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NATO Surprised in Kosovo - Not Likely!
31 March 1999
By Jack Seymour, Senior Fellow
US and NATO officials initially evinced surprise
at Serbia's ruthless assault on Albanians in Kosovo, with
the now obvious aim of driving as many as possible from the
province. Now these officials strive to emphasize that the
assault was beginning before the bombing campaign and could
not have been caused by it. The Serbian onslaught should not
have been a surprise, and according to recent news analyses
it was not. Both military and civilian intelligence assessments
warned about the likelihood. Yet, it is clear that no serious
planning was undertaken to protect the Albanians.
That failure produced a serious defeat for the
Alliance in one of its stated aims for the air campaign. The
planners noted the 40,000 Serbian troops massing in and near
Kosovo but took no effective measures to save the Albanians
there. This despite President Clinton's statement to the nation
on March 24 that the Alliance was acting "to protect thousands
of innocent people in Kosovo from a mounting military offensive."
Worse, the Alliance is taking no visible measures to correct
its error even now, preferring to keep on bombing in hopes
that eventually there will be some tangible benefit to the
Albanian Kosovars. This is evidently owing to the prior and
publicly stated unwillingness to employ ground forces in the
campaign.
Unless NATO can act at this late stage to end
the crimes against Albanians, it will have failed in one of
its announced objectives, with obvious consequences for its
prestige. The international community will be left with the
major responsibility and challenge of compensating the victims
of these crimes by caring for the refugees and working diplomatically
and financially to see that they can eventually return to
their homes. The policeman will have failed and society will
have to repair the consequences as best it can.
It is too early to draw solid lessons from this,
but some tentative ones include:
end our infatuation with high-tech air power
as an easy way to accomplish political or humanitarian goals,
do not let wishful thinking interfere with
planning for all reasonably imaginable scenarios,
start developing military capabilities to
deal with limited-war situations where ground action must
supplement air campaigns-or vice versa.
prepare the public for such eventualities
in the future, and
strengthen longer-term instruments of mediation,
conflict resolution, and civic institution building to supplement
the tools of diplomacy and military action.
Proposals for such longer-term activities in
Kosovo were submitted several years ago. Now it is too late
to have any immediate effect. But extensive and costly work
will be necessary to repair the damage, rehabilitate the victims,
deal with the criminals, and produce stability and cooperation
in the Balkans after the bombs have stopped falling.
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