A Perfect Polemic: Blind to Reality on Kosovo

Mandelbaum suggests that NATO might have avoided the horrors that befell the region's people had it made a "concerted effort to reinforce the cease-fire [in Kosovo] and strengthen the international observers." But that is precisely what America and our allies tried to do starting in October 1998, when Milosevic agreed to cease his repression of the Kosovars and the OSCE launched an unprecedented effort, including the deployment of more than 1,000 monitors, to hold him to his word by peaceful means. Throughout this period, Serbian forces repeatedly violated the ceasefire, exceeded the troop levels to which their leader had agreed in October, and steadily increased their harassment of the international observers until it was impossible for them to do their jobs.

The February talks in Rambouillet marked the end of this diplomatic process, not the beginning, as Mandelbaum implies. The administration's central position at the talks -- that a greater tragedy could be avoided only if Serbian forces withdrew from Kosovo while an international force was deployed -- was absolutely right. It was the conclusion drawn from a year of hard diplomacy, going back to March 1998, when, with America's European partners and Russia, the United States first asked Miloevic to pull his police out of Kosovo. If anything, Secretary Albright's assertion that "NATO went the extra mile to find a peaceful resolution," which Mandelbaum disparages, was an understatement.

Mandelbaum also mischaracterizes what happened at the Rambouillet talks. The plan the allies presented there did not call for a "referendum after three years to decide Kosovo's ultimate status." Instead, it offered an international meeting that would determine a mechanism for defining Kosovo's future, which would take into account the will of the people concerned, the opinions of relevant authorities, the degree of compliance by the parties, and the Helsinki Final Act. Moreover, the KLA delegates did not "refuse" to agree to the allies' plan for Kosovar autonomy. They accepted it in principle, went home, and then returned to accept it formally. Milosevic's delegates never seriously engaged at the talks -- because he was simultaneously preparing the offensive that he believed would destroy the KLA once and for all. That was clearly his fundamental aim from the beginning, and the "concessions" Mandelbaum suggests offering would have been highly unlikely to divert him from trying to achieve it.

Once Rambouillet broke down, NATO had little alternative but to act. Milosevic would not accept any solution that required him to pull his troops from Kosovo. Those troops were starting their offensive, violating every previous commitment Milosevic had made to the international community, and the situation was deteriorating rapidly. America and our allies hoped that military action would prevent further suffering. But we knew that it was equally possible that it would not and that a sustained campaign might be necessary to stop the killing and reverse the expulsions. And we were prepared to do what it took to win.

A DOG IN THIS FIGHT

Mandelbaum's heart does not really seem to be in the policy alternatives he suggests. Perhaps that is because he sees little reason to care about what happens in faraway Kosovo, a place he dismisses as a "tiny former Ottoman possession of no strategic importance or economic value, with which the United States had no ties of history, geography, or sentiment." Overlook the sweeping insensitivity and historical myopia of that statement -- hardly surprising from someone who also opposed NATO's effort to end the bloodshed in Bosnia in 1995 -- and simply focus on Mandelbaum's claim that "no national interest was at stake" in this conflict.

In fact, 19 NATO allies, with all the diversity of their political cultures and historical relationships with the Balkans, felt they had a compelling interest in ending the violence in Kosovo. A prolonged conflict there would have had no natural boundaries. The allies had an interest in not seeing Kosovars driven from their land, across national borders into fragile new democracies that would be overwhelmed and destabilized by their presence. If NATO had not acted, Kosovo's neighbors might have felt compelled to respond to this threat themselves, and a wider war might have begun. The allies clearly had an interest in preserving the stability of southeastern Europe -- and protecting the strides it has made away from a violent past toward a more democratic future. And the allies had an interest in maintaining the unity and credibility of NATO, which would have been impossible had the alliance done nothing in the face of unspeakable atrocities committed at its doorstep -- a lesson learned in Bosnia. One can dispute whether these interests justified NATO's decision to use force. But one cannot dispute that these interests exist.

Mandelbaum also argues that the conflict undermined far more important American interests -- namely, U.S. relations with Russia and China. True, Russia strongly opposed NATO's action in Kosovo. But Mandelbaum neglects to consider what would have happened to that relationship had America let the slaughter of innocents continue in Kosovo simply because Russia objected to the use of force. It would have been far harder to sustain a domestic consensus for U.S.-Russian relations under those circumstances. It is far better to try to resolve the source of the tension itself: a decade of war and instability in the Balkans.