Crisis-Hopping Isn’t an Option

However the Kosovo crisis is resolved, the United States and its NATO allies must finally commit themselves to a comprehensive and coherent strategy for long-term stability throughout Southeast Europe. Beyond reinforcing Allied determination in Kosovo, this must be the centerpiece of the NATO summit in Washington on April 23-25. The alternative is to condemn the West to more episodic interventions under crisis conditions.

Bosnia should have been a warning. In a small corner of Europe, the four-year conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina poisoned relations between NATO and the United Nations and nearly wrecked the Atlantic alliance over the issue of whether it should employ air power to protect Bosnian civilians. It was only in the summer of 1995, after two years’ vacillation, that the NATO allies finally used military force beyond isolated “pin prick” bombing of Bosnian Serb heavy weapons. Robust NATO airstrikes then helped to end the war and to give Bosnia hope of a peaceful future.

But NATO was not acting out of a sense of responsibility for the fate of the Balkans; rather, it was shamed by the massacre at Srebrenica. It also recognized that it could not validate its newly designed role in Central Europe and with Russia so long as war raged on the alliance’s doorstep. Naturally enough, when Bosnia quieted down, there was no attempt to sort out the region’s other problems, even in Kosovo--the “other shoe waiting to drop” in the Yugoslav Federation and already the subject of security pledges by Presidents Bush and Clinton. The allies finally agreed to act in Kosovo only when they saw a replay of Bosnia: more slaughter engineered by Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic and the need to preserve NATO’s ability to act elsewhere in Central Europe and beyond. They also had to settle Kosovo promptly lest it disrupt NATO’s 50th birthday celebration at the Washington summit.

Yet the Balkans--and Southeast Europe more broadly--are now more important than they were during the Cold War. Then, East-West confrontation kept Balkan problems in check, and even recurring crises between Greece and Turkey did not challenge basic U.S. and Western strategy toward the Soviet Union. Today, by contrast, most of newly independent Central Europe is well on the way to stability based on the growth of democracy, the prospect of economic advance and deep engagement with NATO and the European Union. In Europe outside of Russia, only in the Balkans is the “unfreezing of history” producing major stresses and even conflict.

Meanwhile, the entire region has become more important because of rising concerns about the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and areas beyond like Afghanistan, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. In addition to the intrinsic value of trying to resolve remaining European struggles, there is increased strategic importance in doing so. It is not for nothing that U.S. air power in Europe has largely moved south of the Alps, that U.S. ground power is beginning to follow suit and that the U.S. 6th Fleet is as important as it was in the Cold War.

Growing political and strategic interests, however, have not yet produced commitment, policy or leadership. NATO decided well before the Kosovo crisis exploded that it would not issue membership invitations at this month’s summit to Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria or Macedonia. At the same time, the allies have not planned to beef up NATO’s Partnership for Peace in the region or to provide either a precise strategic focus, concentrated political effort or substantial resources. The United States has taken some modest steps, but these dwarf those of the other NATO allies combined.

Nor has diplomacy to try defusing Greek-Turkish relations and resolve the Cyprus dispute fared much better. U.S. and United Nations’ attempts have been episodic and half-hearted, even though tensions have risen and been sharpened by the European Union’s membership negotiations with Cyprus, while Turkey is shut out. And Turkey’s internal troubles, including religious-secular stresses and the Kurdish minority, are putting it under severe pressures.

At the Washington summit, the allies must reverse course and show, finally, that they are prepared to put commitment, effort and resources behind their clear strategic interests in a stable Southeast Europe. For President Clinton, host of the summit, this is a key test of his foreign policy leadership. Indeed, with NATO’s policy in Kosovo being widely criticized, demonstrating a broader vision is critical even to shore up support for its Kosovo efforts.

It is a rare crisis that does not provide a chance to seize the future, to turn war aims into aims for peace. Thus the allies must recognize, now, that nothing in NATO’s future is possible unless they put the focus on, and keep it on, all of Southeast Europe from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, from former Yugoslavia to Turkey’s Eastern frontier.