Sometimes a Great Nation by Fareed Zakaria

May 18,1997

Sometimes a Great Nation
By Fareed Zakaria

A hundred years ago the leading superpower of the day, Great Britain, sent troops into the Sudan. Its statesmen explained their decision thus: Britain's global position rested on its empire in India. Access to India required a secure Suez Canal, which required that Egypt be safeguarded, which required that the upper Nile valley be controlled. So the Sudan was vital, you see.

Such was the convoluted logic of the Pax Britannica. Last week, the world got a look at the strategic spiral of the new Pax Americana. NATO's intervention in Kosovo is the logical next step -- and there will be more -- of a foreign policy in which one peripheral commitment creates another. America, already the guarantor of peace in Bosnia, will now find itself deeply involved in the future of the south Balkans, with its feuding states and ethnically mixed populations.

As a consequence of its bombing campaign, NATO has had to extend security assurances to a jittery Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovenia and Romania. Meanwhile, our relations with the major powers deteriorate, the global financial system remains unsettled, and genuine threats in the Middle East and Northeast Asia are placed on hold. "We can only do one crisis at a time," a White House official told me last week. Someone had better keep that from Saddam Hussein.

President Clinton put out a volley of explanations for the attack, hoping that if one does not convince, another will. First he claimed that American security and prosperity require keeping our major trading partners in Europe safe.

But for much of the last decade a bloody war has raged in the Balkans, while Western Europe has thrived. We have been constantly warned that instability in the former Yugoslavia would spill over, yet it has not. Indeed, the tragedy of Bosnia was that none of Europe's major powers cared much what happened there.

If the Balkan conflict does spread this time it will be because NATO interfered -- thus creating the problem the alliance is supposedly trying to solve. Over the last century the region's wars have expanded only when major powers have got involved -- most disastrously in 1914.

The most honest supporters of intervention admit that to be successful, bombing must be merely the beginning of a much bigger and wider campaign involving other countries in the region. Some advocate using Albania as a staging ground for NATO ground troops. Others recommend creating a 60,000-strong force in Macedonia. If all this seems farfetched, consider that if the Serbs continue their campaign in Kosovo, the United States will be faced with two options -- appeasement or escalation. (It was this grim dilemma that pushed a reluctant Washington deeper and deeper into Vietnam.)

On the other hand, if Serbia does back down, NATO will have created a new state in the Balkans. Kosovo's relations with its neighbors -- including Macedonia, which has a mix of Albanians and Serbs, and Albania itself -- will be tense. As the main sponsor of the new nation, America will have to assume some responsibility for its security. Russian ties to the Serbs are bound to strengthen. (Having been assured for the last three years that NATO is a defensive alliance, Russia is predictably furious to find it waging a war in the south Balkans.) Greece and Turkey are always spoiling for a fight anyway.

President Clinton says he wants to avoid the kind of mistakes that led to World War II. But in drawing outside powers into the Balkans, he is forming tangled alliances reminiscent of World War I. And one hopes Mr. Clinton understands that Slobodan Milosevic -- who rules a moth-eaten, impoverished country that has not attacked its neighbors -- is no Adolf Hitler. He is not even Saddam Hussein.

The President's humanitarian case for NATO's action is more compelling. Serb atrocities in Kosovo are real and gruesome. The United States is powerful enough that when it can do good it should -- if the costs and risks seem reasonable. But in this case, NATO is entering a complex political situation without a clear objective or exit. In attacking a country for denying a province independence, it is inviting claims from a long list of victims -- including Kurds, Tibetans, Kashmiris and Chechens, among others.

Mr. Clinton and his supporters wrongly framed the Kosovo debate as one between intervention and isolation. The real question is, what kinds of intervention should America engage in?

The Clinton Administration has tried nation-building in Somalia, democratization in Haiti and reintegration in Bosnia. Every one of these experiments has failed. Every one of these peripheral interventions was also unplanned, a reaction to a crisis. Surely the test of a world power is not only when it can say yes, but also when it can say no.

Meanwhile Washington's relations with the major powers range from bad to worse. Nuclear arms reduction with Russia is in a deep freeze; relations with Japan are barely civil; the roller-coaster ride with China is on a sharp downswing. Thanks to European defections, the containment of both Iran and Iraq is wearing thin. After announcing last fall that the global economy was facing "its worst crisis in 50 years," Mr. Clinton dropped the issue rather than tussle with the G-7. But thank goodness we're bombing Belgrade!

Washington can pursue a careless foreign policy because it has power to waste. The United States towers over the world like no country ever has.

This gives America a unique window of opportunity. It could strengthen the basic foundations of global peace, expanding the open world economy and liberal order that the industrial states enjoy. Or it could keep up its efforts to put a lid on ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts whenever they break out. This will be an unending task, since the world is not going to stop changing, and new groups will always make new claims to power.

Britain spent decades -- and endless blood and treasure -- stabilizing dozens of places like the Sudan. Once it left, the violence always began anew.

Great global power -- no matter how benevolent -- always arouses envy and resentment. (John Dryden wrote in the 17th century, "When the chosen people grew too strong / The rightful cause at length became the wrong.")

Washington should make sure that when it provokes international ire and opposition, it is doing so for good reasons. The tragedy of American diplomacy today is that it is incurring the costs of hegemony without getting the benefits.