Thursday, June 17, 1999

Lessons of the Balkan War

As NATO peacekeepers move into Kosovo, they are finding grisly evidence of Serbian brutality in nearly every town. The signs of mass killing and wanton destruction in places like Djakovica, Vlastica and Cikatova ought to give pause to those who fault NATO for confronting Slobodan Milosevic. Though definitive judgments on the war await further developments in the Balkans and the work of future historians, it is not too soon to conclude that the air offensive was just, and more effective than its many critics expected. As an exercise in military and political coercion, the campaign achieved most of its aims with limited civilian casualties. Perhaps most important, it demonstrated that the United States and its allies can act decisively in defense of democratic principles and against ethnic violence in Europe.

This was the first military conflict since the end of the cold war fought primarily for humanitarian purposes. It probably will not be the last. Washington went to war in the Persian Gulf eight years ago because Iraqi aggression threatened America's economic welfare. The threat in Kosovo was different. Certainly, maintaining stability in Europe is essential to American security. But the immediate hazard in Kosovo was a demonic assault on the principles of a civilized society. NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days to combat lethal ethnic cleansing, to reverse the expulsion of more than a million ethnic Albanians from their homes and to prevent Slobodan Milosevic from terrorizing the Balkans.

That Washington and its European allies were willing to confront Mr. Milosevic is a powerful signal to other tyrants that the instigation of ethnic violence, even within their own borders, can reach a point that the world will not tolerate.

That does not mean the West can or should intervene whenever ethnic conflict erupts. As a practical matter, intervention should be confined to cases where violence is extreme and threatens to engulf neighboring nations and where democratic nations have the means, as in Kosovo, to respond. The combination will be rare outside Europe. When possible, such military actions should be conducted with the approval of the United Nations Security Council. They should not be initiated without the support of the American people and Congress.

Air power is not a panacea, but the war in Yugoslavia demonstrated that sustained aerial attack with precision munitions can erode resistance and bring retreat. Civilian casualties are inevitable, but NATO worked hard to avoid them. It is a tribute to American military technology and the skill of NATO pilots that in almost 10,000 bombing runs no allied airmen were lost and only two planes were downed. Americans should not count on such success in every conflict, but the bombardment of Serbia and Iraq suggests that most air defenses can be defeated by American weapons systems.

NATO, in its first war, showed surprising cohesion and determination. Much was made of Germany's opposition to a possible ground war, and Italy's and Greece's preference to end the bombing, but in the end the alliance did not crack as the air war was extended and intensified. This was due in considerable part to the steady leadership of President Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and President Jacques Chirac of France. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, raised in the turmoil of earlier European conflicts, brought great conviction and passion to the fight against a new kind of chaos.

The mass graves, gutted buildings and torched farmhouses of Kosovo are not the inevitable product of military conflict. They are the result of a premeditated assault by Mr. Milosevic against ethnic Albanians. Enforcing the peace in Kosovo will be difficult, as the events of the last week have shown. Reconstruction will take months, and reconciliation may be impossible after so much bloodshed. But to have done nothing in the face of Mr. Milosevic's campaign of terror would have been unconscionable.