The Kosovo Debacle Is the Logical Result of an Interventionist

Roots of Allied Farce

n the morning of macy should be judged by March 29, 1999, what it prevents, not only by the sixth day of what it initiates and cre- NATO’s bombing ates.. .Much of it is a holding campaign against action designed to avoid the Serbs, Ameri- explosion until the unifying can diplomats forces of history take human- throughout the Office of the ity into their embrace.” High0 Representative (OHR) Hutson is a Balkan expert. in Bosnia-Herzegovina Fluent in Russian and Serb@ received an unusual message Croatian, over the course of from their colleague in Tuzla. a three-decade long foreign It was Foreign Service officer service career Hutson spe- Thomas R. Hutson’s last offi- cialized in the Soviet Union

’ cial e-mail to his associates. and its Slavic satellite. His Hutson’s message was a first Balkan posting was to bombshell. He was openly Belgrade in the heyday of attacking Clinton’s Kosovo Marshall Tito’s Yugoslavia. policy. Over time, he has lived a total “My personal reasons for of eight years in the region. retiring now have only been Hutson was in the Balka- strengthened by the ill-con- ns when Bosnia and Croa- ceived decision of NATO to The Kosovo debacle is the logical tia, with dominant ethnic bomb the Serbs,” Hutson U mi nor i ty populations , wrote. “Tliis decision has uni- exploded into a savage war fied the Serbs as no other result of an interventionist doctrine of secession from predomi- event I have witnessed in my nantly-Serbian Yugoslavia. observation of the area for He returned to the Balka- nearly three decades.” that rose alongside Bill Clinton. ns after the Dayton peace U “As for its impact on accords were signed by the

Bosnia and Herzegovina,”v he Western powers and lead- warned, “I fear that it has driven a stake into the heart of the ers of former Yugoslavia in December 199;. Dayton accords.” Hutson’s first digs in Tuzla were dismal; he and his staff of His e-mail closed with a quote from Abba Eban: “Diplo- three were housed in an old salt factory. Yet under his ener- ...... getic leadership the OHR mission grew to almost thirty peo- JOHN B. ROBERTS11 is a writer and television producer. ple. They moved into a building renovated by a local soccer

