MORE than a week after NATO planes began to bomb Yugoslavia, the Western world is being forced, inch by unwilling inch, to acknowledge it has made a terrible mistake. Earlier last week, when the first Kosovar Albanians began to stream across the borders of Macedonia, Jamie Shea, the NATO spokesman in Brussels, denounced it in shrill tones calling it the greatest humanitarian tragedy since World War II. He also brusquely rejected the suggestion that NATO's bombing might have triggered the systematic ethnic cleansing now going on in Kosovo. Serbia was solely responsible, he said, and would have to suffer the consequences.
Even then, barely four days into the bombing campaign, Shea sounded defensive. Today, the grim train of events the bombing set off is clearly visible to the world. Speaking to the BBC in New York, a senior member of the US' oldest thi-nktank, the Council on Foreign Relations, put NATO's blunder in perspective: "In a military operation," he said, "you hope for the best but plan for the worst. NATO hoped for the best and planned for the best." NATO spokesmen are trying to put the best face on their blunder. No one, they seem to be saying, could have anticipated that the Yugoslavs would do this. Wrong again. Journalists and security analysts have emphasised that Serbia's response could easily have been foreseen. No less than Sir David Owen, former British foreign secretary and the European Union's special envoy to Bosnia in 1992-93, told CNN in unambiguous terms that it had been foreseen long back that Milose-vic would respond to air strikes with increased pressure on the Kosovars.
Even as I write, on April Fool's day, NATO is blundering from one colossal mistake to an even greater one. For the last three days, it's been "widening and deepening" its air strikes in Yugoslavia. Threats are being piled upon threats. NATO is accusing Serbia of starting a new variant of ethnic cleansing: identity elimination. Yugoslav leaders are threatened that they will be hunted worldwide on charges of crimes against humanity. The response? By March 31, over 135,000 Kosovar Albanians, over a quarter of the entire population, were pushed across the borders of Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro.
So now the cry has gone up for NATO to send in ground troops to stop the mass eviction. US spokesmen, badgered by journalists, maintain that no ground troops will be sent in, but NATO's spokesmen have begun to qualify their assertions. It is possible that by the time this appears in print, NATO will have begun to send in ground troops. The pressures on it are mounting, as the media shows the world the streams of refugees pouring across the frontiers: old people in wheelchairs, crying babies, weeping women. Once ground troops go in, the catastrophe will be complete.
Where did this second Balkan tragedy begin? NATO would like the world to believe that it is all Milosevic's fault. Had Serbia accepted the Rambouillet peace accord, as the Kosovo Liberation Army did on March 17, a NATO peacekeeping force would have been in place to safeguard the Albanians during the three-year cooling-off period during which the terms for Kosovo's autonomy would have been worked out, and a referendum held to endorse it. The sticking point for the Serbs, however, was the demand, made mainly by the US, that the peacekeeping force should be a NATO force and not a UN force or one that included a large Russian contingent. From Belgrade's point of view, this represented too great a loss of control over the future, and too much uncertainty during the interregnum, in a territory vital to the Serb national identity.
One does not have to look back far to understand why Milosevic doesn't trust NATO. Yugoslavia was vivisected by a unilateral German decision to recognise Slovenia and Croatia, while other EU members were still trying to find a way to preserve its territorial integrity. The others then accepted it as a fait accompli. This led to the declaration of independence by Bosnia and the holocaust that followed.
Why did NATO take a hard line on the troops issue? The answer, regrettably seems to lie in the post-Cold War world order that the Clinton Administration and the East Coast multilateralists are determined to build. In this the US will keep the peace in the Americas; NATO will do so in Europe, and the UN in the rest of the world. The UN would not be an embryonic world government, but at best a partner employed in areas where no vital European or US interest is at stake. The use of Russian or South Asian troops would not fit this grand design.
THE flaw in this design is NATO's assumption that it has the power to dictate to another country, and when it proves recalcitrant, to use its superior military power to bring it to its senses. NATO can pound much of Yugoslavia to ruin. But that will only seal the doom of the Kosovar Albanians. To achieve its objectives, NATO must be prepared to commit ground troops. As Sir David Owen said in his interview, if force had to be used, ground troops had to be committed from the very beginning in order to prevent the ethnic cleansing it would set off. Now it will serve no purpose. For, no matter what agreement NATO extracts from Milosevic, it has already lost. Even if the way is cleared for ethnic Albanians to return, they still have to live at peace with their neighbors. That is becoming less possible every day.
NATO's military superiority is a product of technology and the TV cameras. It has imbued the member countries with the belief that they can prosecute war without suffering casualties. This arrogance makes it difficult for them to admit they have erred. In Serbia they've already lost. But a good deal of blood may still have to flow before they realise this. As for the Kosovars, they have become dispensable pawns in a European version of the Great Game.
