decides on...
...And therein lies the problem...
...For one thing, the famed "extraction force" is not yet capable of carrying out its mission...
...As NATO General Klaus Naumann more candidly acknowledged, "the democratic states are wrestling with one another over this...
...He knows how long it will take NATO to complete its deliberations...
...Now that the moment of truth has arrived, however, it turns out that things are not so easy...
...He will remain intransigent while the allies bicker...
...Who will decide whether or not he has failed to comply and military action should begin...
...And he has told a parade of American envoys, including the U.s...
...First, Clinton officials must get NATO allies to approve an "activation order" that would theoretically permit General Clark to begin military action...
...In October, administration officials assured skeptics that if Milosevic violated the ceasefire and it became necessary to carry out military action, the verifiers on the ground in Kosovo would not pose a problem...
...For even if such an order is approved, it will be almost meaningless...
...Magic tricks can usually accomplish the Clinton administration's main foreign policy objective: getting through that day's news cycle and kicking the can down the road...
...As one NATO official told the New York Times last week, "We'd have to get the monitors out before we could do anything...
...If air strikes are ever actually approved, he can calculate almost to the hour when the attack will begin...
...But above all, he knows that the United States and its allies are extremely reluctant to attack...
...Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...All that takes time, as Milosevic well knows...
...CLINTON'S KOSOVO COLLAPSE by Robert Kagan THE SHAM DEAL ON KOSOVO that Richard Holbrooke struck with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last October has now definitively, and predictably, collapsed...
...But reality inevitably intrudes, and usually faster than the Clinton folks expect...
...ambassador William Walker, the head of the international verification mission in Kosovo, called a "crime against humanity...
...And the reason is the same now as it was then...
...The common wisdom last october was that Holbrooke's deal with Milosevic would keep things quiet in Kosovo at least until March...
...But the administration persists in believing that the "threat of force" is actually a key tool of policy...
...But what are the consequences...
...He has launched aggressive attacks on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo...
...commander of NATO forces, General Wesley Clark, to go jump in a lake...
...The United States will have to go back to the allies and get agreement, again, that military action can go forward...
...The key word here is "theoretically...
...One can use military power even while . . . international monitors [are] on the ground," insisted State Department spokesman, Jamie Rubin...
...He knows all the hurdles the United States must jump through before it can even threaten to use force...
...Well, that takes a little explaining, because as saddam Hussein can tell you, in Bill Clinton's world the American response to flagrant international misbehavior is not exactly what you would call swift and sure...
...Then, if NATO does approve a new activation order, Milosevic will wait until the last moment, pull back his forces, and return to the negotiating table...
...What they want to do instead—what they hope for, instead—is to use the "threat of force" and pray that Milosevic will let them off the hook, even if that means accepting another bad deal like the one Holbrooke negotiated last October...
Vol. 4 • February 1999 • No. 19
