Transcript
R. Nessen: My name is Ron Nessen. I want to welcome you to this morning's Brookings briefing and analysis of this weekend's NATO 50th anniversary summit meeting in Washington and its aftermath, including the impact on the Kosovo war.
The moderator this morning is Richard Haass, who I think most of you know. Dr. Haass is the director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of eight books on American foreign policy, including The Reluctant Sheriff: The U.S. After the Cold War, and also Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War.
From 1989 to '93, Dr. Haass was special assistant to President George Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. He was awarded the Presidential Citizen's Medal for his contributions to the development and articulation of U.S. policy during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm and previously has held posts in the State Department and the Defense Department.
Speaking first this morning will be Ivo Daalder, talking about what the NATO meeting accomplished and what the future of NATO is. Dr. Daalder is a Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. He's on leave from the University of Maryland, where he is associate professor at the School of Public Affairs and director of research at the Center for International and Security Studies.
He is the director here at Brookings of a project on NATO in the 21st century. He served as director of European Affairs on President Clinton's National Security Council staff, where he was responsible for coordinating U.S. policy toward Bosnia. His forthcoming publication from the Brookings Press is entitled NATO in the 21st Century: What Purpose? What Missions?.
Next, Roberta Cohen will talk about her area of expertise, which is refugees and humanitarian issues growing out of the Kosovo war. Roberta Cohen is a guest scholar in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution. She is a specialist in human rights, humanitarian and refugee issues. She serves as codirector of the Brookings Institution's project on internal displacement and as a senior adviser to the representative of the U.N. Secretary-General on internally displaced persons.
A few of her most recent publications include Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement. She is co- author of The Forsaken People: Case Studies of the Internally Displaced, and Exodus Within Borders.
And you will then hear from Michael O'Hanlon on the war, the prospects for a ground war and how long that would take if it were undertaken. Dr. O'Hanlon is a fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program here at Brookings, specializing in U.S. defense issues. He is also adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of Public and International Affairs and at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He was a defense and foreign policy analyst in the National Security Division at the Congressional Budget Office for five years.
His most recent book, How to Be a Cheap Hawk: The 1999 and 2000 Defense Budgets, analyzes the Clinton administration's quadrennial defense review.
And then finally, Richard Haass will cover what everybody else doesn't cover, and particularly focusing on the current situation in Kosovo, and the prospects for either negotiations or the impact of diplomacy. So with that, we will call upon Ivo Daalder to begin.
I. Daalder: Thanks, Ron, for that introduction. Thank you for coming here rather than hearing Jamie Shea, who is speaking at the same time. The word there is we're winning. He's losing, and he knows it. So, now you can go to the real briefing, where he's winning, we're losing, and we don't know it.
Let me reflect on the NATO summit and its impact on the war in Kosovo for a few minutes. Looking at what happened here in the last three days in Washington, one has this suspicion that what we have seen was a surreal event. On the one hand, it was in celebration of what is by any doubt the most successful military alliance in history that had accomplished in 50 years of its existence many, many noble feats, including winning the Cold War without firing a shot. This was also to be the occasion at which the Alliance was going to sketch out its new vision for a new NATO for a new century.
On the other hand, however, NATO is involved in a war. It's involved in its first major war in its 50-year history, and its failure so far at least to meet even its minimum objectives demonstrates, convincingly or otherwise, that its vision may in fact not be its reality.
On paper, the 19 Allied leaders did present a coherent vision of an alliance for a new century. Indeed, it is a NATO that I would strongly support. In your package, you may find a policy brief I did three weeks ago outlining what I believe NATO should look like. And if you read the documents coming out of the summit, I am consistent with that vision or they are consistent with my vision.
NATO on paper is a muscular organization that is ready and able to defend the members against any threat to their security, to promote their interests as best they can and to safeguard peace and security throughout the Euro-Atlantic area--"the Euro-Atlantic region and area" is a phrase that rings more loudly in NATO documents these days than even "defense of NATO territory."
NATO on paper is a forward-looking alliance, looking towards the day on which NATO in combination with the European Union and other organizations in Europe has achieved a Europe that is both whole and free. NATO on paper is an organization where membership will be enlarged over time, including former Warsaw Pact countries and others.
NATO's new strategic concept that was adopted on Saturday balances the responsibility and needs for collective defense with the newfound responsibility to manage crises in non-NATO Europe, notably, according to the concept, in Southeastern Europe. NATO's new strategic concept commits to defending not just territory of the allied members, but the values that binds these members in the future.
NATO's new strategic concept seeks to rebalance the responsibility within the alliance between the European and its North American members. And NATO's new strategic concept moves NATO decisively towards meeting new threats, such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. NATO on paper, in other words, is a wonderful, robust organization.
However, NATO in practice today continues to face its most severe test of this new vision. And that's where the surreal nature of this summit lies. On the one hand, it is projecting a vision of a confident, able, united alliance dealing with the new threats to security in Europe; and yet, when we look at what NATO in practice is doing, we are doubtful whether it in fact is either confident or is united, or capable of dealing with the new threats in Europe.
The key question is whether in Kosovo, NATO can deliver on its visions and it can deliver on what it promises on paper. At the summit, NATO's leaders went to the brink up to deciding to deploy ground troops. And they blinked--but for the United Kingdom. And even--even the United Kingdom pulled back. Allied leaders said "no" to ground forces now, "no" to ground forces in the future, and even Tony Blair moved back from where we believed he was on Thursday.
The President of the United States' only statement on ground forces was to hide behind NATO and Solana, its secretary-general, to say that he did not object to the decision by NATO to look at a reassessment of what it would take.
In the last three days, we've witnessed a NATO that lacks the will to act in ways that were necessary to achieve not only its aims in Kosovo but its vision as stated on paper. On display was a NATO whose leaders approached the Kosovo crisis not from the perspective of this being a true war that must be won, but rather from their own parochial domestic political perspective.
German, Greek, Italian officials fretted about their governments falling in case a ground force option were to be decided. President Clinton openly worried about the lack of public and Congressional support and deflected any pressure for ground forces. In fact, if you read today's front-page story in the Washington Post, the president and his advisers take notable glee at the fact that they have been able to avoid making tough decisions.