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star who had prospered in Turkey (according to rumor, as a leading advocates of a new and radical use of military interven- gun-running war profiteer). tion around the globe. In the early nineties, when Clinton was From his office, Hutson could see a nearby square, the site of still governor of Arkansas, they formed part of a small foreign a May 1995 artillery attack that killed 71 people. It was a reminder policy elite convened by the Carnegie Endowment for Interna- of the stakes of war in the Balkans. So were the difficulties he tional Peace to change U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War. encountered in trying to resettle people displaced by the war. Reports signed by all three recommended a dramatic escalation Although protected by military forces from countries, includ- of the use of military force to settle other countries’ domestic ing the Russians and the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, villagers were conflicts. Ironically, an institution dedicated to “International extremely hesitant to go home. Serbs, victims of savage ethnic Peace” set the stage for Clinton’s interventionist policies in Soma- cleansing in Krajina, feared their Bosnian Muslim and Croat lia, Haiti, Bosnia, and KOSOVO,triggering the most widespread neighbors, who in turn feared one another and the Serbs. deployment of U.S. troops since the Second World War. Hutson foretold the current conflict in the fall of 1997, when I Ambassador Milton Abramowitz, former assistant secretary of asked him to identify unresolved Balkan hot spots. “Although it is state for intelligence and research, was president of the Carnegie not yet in the center of the screen,” he wrote me in reply from Sara- Endowment between 1991 and 1997. During his tenure he estab jevo, “the dilemma over Kosovo (the U.S. commitment to its being lished blue-ribbon commissions of policy experts to create a new part of Serbia vs. aspirations of the 90 percent Kosovar Albanian U.S. foreign policy framework. majority for independence or union with Albania). It could also spill In February 1992 I was asked to design a publicity campaign over into Macedonia, with inevitable consequences for Serbia to gain public support for the commission’s recommendations. and the rest of the Balkans.” I was invited to attend closeddoor com- Hutson tried first to shape policy mission meetings, and later I met with from the inside. During a briefing on Abramowitz, who made clear he want- resettlement of Bosnian war refugees, ed the commission’s views to play a Hutson alerted NATO Supreme Com- part in the upcoming presidential elec- mander Wesley Clark to the difficul- tions. Some commissioners had been ties of dealing with the Serbs. Using a appointed to brief Democratic presi- Turkish word, inat, to describe the Serb dential candidates. The release of the temperament, Hutson told Clark the final report was to coincide with the Serbs could not be bombed into sub Democratic National Convention. mission. hat,Hutson says, means irra- I didn’t know it at the time, but these tional. The Serbs’ attachment to Koso- meetings were my introduction to vo as a symbol of national inde- Clinton’s Cabinet-in-waiting. During pendence is like a Texan’s view of the the spring and summer of 1992, Alamo. NATO would not easily force Madeleine Albright, Henry Cisneros, the Serbs to allow Kosovo to secede John Deutch, Richard Holbrooke, from Yugoslavia and join with Albania, Alice Rivlin, David Gergen, Admiral the goal of the Kosovar liberation William Crowe, and numerous lesser movement since the early nineties. luminaries who would nonetheless get sub-cabinet appoint- At his initiative, Hutson met separately with White House ments debated defense and foreign policy for hours. Richard aide Leon Fuerth, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and pres- Perle and James Schlesinger were the token conservatives. I lis- idential envoy Richard Holbrooke to urge U.S. support for rein- tened intently, offering opinions only when asked. stating exiled Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic as a creative Shortly before I began attending the commission’s meetings, solution to the search for a successor to Milosevic. (There was a Bosnians voted in a referendum for independence from precedent for U.S. meddling in Yugoslavia’s royal affairs. In 1941, Yugoslavia. All-out war erupted in Sarajevo one week later. So the U.S. military attach6 Louis J. Fortier plotted with General Simovic, Balkans were a hot topic of commission discussions. Richard head of Yugoslavia’s air force, to depose a pro-Axis King and Holbrooke, who three years later became Clinton’s architect of replace him with his pro-U.S. brother. This palace coup set the the Dayton peace accords, argued passionately for American stage for the Yugoslavs’ fierce resistance to German troops. ) military intervention there. Hutson’s advice, drawn from years of field experience, was Bosnia was then the most critical trouble spot in the region, brushed aside. So at 10:28 in the morning of March 29, 1999, but hardly the only one. On April 28,1992, Albanian president Sali Hutson dispatched his e-mail dissent with a simple “send” com- Berisha welcomed visiting Kosovar leader Bujar Bukoshi to mand. He didn’t wait around to read the replies. Tirana with fateful words. “We must demand,” he said, “the right for self-determination of the Albanians in ex-Yugoslavia.” hen he met with Albright, Holbrooke, and Fuerth in Albania knew the.Kosovars’ ultimate goals. In a series of New 1995 Hutson may have thought they were simply unin- York Times interviews in 1992, Kosovar political leaders said they Wterested in his political solution to preserve the Yugoslav planned autonomy or independence as intemiediate steps. Some Federation and prevent war. He didn’t realize the three were of the Kosovars said there was no point negotiating with Serbs.

