Still, some things never change. NATO’s founding fathers constantly had their minds on Moscow; no less do their children, the leaders of the alliance today. For there is a nightmare that hovers over Kosovo. If NATO’s air war over Yugoslavia fails to shift Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo, the pressure will build for ground troops to do the job. But that would enrage Russia–traditional ally of the Serbs, and already bitterly resentful of the West’s alleged arrogance. If Russia supported Belgrade, great powers would be aligned on competing sides of a Balkan conflict; pretty much the configuration that in 1914 plunged the world into 75 years of war, hot and cold. In Moscow this week, a senior Western diplomat put the case plainly: “We are not yet at the point where we are sacrificing Russia to deal with Slobodan Milosevic. But we’re getting there. And if you do that, you’ve made the wrong choice.”
That is why–although they turned down NATO’s invitation–the Russians were a dominant, if unseen, presence at the Washington summit. Shoring up the pro-Western instincts of President Boris Yeltsin was the hidden subtext of the summit communique, which emphasized that “Russia has… an important role to play in the search for a solution to the conflict in Kosovo” and made repeated mentions of the United Nations. NATO leaders were careful not to dis the visit to Milosevic last week by Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin. (Though Milosevic appeared to have ruled out the presence of an armed peacekeeping force in Kosovo–a key allied demand–NATO sources suggested that Chernomyrdin may have wrung some concessions from the Yugoslav leader.) And next week the foreign minister of Greece, a NATO member but one with close cultural links to Serbia, will meet Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in Moscow; they are likely to be joined by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The purpose of the meeting, says a Greek source, is to bridge the gaps between NATO and Russia.
Above all, the West’s concern about Russian reaction has come to shape the debate on whether ground troops are needed to win the Kosovo war. For though Yeltsin and his allies have so far resisted Russian nationalists who bitterly resent NATO’s tactics, there is a pervasive sense that Yeltsin would be hamstrung if the war moved from the Balkan clouds to its muddy fields. Anatoly Chubais, Russia’s former top aide and the West’s favorite Russian reformer, was quite explicit on that point in London last Friday. “If NATO goes from air force to ground force, it will be a world catastrophe,” said Chubais. “The damage to relations with Russia would be irreversible.”
In the run-up to the Washington summit, there was much talk that some European nations, led by Britain and France, would seek to put ground troops on the agenda. Clinton himself remains firmly opposed to a ground war. “The president really is not at all persuaded it is a good idea,” says a senior U.S. official. True, Clinton has agreed that NATO can “reassess” its plans on the number and nature of troops that might have to fight a war on the ground. In the American view, however, that study is designed to make the introduction of ground forces less rather than more likely. “Most people here think that the assessment will burst the bubble” of the move for ground troops, says one senior administration official. Why? Because “everybody expects [the study] will come back with higher requirements.” So instead of needing 75,000 troops, say, to retake Kosovo, the White House now expects that the NATO brass, under Pentagon pressure, will say that they require about 150,000 soldiers on the ground.
Such Vietnam-like numbers would almost surely signal the end of talk of a ground war. As Kosovo turns into a war of attrition, popular support for the fight is in any case getting wobbly. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, only 46 percent said they would support the deployment of American forces to compel Milosevic to agree to a NATO peace plan, down from 57 percent a week before. True, Clinton has remarked privately that he doesn’t care if Kosovo costs him 20 to 30 points in the polls, but then Clinton is not running for election in 2000.
By last Saturday the American ploy to kick the discussion of ground forces back to the brass seemed to have done the trick. European nations lined up to say that they had never even dreamed of getting their soldiers’ boots muddy. A spokesman for French President Jacques Chirac said that ground troops were “not on the agenda” and denied reports that Chirac had ever wanted them to be there. A senior German official said that it would be impossible to launch a ground campaign without a resolution of the U.N. Security Council, which could take months. (And where, in any case, Moscow has a veto.) But the debate is not quite over, largely because of the hawkish instincts of Tony Blair, the British prime minister.
