A New World Disorder

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 50th anniversary had been expected not only to celebrate its successful contribution to keeping the peace throughout the Cold War, but also to herald its expanded role, as Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said, in keeping the peace for its next 50 years. The Washington summit, on April 23-25, will display all the pomp befitting the occasion. It will reflect the enlargement of membership in Central Europe and reaffirm an open-door policy to more expansion. It will issue a new “vision statement” for the post-Cold War world.

What had not been expected was that the fireworks for the 50th would pale beside a month of NATO’s nightly bombing of Yugoslavia. Suddenly, the alliance’s new mission, blandly described by Albright at the last NATO summit in December, sounds less reassuring. She spoke of a “new and better” NATO “committed to meeting a wide range of threats to our shared interests and values,” and acting “to ensure stability, freedom and peace in and for the entire transatlantic area.” Commendable aims, but is it a realistic policy prescription?

The question is whether NATO is to remain an alliance for collective defense or be transformed into a collective security “enforcer,” initiating military action against other countries deemed to threaten “the interests and values” of member states. Before the December summit, Washington proposed an explicit statement declaring NATO’s intention to act, when “possible,” in fulfillment of a U.N. Security Council mandate. Agreement was not reached; whether such a formal statement will be made at the Washington summit is not clear. In any case, NATO has already decided to take military action against Yugoslavia without a U.N. mandate--for it could not obtain one.

Its actions over Kosovo, for better or worse, herald the new NATO. The alliance initiated military action not in defense of its 19 members, but of their “interests and values.” This makes a mockery of arguments only recently made to Russia that it had nothing to fear from NATO enlargement, because, after all, NATO was merely a defensive alliance. Little wonder, too, that some Russians see a potential threat if NATO viewed a Russian internal crisis--for example, a renewed conflict in Chechnya--as creating a challenge to its members’ interests. That may be far-fetched, if only because Russia has a nuclear arsenal--not the message we want Russia, or potential nuclear proliferators, to draw.

The new NATO mission may be intended to expand international law, but an alliance decision to override traditional interpretations and circumvent the United Nations risks undermining that very international law. If one group of states can assume rights of unilateral military intervention vis-a-vis other members of the international community, so can any other. Is that a pattern we wish to encourage?

The new NATO clearly has constructive aims and a laudable new “vision,” but it has not resolved some fundamental issues. If NATO assumes the right to place limits on the sovereignty of nonmember states, without a mandate from the United Nations or consensus of the world community, it should at least have a clear understanding of the repercussions of its actions.

In initiating military attacks on Yugoslavia, the justification was partly self-determination for the inhabitants of Kosovo and partly humanitarian. NATO’s own prescribed settlement called for accepting the sovereignty of Yugoslavia over Kosovo, while demanding a grant of self-determination for the Kosovars short of independence. Why give precedence to self-determination that does not lead to independence? Moreover, NATO presented Yugoslavia with an ultimatum, under threat of bombing, not only to accept that redefinition of its own sovereignty, but also to accept NATO’s peacekeepers, not those of the U.N. or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, another sharp diminution of Yugoslav sovereignty.

Bombing Yugoslavia was NATO’s action of choice, not because it was most likely to succeed, but because it was the easiest to undertake. The initial explanation was that it would push Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept the NATO-proffered settlement. This improbable, but apparently genuine, explanation was quickly supplemented by claims that it would “degrade” Yugoslav capability to suppress the Kosovars.

In some respects, to be sure, the air offensive has been impressively successful. To date, not a single NATO airman has been killed, and only one $45-million warplane was lost. Plus, of course, the loss of much of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population.

The collateral damage of the NATO attacks to civilians in Yugoslavia has been minimized, but the collateral consequences in Kosovo have been far greater than anticipated. No less important have been the collateral damages in international politics.