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Due to higher birthrates, they said they were now Kosovo’s eth- States, but to impose highly subjective political settlements on nic majority. They alone would control Kosovo’s future. They other countries. It discarded national sovereignty in favor of inter- planned to secede from Yugoslavia and join Albania. national intervention. I began to regret my efforts to build pub- licity for the report. y mid-summer, the Camegie Endowment’s final report was The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was gird- ready. “Changing Our Ways: America’s Role in the New ing for war. All it needed was a president eager to do battle. BWorld” was a dramatic departure from the bipartisan for- Shortly after the report’s release, presidential candidate Bill eign policy consensus of the Cold War period. Richard Perle Clinton took up the Carnegie Endowment’s cudgel. In a July 25, and James Schlesinger resigned rather than endorse the report’s 1992 speech he said Milosevic needed to be brought to justice for conclusions. his “crimes against humanity” and criticized George Bush’s lack The report urged “a new principle of international relations: the of “real leadership.” By August io, Clinton advocated the use of destruction or displacement ofgroups of people within states can military force against the Serbs. Abramowitz’s tactic of having justify international intervention.” It said the U.S. should “realign commission members hand-feed key Democrats even before NATO and OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in the report’s release was paying off. The Carnegie Endowment’s Europe] to deal with new security problems in Europe” and urged new foreign policy principles were front-and-center in the pres- military intervention under humanitarian guises. idential debate. I had taken Dmitro Markov, a Ukrainian friend who was press Sixty days later, the first violence in Kosovo began. Education counselor for his newly independent country’s embassy, with was the point of conflict. The Serbs wanted students taught in me to the Carnegie report unveiling Serbo-Croatian, Yugoslavia’s primary at the National Press Club. He won- language. Someone supplied weapons dered how the new principle might to the Kosovar separatists, who wanted apply to Ukraine’s sizable Russian all-Albanian schools and teachers. minority. Across the former USSRand Armed clashes broke out. its Eastern European satellites, few Another 1992 Camegie publication, issues are so explosive as that of nation- “Self-Determination in the New World al minorities. The Russians had already Order,” brings the new military doc- announced their ground rules-any trine into sharp focus. Co-authored by maltreatment of ethnic Russians in the Carnegie staffers David Scheffer (now “near abroad” or new republics was U.S. ambassador for war crimes) and grounds for military intervention. Morton Halperin, the book set criteria If the U.S. endorsed this new for- for officials to use in deciding when to eign policy principle the potential for support separatist ethnic groups seek- international chaos was immense. Real ing independence, and advocated mil- or trumped up incidents of destruction itary force for that purpose. The 12e or displacement would be grounds for page book resulted from a Carnegie Russian or American military inter- study group created by Ambassador vention in dozens of countries where nothing like a melting pot Abramowitz. Leon Fuerth, then a Senate staffer for A1 Gore, has ever existed. and Greg Craig, who would later be on Clinton’s Senate impeach- Ambassador Abramowib’s blue-ribbon coinmission had plant- ment trial defense team, were members of the group. ed the policy seedlings for the Kosovo war. “Changing Our The book endorsed U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros- Ways” provided both the rationale for U.S. interventionism and Ghali’s concept of “preventive deployment.” It meant interna- a policy recommendation about the best means -NATO -for tional military coalitions, preferably U.N.-led, could send armed waging that war. force not as peacekeepers but peacemakers-to prevent con- This was an entirely new concept for NATO, which was flict from breaking out and stay in place indefinitely. Scheffer and born as a‘purely defensive alliance against the Soviets and the Halperin endorsed Clinton’s call for military intervention in Warsaw Pact. I was part of the White House team in Spain in Bosnia. They also said military intervention was called for “when 1985 when Reagan urged President Felipe Gonzalez to hold a a self-determination claim triggers an armed conflict that becomes referendum on NATO membership. Would Spain have voted a humanitarian crisis.. .redefining the principle of non-interfer- to join NATO knowing that their Basque minority, spread across ence in the internal affairs of states.” four provinces in Spain and three in France, might someday use Actually, the Kosovo intervention appears only partially to terrorism to provoke NATO intervention on their behalf? Would meet Scheffer and Halperin’s criteria. In setting out pre-condi- Gonzalez, whose government has since been accused of using tions for the introduction of military force, the authors say that in death squads to exterminate Basque militants, have even allowed addition to all peaceful avenues being foreclosed, “the use of such a NATO referendum? military force to create a new state would require conduct by the The report also proposed the revolutionary idea that a U.S.- parent government so egregious that it has forfeited any right to led military first strike was justified, not to defend the United govern the minority claiming self-determination.’’Before NATO

