Kosovo Deal Grew Out of NATO’s Self-Interest and Compassion

For the second time in eight months, the United States has threatened a dangerous, unpredictable dictator with military force, helped wring eleventh-hour concessions to defuse an international crisis and managed to preserve an uncertain peace.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and, in the earlier instance, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared to know exactly how far to push the West before stepping back from the brink.

But in other critical respects, there’s a world of difference between Monday’s tentative agreement with Milosevic on separatist Kosovo province and February’s U.N.-brokered arrangement to avert a military strike against Iraq.

Although it took a while, America and Europe’s major democracies finally coalesced to face Milosevic down. And the Western powers appear to have won on their terms: a cease-fire, a withdrawal of Serbian forces from the embattled province, assured access by humanitarian workers, international observers to verify Milosevic’s commitments, and a pledge to negotiate a political settlement between Serbian authorities and Kosovo’s predominantly ethnic Albanian population.

By contrast, last winter’s crisis with Hussein climaxed with a dubious compromise--and severe strains between the United States and its NATO partners.

Of course, initial assessments of the Kosovo accord are seasoned with more than a pinch of skepticism. Even President Clinton noted that “Balkan graveyards are filled with President Milosevic’s broken promises,” and other White House officials were similarly cautious in their responses.

“Commitments are not compliance,” National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger warned Tuesday.

Major questions already have arisen about the mechanics of the Kosovo agreement. Yet even amid the uncertainty, there are important lessons to be learned from the two crises.

Nearly a decade after the Cold War’s end, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization remains a credible, durable force, ready to act on “out-of-area” missions to preserve peace throughout Europe--although possibly not beyond.

In many respects, Kosovo was a milestone for NATO, and not just because it involved an internal Yugoslav crisis.

Italy’s government, which collapsed Friday, could have easily refused to back proposed airstrikes. Instead, the Italians acted. And in Germany, the newly elected Social Democrats and their likely coalition partners, the supposedly anti-NATO Greens, said they would back any decision made by caretaker Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

“It was a very important test for NATO,” said a senior Clinton administration official.

The Europeans were motivated in part because the crisis is virtually on their doorstep. It presents problems for them on three levels: as a threat to their stability, an affront to their values and a potential source of a new influx of refugees.

“What is at stake here is the stability of Europe, and I think everyone understands that,” said Dominique Moisi of the French Institute for International Relations in Paris. “It is an insult to human rights in the heart of Europe.”

The two crises also underscore the additional incentive created when the West believes it is acting to avert human tragedies, analysts said. In Kosovo, the United States and its European allies garnered much of their support from a popular mandate to halt human suffering caused mainly by the actions of Yugoslav leader Milosevic. Hundreds of people have died since the crackdown began in February, and as many as 300,000 civilians have fled their homes.

In the Iraqi crisis, public perceptions were more ambiguous. Although few in the West doubted that Hussein is a dangerous leader who cares less about his people than about his own well-being, some argued that sanctions were the biggest source of potential starvation in Iraq and that threatened airstrikes posed the greatest direct threat to the Iraqi people.

“The suffering of ordinary people is a considerable driving political force,” noted Douglas Johnston, a national security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “In Kosovo, there is no question who’s the cause.”