WIN IT
WIN IT According to the polls, a majority of the American people support sending U.S. and NATO ground troops into Yugoslavia to defeat Serb forces and stop the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the...
...They must also damage his interests elsewhere...
...This does not necessarily mean marching on Belgrade— although we would hope that as NATO moves forward in any ground war this option not be discarded...
...It is irresponsible for the president and his advisers to continue ruling out the ground option, and it is simply unforgivable that the administration has refused even to begin preparing for such a deployment...
...But it does mean indicting Milosevic as a war criminal...
...But then history has taught us that you rarely get to choose where to make your stand...
...But we think American opinion on Kosovo has also been significantly shaped by something else, something often talked about but rarely glimpsed: bold political leadership—the kind of leadership that shapes polls rather than follows them, the kind that stakes out a position in a crisis without waiting to see which way the pack is running, the kind of leadership for which Americans ordinarily look to their president...
...Robert Kagan and William Kristol, for the Editors...
...Why don't they just make Dick Morris the national security adviser and stop the charade...
...And it means taking much tougher measures against pro-Milosevic forces in Bosnia...
...The struggle in Kosovo today is about more than human suffering...
...Talk about leadership...
...In the coming days the Butcher of Belgrade is going to mount a peace offensive to try to lock in his military gains in Kosovo and split the alliance...
...Dictators around the world, and other would-be Milosevics who have not yet made their appearance, need to know that when they carry out their brutal acts, they will not merely be resisted and turned back...
...Any strategy that does not aim at Milosevic's ouster—as well as the removal of the thugs who surround him—will only make it likely that at some point in the future the horrors we have witnessed will return...
...They need to know that they will lose some of their power, preferably all of their power, perhaps their lives as well...
...No doubt much of this popular sentiment comes from Americans watching the daily horrors of Kosovo unfold before their eyes, while the ineffectiveness of ever-so-slowly-escalating NATO airstrikes becomes ever more depressingly apparent...
...It may seem odd that this challenge is coming in a place that few Americans ever heard of...
...Or will we allow much of the world to slip into chaos and brutality, to be shaped by men like Milosevic and Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il and the dictators in Beijing...
...The task now is to win the war...
...and NATO ground troops into Yugoslavia to defeat Serb forces and stop the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the Kosovar Albanians...
...He may offer to accept many of the terms laid out in the Rambouillet agreement, including "autonomy" for Kosovo—but with Serb control and some Serb military and police forces remaining in Kosovo to intimidate whatever ethnic Albanians are left in the province...
...NATO has been reluctant to go after him for fear of casualties...
...As McCain said last week, "the president wants to win a war without waging a war...
...The longer Clinton waits, the better Milosevic's chances to win—either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table...
...Drive Milosevic from power...
...It is Milosevic's ruthless ambition, not historical ethnic hatreds, which has brought war and misery to the Balkan peoples throughout this decade...
...Mobilization for a ground war will take weeks...
...This would be a good time, for instance, for NATO to go in and snatch the war criminal Radovan Karadzic, who has been frolicking around Bosnia for years...
...But unlike Bush, Clinton has refused to take the necessary steps to make good on that promise...
...The Clinton administration continues to cling to the hope that victory can be achieved by air power alone...
...Will hard-line Bosnian Serbs protest and perhaps even seek vengeance...
...Today the crisis in Kosovo has become one of those unlikely pivots in history...
...There will be a time later on for post-mortems on the Clinton administration's conduct of this war and for a broader debate on the principles and practice of American foreign policy...
...One could wish that President Clinton had the courage to build on the foundation of public support established and reinforced by leaders like McCain, Lugar, Hagel, and Cox...
...No return to the status quo ante...
...That is what is at stake in this crisis...
...Here's what winning means: ¶ Liberate Kosovo...
...But whether or not that proposition ever made sense, the way the United States and NATO have conducted the air war—with Vietnam-style gradualism—has made success nearly impossible...
...Still, perhaps the president can be led to the right policy, and the right policy is to win this war...
...Accepting any of these proposals, or even entering into negotiations to discuss them, means a victory for Milosevic and a clear defeat for the United States and NATO—not to mention a continuing nightmare for the ethnic Albanians...
