An Ineptitude That Will Cost Lives

Neither threats from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization nor bombs can fix the administration’s fundamentally flawed policy on Kosovo. President Bill Clinton’s refusal to support independence for Kosovo will only produce instability in the Balkans.

He and U.S. special envoy Richard C. Holbrooke are not noted for their far-sighted strategic planning. They took Kosovo off the agenda at the Dayton peace conference in 1995. They are making the same mistake by taking Kosovo independence off the agenda now.

It’s 10 years too late to offer Kosovo’s Albanians a little autonomy within Yugoslavia. Even moderates are repelled by the thought of staying in a state run by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. His government annexed and militarily occupied Kosovo in 1989, banned Albanians from schools, purged them from the courts, fired them from jobs, burned their homes and killed them. If this changed political reality isn’t understood and independence supported diplomatically, the United States will have to deal with its harsher assertion in one or 10 years, when the Kosovo Liberation Army is militarily stronger and politically hostile.

It’s not that the villagers and students making up the rebels’ ranks are eager to get themselves killed. They and moderate politicians are being offered practically no other way to escape Milosevic’s brutal grip. The January draft of the administration’s peace proposal back-pedaled on the idea of a strong central government in Kosovo, reducing Albanian “autonomy” to municipal control over such matters as child care and health. It allows Milosevic, furthermore, to continue to run Kosovo’s defense, foreign and monetary policies. He and the Serbs, in the draft’s proposed parliament, could even kill any legislation they desired because of the veto given to each ethnic group. Unlike the Irish peace accord, the draft does not provide for a majority vote on Kosovo’s final status.

As a critic said of an earlier draft, this latest proposal only “gets Milosevic to throw the Albanians a bone--and pressures them to accept it.” Yet, despite offering neither independence nor real autonomy, the draft is likely to be the basis for the direct Serb-Albanian negotiations that the West is trying to jump-start with threats of military force. The peace plan and Clinton’s Milosevic-favoring strategy are not a solution to the problem in Kosovo, but a dangerous postponement of it.

Morton I. Abramowitz of the Council on Foreign Relations is one of many analysts rethinking Clinton’s limited-autonomy policy and backing off their opposition to a border change. Abramowitz no longer rules out independence brought about in stages. Paul R. Williams, professor of international law at American University, supports a similar phased-in independence, plus a final majority vote on Kosovo’s status and limits on its ability to unite with Albania. Others recommend a wider regional settlement that would avoid destabilizing Balkan countries.

The premise underlying the administration’s refusal to grant independence to Kosovo is wrong. Holbrooke, Clinton’s most influential advisor on the Balkans, keeps insisting that Milosevic is the key to a solution. In frequently meeting with Milosevic, Holbrooke gives the Yugoslav president a legitimacy and importance he otherwise would not enjoy. Milosevic can be dealt a fatal political blow by making him the man who lost Kosovo, by imposing a phased-in settlement that moves from real autonomy to independence. This shift of tactics could prevent years of Balkan havoc that he, as well as the Albanians, will cause.

Clinton and Holbrooke don’t see that Milosevic can’t be appeased. War is Milosevic’s long-term strategy for staying in power. War keeps the unpopular president in office by letting him satisfy his political base while distracting Serbs from their shattered economy. Veran Matic, head of Belgrade’s independent radio station, B-92, believes that, after the war in Kosovo, Milosevic will engineer a similar conflict in Montenegro.

Clinton’s shortsighted policy is shaped not only by a misreading of Milosevic and the Albanians, but also by Holbrooke’s experience as a diplomat in Vietnam. It was in that Southeast Asian country that Holbrooke learned to make deals with dirty little dictators. Apparently, though, he didn’t learn that such realpolitik often boomerangs. His belief that granting Kosovo its independence will lead Albanians in other Balkan countries to demand it too echoes the “domino theory” popular among apologists for U.S.-Vietnam policy in the 1960s.

Janusz Bugajski of the Center for Strategic and International Studies doesn’t foresee falling dominoes. He believes a just settlement in Kosovo would lessen the anger of Albanians in other Balkan countries. A regional settlement, he contends, would help ensure stability by providing financial incentives to neighboring countries to treat Albanians fairly and as equals of their own citizens.

This approach would defuse Albanian radicalism and calls for a Greater Albania in a number of countries. In Macedonia, Albanian leaders’ rhetoric isn’t mainly about joining the motherland, but about ending job discrimination, starting Albania language schools and a proportional electoral system. In the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, Albanians might be satisfied with a government as anti-Milosevic as they are. In Albania, some limits on joining with Kosovo, coupled with a Western commitment of economic assistance to all Balkan countries, could be stabilizing. As for Bosnia, a breakaway Serb republic could be prevented by packing Milosevic off to the War Crimes Tribunal, as U.S. Senate and House resolutions urge.

Holbrooke, when asked in May what could be done about Kosovo, replied, “I have no idea.” He and Clinton have spent nine months proving that point. Unfortunately, people may suffer for decades because of it.