Making the Case for the Kosovo Bombing

AS NATO forces conduct airstrikes in the Serbian province of Kosovo, it's easy to understand why American officials have so often been nostalgic for the Cold War. If the East-West struggle was marked by clear-cut geopolitical challenges and stark policy choices, the imbroglio in Kosovo comes out of a new national security landscape colored in shades of gray.

In his address to the nation on Wednesday, President Bill Clinton spoke with confidence and resolve about what is at stake in Kosovo and why military action was the right choice. That sureness should be recognized as a facade. In truth, the Clinton administration knows that the airstrikes will lead NATO down a highly uncertain path, with no guarantee of success and the real possibility of U.S. casualties. For congressional critics of the Kosovo action, these risks are unacceptable. The United States, they say, should only use force when graver American interests are at stake and the outcomes of intervention are more certain. However, in ordering airstrikes, Clinton took the kind of unpleasant - but unavoidable - gamble that is increasingly the trademark of post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy.

Bluntly put, the United States has never had any good options in Kosovo. And, over the past year, the Kosovo crisis has forced U.S. policymakers to grapple with many of the same tough issues that they have faced in Bosnia, Rwanda and Haiti. First, there is the question of how to respond when only limited American interests are threatened. For all of the savagery of the fighting in Kosovo, it is clear that the region's troubles do not put at risk any interests that are truly vital to the United States. Kosovo's economic and strategic significance is minimal. If the Serbs successfully crushed the Kosovar insurgents, the consequences would be nil for the average American.

Second, there is the question of whether the United States and its allies should initiate military action without authorization from the United Nations and the full support of the international community. Russia's vehement condemnation of the airstrikes indicates that there will be a diplomatic price to pay for punishing Serbia. Other important goals of U.S. diplomacy - such as reductions in strategic nuclear arsenals - may be dealt a setback. More generally, the ideal of the rule of law by the UN always suffers when the United States goes around the Security Council.

Third and finally, the Clinton administration confronts in Kosovo the same question it faced in Bosnia and Haiti: Is it prudent to initiate military action when there is acute uncertainty about whether it will achieve the desired ends? In recent years, through much painful trial and error, the Clinton administration has fashioned some rough answers to these questions. Contrary to the claims of critics, both on the left and on the right, NATO airstrikes in Kosovo are underpinned by a coherent strategic outlook. If anything, it is the administration's critics who are the muddled thinkers.

On the matter of national interests, the Clinton administration has wisely understood that threats to minor U.S. interests can and should be addressed with limited applications of American power. Stopping a humanitarian disaster in an obscure country is an example of a foreign policy goal that doesn't rise to the level of a vital interest, but nevertheless is a goal that many Americans support.

Few would suggest trying to achieve this goal through actions that would likely incur major U.S. casualties, such as committing ground troops to combat. But it does make sense to defend minor U.S. interests with more limited measures, such as airstrikes or the deployment of troops in low-risk environments. Bosnia and Haiti are prime examples of this outlook. In both cases, American forces have incurred minimal losses while achieving a great deal of good. Likewise, airstrikes in Kosovo represent the defense of limited U.S. interests with the limited application of U.S. power.

International opposition is another obstacle that shouldn't automatically foreclose American military action. To be sure, America has often acted as an imperial power in this century, flouting the rule of law and weakening international institutions. Ideally, all use of military force should be authorized by the UN. While it is true that the Clinton administration has sometimes been too quick to bulldoze over this ideal, it is also true that Clinton's policy makers have often had a strong reason for doing so and do not take this step as lightly as many of their predecessors did.

In this case, Russian opposition to airstrikes on Serb forces has much to do with the strength of Slav nationalism within Russian politics, and if the matter of airstrikes were put to the UN Security Council, Russia would surely exercise its veto. The Clinton administration is right not to allow this to happen, as it was in circumventing the UN in its recent airstrikes on Iraq.

Unfortunately, upholding the spirit of international law and past UN resolutions sometimes requires sidestepping the Security Council. As for the damage to U.S.-Russian relations, this breach will be repaired as others have been in the past.

The uncertainty surrounding military action is another issue on which the Clinton administration is on firm, and familiar, ground. Early in the administration, when Colin Powell was still chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he made the argument that the United States should only use military force when the outcome was preordained. Panama and the Gulf War were Powell's models of the acceptable use of force, and Powell drew on American experiences in Vietnam and Lebanon in making his arguments.

But the Clinton administration rightly rejected this all-or-nothing mentality as unsuited to the post-Cold War era. It has understood that in the muddled conflicts of the new era, the use of force will seldom be accompanied by guarantees - and that this consideration should not be allowed to paralyze the United States. In some cases, as in Bosnia in 1995, military action will produce results. In other cases, as in the strikes last year on Afghanistan and Sudan, it will not. But compiling an uneven track record is preferable to doing nothing at all in these gray-area conflicts. In Kosovo, as in previous interventions, the Clinton administration is taking a calculated and worthwhile risk.

While the president and his advisers have thought through the hard questions, many of their critics have not. Those who call on the United States only to use force when vital interests are at stake neglect to explain what America should do in situations where more minor interests are threatened - quite an oversight considering that this is the case in most international crises today. Often, setting the bar so high is simply a cover for isolationism or appeasement.

The same objection largely applies to the critics of limited military action.

If Clinton had listened to the advocates of the Powell doctrine, the civil war in Bosnia might still be raging today. Greater sympathy should be extended to the UN purists. They are a high-minded bunch, and are right to frown on steps that undermine the authority of the UN. But in this instance they offer no good advice for dealing with an intransigent and nationalist Russia intent on using its UN veto to protect Serb troops engaged in ethnic cleansing.

Interestingly, the Clinton administration has received little criticism on the issue where it is most vulnerable. Why, it might be asked, are NATO warplanes defending ethnic secessionists in Kosovo when the West didn't do anything to stop Russia from crushing the Chechen insurgents or Turkey from waging a brutal war on Kurdish rebels? Clearly, the United States is far from developing a consistent policy for dealing with ethnic partition efforts. The Clinton administration's actions in this area have been inconsistent at best and grossly hypocritical at worst. And with so many ethnic secessionist movements festering throughout the world, such muddled approaches to foreign policy can create great risks.

That said, the administration's past mistakes in responding to ethnic conflicts do not supply grounds for condemning its current policy in Kosovo. In this case, the Clinton administration is doing everything it should do.