...No more deals with Milosevic...
...It does mean isolating him in the international community, maintaining strict economic sanctions, and supporting those Serbian democratic forces who, once the present conflict is over and Milosevic's military has been defeated, will surely return to their earlier struggle against the tyrant who has brought the Serb people so much misery...
...At the end of the war, Milosevic must be seen, by his own people, by the world, and especially by the likes of Saddam Hussein and the leaders in Pyongyang, to have made a disastrous miscalculation of American and NATO resolve, which cost him and his followers dearly...
...But now that we're in a full-scale war with Milosevic, that reticence seems especially ludicrous...
...We will someday have to look back and judge whether we had the courage and wisdom to stem the tide of brutality and dictatorship or whether the United States, instead, let the international order we uphold, and from which we benefit, begin to crumble...
...But that is no reason not to try...
...No, this time it is coming from a handful of Republican politicians, led by Senator John McCain, who had the guts to get out in front of public opinion and make the case that the moral and strategic stakes in Kosovo are high, and that when America starts a war it needs to win it— even if that means using ground forces...
...Now other influential Republicans, like congressman Chris Cox, are stepping up to the plate despite their earlier misgivings about the military operation in Kosovo...
...Driving Serb forces out of Kosovo is now going to require U.S...
...Until that discussion begins, the Clinton administration should revoke Richard Holbrooke's passport and tell Yevgeny Primakov to turn his attention to fixing the Russian economy...
...After all, more strategic flexibility would have served us well in the Gulf War, as it became apparent at the end of the conflict that the removal of Saddam Hussein was a goal well within the grasp of American military forces...
...Unfortunately, Clinton and his advisers seem to be worried that while support for ground troops may be high today, it will not remain so once troops are deployed and casualties taken...
...They need to know that they will become marked men...
...It is essential that Milosevic pay a very high price for his brutality in Kosovo...
...He may offer a plan for partition...
...Only this time the bold leadership is not coming from the White House, or from the State Department, or from the Pentagon, whose inhabitants, whatever their good intentions, remain paralyzed by fear at the thought of committing ground forces to complete the job they so hesitantly and, as it now appears, ineptly began...
...There is no guarantee that Milosevic would fall, or that if he did his successors would be angels...
...Congress can and should authorize the use of ground forces as part of a strategy for victory...
...President Clinton tried to sound like George Bush last week, declaring that Serb actions in Kosovo "must not stand...
...This week Congress returns and will likely take up the Kosovo crisis...
...The bare minimum that the United States and NATO must achieve in the coming weeks is the removal of all Serb forces from Kosovo, followed by the return of ethnic Albanian refugees under the protection of a NATO force...
...For that reason, it is not enough if the United States and NATO merely reverse Milosevic's aggression in Kosovo...
...That's why in addition to preparing for ground war in Kosovo, NATO should beef up its forces in Bosnia and get ready for the possibility of combat there, too...
...At stake is the single overriding question of our time: Will the United States and its allies have the will to shape the world in conformance with our interests and our principles, challenging as that task may be...
...It is about more even than European stability and NATO's credibility...
...Or, to put it another way: to win this war against Slobodan Milosevic and his army of butchers by whatever means necessary...
...Probably, but at some point in this conflict they may do so anyway...
...Whether this is a short-term or long-term goal, we need to make clear that it must be the ultimate goal of American policy to rid Europe of this menace once and for all...
...Presidents normally lead, and Congress normally follows, but the best thing Congress can do is to put as much pressure as possible on this president...
...The only thing to discuss with Milosevic is his unconditional surrender...
...That means defending the increasingly independent republic of Montenegro against attempts at subversion and allowing the Montenegrins the chance to break away from Belgrade's control...
...Congress should oppose cutting any deals with Milosevic and insist on victory...
...The happy result of McCain's leadership, along with that of senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel, is that a good portion of the American public has come remarkably quickly to the same conclusion: that winning is the only acceptable option in this crisis...
...So Clinton and his advisers are preemptively deterred even from preparing for the use of ground troops because they fear that at some unknown moment down the road, the polls might dip...
Vol. 4 • April 1999 • No. 29