Even Chirac, the president of France--no stranger to upsetting Americans in their own hometown--did not take the opportunity to grandstand for fear that the French public might not support the consequences of a ground force deployment.
In short, NATO summit was the last, best chance in my view for a decision on ground forces, and we missed it. We are not likely to see ground forces moving into Kosovo in anything less than a permissive environment, the very conditions that for the last four weeks we have stated remain.
I among many others had hoped that this summit would end up with a different outcome. It won't, in my view. Lacking ground forces and absent the ability to push Serb forces out forcefully from Kosovo, NATO will have to settle for something less than the conditions that it has laid out now in the last four weeks that must be met. What that less is, I'm not so sure. But it isn't going to be a place in which Kosovar Albanians can return in safety and security now that they have been pushed out.
One final point. In failing to win in Kosovo, indeed in losing in Kosovo, NATO in practice will call into question whether NATO on paper is in fact anything more than what it is on paper. Quite apart from the human misery that we have been witnessing in the last few weeks and months in and around Kosovo, that indeed would be a tragic loss.
R. Cohen: Good morning. I'm going to address the humanitarian dimension of the Kosovo crisis--the more than 600,000 ethnic Albanians who were forced out or fled Kosovo since the air strikes began, in addition to the 170,000 refugees that fled earlier. UNHCR's latest projection is that 950,000 may come out. There are another seven to eight hundred thousand trapped inside Kosovo.
What needs to be emphasized in all this is that the humanitarian dimension of the war is closely intertwined with its military aspects. Only ground forces can protect the beleaguered population in Kosovo, and only ground forces can ensure the safe return of refugees back to Kosovo.
It must also be borne in mind that neither the refugees nor the internally displaced are a by-product of this conflict. They are an integral part of Serb political and military strategy. The ethnic cleansing campaign has served as a counterinsurgency strategy to deprive the KLA of a civilian base. It has also served as a form of collective punishment against the population for opposing Serb policy.
More fundamentally, it seeks to alter the demographic composition of the province. Indeed, plans to expel large numbers of ethnic Albanians were developed well before the war. "A village a day keeps NATO away," remarked one Serb diplomat to NATO secretary-general.
Those forced out of Kosovo are also a weapon in the war. Indeed, the Serbs turn the refugee flows on and off like a spigot, at times deliberately targeting countries that are already overwhelmed. The use of unarmed, destitute and frequently ailing human beings as proxy armies to destabilize countries and draw the whole region into a wider conflagration has got to be one of the worst crimes in this war.
And tremendous strains are being caused in neighboring states. There are now more than 360,000 refugees from Kosovo in Albania. And although more than half have found refuge in private homes, and there's a great deal of ethnic solidarity, Albania is a very poor country. Its infrastructure is fast reaching a breaking point. Moreover, in the north, the presence and activities of the KLA could help widen the war and jeopardize the security of the refugees.
In Macedonia, the influx of 133,000 Albanian Kosovars is straining the country's delicate ethnic balance. Macedonia has a population of two million, of whom 23 percent are ethnic Albanian--that's about 500,000--and 65 percent Slavs with affinities to Serbia.
Before the influx, tensions already existed between these groups. Fears that the Kosovar Albanians will remain in Macedonia, radicalize it, and break up the country to form a "Greater Albania," have led the Macedonians to periodically shut its borders and cruelly keep thousands at the border in a no-man's-land without adequate food, shelter, medicine, or proper access to humanitarian organizations. Macedonia insists that it will limit the number of Kosovo refugees who can remain to 20,000, which means that more than 100,000 will have to go.
In Montenegro, Serbia's pro-Western partner in the Yugoslav Federation, Milosevic has gained control over the army and is now trying to instigate a coup against the government. The 67,000 Kosovo Albanians in Montenegro are thus in a risky situation. Since they're not really refugees--having gone from one part of the Yugoslav Federation to another--they could be expelled or face a worse fate should Milosevic take over Montenegro. Indeed, incidents have already begun, and thousands per day are reported to be exiting for Albania because they don't feel safe.
The NATO statement speaks of "swift and safe return," but not all refugees will want to return home if Milosevic remains in power, if Serb military and police forces remain in Kosovo, if perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity are not brought to justice. Without the introduction of ground troops, and a change in the Rambouillet Accords, it will be impossible to bring the refugees home safely and ensure their safety thereafter.
A word about the situation within Kosovo. Although NATO's statement says that it will not allow the campaign of terror to succeed, its insistence on conducting a war without casualties among the allied forces has basically allowed Serb forces to inflict and even step up casualties and atrocities against the Kosovar Albanians.
Fear of casualties has prevented NATO from air-dropping food and medicine to people reported to be near starving. Its insistence on high-flying planes also resulted in last week's air strikes against convoys of displaced persons. Its recent air strikes on army headquarters and ammunition plants within Kosovo have not stopped door-to-door ethnic cleansing campaigns. Only NATO forces on the ground would be able to do that.
At present, tens of thousands are reported to be hiding in the hills and forests, where food is running out, as it is in urban centers. Villages' stores and food stocks are burned, thousands are being moved around by Serb forces. Both human rights and humanitarian organizations taking testimony from refugees report a worsening in the situation this past week, in particular as far as killings are concerned. And I would note that the human rights organizations have been quite cautious in their reports, so this worsening of the situation one has to look at very seriously.
There's much debate about whether genocide is being committed or just crimes against humanity; whether there are mass killings or sporadic small-scale executions; whether there are rape camps or only individual cases; whether 3,500 already have been murdered, or if it's only several hundred, and whether there are mass graves or only unverified mounds of earth.
Even if NATO is exaggerating some claims, as has been charged, the situation on the ground in Kosovo could not be more grim. Hundreds of thousands are clearly at risk.
The only positive element in this situation from a historical perspective is that there is now at least a clear international responsibility for refugees. Fifty years ago, during the Second World War, that was not the case. Refugees were routinely turned back, including by the United States.
But as we enter the 21st century, we still do not have an international system that protects people under assault in their own countries.
