The New York Times

April 1, 1999

ESSAY

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Who's Losing NATO?

WASHINGTON -- NATO's military objective was clear: to "degrade" Serbia's ability to drive the ethnic Albanian out of its province of Kosovo.

Some degradation. After a week of Milosevic's ethnic cleanskrieg, a third of the unwanted population has been driven out, many civilians murdered, the Kosovo Liberation Army decimated. Slow-moving NATO's bluff was called and fast-moving Serbia is winning the war.

Why? One reason is that Clinton's poll-following and wholly unnecessary promise of no use of ground troops emboldened the Serbian dictator. Another is that our cautiously phased air campaign concentrated on Serbian air defenses, thereby protecting our pilots, rather than combining that with an attack on Serbian field forces as they swiftly carried out their savage sweep.

In the face of seven days of defeat, NATO will now punish Serbia by bombing government buildings in Belgrade. That may salve our pride, but an equivalent discomfort -- an evacuation of the Pentagon -- would not stop America's ability to wage war. Pinpoint bombing of Belgrade headquarters will only solidify Serbian patriotic support for Milosevic.

We will also take more risks flying lower over Kosovo. That may take out 400 tanks and heavy artillery pieces now shelling towns, but will not stop the panicked exodus driven by men with rifles.

That leaves the West on a classic Vietnam spot: Serbia, the subpower, is fighting to win, while NATO, the superpower, is painfully escalating as it yearns to settle.

To end brutal internal aggression against innocents, we have to break that pattern.

On the military front, beyond tactical air attacks on the cleanskrieg, NATO bombers should darken Belgrade. The removal of electricity would disrupt military communications and remind triumphant Serb leaders of the greater human hardship being inflicted by their orders on Kosovars. Then we should target industrial plants around Belgrade and Nis, and sink all Serbian naval vessels.

Ground troops? The prospect of body bags is anathema to Bill Clinton despite his bluster about genocide. Without his willingness to ask Congress to put our troops where his mouth is, Europeans and even Turks will not take on the nation that bloodily battled Hitler and stood off Stalin.

What can be done is to mass a NATO ground force near Albania and Macedonia borders, protecting and training a K.L.A. guerrilla force. The very presence of five armored divisions nearby, prepared for action under air supremacy, would radically change the local power equation.

Economic pain can be inflicted by the seizure of Serbian assets around the world to subsidize the upkeep of refugees. Psychological war can be waged by shortwave, leaflet and even the Internet, to Serbs now getting only Milosevic propaganda. Just as fissures will develop within the NATO alliance, political splits in the initial Serbian solidarity should be exploited.

On the diplomatic front, forget the Russians. To them, keeping Kosovo under Serbian rule means keeping Chechnya under Russian rule.

Primakov's Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, said this week that NATO officials, not Serbian killers, should be tried as war criminals for their "undisguised genocide." The long-term Russian interest is to diminish NATO; Primakov cannot be its intermediary.

Our former political goal of an autonomous Kosovo under Serbian sovereignty has been overtaken by atrocity. Take the mushy offer we made at Rambouillet off the table. The allies should now stand for a separated Kosovo and be willing to consider a partition plan that lets Serbia keep revered historic sites but joins most of the area long populated by Albanians to Albania.

After his victorious first week, Milosevic will not hear of it. He sees what has not happened to Saddam Hussein's Iraq and logically assumes nothing serious will happen to his Serbia.

We have not yet reached the end of the beginning.

But after sustained strategic and tactical bombing; after an economic blockade and asset seizure that squeezes his political supporters; after the buildup of troops on his borders that protects the seekers of vengeance, and might just roll tanks forward to establish fortified havens for innocents -- after all that, as crowds now cheering in Belgrade start to grumble about shortages and isolation, the conqueror of unarmed Kosovo might be more inclined to trade a little land for peace with Europe.