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began its late-March bombing campaign, Serbian repression in Wall Street Ioumal urging a drastic shift in U.S policy toward Kosovo did not meet this test. Nor did the Kosovo Liberation Kosovo. It was time, Abramowitz counseled, to support full Army meet the requirements set by the authors for adherence to independence for Kosovo. He outlined options including international norms. In fact, “self-determination” doesn’t really bombing Serbia, ousting Milosevic, arming and training the apply to the Kosovar Albanians, where the ultimate goal is annex- KLA, and turning Kosovo into a NATO protectorate through the ation of Kosovo into Albania. use of ground forces. Yet like so many others, Abramowitz As a measure of its influence, Scheffer and Halperin’s pre- seems not to have anticipated the refugee exodus resulting scription for U.S. military intervention became the third-best from the war. “KOSOVOhas ceased to exist,” he said, clearly dis- selling publication in the history of the Carnegie Endowment’s traught, three weeks into the war. publishing program. Others in the foreign policy elite soon took It is a bitter irony that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo com- up the issue. In 1994, the Council on Foreign Relations pub pounded the very evil it was intended to prevent. Instead of help lished &chard Haass’s book Intervention: The Use ofAmerican Mil- ing the ethnic Albanians establish their own independent polit- itary Force in the Post-Cold War World, voicing similar themes. ical entity, the Clinton administration accelerated their purge. But by then the glow of multilateral military interventionism had temporarily faded. The ill-fated Somalian adventure in nlike Ambassador Abramowitz, who seems distraught peacemaking and nation-building soured the public’s appetite for that the strategies he advocated brought about Kosovo’s U.N. command of U.S. troops, and the 1994 GOP sweep of the Uobliteration instead of its salvation, Tom Hutson is just House and Senate stmck fear of a one-term presidency in the heart plain angry. of the Clinton White House. In 1995, two years before the esca- The Dayton accords were born lation of violence between the KLA from this new political reality. Clinton and the Serbs, Hutson wanted the U.S. dispatched Richard Holbrooke to end to take the lead by organizing an inter- the Balkan hostilities before the pres- national body to work out a peaceful idential re-election campaign began. resolution for Kosovo. Nobody heeded In the haste to declare peace, Hol- him. He urged Albright to work with brooke made a fatal misstep. Insiders Prince Alexander, as a unifying force say Holbrooke missed his chance to who might help move Yugoslavia past resolve the Kosovo dilemma without Milosevic. When he briefed her at the a bloody war. The final language of U.N. in June of 1995, Albright listened the Dayton accords supports the intently. Hutson was encouraged when Yugoslav Federation’s territorial he left her office. But afterwards her integrity, which binds Kosovo as a staff spread the word that Albright was province ofYugoslavia. unenthusiastic and Hutson’s proposal “I can understand why and I’m not was not to be taken seriously. blaming anybody,” Abramowitz told Hutson is angry that the U.S. has bre me in late April, “but that was the time ken its commitment to Milosevic. He Milosevic was at the table and he wanted the war to end .... That says Richard Holbrooke committed the U.S. on Kosovo at Day- was the point of maximum leverage. We wanted to end the war. ton, and now has broken his word. And so did he.” He is angry about NATO’s new role as military aggressor. Kosovo was not taken up at Dayton. Milosevic was left with “We’re America!” he says. “We don’t do things like this!” the understanding that the U.S. respected Yugoslavia’s sover- Hutson thinks we need a U.N. mandate or declaration of war eignty over its errant province. Holbrooke delivered Clinton a from Congress to carry on fighting. He still trusts that a diplomatic clean foreign policy slate for his re-election campaign. The resolution is possible, but that it will take a unilateral NATO Balkans were less of an issue in the 1996 presidential election than cease-fire. Hutson thinks the Russians and the U.N. could then they had been in 1992. mediate a Kosovo truce. He believes diplomacy is infinitely But the reckoning over Kosovo was merely postponed, not pre- preferable to a ground war in Yugoslavia. vented. In addition to Dayton, Abramowitz says the US. missed “Don’t count on the Serbs doing anything other than fighting a second turning point to prevent war. As the Kosovo Liberation to hang on to it,” he warned General Clark before the war began. Army’s militancy increased between the months of November He is convinced a ground assault means we will fight Serbs 1997 and February 1998, Abramowitz thinks diplomacy might have behind every rock and tree, just as the British faced American defused the crisis. colonists during the Revolution. “Once the Serbs began to beat up on the KLA in the vil- Finally, Hutson is bothered that Clinton is holding out false “ . lages,” he says, it was too late.” hope to the Kosovar rehigees. “This lie ...this pipe dream that After six years as the Carnegie Endowment’s president, these people are going to go back. There’s no way in hell they’re Abramowitz in 1997 moved on to the Council on Foreign Rela- going to go back,” Hutson says. “We have the responsibility for tions. In January of this year he published a column in the these two million people in perpetuity.” U