M. O'Hanlon: Thank you, Roberta, and Ivo and Ron and all of you. I fear that Ivo may be right--that the opportunity for using ground forces may be passing. But I'm not going to give up hope yet, for the reasons Roberta has just mentioned. And I think there may be one last great opportunity to have a debate on ground force and that option, which will be, I believe, when we start seeing how many people are at risk of dying within Kosovo.
All the statistics about refugees sounds very troublesome, and yet, to some extent, hauntingly familiar from many conflicts around the world. But if we start seeing a million people inside Kosovo at risk of dying, this becomes a genocide, whether or not it's at the point of a gun or because of starvation. And at that point, the Clinton administration will be violating its pledge not to permit another genocide if it tolerates that kind of action and simply bombs, and charges Milosevic with the moral responsibility.
Clearly Milosevic is at fault morally. The issue is not whether or not he is the one to blame for the original problem. It's what our policy is then doing about it. And if we insist on being stubborn and saying an air campaign is working while hundreds of thousands may be dying, we then violate our pledge not to tolerate genocide.
So I believe there still is a hope for a debate on this matter. I hope that that will not be the forcing issue and somehow these Kosovars will get out or get food. But I'm afraid they won't.
Having said that, let me now quickly lay out a couple of thoughts on some of the military details of how you would get to Kosovo fast. And those of you who saw yesterday's "Outlook" section piece by Robert Kiligrew [ph], retired military planner, will see some what of what I'm going to go over. And I'm just going to give you a couple of details now. We can get into this later in the Q&A in greater detail, if you would like.
John Keegan, the notable British military historian has also been arguing for this kind of approach recently. And the key to what makes this operation do-able within weeks, is helicopter and mobile infantry assault units. The U.S. Army has the 101st Air Assault Division, the U.S. Marine Corps is capable of deploying a great deal of equipment by helicopter, and the British and French also have some units that are capable along these lines.
If you deploy units like these, you can actually move into the area within weeks of now--or any subsequent decision point to get started. You probably need two weeks to get the equipment into Italy, for example, or to some extent Albania, depending on which units are going where, and then another week or so to set up an advance staging base, within Albania, from which you can then leapfrog into Kosovo.
My own guess is that if you take this approach, you probably can get by with no more than 100 NATO tanks and have a very successful operation. You would still want some armor, I would concede that point. I also believe the "Outlook" section piece yesterday was a little optimistic, implying the armor would be fairly straightforward to deploy. That will be hard.
But nonetheless, if we can limit the need to roughly 100 tanks, we can get through those narrow roads in the space of a couple of weeks. And we can even fly those tanks into position.
People understand that you can't fly heavy armor around the world, and that's true. But the United States has roughly 400 strategic transport aircraft, two types of which can carry tanks, the C-5 and the C-17. We have about 150 of those airplanes combined. Each one of those airplanes just takes one tank and the C-5 in theory can take two. But if each just takes one tank, that's enough in my opinion for the operation to work. It would be great to have more, but that's enough, combined with all the helicopter mobile assault.
These helicopter mobile teams are not just guys carrying rifles. They have artillery, they have trucks, they can carry lightly armed vehicles in that helicopter. They can carry a lot of anti-tank weaponry of a lighter nature.
Nonetheless, it would be dangerous to rely exclusively on these kinds of units, because in certain kinds of urban combat settings, you do want to go into heavy, you do want to go in leading with your tanks. But we have so much in the way of aerial firepower and mobility with these helicopters, that we can do a lot in that way.
Let me just tick off a couple of final points and leave this more as a way to get the military issue on the table than to go over all the deployment statistics and details with you in the opening statement.
If one were to focus, for example, on the 101st Air Assault Division and the Marine Corps units, we would probably need roughly four trips--four round trips--of each of our strategic airplanes to get these units into position, for example, in Italy. And this does hinge on Italy going along. If Italy doesn't want to go along with this, we have to send the equipment by ship to Albania directly, that will delay it by another week or two, then it becomes an operation that takes six weeks instead of three to four weeks. But either way, it's not much.
So if we take the strategic airplane, three or four rounds trips of each one can get a couple of brigades of the 101st Air Assault Division into position, at least four or five thousand Marine troops, and these hundred tanks I'm talking about. And that's roughly--you can just do the math yourself--four round trips to Italy by an airplane flying at standard speed, that's two to three days for each round trip, you can get that stuff prepositioned within the space of a couple of weeks.
Then you start hopping by helicopter into Albania. You have to do successive flights because if the 101st has 400 helicopters, it's a lot but it's not enough to carry the whole division so you've got to do successive operations. This is the way the 101st performed in Operation Desert Storm.
And then, final comment, the nice thing about these helicopter mobile teams, of course, you bypass land mines, you bypass congested roads and you bypass to a large extent mountains, and you try to bypass Serbian defense. They don't know where you're coming in, and they cannot reinforce your chosen landing place very easily, because you control the air and you're moving fast by helicopter.
So for all these reasons, there's a lot of appeal to this approach. I'll just leave you with that for now and look forward to more discussion in the Q&A. Thanks.
R. Haass: One of the many good things about going last is there's not a great deal that's left to say, so let me just say a few things and stop.
I tend to agree with the idea that the summit made it clear that ground forces are unlikely to play a major role in this crisis. It's too bad, given what Michael O'Hanlon and others have said. If, when we began the bombing, which was just over a month ago, we had also made a decision to ready ground troops, it would now be a real option. It would be there.
And if some have the idea that ground forces take a lot of time and therefore we shouldn't do it, yes, I think it's a self-fulfilling option. All I'm saying is that had we decided from the get-go, to use ground forces, it would be a reality now. And as Mike O'Hanlon and other defense experts are pointing out, if we decided to do it now, it could be a reality roughly a month or so from now, rather than in the fall, as some analysts are saying.
That said, again, I do not think ground forces are going to play a major role in this crisis. If a Congressional resolution is brought up, I believe it will be passed. A Congressional resolution would call for the use of all military means. If it is brought up, it will pass. But the administration then is likely to say it is using all military means--all necessary means--the way it is going now. So you are likely to get some sort of a statement from the Hill possibly that will be taken as support for the troops. But it's not clear right now that the Congress is going to be in a position to change the strategy.
