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Text modified and edited slightly for clarity
Barely one week into NATO's inaugural foray into imperialism, it seems our attempt to pacify Kosovo has backfired.
Before I try to wring wisdom from folly, consider a few predictable failures:
CAUSE |
EFFECT |
| The Clinton administration, guided by the humanitarian desire to help people in distress, argued that the West had to attack Kosovo because Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic would view inaction as a license to kill. The Administration bombed. |
Milosevic unleashed a campaign of atrocities while pushing Albanians out of the province. |
| Planners promised to "degrade" Milosevic's military. |
Our country attacked some armories and airfields, but exposed our weaknesses in the process.
The government is running out of the President's weapon of preference, air-launched cruise missiles - an armament the government stopped producing 13 years ago. The Air Force is planning to turn some nuclear weapons into conventional munitions. But if the Administration continues using the bombs at the current pace, the cupboard could be bare by mid-summer. That would leave us with no choice but to buy some from the French.
Equally troublesome is the fact that one cannot subdue guerrillas from the skies. The last person to achieve unambiguous victory in an air war was Zeus. |
| The president and his top ministers promised to stop a campaign of genocide. |
But there was no such campaign. Last year, fighting in Kosovo claimed 2,000 lives on both sides. The State Department has no figures for the ante-bellum death rate this year, but sketchy estimates available through human-rights organizations indicate that the death toll was at most in the hundreds and perhaps less than 100. This does not qualify as "genocide," although it does describe the awful toll of what was a low-grade civil war before the Clinton Administration turned it into a high-octane slaughter. |
| The president warned that violence in Kosovo could set regional powers at odds, destabilizing Europe and leading to a wider war. |
This Administration has made that trifecta of misery more likely. The US invasion of a sovereign nation set off a predictable flood of refugees into Albania, Macedonia and the Yugoslav province of Montenegro. |
| In fighting Milosevic, the Clinton Administration cozied up to some bad guys, such as the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA, last year, appeared on the State Department's list of international terrorist organizations. It reportedly bankrolls its operations with proceeds from the international heroin trade and loans from such characters as Osama bin Laden. |
The Balkans and Middle Europe are crawling with dispossessed ethnic groups, including Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Macedonians and Romanians. Each has been jammed into a nation with artificially constructed borders. Most harbor not-so-secret dreams of claiming a homeland. If the Administration is going to help Kosovo's nationalists, what about Europe's other lost tribes? |
| The government said we have a fight with Milosevic, but not the Serbian people. No more: the Administration is now aiming at civilian targets. |
This ensures the Clinton Administration will kill noncombatants and enhance Milosevic's popularity. |
Which gets us to the The government defined its enemy and its objectives in such a manner as to guarantee failure. The government demonized Milosevic as the bad-hair Hitler and so prompted him to shed his inhibitions about trouncing the Albanians. The government compounded the farce by announcing that the US and NATO wouldn't use the only kind of force he might fear - ground troops.
It's too late to rally the infantry. Kosovo will be gone by then. As for the ill-considered notion of arming the KLA, it would take years to train the guerrillas - and the moment they succeeded in reclaiming Kosovo, the US government would feel compelled to disarm them.
A fair number of conservatives have been touting the Yugoslav incursion as an example of muscular "internationalism." But this operation is as ill-fated and laughable as Britain's earlier quest to subdue "wogs" and turn them into proper Englishmen. The government is treating our troops as if they were armed social workers determined to enforce good manners. But the essence of internationalism is to engage the world, not tame it.
Our fireworks display (Chinese are upgrading their fireworks with the help of espionage) over Kosovo has demonstrated the impossibility of compartmentalizing foreign policy. The government has fouled up the US' relationship with Russia. The US government has set the stage for grizzly conflicts throughout Eurasia. The Administration has encouraged the spread into Europe of radical, expansionist Islam. And now, by taking the leading role in this fight, the president has made the United States, not NATO, a target for global jeering.
What next?
- Congress has to rebuild our haggard military (which they destroyed) -- more money to pay, train and equip forces; new appropriations for missile defense and high-tech weaponry. It is a sin that our troops, upon their return from battle, must queue up for food stamps. It's a greater sin that the Administration has made our diplomats look like idiots [or maybe they(she) are just not credible anyway] when they(she) make threats. Diplomat threats mean nothing if your country has a weak military, incapable of enforcing one's empty threats. If a diplomat conveys a Neville Chamberlain aura during negotiations, then negotiations will fail.
- Now, the Administration must clean up its own mess. That probably means putting troops into Macedonia and Montenegro to prevent further incursions by Milosevic and widening hostilities.
- The US must reclaim its perspective. NATO is a defensive alliance and a political organization. It isn't equipped to declare wars. If the Administration didn't understand two weeks ago, it should today.
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