Wage a Full War -- Or Cut a Deal by Fareed Zakaria

April 12, 1999, U.S. Edition

Wage a Full War--Or Cut a Deal
Washington and its NATO allies have only two options in the Balkans -- and they'd better choose one fast.
By Fareed Zakaria

The best book on the Vietnam War explained that America's policy in that conflict was, strangely, quite rational. Leslie Gelb and Richard Bett's "The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked" argued that the Johnson administration had decided abandoning South Vietnam was out of the question, but so was invading the North. The logical result was a middle course: bombing raids and escalation. Unless NATO starts to shift policy soon, somebody years from now will write about "the irony of Kosovo."

From the start, NATO has been trapped in a dilemma. Wary of doing nothing but equally fearful of a Balkan land war, Washington and its allies chose a middle path: bombing and if that fails, more bombing. So far it has not accomplished its goals -- strategic, political and even humanitarian. It has strengthened Slobodan Milosevic's hold on power, destabilized the neighboring countries, destroyed the Rambouillet peace formula and--most important--actually worsened the plight of the Kosovar Albanians. It appears that we must let Kosovo be destroyed in order to save it.

As for the Kosovars themselves, the sad truth is, in the Balkans refugees rarely go home. The war in Bosnia uprooted 2 million people. Yet, despite the guarantees of the Dayton peace accord and the 60,000 Western peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia under its terms, less than a third of the transferred populations have moved back. Even if NATO pledges to protect the Kosovars, they may opt to stay in refugee camps in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro; huge semipermanent settlements of outsiders would create economic and political havoc. Operation Allied Force might well permanently destabilize the region -- precisely the opposite of its intended effect.

Despite its bizarre claim that the fate of Europe hangs in the balance, the Clinton administration recognizes that this is mainly a humanitarian mission. Its goal--to stop the atrocities in Kosovo--is a noble effort but a naïve one. Humanitarian tragedies have political causes; you cannot solve one without tackling the other. NATO is using military-political means but without military-political goals. The "degrading" of the Yugoslav Army is not a strategic objective. It tells us where the bombs are falling, not why.

If the goal is to stop forced population transfers on the ground, bombing is unlikely to achieve it. What is being done by paramilitary units at night cannot be prevented by supersonic aircraft. The Dayton accord ended the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia for two reasons. First, the cleansing had been successfully completed, carving three ethnically pure regions out of the old patchwork of Bosnia. Second, the Croatian and Bosnian Army offensives created strongholds for each group, forcing some kind of balance of power on the ground (supplemented, of course, by NATO troops). NATO must decide what its goals in Kosovo are--and fast. It has only two choices.

Wage war: If NATO believes that the vital interests of Europe and America are at stake in the south Balkans, then it should declare war on Yugoslavia, announce that it supports an independent Kosovo and take all means necessary to achieve that goal. This means a major land offensive, using NATO troops. Military planners who say that this could require 200,000 troops might not be far off the mark. Recall that Hitler deployed 37 divisions in Yugoslavia and still could not control the country. Our goal need not be to invade Belgrade, but we should do whatever it takes to wrest Kosovo from Yugoslavia and inflict as humiliating a defeat on Milosevic as possible--one so decisive that it weakens or topples him. Once the war is over, Kosovo will have to be armed and protected by NATO, probably in perpetuity.

Negotiate peace: If NATO decides not to go down that path, then it must develop a negotiating strategy. The bombings should continue -- in fact, they should intensify just as it appears they are -- but simultaneously, someone could take a message to Milosevic that NATO would we willing to restart negotiations. (The pope's intermediary might be just the person to use.) Rambouillet should be scrapped. It was a bad deal in the first place, creating an independent Kosovo disguised in the language of autonomy. The Serbs will never agree to it--as their current stand makes plain. The West's goal should be a slice of Kosovo, to be made autonomous or quasi independent. The Serbs would get some of what they want, which is really land--important battle and religious sites, the capital--but in return they would have to guarantee a safe haven for the Kosovars, which is what NATO wants. Western troops would have to stay for some time, but that now appears inevitable no matter how events unfold.

I vote for the second option. American interests in the south Balkans do not warrant a major and prolonged military involvement there. The Europeans have greater interests there than Washington does, but even for them the danger lies mostly in refugee flows, not in the conflict's spreading--unless NATO does the spreading itself. As Winston Churchill--hardly shy about using military force -- once said, there are certain circumstances in which "jaw, jaw is better than than war, war." But more crucially, NATO must choose one path or the other. With every passing day, events on the ground--not in Washington or Brussels--will control events. There is no middle ground in the Balkans, just a widening crater.