Kosovo: Could It Have Been Avoided?

The heart of the treaty is Article 5, which states that "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all."

Still, a final question remains: was NATO justified on moral grounds? This requires extensive analysis.

The NATO air war against the repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority didn't happen because of one man--Slobodan Milosevic--any more than Fidel Castro caused the embargo against Cuba or the war against Iraq can be blamed on Saddam Hussein. These are simplistic claims, because in our rational moments we know that it takes more than one person or one nation to start a fight. And we know that creative means can be found to defuse one.

Since memories are short and the situation is complicated, an examination of recent history will help clarify what has happened in the southeastern portion of Europe called the Balkans. In 1991 and 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia. In April 1992, Montenegro and Serbia joined together to form the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), of which former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic became president.

War continued in Bosnia among the Croatians, the Muslims, and the Serbs. The United States tried to stop the war with accords hammered out in Dayton, Ohio. Those accords provided for a truce in 1995 based on "military stabilization" premised on a military balance among the warring parties. The United States then committed itself to train a united army of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats in order to achieve balance with the more powerful Serbs.

The Dayton accords stopped the war--but without any peace strategy and before any of the warring parties had achieved their political goals. It also legitimized the ethnic principle of rule and the nationalist goals of all three Balkan parties. None of them considered the Dayton truce written in stone but agreed to cooperate as long as it served their national interests.

In November 1996, FRY President Milosevic refused to recognize that an opposition party had won the municipal election in Belgrade--the capital of the FRY and the base of Milosevic's Serb-led government. For three months in Belgrade, there were daily nonviolent protest marches against his government--20,000 demonstrators on many days, 100,000 on others. On January 13, 1997, for the Serbian New Year, the protests drew more than 300,000 to the city center, in the pouring rain and against massed police who tried to block streets. The New York Times quoted an opposition leader as saying:

   "We will drive them out. Let them get used to a Serbia that is shut down.
   Our next move will be to refuse to pay our electric bills and our
   television bills. Let them cut off our electricity." Another leader urged
   supporters to block roads throughout the country. "All roads will be jammed
   for a few days until we liberate Serbia."

A European diplomat said, "This is a revolution. It is slow and laborious but the centers of power will not be the same when this is over." But as the Times also reported, "Most senior police officials and nearly all senior military officials have told the President that they will not use force to crush the street protests, Western diplomats said."

The nonviolent street protests against Milosevic were remarkably successful. On February 21, 1997, opposition leader Zoran Djindjic took control as mayor of Belgrade and an opposition coalition took control of the city council. Belgrade was the last of fourteen city governments won by the opposition.

Although this democratic revolt occurred after the Dayton accords, the United States did nothing to commend or support the opposition. Instead it preferred to deal with Milosevic.

The United States also chose to largely ignore the nonviolent opposition movement in Kosovo, a southern region of the FRY's province of Serbia that is regarded by the primarily Orthodox Christian Serbs as key to their struggle to preserve their faith since 1389. As such, Milosevic has repressed Kosovo's mainly Muslim ethnic Albanians: about 90 percent of the population. Since 1989, Milosevic has worked to strip Kosovo of its autonomy, shutting Albanian-run schools and dismissing hundreds from state jobs.

In hopes of independence, ethnic Albanians in 1992 created parallel schools with secret classes and a parallel government to nonviolently resist Milosevic's Serb-led government. Opposition leader Ibrahim Rugova became president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo.

But in 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)--a rebel opposition group--began killing FRY police and other Serbs in Kosovo, worsening the conflict. As more and more Kosovars were being killed, Rugova finally called off demonstrations against Milosevic and called on the United States--through the Dayton accords--for help. The United States ignored his appeals.

The United States also sabotaged the impartial effort of the United Nations Protection Force, which was established as a peacekeeping force in Bosnia in response to "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs. The United States arranged covert arms deliveries to the Muslims and then criticized the U.N. force as unable to prevent violence.

