More Challenges Likely to Test Reinvented NATO

The televised images--NATO aircraft lifting eerily into the night sky, trying to bomb a dictator into submission and halt a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo--illustrate more than Europe’s latest agony.

They also offer a glimpse into the future, a look at the “new NATO”--an alliance reinvented and retooled since the collapse of its initial enemy, the Soviet Union, to address the security challenges of a new century and a new political era.

Only days shy of its 50th birthday, the alliance that helped vanquish communism without firing a shot has been ordered into combat in what has become the biggest single test of its refashioned role: keeping order in an unruly, chaotic, post-Cold War world.

At a news conference in London on Thursday, British Defense Secretary George Robertson boiled down NATO’s objective in Kosovo to this: “It is to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe by disrupting the violent attacks currently being carried out by the Yugoslav security forces against the Kosovar Albanians, and to limit their ability to conduct such repression in the future.”

While the outcome of the mission remains far from certain, just the initial hours are enough to demonstrate that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s larger task in the next century is loaded with difficulties.

NATO Insiders Cite Shared Values, Vision

NATO’s goals in Kosovo are proving hard to define and even harder to sell publicly. Alliance unity has been strained, virtually from the outset, because some member nations are struggling with far more political fallout than others. And the underlying legality of the airstrikes is murky: With somewhat questionable United Nations authorization, the attack is directed at Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic over a crisis contained within the borders of his own country.

Still, insiders insist that they are committed to the Kosovo operation and convinced that shared values, common enemies and an overriding sense of a united Euro-American destiny--a vision that held NATO together during its first half a century--will carry it well into the next.

“The NATO alliance has great relevancy to the 21st century and the end of the 20th in dealing with what we see as the major threats,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at a news conference in Washington on Thursday. “And in our estimation, the biggest threat that we have now is the threat of chaos and instability.”

Beyond this, however, another reality has brought NATO into its reshaped role: Repeated crises in the Balkans throughout the 1990s have proven that no one else is capable of bringing order and halting humanitarian disasters in Europe.

“In the crisis in Bosnia, the United Nations failed dismally and the European Union failed dismally,” said a senior European diplomat based at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “The difference with the U.N., where I worked for four years, is that NATO works. And, if not NATO in Kosovo, then who? Have you noted how nobody seriously talks about the United Nations as a peacekeeper for a hot spot like Kosovo anymore?”

More than any other factor, it is the absence of another viable institution to deal with Europe’s security problems that has enabled NATO to survive the demise of its original enemy and undertake the overhaul that made possible this week’s sorties over Yugoslavia.

The airstrikes are occurring only a month before the alliance’s new strategic concept is scheduled to be formally blessed at a NATO summit in Washington hosted by President Clinton. In addition to its birthday celebration, the summit will constitute a formal welcome to the alliance’s newest members: Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Although they rarely say so publicly, many Europeans still view elements of NATO’s original role--keeping the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in--as relevant. This residual role is especially important for the alliance’s three new Central European members, who appear willing to participate in Kosovo-like missions in return for protection against the ghosts of their collective past.

Despite the sense of common purpose, the initial phase of the Kosovo mission has underscored the strains inherent in NATO’s current role, especially in sustaining political support and defining clear-cut goals.

In the United States, criticism by congressional Republicans about murky objectives and the absence of a visible exit strategy resonates in a nation still haunted by the trauma of Vietnam. But in a Senate debate eventually carried by proponents of the Kosovo mission, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) argued that clear game plans are virtually impossible to devise in the messy post-Cold War world.

“The world has changed so fundamentally that this calculus of what the last step will be is no longer relevant, especially if we try to answer it before the first step is taken,” he argued. “It leads to a policy of paralysis.”

Calls to Halt Strikes Surface in Europe

In Europe, political pressure in some NATO countries to halt the airstrikes popped to the surface within hours of the first bomb explosions in Serbia. In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema on Thursday summarily declared the air campaign a success and advocated a return to diplomacy, while in Athens, Greek Defense Minister Akis Tsohatzopoulos called for a pause in the military action.

“It is urgent that now, after the first wave of attacks, that NATO give a new chance to the parties involved,” he said.

With several European countries bracing to absorb a wave of refugees that U.N. officials fear could reach 100,000 in the weeks ahead, the pressure to end the airstrikes is likely to grow. And with no consensus on what to do if bombing doesn’t force Milosevic back to peace talks or at least cripple his ability to wage war, the way ahead is prone to dispute.

For all the difficulties, however, government officials from alliance countries on both sides of the Atlantic are convinced that NATO’s latest mission is the right one. Aware of the stakes involved, they are committed to making it succeed.

“Kosovo is a test case of whether NATO can handle these new missions,” a senior U.S. State Department official said. “The stakes are very high there, not just for Kosovo, but for the future of the alliance itself.”

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Marshall reported from Washington and Dahlburg from Brussels.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What NATO Nations Are Sending

The mission in Yugoslavia involves planes and ships from most of the NATO nations, with the U.S. supplying a large proportion of the arsenal.

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Suport Country/organization Warplanes planes Ships Belgium 10 0 0 Britain 8 0 0 Canada 6 0 0 Denmark 6 0 0 France 30 4 1 Germany 14 1 1 Greece 0 0 1 Italy 10 1 1 NATO standing force 0 4 8 Netherlands 16 1 1 Norway 6 1 0 Portugal na na na Spain 6 1 1 Turkey11 0 1 United States 200 * 12

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na=not available

*breakdown of American planes unavailable, but approximately 200 of various types are being provided by the United States

Sources: Federation of American Scientists, Department of Defense; compiled by TRICIA FORD/Los Angeles Times