NATIONAL INTEREST SERVED IN KOSOVO.

Byline: Robert E. Thompson

AMERICA'S armed intervention in Yugoslavia raises questions once more about our national interest, our humanitarian obligations and our leadership in international organizations created as a result of our conviction that collective security is essential to peace.

The effort of U.S.-led NATO forces to halt the slaughter of civilians in Kosovo through air attacks has created consternation, confusion and outright opposition among many in the United States.

What, many critics ask, is our national interest in a country that has often been a cauldron of competing ethic, religious and political forces since it was created by the Treaty of Versailles 80 years ago?

Does America, as the world's only superpower, have a humanitarian responsibility to protect the innocent victims of ruthless aggression and restore peace to lands shattered by warfare? If so, does that responsibility extend to Africa and Asia?

Is NATO's armed action in Yugoslavia a natural and legitimate outgrowth of the internationalism that has been the guiding force in U.S. foreign policy since the United Nations was founded in 1945 and NATO in 1949?

Does the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created as a barrier to Soviet aggression in Western Europe during the Cold War, still have a viable mission?

There are other pertinent questions: When and how do we end the bombardment of Yugoslavia and bring our forces home? Will massive bombing eventually force the ruthless Slobodan Milosevic to the peace table? Will it become necessary for the NATO allies, including the United States, to commit troops and then to the peacekeeping?

Those last three questions may be the most important to American families.

Answers are vital to preservation of a foreign policy that has, for the most part, served us well and to an understanding of that policy.

First, it should be noted that what we are trying to achieve in Kosovo already has been achieved in Bosnia, where violence reigned before NATO's intercession.

Our national interest, like that of our NATO allies, is in ending the genocide that has taken the lives of thousands of Kosovar Albanians and the forced evacuation that has uprooted hundreds of thousands more from their homes.

At one time, before jet planes, trans-ocean rocketry, computers and far-reaching communications networks tied us all together in one enormous, if not necessarily happy, human family, many Americans would not have accepted such a national interest. But, in today's world, we are separated from each other only by minutes rather than days and weeks. Isolation must be a thing of the past.

It has taken us a long time to realize the wisdom of words written by John Donne 375 years ago: ``No man is an island, entirely of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.''

As a nation blessed with tremendous power in all phases of our existence, America does carry a special burden to help those nations that it can help. But we have been burned in places like Vietnam and Somalia, and we have an obligation to our people to pick and choose where we interject ourselves and to do so only where we are convinced we can prevail.

Since World War II, when we defeated vicious foes in Europe and Asia, we have, through the United Nations and NATO, sought to use our power to halt aggression and genocide. We have not always done so wisely, but at least we have tried.

The other side of the coin is that thousands of people around the world who now are protesting our bombing raids sat in serene silence during the months that ethnic cleansing killed, maimed and uprooted innocent people in Kosovo. Some others who now protest our action clamored for action in the recent past.

NATO remains vital as one of the great peacekeeping institutions in history.

Critics ask what our exit strategy is. The answer should be: to force Milosevic and the Serbs back to the conference table, to make them accept NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo to protect the embattled ethnic Albanians there - and, ultimately, to oust Milosevic from power.

President Clinton has sought to explain the bombing of Yugoslavia in terms of World War II. He pictures Milosevic as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler and himself as a latter-day Winston Churchill, warning that the villainous Yugoslav dictator can spark a war that will engulf neighboring nations, including Greece and Turkey.

Some critics see the war in Kosovo as another Vietnam, a civil war in which the United States has no abiding interest. They fear that America and its allies can become mired in a tragic conflict that is unwinnable without ground troops.

They point out that massive bombing of London by the Nazis in World War II did not break the spirit of the English people. Nor, they add, did the bombing of Hanoi force the North Vietnamese to capitulate. In the Persian Gulf War in 1991, airstrikes played a vital role, but it was the ground troops that drove Iraq's forces back to Baghdad.

But such an outlook is extremely pessimistic. While the outcome in Yugoslavia remains uncertain, the truth is that America and its NATO allies are committed to saving the lives and villages of the people of Kosovo.

The exercise of power to help other peoples is a duty that entails sacrifice, and that is the price we now are paying for a better world.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Ethnic Albanian refugees seek shelter in the mosque at the Albanian border town of Kukes.

Associated Press