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LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Hawkor Turke~? STUARTREID cl . London At the NATO summit, ever in the field of eyes shining, hair coifed, he human conflict urged buddy Bill, who seems has so much cred- a bit uncomfortable about it been taken by killing white folk, not to be one man for so Iit- swayed by the isolationist de. The way Tony sentiments. He sounded like Blair tells it-and Churchill in 1939, or Mar- the way the newspapers here garet Thatcher in 1990, areN spinning it-you’d think when she told George Bush that he, not the Stepford war- (Sr.) “now is not the time to rior Wesley Clark, was the go wobbly.” (Bush didn’t go commander in chief of wobbly, and pretty soon NATO, that he was the man Iraq’s army was being mas- with the throw weight. In fact, sacred on the road to Bazra; the United Kingdom is once Saddam himself remains in again providing the United place, of course, taking the States with a corporal’s occasional hit from a Toma- brigade: We are powerless to hawk, but grinning and giv- do more. It is hard to come ing us the finger.) You’d by exact figures-don’t you never guess that as a young know there is a war going Labour MP Blair was a sup- on?-but ofthe estimated 700 porter of the (explicitly anti- aircraft serving in the Balkans Tony Blair fights for Hollywood NATO) Campaign for theater, some 500 are Ameri- Nuclear Disarmament. But can and only 45 British. But let’s be fair: Minds are for nobody here is counting. values with American firepower. changing, and a politician Tony is at one and the same who doesn’t change his time NATO’s leading hawk and the most popular British prime min- mind and seize the moment is lost. Whether this war works as ister in history. Blair really believes in what he describes as the well for him as the Falklands war did for his mentor Margaret “first progressives’ war,” a straightforward conflict, as he sees it, Thatcher remains to be seen. My guess is that it won’t and that between absolute good and absolute evil, and never mind a thou- Milosevic, like Saddam, will end up giving us the finger. And sand years of Serb history, let alone the last fifty. then what? NATO’s leading hawk will turn out to have been That’s what makes him so dangerous. If he were merely a cyn- NATO’s leading turkey. ical opportunist, a gesture politician, he would have leant on Bill War, though, is a dangerous occupation, especially for jour- Clinton at the end of the first futile month of bombing and per- nalists. By the time this issue appears, anything may have hap suaded him to call off the dogs and cut a deal. But no. Blair wants pened..In 1914 they used to say it would all be over by Christ- to send in ground troops against the “new Hider.” Total victory is mas; two years later zo,ooo Britons died on the first day of the the only exit strategy he is (or was in April) prepared to consider, Battle of the Somme, after the German line had been shelled and nuts to peace-feelers from wimpy Germans and wimpy Rus- non-stop for a week. The terror inspired by the bombardment- sians and the hell with whining scruples from the loony left about aimed at fighting men, remember, not at television makeup A-io Warthogs carrying depleted uranium missiles over Kosovo. artists-was such that not only the soldiers but the rats in the ...... German dugouts went mad. As I write (in early May), we still STUARTREID is an editorial page editor for the Independent face the possibility of an appalling conflagration. It is hard to give on Sunday. peace a chance in a war being supported with such righteous-

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