How long can NATO continue bombing Yugoslavia? The Clinton
administration’s answer so far has been, "as long as it takes" for Serbian
President Slobodan Milosevic to capitulate to its demands. It doesn’t seem to matter if
the bombing only worsens the plight for the Kosovar Albanians, the people we are
supposedly trying to help. But there may be limits to what the people who reside within
the NATO countries, including this one, are willing to tolerate. This is especially true
now that Milosevic has offered to accept an international presence in Kosovo to oversee
the return of refugees and their safety. "I think, that as Jesse Jackson would say,
give peace a chance here," said Trent Lott, Senate Majority Leader. This has been a
war against civilians, on both sides, an ugly truth that gets increasingly difficult to
conceal with each set of bombing raids directed at non-military targets. Indeed President
Clinton practically admitted as much when he declared that Milosovic’s intransigence would
cause the "the Serb people he claims to represent [to] face mounting hardship."
The Yugoslav army and paramilitary have terrorized the civilian
population of Kosovo for the same reasons that the United States and its proxies did so in
Vietnam, El Salvador and Guatemala: they are fighting against a guerrilla army that has
support among the population of the contested territory. One way to wage this fight is to
"drain the sea from the fish that swim in it," as U.S. counter-insurgency
strategists used to say. These barbaric methods are now labeled "ethnic
cleansing." On the NATO side, the war is being waged against civilians for somewhat
different reasons: NATO’s leaders cannot afford to risk their soldiers’ lives by engaging
Yugoslav forces on the ground, due to lack of support at home. So they have been trying to
bomb Yugoslavia "back to the Stone Age" or at least to make it a very poor
country for some time to come. They are close to achieving this goal. For US
policy-makers, destroying the Yugoslav economy is an important goal. It demonstrates to
the world that any country that refuses to obey U.S. orders will pay an unbearable price.
Hence Secretary of Defense William Cohen’s response to the release of the three American
POW’s over the weekend: "We’re going to intensify the bombing." But American
citizens have been sold on this war as a humanitarian effort to rescue the Kosovars. They
do not see the need to punish the people of Yugoslavia, nor do they share their leaders’
other strategic aims. For example, the Clinton administration has already used this war to
establish NATO’s new role as an aggressive international police force, in contrast to its
original stated purpose as a defensive alliance during the Cold War. The ever-expanding
membership and mission of the new NATO is also a means by which the US can continue to
control Europe’s foreign and military policies.
Most Americans are not interested in these goals, and certainly
wouldn’t want all the suffering on both sides of the conflict in Yugoslavia to continue
for reasons of power politics. This is the basis for the cracks that are appearing in the
political support for the war here, beginning with last week’s vote in which the U.S.
House of Representatives refused to endorse the bombing. Europe’s leaders are mostly
willing to accept the hegemonic role of the United States, and the continued violence and
suffering that this entails. But there too, the citizenry has different ideas.
Anti-Americanism is on the rise in Germany, and on May 13, Germany’s Green Party will meet
to debate their policy on the war. The Greens will probably ask their leaders why they are
supporting the continued bombing of Yugoslavia, while the Republican leadership in the
U.S. Congress is now pushing for a negotiated solution to what some are calling
"Clinton’s war." Twenty-six Democrats also broke ranks last week and voted
against the bombing. Many Greens are very angry about their party’s collaboration with the
war, and if their views prevail, it could conceivably topple the German government (a
coalition of the Social Democratic and Green Parties). If the real purpose of the bombing
were to secure a safe return and democratic government for Kosovo’s Albanians, a
settlement might well be reached. Some compromise could be worked out on the differences
that remain: primarily the composition of the international peace-keeping force and their
weapons. But the Clinton administration has imperial ambitions that carry a much higher
priority. So we will need increasing pressure from citizens on both sides of the Atlantic
to get President Clinton and his European allies back to the negotiating table.
