Kosovo: A War Without Heroes - Brief Article

National Review, May 31, 1999

The outlines of a deal with Slobodan Milosevic are coming into view. NATO's demands are being "degraded," to use the peculiar parlance of this peculiar war. The alliance is willing to concede Milosevic's sovereignty over Kosovo, to disarm what is left of the Kosovo Liberation Army, to stop the bombing when Milosevic has "demonstrably begun" to implement a settlement. It will let the U.N. Security Council, including the Russians and Chinese, determine how to protect the Albanian Kosovars. These concessions, it should be noted, have been made in advance of any negotiation with Milosevic; the Western allies have been negotiating with one another and the Russians. Now the allies are debating whether to halt the bombing once negotiations start or even beforehand, though it is almost inconceivable that the West would have the will to resume the bombing once stopped. No wonder Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said that the latest declaration of Western aims represented "a good deal for Milosevic."

Milosevic, for his part, can happily accede to withdrawing most of his army and police from Kosovo, having already smashed the KLA. He can accept some toothless international monitoring force and even invite the refugees to come back: He knows most of them will not, absent NATO protection, and the few who do will be useful as hostages. He also knows that the Clinton administration is eager for any deal confusing enough to be spun as a success. (Even now it pleads for the diplomatic help of Russia, not known for its concern for the lives of Kosovars or the interests of NATO.) Prepare for a denouement of dishonor.

That dishonor began when the administration decided to will the ends of war but not the means or even the name. This is an administration that refuses power rather than accept responsibility. Senators McCain and Biden offered a resolution supporting the use of all necessary force, including ground troops, to defeat the Serbs, and the administration opposed it-which would be astonishing if anything about this administration could still astonish.

But the administration's irresponsibility has been matched by that of the Republicans in Congress, whose hostility to Clinton has led them to become in this respect his mirror image. There are, of course, good arguments on both sides of the question, whether to persist in the Balkans. We ourselves would be willing to accept a deal ceding some territory from Kosovo to Serbia in exchange for real protection of the Albanian Kosovars. What is impossible to defend is a Congress that refuses either to support the airstrikes or to call for a withdrawal.

And what is alarming is not the fact of conservative opposition to the war but its tone. Republicans have been praising Jesse Jackson's freelance diplomacy and quoting John Lennon's geopolitical credo. Conservative columnists have blamed the Serbs' slaughter on America for trying, as one put it, "to force the Serbs into the de facto surrender of their sovereign territory." Congressmen who are quick to denounce judicial activism have run to the courthouse to ask a federal judge to set foreign policy, and embraced a War Powers Act that every president has rightly opposed as unconstitutional. Trent Lott has adopted the diction of a high-school guidance counselor, urging Clinton to respond to Milosevic with "words, not weapons"-as though this president had ever needed encouragement on that score. Finally, they mutter that Clinton will capitulate-that is, take their advice.

The Jesse Jackson Republicans have seemed more interested in taking advantage of a U.S. defeat than in explaining how to avert one. If that defeat occurs, it will indeed be a time to savage the administration for its lack of moral and strategic seriousness. All too many Republicans, alas, have forfeited their right to do so.