Clearly NATO over the last three days did not change the strategy. So it's probably useful to think of this as a crisis that will play out without anything fundamentally being done differently on the military side than is being done now. I may be wrong, Mike O'Hanlon may be right that the scale of the atrocities may force our hand. But for argument's sake, let's say essentially what you see now, is essentially what you're going to get.
But that is what NATO agreed to. You had NATO solidarity over the last three days, that's the good news. The bad news is that the solidarity coalesced or formed around a very modest policy. And I would call it something like "Stay the Course Plus." What the "plus" is, is twofold. A somewhat freer hand for NATO authorities in the choice of targets, so you'll have a little bit less politicization of the targeting process, though we'll have to see how that works out in process.
And secondly, clearly NATO is preparing to do something about the cutting off of oil flows. Let me just say on the oil situation, twofold. One is it's not clear to me it would make that much of a military difference. Right now Serbian forces are not consuming enormous amounts of oil. From what I can tell, they're essentially digging in and conserving it.
Secondly, even if you could--big if--get NATO consensus on the physical cutting-off of oil--it's not clear that you can by any means, the French and others are disagreeing, you then very quickly run into the Russian question. And this is where the absence of a U.N. Security Council authorization becomes important, not simply for general questions of legalism, but very hard-core reality. It is for me hard to imagine NATO boarding a Russian flag vessel and basically threatening to sink it if it delivers oil. It is hard to believe, and indeed I would hope they would not take that step.
Putting aside the oil question though again, I think the bottom line to come out of the last three days is the war of attrition continues, and the humanitarian situation therefore continues to get worse. And nothing happens that changes the reality that we continue to have two wars. We have a NATO air war, in which we are realizing a degree of progress or success, but in a way that is eerily reminiscent of Vietnam.
Reports of targeting, of what we've targeted successfully, has become the Kosovo war equivalent of body counts. So we get up there every day and give statistics about what it is we're accomplishing what it is we're degrading, but it lacks content. It lacks a net judgment. And the net judgment is that whatever thus far we are accomplishing from the air, we are losing on the ground. We are losing the ground war. That is the other war. That is being lost, and that is the reality. So, yes, we are fighting two wars, but we are not winning the one that matters most.
As a result, coming out of it there's two possibilities. One is my analysis is wrong--happens quite frequently--which is that the strategy does work, and by "work" I mean that at some point Mr. Milosevic cries uncle. Or the bombing is so effective, it so degrades, it so weakens Serbian forces in Kosovo, that a ground force option can be introduced in something that is tantamount to a permissive environment. So it is extremely easy. You then go in, we take all of Kosovo, we establish it as a protectorate using NATO forces, and the refugees can go back, confident that they will be safe. That is the optimistic scenario. I would say the odds of that are extremely low--extremely, extremely low. And I would simply say that the fact that even the successful option that I've just laid out would take months to probably work. It's hard to think of it as a success, because we don't know just how bad the humanitarian situation might be at that point.
So it's conceivable it would work. We don't know what cost we would pay by the further passage of time. But, again, I would just say it's extremely likely. And one of the interesting statistics of the last week is that whatever gains we have made in degrading Serbian capabilities, one needs to think of that offset by the fact that Serbian presence in Kosovo continues to climb. The numbers are going up and people are digging in. So one has to reach a net judgment on the bombings. Even the one war we are claiming to win, the air war, I think there one has to take that with a grain salt.
What's the more likely possibility than this, than essentially the current strategy working? I would think that the current--is the following--here's the second alternative. We continue to bomb. It does have some impact on Mr. Milosevic. Clearly it cannot be an enjoyable thing to be on the receiving end of this sort of pounding day in and day out. At the same time though the bombing takes its toll on the alliance, that one is already seeing growing diplomatic dissent, greater concern about the Russian reaction and the consequences of this for Russia's relations with the West, and that as a result, because of Russian activism, alliance divides and Milosevic beginning to feel the pain of the bombing, that diplomacy moves into a different gear, and that increasingly the diplomatic track becomes at least as active as the military track, and what we begin to see is the opening of what you might call a diplomatic marketplace, in which lots of ideas are introduced and people throw them out to test the market to see what the reactions are of NATO, to see what the reactions are of Belgrade. My hunch is that is the way we are going. Should we accept these outcomes? And these outcomes, by the way, will differ about the nature of the international presence, NATO versus international force, versus monitors--all sorts of question about what the composition, nature, purpose of an international force might be.
A second area of potential compromise is the question of Serbian withdrawal. Is it total? Is it partial? To the extent it's partial, what is allowed to be left behind numerically, qualitatively geographically? Is it in all of Kosovo or only part? Questions about cease-fires: What are they linked to? What has to happen before NATO would stop its bombing exactly? There is not talk so long as the Serbian withdrawal begins. Is that enough? How has that been monitored? What sort of political situation would exist there ultimately? What I am suggesting is there's lots of room for diplomatic compromise, and I think we are going to see this move towards center stage.
Should we accept it? Well, obviously the devil quite literally will be in the details here, but I would say this is something we have to look at very seriously--in part because we have left ourselves little choice. Once you rule out ground forces, once you rule out any chance of achieving your objectives in a short amount of time militarily, it seems to me that implicit in that is a willingness to accept the possibility of achieving your objectives or only a part of your objectives through some other means.
So I would say that the flip side, or implicit in what NATO did the last three days, and what has happened over the last 33 days, is the idea that we would countenance the possibility of accepting lesser objectives in Kosovo, and I think we are moving gradually, but probably inexorably, to that point--particularly if again ideas come out that the important members of NATO begin to coalesce around. What that would mean ultimately is some sort of an outcome in Kosovo that would not give us all of our objective. And it would mean then as well the necessity and the reality--and you're already seeing it in place--it hasn't been talked about a lot, but the putting into place of a containment strategy in the region, that you'd have an outcome in Kosovo that would give us less than all we want for the foreseeable future, a containment strategy for the region where NATO has forces open-endedly in places like Macedonia and Albania as security guarantees to them.
