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A L S O+T O D A Y
Limp Willy? "Pec is burning! Where are the ground troops?" Soldiers missing in action
T A B L E+T A L K Kevorkian's conviction: Was it a boon or a bomb to the assisted suicide movement? Join in the fray in the Social Issues area of Table Talk
R E C E N T L Y Beginner's guide to the Balkans Kosovo update Bombing the baby with the bath water Milosevic's proposal Endgame? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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HUMANITARIAN ENCLAVE? | PAGE 1, 2, 3
Do you think Milosevic's force and resilience have taken NATO by surprise? I think so. It appears from what we're seeing that there was a lack of imagination in planning. He realized straight away that he could improve his position in Kosovo. I'm sad to say that our efforts against ethnic cleansing have instead become a catalyst for the acceleration of it. Before we invaded he had stepped up his ethnic cleansing, but clearly it's gone into warp speed since bombing begin. Did NATO foresee Milosevic stepping up his push to drive ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo? It's not clear we expected him to do what he did -- it's almost as if we expected him to do two things in sequence: endure and then surrender. The business of escalating laterally was never even thought of. The plan we came up with has two speeds -- bombing and more bombing. Milosevic, on the other hand, has tried a number of things -- he's tried a diplomatic tact, he's tried to send his planes into Bosnia and he stepped up his propaganda and further isolated his people from Western press. He's doing any number of things that were unpredictable.
Have the airstrikes successfully debilitated the Milosevic-led military and government in Yugoslavia? There's no doubt in my mind that they've been a very serious body blow. Whole segments of the Yugoslav armed forces are disappearing. Their Mig-29 inventory has been cut in half or less; critical facilities have been wiped out; installation after installation has been taken down, including command and control and air defense. You name it and they're suffering. And now in Kosovo and other places Yugoslav armored units are going to begin to get seriously picked away by A-10 aircraft and possibly even attack helicopters. That's some vicious business. Those guys miss very infrequently ... and they can hang around and wait for you to come out of hiding. And when they hit you with their maverick missiles, their automatic cannons or any tank-guided missiles, you've had it. What's coming for the Yugoslav armed forces is even worse than what they've already had. But the real question for strategists is whether what is happening from a military perspective is causing the right political effects. The right effect would be to get Milosevic to sign on to the Rambouillet accords and begin to behave himself in Kosovo. With all that's happened in the past week, will it be possible to return to Rambouillet? It's hard to say. A lot of the people who signed for the Kosovars are dead or in hiding. Milosevic doesn't say no, he says, "Hell No!" And the United States is beginning to talk about independence for Kosovo. You heard that from the president and a little bit more from James Rubin this afternoon. What other strategic options exist, besides bombing and ground troops? I think all of these things can become dozens of options when they are played in conjunction with diplomacy, and let us also not forget economic sanctions, which are, of course, biting Yugoslavia pretty hard right now. Sanctions were off after the Dayton accords, but they've been back on for the better part of two years. Should NATO or the United States arm the Kosovo Liberation Army or other opposition groups? Arming the KLA is an option beyond ground troops and bombing, but it's something that will only pay off months from now. Look at how long it was after we started helping the Afghanistan mujahadeen before they began to have an effect. That's an option, but not for the near-term future. Has the United States moved into a mind-set where it believes it can win a war without losing any soldiers? There is a bit of dissent that as the world's only superpower that we can engage in what you might call Tomahawk diplomacy or immaculate interventions, where we go in, kick the furniture, get what we want and nobody gets hurt but a few unfortunate people on the other side of the fence. In some instances, that's enough, like with our recent missile strikes in Afghanistan and the Sudan with Osama bin Laden. That was enough to make the point. But Kosovo is a complex situation that calls for great determination and complex tools that must work together over long periods of time to get the job done. The notion that we can somehow break Milosevic and his thugs and breaking their will vis à vis Kosovo is only one or two cruise missiles away is an inadequate attitude. How would you rate the Clinton administration's handling of the war in Yugoslavia? Of all the Clinton military operations so far, this has been by far the most disappointing. We seem to have underestimated our opponent and we seem to have gotten into it with one hand tied behind our back. Why we would choose to do both of those things is a mystery. N E X T+P A G E+| Negotiating with a "war criminal" |
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