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.