NATO Gave Milosevic Advantage

Suspension of the Kosovo peace talks in France is a bitter blow for the NATO alliance. Once again, Yugoslavia’s president, Slobodan Milosevic, has outfoxed the West. Once again, the allies have made bold threats designed to bring the Kosovo fighting to a halt, but they have proved hollow. Unless the talks slated to resume March 15 produce success, NATO’s 50th anniversary celebration at a Washington summit in late April will be overshadowed, marked by failure to stop a conflict on its doorstep.

Concern about the impending summit produced the first problem for allied strategy in the Kosovo negotiations. After a year in which they mostly temporized in the face of conflict, the allies put new energy into diplomacy and military threats in major part because of the risk that the NATO summit would be marred by continued killing in the Serbian province. Thus it appeared that the peacemakers were more interested in procuring a settlement than the warmakers.

In addition, the Contact Group--the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia--ruled out in advance the key goal of the Kosovar Albanians. Independence for Kosovo, the Contact Group judged, could foster a Greater Albania that would then seek to pull apart neighboring Macedonia, with its large Albanian minority. A precedent could be set that every Balkan ethnic group should have its own state. And countenancing an independent Kosovo could end Yugoslavia’s incentive to bargain, since that province has historical significance for the Serbs.

But by ruling out independence instead of using it as a bargaining chip, the Contact Group lost leverage on the Serbs. Meanwhile, the negotiators set as a key goal the disarming of the Kosovo Liberation Army, without setting as a parallel goal the total withdrawal of Serb military and police units. Thus Milosevic gained most of what he wanted before the negotiations began, and he could focus on his secondary goals: maximizing the number of Serbian soldiers and police that could remain in Kosovo, limiting the size of a peacekeeping force to be deployed in Kosovo, trying to shift its mandate from NATO to the ineffectual Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, seeking to end economic sanctions on Yugoslavia and representing to the Serbian people that, once again, they were being “victimized” by NATO.

The talks were further prejudiced by a significant omission: a detailed plan of post-settlement military arrangements in Kosovo, in particular to show the Albanian Kosovars what precise protection they would be provided by NATO peacekeepers. At the 1995 Dayton peace talks that ended the war in Bosnia, having such a military document on the negotiating table proved to be critical. Allied military leaders did draw up a plan for Kosovo but, strangely, the diplomats did not introduce it in parallel with the political proposals.

Nor were the talks supported by a credible threat of military force. Despite a year’s worth of threats by various U.S. and allied leaders, the alliance as a whole has been deeply ambivalent about using air power to force the Serbs to bargain. Unlike Bosnia, Kosovo is not an independent state but a part of Serbia; there is no U.N. Security Council resolution asking NATO to apply force; and many allies have argued that some military actions by Serbian forces have been provoked by the KLA.

Over the years, Milosevic has proved adept at judging when NATO means business. Last October, the allies did agree to use air power against Serbia, and this helped produce a short-lived cease-fire. But most allies were relieved that they did not have to act; now that conflict has resumed, there has been little inclination at NATO, as some commentators put it, to “act as the KLA’s air force.”

Milosevic understands this lack of allied will and has been unimpressed by the movement of massive allied air power to the region. Thus it was never realistic to argue that, if the Kosovars signed on the dotted line, NATO would be prepared to use force to counter Serb recalcitrance. Even so, negotiators put pressure on the Kosovars, the principal victims, to be the first to agree.

Wilting under this one-sided pressure, the Kosovars will now consider whether to ratify an interim political accord, and they are likely to do so. But the allies must then convince the Serbs to comply, and that is only likely to happen if they can revive the credibility of NATO air power.

This means focusing on what the Serbs do. If they do renew the fighting--as appears likely--the alliance must hold them accountable for violating last October’s agreement to stop the war, and all the more so if the Serbs commit more atrocities. At the same time, the allies should make no further threats that they are not truly prepared to carry out, and NATO should scale down plans for airstrikes to increase the chances that the European allies would agree to execute them.

Regaining damaged military credibility and thus influence over the Serbs in the peace talks will not be easy. But it is indispensable if NATO is to have hope of bringing the war in Kosovo to an end, and of preserving its own ability to be effective--in the Balkans and elsewhere.