Strange Nestfellows - liberals and conservatives have different reasons for supporting US involvement in Kosovo

National Review, May 31, 1999 by Elliott Abrams

The cast of hawks on Kosovo.

Nothing has been more disturbing to conservative Kosovo hawks than the identity of their allies. To be supporting a foreign policy backed by Christopher Dodd; to be seated in a cheering section next to David Bonior; to find oneself applauded by Ted Kennedy-it is truly enough to cause us to rethink.

And the only solution is clarity. For in truth, these liberal Democrats are not supporting the war for the reasons that conservatives are supporting it. As confusion will breed trouble tomorrow, we had better avoid it today.

Liberal hawks support the war because they think it unrelated to our national interests. In their eyes, if the war enhanced U.S. security, its purpose would be less high and its character less admirable. For them, Kosovo is another Somalia, another Haiti, another chance to do what we failed to do in Rwanda: foreign policy as social work. There is not much reasoning at work here. Paul Wellstone talks of "a knot in my stomach," and Bonior says that the refugee situation "grabs me in a very visceral way." They can be awfully bloody-minded when they are certain of the justice of their cause, but this should come as no surprise: An inflamed liberal conscience is a weapon of mass destruction.

A CALCULATION

For those on the right who support the war in Kosovo, the calculation is different. To begin with, it is a calculation, not an emotion. The American intervention in Kosovo is a real risk, in no small part because the Clinton administration's unreliability and incompetence are inescapable. When the war accelerates, we will still be led by Bill and Al and Sandy and Madeleine (not to mention Strobe). Whatever we end up doing in Kosovo, they will control, with all the attendant risks.

As conservative hawks calculate, they judge that this use of American strength will not, in fact, leave us weaker elsewhere; that a defeat would irreparably weaken NATO and seriously harm American credibility; that the damage would outlast the Clinton administration; that there are realistic solutions in the Balkans that can be imposed; that fears of creating a dangerous nationalist reaction in Russia are overblown. We believe these things, but these, again, are judgments rather than moral certainties. They are calculations.

This is not to say that there is no deeper principle, no broader strategy motivating most conservative hawks. There is a group-call them the Kissingerians-that wishes we had never gotten immersed in this but holds that, now that we're in, we must win. Kissinger himself is consistent and logical: Just as he opposed cutting and running in Vietnam, he does so in Kosovo.

Then there are the ideologues of American greatness. Their primary motivation is a theory about America and the American role in world politics. "France cannot be France without greatness," General de Gaulle once wrote; the American Gaullists think he had merely the country wrong. To them, it is right and proper for America to be what the British used to call "top nation," and to act like it. An international system dominated by American power and idealism will be more democratic and more humane, they believe; and the alternative would be a Hobbesian world political system and an America untrue to its principles.

For the moment, the Kissingerians and the Gaullists are in an uneasy coalition and made even more nervous because the outcome of the war is in the Clinton team's hands. But their alliance is nothing new: It was forged during the Cold War. What is new and unsettling is that both these groups find themselves before the cameras agreeing with people who-almost yesterday-couldn't quite make out which side was right in the Cold War. Strobe Talbott opposed every one of the Reagan initiatives that won the Cold War, believed we were headed for a nuclear holocaust, and was (and remains) contemptuous of those who backed the Reagan strategy. But today he is a hawk. Bonior thought the Grenada rescue mission was unforgivable aggression. But now he wants ground troops. Sandy Berger is a Peace Now-nik when it comes to Israeli concessions, but won't give an inch in Kosovo. And so on.

With friends like these, conservative hawks need precision. The "national interest" part is easy: While such a consideration is backward and dirty to the progressive folk now in charge of our foreign policy, it is central to the conservatives. Things get stickier, though, when we have to define the national interest. The difficult question is whether American leadership is per se a national interest- especially leadership on "humanitarian" issues like stopping mass murder. Is it in America's national interest to prevent the brutalization of Kosovo today and another Rwanda tomorrow, even if it means using force? Always? If not always, when?

If the hawks have been less than precise here, they may be forgiven, for these are the toughest new questions facing American foreign policy. Again: When is an intervention "humanitarian," and when does a case of barbarism carry sufficient freight to become a matter of narrow national-interest calculations? When does action-or inaction-in a barbarous situation so affect the reputation of the United States that our national interest rather than our conscience is at stake?