Conflict in Kosovo Forces the U.S. to Finally Confront a Harsh Reality

When President Clinton released the new figures Friday showing unemployment had dropped to a 29-year low, he ironically underscored a critical element of his political problem in Kosovo.

This has been a decade when very little has gone wrong for America. In domestic life, virtually every economic and social trend, from unemployment to teen pregnancy, is moving in the right direction. The only thing rising faster than the federal budget surplus is the stock market.

In foreign policy, too, this has been a period without great reversals. Twice in the 1990s, U.S. presidents took steps that they feared could threaten large numbers of U.S. lives. The first came in 1991, when George Bush unleashed the Gulf War coalition against Saddam Hussein; the second when Clinton pushed NATO to bomb the Bosnian Serbs in late summer 1995--and then committed thousands of U.S. troops to a peacekeeping force there. But in each case, America achieved its objectives at a far lower cost than anyone imagined.

All of this good fortune has produced a politics with an aversion to hard choices--and an affinity for instant gratification that’s now bedeviling Clinton. The reaction to Kosovo suggests that the Vietnam syndrome--the fear of foreign quagmires--has been compounded by a Gulf War syndrome--the expectation of overnight success.

“The Gulf War,” notes political scientist John Mueller, author of a recent book on public opinion about that conflict, “was seen to mean that we could be successful with extremely low casualties . . . .”

Those extravagant expectations were evident last week in the feverish media reaction to the downing of a single F-117A Stealth fighter and the capture of three U.S. servicemen near the Macedonian border. These are troubling and even tragic events; but wars involve costs, a fact that’s faded after the low-cost interventions in Iraq, Bosnia and Haiti. It’s a measure of our times that only a week after the bombing commenced, Clinton was forced to plead for patience in his interview with CBS News.

Kosovo runs against the grain of U.S. politics in the ‘90s because it offers no easy alternatives. In the frustration over NATO’s failure to stop the Serbian offensive against the Kosovo Albanians, that central truth is being lost. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces did not launch their offensive in Kosovo because NATO dropped its bombs; NATO dropped its bombs because Milosevic’s forces were poised to launch their offensive. Milosevic may have retaliated for the attacks by escalating his own violence against the ethnic Albanians. But had the bombs never fallen, Kosovo would still be bleeding.

The political debate back in the United States has been distorted by the refusal to confront that reality. For months, the leading Republican presidential candidates have denounced Clinton for not asserting enough leadership abroad. Yet, among the GOP contenders, only Sen. John McCain of Arizona has forthrightly acknowledged that ground troops might be necessary to reverse Milosevic’s gains. Several of the Republicans, such as former Vice President Dan Quayle, are still breathing life into a fantasy: the assumption that if the U.S. was more forceful in its demands, that Europe could handle this problem on its own.

Clinton, at least, is dealing in the real world. From his long frustration in Bosnia, he’s plainly learned what Quayle refuses to acknowledge: that without U.S. participation, Europe is paralyzed. But the evidence suggests Clinton still didn’t think through what he was willing to risk if bombing alone didn’t force the Serbs to yield. Even the military decisions appear to have been overly influenced by the dominant political goal of minimizing casualties.

“The entire air campaign was based on the assumption that a bit of bombing would do it,” complains Ivo Daalder, a former Clinton national security aide who is now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The whole strategy was going to be cost-free.”

Now it’s apparent that any success in Kosovo will be anything but cost-free. Every road ahead looks rocky. Even if an escalated bombing campaign somehow forces Milosevic to yield, maintaining peace in Kosovo would require a significant commitment of U.S. and NATO troops--probably for years. In the more likely event that bombing alone fails to stop Milosevic, Clinton before long will face a momentous decision on whether to introduce combat troops, not to keep peace but to retake territory.

That’s a daunting political prospect in a media environment where the capture of even a single U.S. patrol generates breathless--and continual--updates on cable television. Much as in the impeachment debate, the question is whether the public would be as fevered as the Washington press corps.

Most Americans oppose the introduction of ground troops, but that opposition is not overwhelming. In two national surveys released Friday, about 40% said they would support sending U.S. troops as part of a NATO combat force. That’s not very far below the level of support that existed for an attack against Iraq before Bush launched Operation Desert Storm. If Clinton actually sends troops to Kosovo, the rally-round-the-flag factor that swelled support for Bush in 1991 will probably produce majority support for the deployment, at least at first.

Whether that support would last is another issue. Mueller notes that, historically, military missions have lost public backing precisely as casualties rise; he suspects the country would only accept minimal U.S. losses in Kosovo. “Americans have never been terribly interested in losing lives in ventures that are purely humanitarian,” he argues, noting that public support crumbled for the mission in Somalia after 18 U.S. soldiers were killed there.

True enough. But Americans also appear unwilling to wash their hands of a humanitarian tragedy of this magnitude. That may soon leave the United States with a pair of equally unattractive options: accepting Milosevic’s gains or taking greater risks to reverse them. Leaders are often judged most by the choices they make when they have no good choices. So, too, are countries. In the days ahead, Americans may learn much about Clinton’s willingness to confront hard decisions--and also something about their own.

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