The assumption is that Mr. Milosevic remains in power and that NATO turns to other tools and a much longer time horizon to realize its stated goals in Kosovo, and that the only way ultimately you get a Kosovo which is free of all Serbian forces, where everyone can go back living in peace and protection, is through the successful application of other tools--and by that I mean possibly covert action, sanctions, the containment--all they're going to have to back up with containment--the provision of economic aid only in the case that there is a very different kind of government put into place Belgrade, war crimes and so forth, that you essentially--what I think we're moving towards is what you might call a compromise over Kosovo that is temporary or tactical, where NATO accepts less than all of its objectives, but it says it's not giving up its goals, but rather takes a longer time horizon for the realization of its goals, and don't lean on military instruments alone for their realization.
Will this be a success? No. Will this be a failure? In part. Or, to put it another way, it will be at best a partial success, but a much more likely, or a much more accurate description, it will be a partial failure, that we will fail to have protected the people. In the near run we are unlikely to succeed in getting everybody back into conditions we want. And we only hope for over time for reducing the percentage of failure and to increasing the elements of success will be the successful application of other foreign policy tools. But we shouldn't conceive ourselves--because of what has already transpired there is no chance of anything like a real success emerging from this crisis. We are now essentially talking about the scale of the defeat, something that obviously has consequences for the immediate situation, but obviously also has consequences for NATO's future, and I believe for our U.S. foreign policy worldwide.
With that set of four grim assessments, let me turn it over to you all, and if you would keep your questions fairly brief. Let us know who you are. If you want to direct them towards one of us on the panel, please do. And there is a microphone here for you to use. If no one raises their hand, we will--sir?
Participant: [Off mic] Let me ask you two questions. Do you see a scenario, talking about ground war, do you see a scenario that maybe just a few NATO allies, those who are capable to deploy troops, will send ground troops to Kosovo, and maybe nations like Germany, or Italy or like Greece refrain from providing this force with ground troops--I am talking about special forces of U.S., special forces of France, special forces of England? That's my first question.
The second question. Do you think it's worth taking the risk--it might worsen the relations with Russia when NATO deploys ground forces, when NATO tries to enforce a sea blockade? Do you think it's worth it to worsen the relations in the United Nations, and do you think it's worth it to risk that the NATO alliance breaks up? Isn't it better to withdraw--[Inaudible]--?
R. Haass: Let me take the second one myself, and then I'll turn to Ivo or Mike on the first question.
In my own view, it's not clear to me that the military benefits from an oil blockade will offset the diplomatic costs. It is also not clear to me, by the way, you will get consensus in NATO for an oil blockade, if the last few days are indicative. But as I suggested in my talk, the military gains are not obvious.
And also there are tremendous risks. There are risks to the civilian population in Montenegro. The idea that you can stand up and evenly divide oil which is going to end up in the hands of Serbian forces as opposed to civilians in either Serbia or Montenegro--it's not clear to me how you control that situation. It's quite possible that any oil that gets in will be routed to the military forces. And, secondly, there is the tremendous risk with Russia. It is simply not worth, to put it bluntly--this is not worth a broader, not to mention military, confrontation with Russia over the question of oil.
So my own view--this is part again of a war of attrition strategy which I don't understand or accept. It thus seems to me that this is part and parcel of a flawed approach. So it's hard for me to see why you would want to pay an enormous price for what is essentially a flawed approach. So, no, my enthusiasm for it is, shall we say, finite. I question the wisdom--which does not mean by the way I come to you last sentence, because the answer to that is not to withdraw from it. It's to fix the larger strategy. But this particular innovation to speak of it that way is one that I would--I would question the wisdom of going down that route.
Why don't you begin addressing the question of a smaller group within NATO?
I. Daalder: Before doing so, just on the issue of the last sentence, it seems to me that it is worth defending 1.8 million Albanians in Kosovo, whatever the costs, if the strategy for doing so is in fact doable. It is worth worsening relations with Russia and it's worth worsening relations with the United Nations to uphold the principles and purposes of the United Nations. And I believe that if NATO were to do that it's possible we could come out more united than it will by pulling back and failing. So in the larger sense I don't want to leave the impression that just because I don't think ground forces are going to happen, I think that's a wiser or a good policy. I am saddened by that conclusion.
On the question of a smaller group of people, even if NATO were to act as NATO, there's going to be a smaller group of NATO consisting basically of the United States, Britain and France. And I have thought--hoped perhaps in a very NATO-esque kind of way, that as we were moving towards the summit the British and the French would be able to convince the Americans to join them in a ground offensive. I was wrong. Clearly the discussion that Tony Blair had with President Clinton on Thursday night--in fact for which he flew over especially, in order to make this a ground force summit--a decision in the summit that was going to lead to ground forces--that discussion did not work. Afterwards the president didn't come any closer to ground forces and Tony Blair never talked about it anymore. So the bottom line is you are not going to get a smaller group of people, or even a larger group of people to agree, unless the leader or the ostensible leader of the alliance leads--i.e., is willing to put its troops on the ground.
And I think what we have seen in the last three days is that that will not happen, that the United States for whatever reason--and we can analyze that for later and later purposes at a later time--has decided that it is not worth ground forces to achieve the objectives that NATO has set. And that being the case it is now time, as I think Richard indicated, and I indicated in my remarks, to change our objectives in a way that I'm more confident with the military strategy that we are willing to embark upon. The worse thing we can do is to continue to have these objectives out there, not being willing to compromise on them, not willing to negotiate on them, and not being on the other hand willing to do what it takes militarily to achieve them.
M. O'Hanlon: If I could just very quickly add, I agree fully with my colleagues. There's a little bit of kind of very simple treatment of this issue interdicting the sidelines in the paper that we are distributing that I wrote on the table. And I agree fully with what Richard says--it is going to be extremely hard to do this. The only hope you have seems to be NATO's strategy, which is to bring down the whole Serb economy and hope that even a selective preference for shipping whatever oil there is in Serbia to the forces in Kosovo ultimately is not enough--[Audio break]--gets brought down to the point that there just isn't oil there to ship to Kosovo. But stopping the supply lines running from Serbia into Kosovo, given that Serb forces need so little supplies to do what they're doing, is not promising.