Blair has never contemplated a full-scale invasion of Kosovo. But, possibly in a deliberate piece of saber rattling to keep Milosevic off guard, he seems prepared to consider a ground war between the alliance and a Serb Army that has been battered by bombs. For at least two weeks, NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark has himself been saying privately that ground forces will probably be needed if NATO’s aims are to be met. At a meeting in Brussels last week, Clark told Blair that he could not guarantee the success of the air campaign. Hence it made sense, Clark agreed, to start dusting off plans for ground troops. Blair then flew to Washington, and last Wednesday night drove straight from the airport to the White House where, over Diet Coke, chocolate-chip cookies and pastries, he and Clinton previewed the summit.
Blair’s intention, sources say, was to move Clinton into a “gray area” where ground troops were at least a possibility. But Clinton was cautious, merely agreeing with Blair that the summit should not formally close off the possibility of a ground campaign. For now, both will place their trust in the NATO study. At the very least, the British think the alliance is now committed to a process that will soon re-evaluate how the air war is going.
So: how is the air war going, anyway? “We are winning, [Milosevic] is losing, and he knows it,” Clark told a press briefing in Washington, just before they agreed to intensify the air campaign. But Clark’s assessment depends, a bit, on which targets count. In Serbia proper, NATO planes last week renewed their attacks on the economic infrastructure. (In Washington, NATO leaders agreed to study the possibility of an oil embargo and naval blockade of Yugoslavia, a key American goal.) NATO also bombed the headquarters of Milosevic’s political party, a TV station owned by his daughter, the offices of Serbia’s state-run TV and the formal residence of the Yugoslav president. The station was back on the air within hours. And on April 21, the last bridge over the Danube at the town of Novi Sad was hit, a strike that seems to have been unintentionally useful. Designed to cut off military supplies to the forces in Kosovo, dropping the bridges has hurt a big agrobusiness complex in the town run by Milosevic’s cronies. “They hit the right targets for the wrong reasons,” says one senior American source.
In Kosovo, however, the picture is rather different. There were no disasters last week–no refugee convoys bombed–but no obvious successes, either. Clinton himself admitted on Saturday that “from the air, you cannot take every Serb body in a uniform… and extract them from Kosovo.” The Serb forces in the province are widely dispersed; often they travel in civilian cars. Because Yugoslav air defenses are largely operational, NATO planes are still three miles up in the sky, hardly the place from which to hammer ground troops. “You have to get down, pursue them, harry them relentlessly and kill them,” says one NATO planner. “I don’t think we’re ready to do that yet.”
But NATO may be ready soon. At Tirana’s Rinas International Airport, a collection of concrete sheds and spherical pillboxes at the end of a rutted and partly dirt road often blocked by sheep and cows, 300 flights a day are now landing, their movements coordinated by the U.S. Air Force. British, French, Italian, German and American troops are building a tent city; at any moment, three or four military helicopters are hovering over the runway. Locals gather at the roadside cafes, watching the carnival.
Last week, finally, the real fun started. On Wednesday the first of two dozen Apache AH-64 tank-busting attack helicopters flew in, with Blackhawk escorts, from Italy. Task Force Hawk is growing apace. Tirana is now home to elements of the 82d Airborne, equipped with 15 M1A1 battle tanks and 14 Bradley fighting vehicles to provide cover for Apaches, 20 TOW missile batteries and 18 Javelin missile batteries, 8 155-mm howitzers, 6 multiple-rocket-launching systems, 8 Bradley Stinger fighting vehicles, and enough piss and vinegar to satisfy a Patton. “We’re going against forces that are very successful against unarmed women and civilians,” says Capt. Mark Arden, a senior Apache pilot from Washington, D.C., “but they will be in for a surprise when they find themselves confronted by the Apache.” His chopper, says Arden, is “a lethal killer of ground targets. We have absolutely the best assets in the world, and I don’t expect any sort of heavy casualties.”
That’s the sort of talk that they wanted to hear in Washington. For there is not a single NATO leader looking forward to a ground war. They know that any ground campaign should have been planned for long ago; the Balkan winter starts in October, only five months away. And above all, the leaders in Washington know that, as a senior Russian official says, “in trying to stabilize the Balkans, [NATO] may be in the process of destabilizing Russia.”
Still, if they could visit Tirana, NATO’s leaders might take some heart. “It’s an honor to be here on the 50th anniversary of the alliance,” said Apache pilot Arden. “We’ve been playing on the same team as these people for 50 years. We’re certainly not going to be stopped by forces like Slobodan Milosevic’s.” We shall see.
