Here’s what I’ve been thinking about the war in the Balkans: If this bombing campaign ever made any sense, which is debatable, that time is surely long past. Our missiles keep hitting refugees in Kosovo and non-combatants in Serbia, and in one tremendous snafu, Bulgaria.
On the other hand, how can we let the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, and the concomitant suffering, go unanswered? Now that Milosevic is starting to make peaceful noises, perhaps we are approaching an outcome that will justify all the death and destruction.
On the other hand, this whole campaign may have served to make Europe less, rather than more, secure. For the first time, NATO has adopted an offensive profile, just one year after making explicit promises to Russia that with Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in NATO, there would never be a NATO offensive. And now we ask Russia to help negotiate a peaceful solution to this NATO attack.
On the other hand, if you want to talk about instability, look no further than Slobodan Milosevic. For the past ten years, he has devoted himself to first creating, then exploiting one unstable situation after another. If we don’t draw a line in Kosovo, we’ll just get a crisis in Montenegro, or Bosnia again. It’s his modus operandi.
On the other hand, it’s fine to talk about what Milosevic has been doing for the past ten years, but what have we been doing, or not doing? If we’re going to sing the praises of intervention, why did we stand by while Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally pulled out of the Yugoslav federation in the early ‘90s, defaulting on their obligation to the federal debt? Why did we not raise a fuss when the Serbs were driven from the Krijina by the Croats? Why did we wait so long to get involved in Bosnia, and once we were involved and had Milosevic at the negotiating table in Dayton, why did we not put Kosovo on the agenda?
Okay, I could go on like this all the back to the battle of Kosovo in 1389. A persuasive argument can be constructed to support either point of view, but ultimately the arguments are unpersuasive, because I get the inevitable impression that my government blindly blunders into one foreign policy mess after another, then exerts itself in great sophist undertakings, trying to make the muddle acceptable to the citizenry.
For my whole life, the foreign policy apparatus seems always to be saying, “We had to go in with guns blazing, what else could we do?” Here are a few guiding principles to file under the heading, “What Else Could We Do?”
First, think ahead. Slobodan Milosevic came to power in 1987. The Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations have had the chance to drop the ball on this one and they all did. In the early ‘90s, the Democratic League of Kosovo tried to establish a provisional government. We did nothing. In the mid-90s, democratic opponents to Milosevic were marching in the streets of Belgrade every night. Again, we did nothing. I’m not suggesting we should have sent in the CIA, like we would have in the bad old days. But maybe send over some political strategists, as Bill Clinton did to help Tony Blair become prime minister in the UK.
Second, talk when you can. We’ve had any number of opportunities to talk this through in the past decade. It’s fine that we’re turning to Moscow to see if they can help end this fight with the Serbs, but why haven’t we used them more effectively in the past? And when we do talk, we should say something meaningful. That last round at Ramboulliet seemed liked nothing more than a bully session designed to push the Serbs into a corner, rather than a search for a common solution.
In the end, this will be remembered as Milosevic’s war, but it’s a war we could have avoided, if we’d tried.
Ready, Fire, Aim
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about the war in the Balkans: If this bombing campaign ever made any sense, which is debatable, that time is surely long past. Our missiles keep hitting refugees in Kosovo and non-combatants in Serbia, and in one tremendous snafu, Bulgaria.
On the other hand, how can we let the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, and the concomitant suffering, go unanswered? Now that Milosevic is starting to make peaceful noises, perhaps we are approaching an outcome that will justify all the death and destruction.
On the other hand, this whole campaign may have served to make Europe less, rather than more, secure. For the first time, NATO has adopted an offensive profile, just one year after making explicit promises to Russia that with Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in NATO, there would never be a NATO offensive. And now we ask Russia to help negotiate a peaceful solution to this NATO attack.
On the other hand, if you want to talk about instability, look no further than Slobodan Milosevic. For the past ten years, he has devoted himself to first creating, then exploiting one unstable situation after another. If we don’t draw a line in Kosovo, we’ll just get a crisis in Montenegro, or Bosnia again. It’s his modus operandi.
On the other hand, it’s fine to talk about what Milosevic has been doing for the past ten years, but what have we been doing, or not doing? If we’re going to sing the praises of intervention, why did we stand by while Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally pulled out of the Yugoslav federation in the early ‘90s, defaulting on their obligation to the federal debt? Why did we not raise a fuss when the Serbs were driven from the Krijina by the Croats? Why did we wait so long to get involved in Bosnia, and once we were involved and had Milosevic at the negotiating table in Dayton, why did we not put Kosovo on the agenda?
Okay, I could go on like this all the back to the battle of Kosovo in 1389. A persuasive argument can be constructed to support either point of view, but ultimately the arguments are unpersuasive, because I get the inevitable impression that my government blindly blunders into one foreign policy mess after another, then exerts itself in great sophist undertakings, trying to make the muddle acceptable to the citizenry.
For my whole life, the foreign policy apparatus seems always to be saying, “We had to go in with guns blazing, what else could we do?” Here are a few guiding principles to file under the heading, “What Else Could We Do?”
First, think ahead. Slobodan Milosevic came to power in 1987. The Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations have had the chance to drop the ball on this one and they all did. In the early ‘90s, the Democratic League of Kosovo tried to establish a provisional government. We did nothing. In the mid-90s, democratic opponents to Milosevic were marching in the streets of Belgrade every night. Again, we did nothing. I’m not suggesting we should have sent in the CIA, like we would have in the bad old days. But maybe send over some political strategists, as Bill Clinton did to help Tony Blair become prime minister in the UK.
Second, talk when you can. We’ve had any number of opportunities to talk this through in the past decade. It’s fine that we’re turning to Moscow to see if they can help end this fight with the Serbs, but why haven’t we used them more effectively in the past? And when we do talk, we should say something meaningful. That last round at Ramboulliet seemed liked nothing more than a bully session designed to push the Serbs into a corner, rather than a search for a common solution.
In the end, this will be remembered as Milosevic’s war, but it’s a war we could have avoided, if we’d tried.