Secondly, on the issue of which countries would have to be involved, again I agree that it would be a U.S., French, British led operation if there ever were ground forces used, and I share my colleagues' skepticism that we will use them. I think the United States and NATO are headed for calling it victory but accepting defeat, and I just hope that somehow we'll change that current trend. But I think it is the most likely one.
However, there is a role for other European militaries, in the sense that once we get into Kosovo--and the way I lay this out in my paper, we would establish a staging area in western Kosovo with the initial foray of 30- to 40,000 troops. And then what you would try to do would be to secure some small air fields--UC-130 airplanes and forces such as that to fly in light infantry, that don't need to be very mobile, but can then take over the job of protecting the enclave and the bases, so that the air assault units can go on the offensive to push Serbian forces out of Kosovo. There are a number of countries in Europe that are capable of doing that kind of perimeter defense of light infantry, and they could come in as I say after the staging area in western Kosovo is secured. I would not suggest it would be Germany playing that role, but one would hope that perhaps some of the low countries, Canada, maybe Spain, some of these countries might get involved and help in that regard. But it would be a supporting contribution, not a primary contribution.
Participant: You talk about the oil embargo that NATO wants to break down the Serbian economy. Is there a danger of creating a humanitarian disaster in Serbia? It's spring now. If there is no oil for their tractors they won't be able to plant anything. [Off mic]--food into Serbia this fall. And, secondly, you mentioned in your talk a little bit about the Vietnam analogy, the body count. What other scenarios could you see that could avoid that happening now and the way that the United States--[Inaudible]--Vietnam?
R. Cohen: Well, if we proceed with the military strategy we have now, there is going to be a greater impact on Yugoslavia's civilian population, and there will be. There will be perhaps need for NATO to be put in the position of bringing in humanitarian aid, or the U.N. doing that. So the other part of this though is that if we are pushed into that position of having to help civilians in Yugoslavia, or at least others may have to do that, we certainly shouldn't agree to reconstruction or development aid to a government run by Milosevic. But I would hope that the military strategy would become different, because this is one of the flaws in that whole strategy.
R. Haass: On that I would just add one thing, which is to the extent you do start seeing humanitarian problems in Yugoslavia or even Serbia more directly, it will contribute to strains within the alliance. Strategic bombing is an unpopular or controversial strategy, and my own view is that it is not something that we will be able to sustain open-endedly. And to the extent one does see growing humanitarian hardships there, the argument will come out, not without some justification, that it's having an impact, but it's having an impact on the wrong segment of society. And it's the same impact one hears often about economic sanctions--that it's too blunt for the tool, and that the leadership or the military are able to insulate themselves from the offense, but the civilian populations aren't. I think it will be one of the factors that will probably contribute to pressure within the alliance to compromise.
On Vietnam, there are some obvious parallels in the sense that we are essentially trying to use an air power centered strategy to coerce a government to compromising when it seems some of its vital interests at stake. And essentially that tends not to work. We've made it worse in two ways. One is by--as we did in Vietnam--declaring certain targets off limits. And second of all with the policy--that is gradualistic or episodic or both. So it's--you simply cannot--there's questions about how much you can ask of air power, even if you put everything you have into air power. But to have a policy that is air power dependent and then to further constrain yourselves in the rate of sorties, the targets and so forth, means that you will almost certainly undermine the coercive dimension of what it is you are trying to do. And this simply then gets to the heart of one of the flaws in our policy. If we have a coercive policy essentially to get the Serbs, to get the authorities in Belgrade to change their policies, then a war in which we constrain ourselves is unlikely to succeed. If, however, you are content simply with measurements of degrading, then you can arbitrarily define what it is you've accomplished and anoint it or announce it as success.
So if we are content to do that we will have that opportunity. But if the measure is not some arbitrary standard of reduced military capability, but is a change in Serbian behavior, then a constrained air power-centered effort is unlikely to succeed, and certainly has not succeeded soon enough, and will not succeed soon enough to stem the amount of pain and hemorrhage.
Participant: [Off mic] You talked about the costs to U.S. foreign policy, the long-term costs. I'd be very curious to hear what you think the main things are, assuming we are now talking about the scale of defeat, as you suggest draws in a victory. Also, how long do you think that that will take? Again if you press the diplomatic option, how long would you see bombing still continuing?
And, thirdly, I'm just interested in some sense of why it is that the gap between the rhetoric and the objectives of this administration are so divorced from the realities of politics.
[Pause, Laughter]
R. Haass: On the cost of defeat, it's one of these topics that is hard to prove, but I think it's out there, and it's inevitably anecdotal. In part it's based upon my last stint in government during the Bush years when very often we would get reports, diplomatic or intelligence, or even sometimes just open through the media, where other governments and leaders formed their impressions of the United States from Vietnam or from the experience in Lebanon. And from several Middle Eastern leaders in particular there were all sorts of judgments that reached us about American staying power or the lack thereof, about American willingness to tolerate casualties, about the power of American public opinion.
And in my own view one of the people who read that, and arguably misread it, was Saddam Hussein. There were lots of suggestions to that effect.
The idea that a great power with global interests can approach each square on the chess board as if it were totally unconnected to anything else on the chess board is odd. It's unlikely, particularly in a world of global media coverage and information movement.
One has to assume that people reach judgments about the United States. And I can't tell you that this will automatically trigger certain challenges, but it's hard to see how it has the opposite effect. It's hard to see how the experience here will make a Kim Jong Il or a Saddam Hussein or someone else less likely to challenge the United States. So in my own view we run the risk that this contributes to a greater propensity to challenge us, and in my own view this can't but have some repercussions in how the United States is perceived by its friends. It makes us slightly less dependable, slightly less reliable as an ally. Now, are these things going to necessarily be decisive? But I do think it contributes to the judgments that other actors in international relations will make. I can't prove it. It's the sort of thing that will play out over the next decade or longer. But I think that's something you have to consider when you make foreign policy. You can't control the lessons that are drawn from whatever it is you do or don't do.