And according to the December 1995 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, the United States arranged for a "private security firm to send retired U.S. military personnel to Croatia to provide military training that in three years transformed the Croatian army into a force able to deal with the Serbian army."

To stop the killing of Kosovars, the United States did get Milosevic to agree to pull back his troops and special police to 14,000 in Kosovo. He also agreed to allow unimpeded NATO air surveillance over Kosovo and 2,000 unarmed verifiers on the ground.

However, the KLA did not agree. So at a conference in Rambouillet, France, the KLA was pressured to agree to an ultimatum to support NATO's military takeover of Kosovo. The Rambouillet ultimatum provides that

   NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels,
   aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access
   throughout the FRY, including associated airspace and territorial waters.

But Milosevic rejected any armed occupation force on Serbian soil. He viewed the opposition as starting a civil war for the takeover of Kosovo. After Rambouillet, negotiations with Belgrade stalled. One offer might have been to have U.N. peacekeeping forces used instead of NATO.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and President Clinton threatened to bomb Serbia if Milosevic didn't back down, as he had done in Bosnia when NATO threatened bombing. Instead, Milosevic held his ground. The unarmed overseers in Kosovo were withdrawn. The Yugoslav government began the evacuation of ethnic Albanians from their homes. And the bombing began because the "credibility" of NATO now seemed to be at stake.

The war that resulted need not have happened if at any time after the Cold War ended the United States had given up its superpower mentality. NATO was created n 1949 as a defensive alliance against the Soviet Union and should have been disbanded after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Instead, it became the American way of maintaining Europe as a part of the U.S. sphere of influence. At its formation, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden referred to NATO as a "European Monroe Doctrine."

Not only has the United States maintained troops and bases in Europe under NATO but it has also considered Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia, as well as Greece and Turkey, as part of its Mideast sphere of influence. That is why it sought to protect Muslims in Bosnia as part of its effort to maintain relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Mideastern Islamic nations. Joan Hoey reported in the Nation that, in 1992, when the United States

   led the campaign for an independent Bosnia [it] had nothing to do with
   higher principle; it was a maneuver to usurp the leadership role in
   Yugoslavia from Germany.... Yugoslavia has provided a focal point for the
   Western powers as they vie for position and influence in the emerging
   post-Cold War order.

After Germany increased its power in Europe, it then acted in tandem with the United States. In 1998 President Clinton persuaded German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder to back air strikes against Serbia and the Germans helped bring NATO into agreement.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union and Russia's agreement to reduce its nuclear arsenal, the United States should have been willing to participate in disarming the world. During the Nixon administration, the United States sponsored and ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which in Article VI says:

   Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good
   faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms
   race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament and on a treaty on general
   and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

The rest of the world seemed ready to implement this but, in the end, the United States refused.

In November 1993, 110 members of the Non-Aligned Nations sponsored a U.N. resolution calling on the World Court to declare nuclear weapons illegal. The United States opposed this. In 1995, the U.N. General Assembly voted 106 to thirty-nine, with seventeen abstentions, to commence negotiations on a phased program of nuclear disarmament. China voted for it, but the United States did not. There have been other initiatives that the United States rejected.

Instead, the Pentagon has steadily expanded its budget and a U.S. Army Field Manual (100-5) refers to U.S. plans to intervene in the internal affairs of other nations. The Republicans in Congress have blocked the United States from paying its debt of $1.6 billion to the U.N. but have increased military budgets billions above those proposed by President Clinton. The president has also invited an expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia and has told other nations, notably the three Baltic states--Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia--they are next in line.

In effect, the United States has rejected the U.N. as a peacekeeping force in Europe and has instead relied on NATO, which is led by the United States. This has implications for the entire effort to establish world law, which the U.N. represents. NATO's expansion could result in a repolarized world. What would happen if Russia and China entered into a military alliance to counter NATO's expansion or aggression? What will it cost? The Congressional Budget Office, even before the war in Kosovo, estimated that NATO expansion may cost $125 billion over a period of thirteen years. The bombing of Serbia has already cost billions.

