NATO Can’t Sit This One Out

Renewed fighting and atrocities in the Serbian province of Kosovo signal more tragedy ahead for its people and trouble for NATO. Failing a miracle agreement, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Liberation Army are poised again to try their fortunes on the battlefield. NATO will face its most severe test since fighting stopped in Bosnia in 1995. It is by no means ready to pass that test.

Fighting between the Serbs and the ethnic Albanian Kosovars ended last October only after NATO threatened airstrikes against Serbian targets, and the U.S. brokered a cease-fire and obtained promises to solve Kosovo’s future politically. To buttress the agreement, unarmed “verifiers” were recruited to keep watch and a NATO extraction force was stationed in nearby Macedonia to give the verifiers some semblance of safety. But the allies were clearly relieved that they did not have to use force, and there was never much hope that the end of fighting was more than a pause for winter. This has been confirmed by the failure of diplomacy, which during these crucial months has not been backed up by high-level U.S. or allied political efforts.

If fighting resumes in earnest, NATO faces an almost impossible dilemma. Its decision to use force--formally called an activation order--remains in effect, and NATO’s supreme commander could implement it at any time. But the allies in Brussels have made clear that it would have to be politically blessed again. Last weekend, they decided not to do so.

The premise of NATO’s decision to use force was that provocation would come from Serbian troops and police. No provision was made for circumstances in which the Kosovo Liberation Army took the military initiative; nor, other than to stop Serb attacks, did NATO ever agree on its goals. At the very least, the allies’ decision gives the KLA no incentive to avoid conflict and reason to believe--rightly or wrongly--that it will be rescued by NATO whatever it does. After the close brush with having to use force last October, virtually no one at NATO believes it will refresh the activation order without the most sustained and one-sided Serb aggression.

It is too late to argue that Kosovo is just a civil war or that this is an “internal matter.” By its actions so far, NATO has assumed responsibility for the conflict’s outcome. Further, its aspiration to build a lasting European peace cannot weather renewed slaughter on its doorstep. If fighting in Kosovo goes on unabated at the time of NATO’s 50th anniversary summit in Washington this April, the focus will not be on its new strategic concept or grand visions. Kosovo will overshadow both celebration of the past and plans for the future.

NATO’s dilemma is compounded by two facts. First, virtually no ally--the U.S. most of all--is willing to put forces on the ground in Kosovo, certainly not to impose a solution. Even to seal the border with Albania would, according to NATO’s military authorities, require more than 30,000 troops. NATO might one day put ground troops in Kosovo, but by today’s reasoning only under the same rubric as in Bosnia: to help preserve an agreement freely arrived at by all parties.

Second, there is currently no basis for such an agreement. The allies might accept some form of autonomy for Kosovo, like that which it enjoyed before Belgrade resumed full control in 1989. But few Albanian Kosovars any longer support that option, and the KLA says it will settle for nothing less than independence. Yet many of the allies fear that independence would cause the conflict to spread, including attempts to incorporate in a Greater Albania the 29% of Macedonia’s people who are of Albanian heritage.

The NATO allies can’t have it all ways. They can’t sit back in the hope that they will be rescued by routine diplomacy and, should that fail, be unwilling to run military risks either to accept Kosovo’s independence or to foster the middle ground of an autonomous regime. Unless the NATO allies decide soon on an acceptable diplomatic outcome and are prepared to use force to back it up, the Washington summit will be about today’s failure rather than tomorrow’s promise.