Similarly, I think it will have (on our history ?)--and that gets to your last point as well. Both this experience, as well as the administration rhetoric and the gap between the rhetoric and behavior does have an impact on the American political debate here and domestic politics. And again it's hard to see how this makes us more likely to play an effective leadership role in the world. And perhaps where we live to fight another day, because we will avoid massive casualties which could alienate American people from responsibility, but this just reinforces the sense that the United States can only act in the world if somehow it can design a policy that's casualty-free. And that to me is an unfortunate reinforcement. It takes the trends of the last decade and adds to them, and it will only make it harder down the road for the United States to do things that arguably it should do if there is a somewhat greater potential cost. We further raise the bar. We further raise the expectation there.
And the fact that the administration further perpetuates in calling what we are doing a success further reinforces the idea that we can have our cake and eat it. We can have successful foreign policies that don't cost. I think that has the added burden of not being true. But it will make it that much difficult or more difficult for Mr. Clinton to accept this, to rally the American people behind what I think will be effective foreign policy. Here I think the fault largely lies in the White House. I think though it's not 100 percent there, and Congress's at times unwillingness to make clear what its views are and alternative views also contribute to that. But I think foreign policy in our Constitution, in our political system, is first and foremost an executive responsibility, and I think it is with the executive branch that as a result the responsibility falls.
I. Daalder: Let me add two other costs or consequences. One, it seems to me that the era on which we were thinking in engaging in an humanitarian intervention is over, and the notion that in the future the United States or its major allies would again undertake a major military mission to protect people strikes me as less likely, even less likely than it is at this point. That is, I don't think that NATO is going to be prepared to launch this kind of operation if something happens somewhere else in Europe, let alone outside of Europe. So the notion that we were moving towards a new consensus on humanitarian intervention, a notion that in the last three to four weeks allied leaders have propounded repeatedly, including Tony Blair in his speech in Chicago, strikes me as to be true only if we succeed. And if we are not succeeding that's not going to work in the future.
One possibly positive consequence, though I'd hate to put a lot of money on it, is that at least London, and perhaps others in the NATO alliance--and I realize that having a foreign policy that relies on the United States for bringing all the military muscle to bear is simply unacceptable. It is clear to me that already in October of last year Tony Blair came to the conclusion that a foreign policy that relies on U.S. military muscle in Kosovo was mistaken, and that in fact as the time had come to move in a major way on a European defense initiative, where you both raise capability and will, that conclusion if anything was strengthened by his talk for two and a half hours with the president in the White House Thursday night. And I would believe that the summit meeting that the EU will have next month, to the extent defense and security issues are going to be discussed, Blair and Chirac--Blair will take about as Gaullist a line on European defense as one can think for any British politician to take. It is unacceptable for the United States to veto what, by British calculation, was what was required, which is a ground force invasion of Kosovo to help these people.
Participant: [Off mic]
R. Cohen: From all the reports--[Inaudible]--atrocities and the killings seem to be accelerating and stepping up. I almost see a parallel in that the Serbs are not hitting at American planes. They're not engaging directly with those who are attacking them. What they do is attack the civilian population even more, just as, in a sense, the U.S. is not willing to engage directly with them, and so we are attacking over in Serbia, with the risk of hitting their civilian population.
But all the reports on the ground give one the impression that if the Serbian response is that if the U.S. aim is to protect the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, then they're going to thwart that aim and they're going to get into more brutality. In fact, it reminded me, watching this, of something from the second world war, where, after the war ended and the allies won the war and it was known, the killings on the ground in concentration camps and other places accelerated, because it was a sort of revenge retaliation on who you can.
Now, hopefully there are also some reports that some of the Serb soldiers are defecting. I don't know the numbers. It doesn't sound as if it will have any great impact, but one hopes that possibly they join the civilians and that they don't want to fight (and?) they lay down their arms.
The KLA, of course, is the only protection force on the ground for some people, and there are great debates about whether or not to lend them support or not. But I don't see so far that there's been any change on the ground as a result of this, and the Apaches are not really--they're not up yet. They're not running. Will that make a difference for whether they will continue to retaliate by reprisals against civilians who are easy to kill? That's the question.
M. O'Hanlon: I don't believe the Apaches will make much of a difference in that regard, even when they get there. For the Apaches to shoot at people, they have to be close enough for people to shoot at them. It's, you know, one thing to shoot at armor with Apaches. But they are good in that they can fly under cloud cover. We've had a bunch of cloudless days in this war, and we still haven't done very well against Serb armor in Kosovo.
So the Apaches can attack armor maybe twice as many days as fixed-wing aircraft at high altitude. That's not a big deal, especially when you're adding 24 to 48 Apaches to a force that's already numbering 700 planes. There's just no reason to think the Apaches are going to be a decisive difference.
As to why they're taking so long, I think that's part of the reason. People know it's not going to make a big difference. They're trying to stretch out the politics of this and deflect--at least the United States is trying to deflect the domestic critics who are calling for ground forces. And to make every kind of step take longer helps kind of take the wind out of our sails and slow down the general political and media pressure to consider a better war strategy.
Secondly, of course, there are some military logistical hurdles. We are trying to send armor to back up these Apaches. Albania is not an easy place to deploy. We're trying to get the Apaches near the border of Serbia, which is something my option, by the way, would not require quite as much. You could have a staging base in my option for helicopter assault further back from the lines and then go into Kosovo directly, but the Apaches need to set up fairly close to the border, and then you have all the more logistical challenges trying to find good land to put down 5,000 people and a bunch of armor. So that's my basic answer to the Apache issue.
As for Hungary, I have one or two quick comments, and Ivo or Richard may want to chime in. It seems to me you only go in from Hungary if you're trying to overthrow Milosevic, because if you just look at a map, you're talking 500 kilometers from Hungary to Kosovo, and you've probably got to go through a lot of the Serbian military to get there. So even if the first half of that 500 kilometers is nice--[Inaudible]--country, the second half is not, and you're going to have to confront a lot of Serbian forces along the way.
So to me, it's better as a feint to force Milosevic to keep some of his forces up north as you go into Kosovo and to hold that also as a reserve option in case he starts massacring a lot of people or, considering the use of chemical weapons, you want to have the opportunity to make him think you may threaten Belgrade directly, but it's not the preferred approach initially.
