The New York Time OP-ED Monday, February 1, 1999

TOO INVOLVED IN KOSOVO

By Lee H. Hamilton

Washington, Deploying American and NATO troops in Kosovo may well be necessary in the short term to prevent the outbreak of wider violence and to help carry out a political settlement. Yet, the possibility of this additional obligation of manpower and resources in the former Yugoslavia raises the important question of whether we are overengaged in this relatively small region.

America and Americans are everywhere in the states of the former Yugoslavia. The United States and NATO already have about 800 monitors of whom about 180 are Americans, on the ground in Kosovo. In addition, the alliance will soon have up to 3,000 troop in neighboring Macedonia. These troops will be deployed in addition to the 32,000 troops - 6,900 of them Americans - who remain in Bosnia. The Bosnia deployments, which began three years ago, have cost well over $20 billion.

We have not just supplied troops. The United States and its NATO allies have become deeply involved in nearly every aspect of the civilian and humanitarian problems in these regions. We are supplying billions of dollars more to promote reconstruction, political and economic reforms, and humanitarian aid, especially in Bosnia.

American officials are in leadership positions all over the region. We are practically the proconsul of the former Yugoslavia. Americans command the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia. We have the controlling voice in the fate of Brko, a pivotal Bosnian town. We are arming and training the forces of the Muslim-Croat Federation. Another American Ambassador commands the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's unarmed monitoring force in Kosovo.

This is simply too much. It is time to take a step back and put this openended commitment into proper perspective. Each peacekeeping mission - in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia -taken by itself has been defensible, helpful and important, and I have supported each one, and the Administration has done a good job in responding to these crises. But now it seems we're pushing our commitment too far.

Viewed from the wider perspective, this commitment of time, effort and expense that the United States and its allies have made and will still have to devote to the former Yugoslavia is greatly disproportionate to its relative importance to our national interest. For all their savagery, the conflicts there have been essentially local, the result of unresolved ethnic, religious and power disputes.

It is true that if we took our troops out of Bosnia or our monitors out of Kosovo, violence would break out almost immediately. There will be peace only as long as we stay. There is little chance for self-sustaining peace in either Bosnia or Kosovo in this generation.

So, we are mired. This will cost us many more billions.

It is not at all certain that Congress and the American people - who have been lukewarm at best about our deep involvement in the Balkans - will continue to support our enormous commitments indefinitely. We cannot just pull out of the region, but we must seriously begin to look at a gradual "de-Americanization" strategy that allows us to reduce our engagement over time, and not get more deeply involved, as we are doing now in Kosovo.

For this to work, our European allies must take over more responsibility. A good start was the willingness of the French to assume the leadership of the NATO troops that protect the monitors in Kosovo. That force includes no American ground troops. The Europeans already have the lead in carrying out the civilian reconstruction in Bosnia. We should also continue to work closely with the Europeans on the future of Kosovo, so that this does not end up as an entirely American affair.

There are greater threats to our national interests than those posed by the problems of the former Yugoslavia. If we don't put the perpetual crisis there into proper perspective, we will be less able to respond to the real threats to our security and national interests.

Lee H. Hamilton, the former Democratic chairman of the House International Relations Committee, is director of the Woodrow Wilson Center.