The bombing campaign not only failed to shake Milosevic, it has rallied all Serbs around him. Its second objective, to prevent instability in the region, has failed spectacularly. The support of Montenegrins for their liberal and pro-Western government has been shaken by the bombing, including bombing in Montenegro. The sudden outflow of a half-million Albanian Kosovars into Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro has created a serious humanitarian problem. It also threatens to destabilize Macedonia, whose own minority Serb population has become anti-NATO and pro-Milosevic as a direct result of the bombing, and whose Macedonian majority is threatened by the possible increase of its own restive Albanian minority.

Another potentially serious kind of collateral damage is occurring within NATO itself. Only Britain has supported the United States with any enthusiasm in the air war. The Germans and others have been uncomfortable with unilateral NATO efforts at “broadening” international law, and the French at sidestepping the U.N. Security Council. There have been objections in Italy and Greece to the extent of the bombing campaign, with the Greeks especially sensitive to the bombing of fellow Orthodox Serbs (and less than enthusiastic at a flood of Albanians in their “near abroad”). The new members of NATO and other Balkan aspirants to membership have been trying to show their support, but with evident misgivings. This was, after all, not the NATO defensive bulwark they thought they had finally joined.

All NATO governments signed on to the decision to take military action, but many had doubts. The course of the air war, and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, have done little to quell those and other new doubts. NATO may even approve the introduction of ground forces into Kosovo as the lesser evil. But the whole experience may inoculate the alliance against future commitments to military initiatives to compel others to accept the new NATO’s vision.

The serious collateral damage in Western, especially U.S., relations with Russia is still not fully realized. There is little sentiment in the United States today for giving much attention to Russia and Russian objectives. There is also little recognition of the Russian perspective, by which the U.S.-led decision to bomb Serbia was the latest proof that Washington had abandoned the vaunted “strategic partnership” with Russia proclaimed by President Bill Clinton early in his term. There is, at least, short-term damage to important arms-control measures, as well as to the still fragile structure of Russia-NATO cooperation.

Russia’s official reaction has been sharp but measured. Far more significant is a decisive increase in underlying popular distrust and hostility toward the United States and NATO, with parliamentary elections in Russia only months away and a critical presidential election in little more than a year.

China, like Russia, is unsettled by the new NATO intervention. Both countries attribute great significance to their veto prerogatives on the U.N. Security Council, and have accepted the existing world order in significant measure because of that reassurance.

Concerns about a disturbing impact on the world order are not limited to Russia and China. Many countries have been uneasy at the periodic U.S. air attacks on Iraq, but that was viewed as an exceptional case, with a clear U.N. mandate and against a palpable threat to other nations. The NATO attacks on Yugoslavia, without a U.N. mandate and with no claim of a Yugoslav threat beyond its own borders, suggest to many a more ominous pattern of hegemonic military initiative by the United States and NATO to serve their own “interests and values” rather than those of the world community.

With the failure of the bombing campaign to achieve its objectives, what will NATO do next? Assuming a Serbian-Montenegrin crisis does not erupt soon, which could spark direct NATO military support for Montenegro, the choice would appear to be a display of ineffectiveness, or, more likely, escalation to sending NATO ground forces into Kosovo. The aim would be to establish a protected area for Kosovars over as much of the province as possible. This could lead to a protracted conflict with the Yugoslav armed forces and more than nominal NATO casualties. At best, it could result in pushing Serb forces and authority out of most of Kosovo, and ultimately lead to a cease-fire and compromise substituting U.N. or OSCE peacekeeping forces for the NATO and Serbian forces. Russia can play a constructive role in this, and should be encouraged to do so.

Meanwhile, though specific further political collateral damages are difficult to predict, it seems clear they would be great. If NATO were to prevail to this extent--and this is the best outcome one can expect--it would be a Pyrrhic victory. The vision portrayed at the unveiling of the new NATO would be greatly dimmed.

NATO, the old NATO, made a major contribution to maintaining the peace through 40 years of the Cold War by credible and reliable readiness to defend its members. For 10 years, it has been seeking a new role. The Washington summit is supposed to consolidate and celebrate the new NATO. Happy Birthday, NATO, on your 50th. But it is a little premature to celebrate the next 50.*