I. Daalder: Let me just add on. Now that we've bombed the third bridge over the Danube in Novi Sad, coming in from Hungary--[Inaudible]. [Laughter]
Participant: [Inaudible]--I have two questions. The NATO summit recognized that Russia has a role to play for solution to the conflict. What is your assessment about that? And second question: Many NATO candidates in Eastern Europe are complaining today that the summit did not take clear steps in favor of their candidacy. What do you think about that?
R. Haass: Why don't I take the Russian question and let Ivo handle the enlargement question. You're correct; the statement did include a reference to Russia having a role to play. We've also had this long phone conversation between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin. On one level, simply saying that Russia has a role to play is nothing for than reflecting a fact of life. It does.
But I think it represents two other things. One is, it's an attempt to throw something of a bouquet to Russia; that people are legitimately concerned by the powerful Russian public and elite reaction to this. This has clearly emerged as almost the accumulation of all of Russia's frustration over the reduction in its great power status, over its humiliation, the sense of impotence, and it's all coalesced around Kosovo.
And the reports of people who have been there in the last week or two are genuinely alarming. This is not just feinting. This is not just bravado. This is real. There is profound alienation there. And so I think you're seeing the alliance worry about that. They're trying to at least throw out some signals that the purpose of this strategy is not to exclude Russia per se.
Secondly, I think it reflects a genuine desire that just maybe Russia can contribute. Again, the military situation is not going well, despite what NATO's spokesmen would have you believe. So in such a situation, you try to encourage would-be mediators to mediate. Now, there's obviously some risk there that what they come up with might not be a package particularly to your liking. And if I'm right in what I said before, we're going to have to play that out.
But I do think there is a recognition that Russia might be uniquely situated or best situated to play a role vis-a-vis Belgrade, and your interest in something diplomatic working, for obvious reasons, has gone up since the military instrument of foreign policy does not seem to be succeeding and shows no sign of succeeding any time soon.
I. Daalder: On the question of enlargement, if I were one of the countries, I would be deeply disappointed, too. I find the statement that came out of the summit on enlargement was weaker than the Madrid statement. There was no indication that NATO would make a decision any time soon, even by the next summit, in which it was said they would just review progress.
And I think in many ways the message that has gone forth is that Germany and Britain won; they don't want to do any more enlargement. And the United States lost on the question of enlargement; that the door is, figuratively speaking, open, but in reality, closed.
This was the summit at which a decisive second round could have happened, and the war in Kosovo only made accession of Slovenia more important, more appropriate at this time. And instead what we told them was a slap in the face. That's what they got for their assistance in the war in Kosovo and a, quote/unquote, "membership action plan," which somehow, somewhere, is going to prepare these countries to become NATO members.
I mean, either they have taken the economic, military and political steps, as Slovenia clearly had by 1997, in which case they ought to become NATO members, particularly if they're opening up their air space and that, in the Slovenians' case, there's talk of opening up air bases, or they're not. And the answer I think they got at this summit was that there's not going to be any enlargement, which is too bad.
This is an alliance that is an exclusive club, and you're happy when you're in. And if you're out, that's just too bad. And if I were the Macedonian prime minister, I would have been exceedingly disappointed, as indeed he was. He was the only one who said, "Call it like it is." I mean, if this is what you get for opening up your country in the way that Macedonia has, then what good is membership?
R. Haass: I think the crisis has been bad for enlargement in two ways. Fairly or not, the fact that NATO has grown from 16 to 19 has increased the frequency and the decibel level of the dilution argument. It might not be a fair criticism. I think it's more NATO's at times difficulty in agreeing on a course, (and they view it?) more as a reflection of a lack of American leadership. All the same, NATO is taking the rap. And the fact that you've already gone from 16 to 19 is seen as exacerbating the problem. So the idea of going from 19 to 20 or 21 is clearly put on the defensive. That's--[Inaudible].
Secondly, the Russia angle. Russia clearly opposes enlargement. People are genuinely alarmed at the state of relations with Russia. People are worried that to go ahead with enlargement in this context simply doesn't make sense.
Thirdly, it's interesting; six months ago, enlargement, along with the general idea of a new strategic concept, were going to be the centerpieces of this summit. Clearly it was Kosovo who has knocked it off the front page and front burner. And just some of the momentum, some of the urgency, went out of enlargement.
A more fundamental question than whether you grow the alliance is what the purpose of the alliance is on paper, and more important, what the ability of the alliance is in practice. So suddenly enlargement no longer seemed quite as central as it did, and there just wasn't the diplomatic time and energy to put behind it. So it clearly lost out.
I. Daalder: Just as a general theme that you're hearing here, enlargement is part of NATO on paper, but enlargement no longer is part of NATO in practice. And that's the theme that you're seeing is this surreal nature of a NATO that has this broad vision in which enlargement fits. But in reality, Kosovo and its (outflows?) is just saying goodbye to that.
R. Haass: Just so you don't think there's consensus up here, I think Ivo is being a little bit too negative. It's clearly a hiatus for enlargement. There's a difference between a hiatus, even a prolonged hiatus, and a permanent one.
I. Daalder: In the next 10 to 15 years, we probably agree.
R. Haass: I think it will resume sooner than that, but it will clearly slow it down. And again, some of that was happening even before Kosovo, given the American Senate. But clearly this will contribute to a slowing down of the process.
We've got time for about one more question. Yes, ma'am.
Participant: [Off mic]
M. O'Hanlon: Another example of wishful thinking. In regard to the first question, I would say that these are consistent. Getting some armor in place is certainly fine. However, it doesn't necessarily shorten the time line very much, because you still need to send over a fair number of units from the United States. And that's going to take time.
If you have to put these things on ships because Italy won't go along, it doesn't matter that much if you have to use six or eight or 10 ships. It helps a little to get started with a few thousand troops now, but it's just not very much progress. And all this talk about, you know, putting a few thousand forces in place or developing these updated plans, this is just going way too slowly for the urgency of the problem.
R. Haass: The answer to your second question is no. [Laughter]
With that, I apologize. We've got to wrap it up. I want to thank you again for coming here, many of you (not?) the first time. And as this plays out, we may continue doing these if people find them useful. Thank you very much.
[END OF EVENT.]