CONFLICT-KOSOVO: What’s the Exit Strategy?

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar 26 1999 (IPS) - After the second night of NATO air raids against Serb military targets in Yugoslavia, the big question in Washington was “what is the exit strategy?”

Officials in and out of the administration of President Bill Clinton admit that the bombing by itself may not be enough to compel Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to meet NATO demands to withdraw his forces from Kosovo and sign the western-inspired peace deal.

And even if Milosevic cried “uncle”, the Rambouillet accord may no longer be viable, according to some analysts who said the bombing may trigger a chain reaction that will make it impossible to achieve NATO’s aim of containing the ethnic conflict within Kosovo.

“I do have reservations about what seems to be a lack of an end game here, an exit strategy and exactly what we’re trying to achieve,” said Republican Sen. John McCain, a possible presidential candidate and party leader on foreign affairs.

In an effort to answer that question, Clinton spoke out Thursday, defining NATO war aims as “to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe or a wider war.”

The bombing itself, he added, was designed to “make it clear that Serbia must either choose peace or we will limit its ability to make war.” When asked about an exit strategy, however, Clinton resorted to a tautology.

“The exit strategy is what it always is in a military operation: it’s when the mission is completed,” he said

Such reasoning worried experts here, many of whom believed that Milosevic was not likely to give up, even as his military assets were gradually destroyed by NATO air attacks.

The administration appeared to believe that, confronted with NATO’s show of force, the Serb leader would back down as he did in Bosnia after NATO air strikes in 1995. But there are major differences between Kosovo and Bosnia which the administration may be overlooking in its calculations, according to the sceptics.

In the first place, Bosnia was a sovereign country at the time, whereas Kosovo is part of Serbia, and Milosevic has made his career out of his nationalist identity.

Second, main units of the Yugoslav army were not involved in Bosnia, as they are in Kosovo and finally, Serb forces, having just been routed from the Krajina region in Croatia in a lightning offensive, found themselves under serious threat on the ground by a Bosnian-Croatian alliance when NATO attacked in 1995.

“There is no equivalent on the ground to the Croatian military (in Kosovo),” said former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The absence of a credible ground force – and Clinton’s explicit rejection Wednesday of US participation in such a force – to threaten the actual loss of Serb territory seriously undermines NATO’s strategy, according to most military experts.

“There is good reason to think Mr. Milosevic will stand firm at least for a while,” wrote Balkan expert David Rieff in the New York Times.

And if he doesn’t yield, what then? It’s clear from Clinton’s and other official’s remarks, that the answer will be to hit more targets to further “degrade” Milosevic’s military forces.

The problem remained that the longer the bombing continued, the riskier it would become on a variety of levels, analysts said.

On the political level, for example, support for the campaign already was less than solid. Within NATO, Italy, Greece and France reportedly expressed reservations about a prolonged campaign while in the US Congress, Republicans were ever eager to score points against Clinton.

“We’re now picking sides in a civil war where U.S. security interests are not clear,” complained Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison Tuesday before a surprisingly narrow 58-41 vote to support US participation in NATO air strikes.

What support does exist for the bombing could evaporate if US pilots are killed or captured or if NATO bombs go astray, killing large numbers of civilians.

Both possibilities increase as the bombing campaign shifts from unmanned cruise-missile attacks against fixed targets to raids by NATO fighter-bombers against smaller, mobile targets, such as tanks.

Moreover, there is no assurance that bombing strategy effectively could prevent the Yugoslav army its campaign against the Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo’s population.

“By holding out against the bombing, (Milosevic) could buy time to continue his murderous campaign in Kosovo – at least until the ethnic cleansing of a large portion of the province is irreversible, no matter what the West does,” according to Rieff.

“That, after all, is what happened in Bosnia.”

Conversely, the bombing risks fuelling the Kosovo Liberation Army’s (KLA) drive for independence. While the KLA, which only reluctantly went along with the three-year autonomy provided for in the peace accord rejected by Milosevic, is considered too weak to defeat the Serbs, protracted bombing could alter the strategic balance.

The administration hoped that NATO’s attacks would erode Serb military power so that both Milosevic and the KLA would recognise the futility of a military solution and accept the Rambouillet accord. But some analysts belied that accord, which calls for a 28,000-troop NATO force to keep the peace, could be difficult to revive, even if Milosevic did give in.

“The Kosovars reject the autonomy Clinton says he bombs to create,” said a Washington Post columnist. The more NATO batters the Serbs’ war machine, the stronger that rejection is likely to become.

That is not necessarily a bad thing, according to some analysts who now are urging Washington to provide direct support, including military aid to the KLA.

One bill introduced in Congress called for 25 million dollars in such aid “to give the Kosovars a chance to defend themselves,” according to one sponsor, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell.

“If Milosevic does not agree to a reasonable compromise, and the Kosovars triumph, then the responsibility for the Serbs’ loss of Kosovo will be his,” according to Zalmay Khalilzad, a former senior Pentagon official under George Bush.

Still others believed that Washington should launch a campaign to oust Milosevic from power.

A bipartisan group of senators, including McCain, Thursday introduced their own 100-million-dollar bill in non-humanitarian aid “is designed to make (Milosevic’s removal from power, and Serbia democratic transformation, United States policy.”