The Western Alliance Will Not Accept an Independent Nation There, and the KLA Will Not Settle for Less

From Los Angeles Times,

August 19, 1999

In the aftermath of NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo, some analysts presciently warned that the peacekeeping and reconstruction mission undertaken by the U.S. and its allies was fraught with peril. However, as each day brings ominous reports from Kosovo–sniper attacks on peacekeepers, “organized” ethnic cleansing of Serbs by ethnic Albanians–it is apparent that the postwar honeymoon between the Kosovo Liberation Army, on one side, and NATO troops and U.N. civil authorities, on the other, has ended much more quickly than we expected. The first shots in Kosovo’s next war–pitting the KLA against its erstwhile liberators–already have been fired.

The unraveling of the post-conflict settlement in Kosovo was easily foreseeable–except, of course, by the Clinton administration. The Clinton foreign policy team bears a heavy responsibility, because the looming disaster in Kosovo is the cumulative result of the serial miscalculations that have been the hallmark of its Balkan policy the past 18 months.

The fundamental problem confronting the U.S., NATO and the United Nations is simple: Their postwar objectives in Kosovo and those of the KLA are wholly antithetical.

Well before the commencement in March of NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia, the KLA had been waging a classic guerrilla insurgency to win Kosovo’s independence from Serbia. The KLA was a national liberation movement committed to attaining independence and the seizing of political power through armed force. There are two key facts about the KLA. First, it is not committed to a democratic future for Kosovo. Second, the KLA’s vision of Kosovo is not of a multiethnic state: Its goal is a Kosovo from which Serbs have been ethnically cleansed.

By mishandling the termination phase of the Kosovo intervention, the U.S. and NATO created a power vacuum that the KLA filled. Notwithstanding that the U.N.–backed by NATO troops as peacekeepers–was supposed to set up a civil authority for the province, the KLA already has established itself as Kosovo’s de facto government. The KLA not only has monopolized the levers of future political power in Kosovo, it also remains potent militarily, having blatantly refused to comply with its pledge to disarm.

The alliance and the KLA now are on a collision course. President Clinton claimed that the U.S. and its allies fought in Kosovo to establish the principle that multiethnic democracy should prevail over ethnic and religious hatred. Yet, as U.S. and NATO military officers on the ground now admit, the brutal expulsion of Kosovo’s Serb population is not the result of random acts of revenge, but rather “systematic and organized.”

The U.S. and NATO have made clear that they oppose the KLA’s aim of independence for Kosovo, which is still a province of Serbia. Washington’s policy is geostrategically sound: An independent Kosovo would become the springboard for a “greater Albania,” uniting Kosovo, Albania and parts of Macedonia. The emergence of a greater Albania would undercut one of the administration’s key Balkan goals: preserving stability in the region.

To assert its authority over the province, NATO and the international civilian administration must disarm the KLA militarily and defang it politically. This is a tall order, especially since the KLA believes that NATO promised that the guerrilla fighters would become the core of postwar Kosovo’s police and military. Moreover, the KLA is unlikely to meekly roll over for NATO. If NATO does move to suppress and disarm the KLA, and if the alliance continues to refuse to grant Kosovo independence, it will be–indeed, already is–perceived as a colonial occupier by the KLA and the vast majority of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population. In that case, the low-level attacks being conducted against NATO troops by ethnic Albanians will burgeon into a full-fledged “low intensity conflict.” But if the alliance fails to move against the KLA, Washington’s Balkan policy will collapse. The Clinton administration is now left with a postwar Humpty Dumpty that even its spinmeisters cannot put back together. The president and his advisors never realized their policy was based on a fatal contradiction: It was impossible for the U.S. to align itself with the KLA without furthering the KLA’s objectives of an independent, Serb-less Kosovo. As in Bosnia, where the administration’s dreams of building a peaceful multiethnic democracy have evaporated, Kosovo is a policy failure. Unlike Bosnia, however, where a fragile truce prevails, in Kosovo, the U.S. and NATO are headed for an armed showdown with those on whose behalf they intervened. The result will not be pretty.

* Christopher Layne is a visiting scholar at USC’s Center for, International Studies and a MacArthur Foundation fellow in global, security.

© Los Angeles Times 1999