A Tragic Miscalculation
By Stephen Zunes
Tuesday, April 13, 1999

There is little hope that Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic's cease fire overtures mount to anything significant. Indeed, he has largely won the war on the ground. By contrast, NATO bombs have done a lot of damage, but have little more to show.

Indeed, NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia tragically illustrates the limits of air power, however massive and well-coordinated, in achieving political goals. As many of those knowledgeable of the region predicted, the bombing has hardened the position of the Yugoslav government, marginalized Serbian moderates, and threatened the stability of neighboring countries. Most tragically, unable to effective challenge NATO air power, the Serbs have turned on those most vulnerable -- the very Kosovar Albanians we were supposedly trying to protect.

There is little question that the NATO air strikes precipitated the ethnic cleansing and other Serbian atrocities against the Kosovar Albanian population. NATO claims otherwise, of course, but what else could they say? Admit that they made a mistake with untold tragic consequences? Milosevic may have indeed desired such ethnic cleansing all along. Yet, by ordering the evacuation of the unarmed monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, NATO gave him the opportunity. By bombing Yugoslavia, they gave him nothing to lose.

NATO seems to think that if bombing doesn't work, just bomb some more. This is has nothing to do with stopping Serbian atrocities against the Kosvar Albanians. This is simply foreign policy by catharsis, an act of frustration. Destroying bridges in northern Yugoslavia and other attacks against the country's civilian infrastructure will not stop the horrific ethnic cleansing hundreds of miles to the south. Escalating the bombing will only escalate the killing of Serbs and ethnic Albanians alike.

Milosevic's power is based upon his manipulation of the Serbs' historic sense of victimhood. Their songs and epic poems portray a willingness to be martyred for the fatherland. NATO bombing plays right into the dictator's hands, strengthening his popular support and hardening his position as the bombing escalates and the civilian death toll rises. The country's pro-democracy movement — once the greatest hope for pluralism and tolerance — has been set back by a decade or more. Ironically, the anti-Milosevic forces are centered in Belgrade and other urban areas which are the principal targets of the bombing.

Meanwhile, not only has the bombing precipitated the massacres and ethnic cleansing of Kosova Albanians, the bombing is destabilizing the region rather than stabilizing it. Macedonia's delicate ethnic balance is threatened by the influx of ethnic Albanian refugees, Montenegro's efforts and democratization in danger and Serb forces have lobbed shells into Albania, a poor country overwhlemed by their fleeing Kosavar brethren.

The bombing campaign has so little to show for it, some pundits are now justifying the continuation of air strikes largely on the grounds that is necessary to maintain NATO's credibility. This appears to be cirular logic, however, because NATO's continuation in the post-Cold War era is based in large part on its supposed need to to intervene in just such conflicts. The Clinton Administration, along with its NATO allies, are digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole. Sending ground troops may be starting to look less politically risky than escalating an ineffectual and increasingly controversial bombing campaign. By the time forces are mobilized for such an assault, however, the Serbs may have reduced Kosovo to a wasteland.

Historians will likely see Clinton's war against Yugoslavia as a bigger mark against his presidency than his impeachment. Ignoring the advice of virtually everyone familiar with the Balkans, he has led a NATO bombing campaign which has achieved the opposite of its stated goals and has no end in sight.

The best the United States and its allies can hope to do at this point is to arrange a cease fire on all sides where both the NATO bombing and the Serbian offensive in Kosovo stops. A beefed-up OSCE monitoring group could then be returned to Kosovo and the repatriation of refugees would begin. A new round of negotiations, which would include the Serbs of Kosovo, the Serbian church and other non-governmental organizations which could challenge the paramountcy of President Slobodan Milosevic.

In the meantime, NATO countries should provide for temporary political asylum for Serbian soldiers who refuse to support Milosevic's war machine. The United States should increase its humanitarian aid, including paying back its debt to the United Nations, equivalent to only a few days of the air war, which has been crippling the relief efforts of the UN High Commission on Refugees. The Clinton Administration should support the democratic Serbs and Montenegrans challenging Milosevic's ethnic chauvinism and militarism as well as the remaining Kosovar Albanians still favoring nonviolent resistance.

Ultimately, this tragic miscalculation may force us to critically re-evaluate the bipartisan consensus in Washington which still believes that preserving Cold War-era military alliances and military budgets really supports U.S. policy interests or promotes peace and stability in the world. Perhaps this would be the only good which might arise from this fiasco.

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Stephen Zunes is an assistant professor of politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.