The expenses of the refugees and their resettlement will be borne by NATO countries, chiefly the United States. Who will pay for the reconstruction of Serbia after many of its structures have been demolished? Will there be reparations for the innocent civilians already being killed there?

In addition to all of the deaths, injuries, and refugees caused by this war, the bombing has many other implications beyond cost. Will the FRY be the last nation NATO bombs? It is certainly the first bombing of a sovereign nation without the nation having attacked another. Is the bombing a humanitarian action because of the Kosovars being driven out of their region? No, the evacuation of Kosovo began before the bombing, in anticipation of it, signaled by the removal of NATO observers. As the editor of the Progressive suggests in the May 1999 issue, that period should have been used to pour in U.N. observers, volunteer peacekeepers, and others determined to find a way out of the confrontation.

And what of the nonviolent democratic opponents of Milosevic ignored by the United States in 1997 and among those bombed by NATO? American media deplore the fact that Serb-controlled radio and television kept the Yugoslav people from knowing what Milosevic's special forces were doing in Kosovo, but the American people were given little knowledge of how widespread the opposition to Milosevic was before the bombing began.

What happens next will depend on many things. No one can predict what the ultimate outcome of this war will be--either in the immediate future or in the years which follow. That will depend upon the willingness of the new European Union to continue its approval of NATO, as well as what happens in U.S.-Russian relations, U.S.-Chinese relations, and in the volatile Middle East.

The most promising possibility is the revival of democratic forces in the FRY. A May 8, 1999, New York Times op-ed column, coauthored by Zoran Djindjic, states:

   Even before the end of the war, the international community should state
   clearly and unequivocally that democratic and economic reconstruction in
   Yugoslavia represents its official and binding position. Such a statement
   would give hope to the citizens of our country and encourage the
   transformation of the political landscape.... Democracy can be established
   in our country only with a complete political transition.... This depends
   on free and fair elections, the strengthening of Serbia's democratic
   opposition ... the complete isolation of undemocratic forces, and the
   establishment of an outside body to help monitor the political change.

RELATED ARTICLE: In the Name of Democracy

Not one democratic government respectful of human rights has developed in any of the twenty-two countries bombarded by the United States since World War II, causing varying degrees of death and destruction. The following list of U.S. bombings is from Washington Free Press cofounder William Blum's website (members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm):

   China 1945-1946                 Grenada 1983
   Korea and China 1950-1953       Libya 1986
   Guatemala 1954                  El Salvador 1980s
   Indonesia 1958                  Nicaragua 1980s
   Cuba 1959-1960                  Panama 1989
   Guatemala 1960                  Iraq 1991-1999
   Vietnam 1961-1973               Kuwait 1991
   Laos 1964-1973                  Somalia 1993
   Congo 1964                      Bosnia 1994, 1995
   Peru 1965                       Sudan 1998
   Guatemala 1967-1969             Afghanistan 1998
   Cambodia 1969-1970              Yugoslavia 1999

Other U.S. military efforts also contradict our so-called dedication to democracy. According to Michael Parenti's 1995 book Against Empire: The Brutal Realities of U.S. Global Domination:

   Over the past five decades, democratically elected reformist governments in
   Guatemala, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria,
   Indonesia (under Sukarno), Greece, Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, and numerous
   other nations were overthrown by pro-capitalist militaries that were funded
   and aided by the U.S. national security state....

      Since World War II, the U.S. government has given more than $200 billion
   in military aid to train, equip, and subsidize more than 2.3 million troops
   and internal security forces in more than eighty countries.... Among the
   recipients have been some of the most notorious military autocracies in
   history, countries that have tortured, killed or otherwise maltreated large
   numbers of their citizens because of their dissenting views, as in Turkey,
   Zaire, Chad, Pakistan, Morocco, Indonesia, Honduras, Nicaragua (under
   Somoza), Iran (under the Shah), the Philippines (under Marcos), and
   Portugal (under Salazar).

John M. Swomley has a Ph.D. in political science and international affairs from the University of Colorado and is professor emeritus of social ethics at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri.3