Transcript
MR. IVO DAALDER: Good afternoon. If there are still some seats left, if you will take your seats we will get this show on the road. Thanks, everybody, for coming. I'm Ivo Daalder, one of the two people talking to you this afternoon. In a moment, Michael O'Hanlon, who is a senior fellow here at Brookings, and the author of the just-published defense policy choices for the Bush administration, as well as my dear co-author on our book, "Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Bosnia"—"Save Kosovo"—we saved Bosnia before that. Michael talked about the military situation in the region, and including the capability for the Macedonian armed and security forces may have in order to deal with the insurgency in Macedonia, as well as what is happening inside Kosovo.
I want to start off by giving you an overview of the conflict that we have all been witnessing on the TV screens in the last couple of days, including why there has been this recent upsurge in fighting, and what it is that we might be able to do about it.
It is important to start off about why this violence has emerged in the last two weeks. It is important to know that the violence in Macedonia is part of a larger problem within the region, a problem which we might term "the Albanian question." ethnic Albanians currently inhabit a contiguous territory that extends into four different countries—Albania, Greece, Macedonia and Yugoslavia. And if Yugoslavia, as many expect will break up in the future, it will extend to six countries, including Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro. So far the violence has beset not only Macedonia, but also Kosovo and southern Serbia on the eastern side of Kosovo in the Presevo Valley.
The question: Why this kind of violence that involves ethnic Albanians in the last few weeks and months? There are really four different reasons.
First, in all but Albania, ethnic Albanians live in countries in which they are a minority, and as a minority they have not always—in fact, in most cases have never been—well treated. So there are real reasons on the part of the Albanian communities in Macedonia, in Yugoslavia in particular. In Kosovo, prior to the NATO intervention of now two years ago—in fact, two years ago to virtually the day that that war started—ethnic Albanians were denied their most basic rights, and an apartheid-style regime had been imposed upon them by the Serb government authorities in Belgrade. After the war the Albanians were liberated from the Serb oppression, but they still don't have any real sense of control over their own livelihoods, being ruled to this day by the international community through the U.N. Mission in Kosovo and the NATO troops that are supporting that mission.
In southern Serbia, you have an Albanian population along the Presevo Valley that suffered in many ways and in many similar ways to those Albanians in Kosovo. They have been denied basic rights as citizens, but most importantly the basic rights to rule and govern their own affairs. That, at least until Belgrade continues to be dominated by the regime that dominated Belgrade until October of last year. Now that there is a new regime, the post-Milosevic democratic regime that has emerged, there is a greater willingness on the part of Belgrade to begin to provide Albanians in the region a sense of control over their own affairs.
And in Macedonia ethnic Albanians have suffered systematic discrimination ever since Macedonia became independent in 1992. Now, it is important to emphasize that the kind of discrimination that exists in Macedonia is as nothing compared to the kind of oppression that the Albanians in the north, in Kosovo and southern Serbia, underwent in years previously. Albanians have been part of every single government that the Macedonians have formed since 1992, since becoming independent. And the kind of discrimination is of a more subtle kind than we saw in Kosovo. It involves the notion and the very real extent of second-class status of Albanians, emphasized by the preamble of the Constitution, which recognizes the state as a Macedonian state with minorities, as opposed to a state that exists of more than a single people. The discrimination involves the refusal of the central government authorities in Skopje to recognize Albanian as one of the two languages in the country. It is part of a discrimination at the educational level, although primary and secondary education in Macedonia consist of both Macedonian and Albanian language training. There is no state-sponsored or state-financed or even state-recognized university level education that involves Albanian—teaching in the Albanian language. And Albanians are not well represented in key public sector jobs, including the police, the army, and the security forces. And finally, Macedonia, though a country divided ethnically with some 30, 35 percent of the population being Albanian, is a centralized state in which local power is limited, and central power is maximum.
So one clear cause of what's happening is an underlying sense—quite legitimate sense—on the Albanian people's part that they have been oppressed and that their rights have not been well recognized.
The second reason for why violence has occurred now, as opposed to a week or two—or a year ago—is that the ouster of Milosevic last October proved to be a major blow to the aspirations of the Albanian people. Most Albanians believe that they could ride Western opposition to Belgrade and the Milosevic regime to independence, that on the coattails of Western opposition they would get independence, because of course nobody would allow a Milosevic-dominated Belgrade to rule a Kosovo—or to rule Albanians in the same way that happened before.
Now that Milosevic was overthrown, the democratic opposition came to power. Western attention shifted on a dime away from opposition to Milosevic to doing everything possible to consolidate democracy and stabilize Serbia. All of a sudden Kosovo became an Albanian—more generally Albanian desires and recognition for their own rights, and Kosovo's case for independence, became a secondary, if not a tertiary concern for the United States and the Western countries in general, as the United States and the West in general tried to consolidate democracy in Serbia.
Since violence, we have been taught for the last 10 years, is the way you get attention in the Balkans—after all, the reason you are here is because there is violence in Macedonia—you wouldn't have been here four weeks ago when there was no violence—the way to get violence—to get attention is to engage in violence. The fact that the West is turning away from the Albanians and their aspirations meant that extremist forces were more likely to use and will begin to use violence in order at the very least to get attention. It happened in Kosovo, where we saw an escalation of violence starting in November and December, leading in February to the bus bombing. It happened in the Presevo Valley, where the number of people—the number of Serbs killed after November is double the number that had been killed in a year and a half previously. And of course it happened in Macedonia.
A third major reason why violence has occurred now is that the United States and NATO have failed to crackdown on the extremist upsurge of violence. They haven't systematically shut down the KLA inside Kosovo. They haven't seized the weapon caches that they know exist. They haven't shut down the leadership of the KLA that continues to be there. They have allowed until very recently Albanians to operate freely in the ground safety zone between Kosovo and Serbia, a zone in which no Serb military and police force—no Serb military and interior security forces were allowed to patrol—a five-mile-wide zone established after the Kosovo war. They have failed to prevent the exfiltration of weaponry and people from Kosovo into Macedonia until very recently. And the fear—so in general a fear of casualties, a fear to confront what seemed to be the cause of instability on the part of the United States and of NATO seems to have predominated more than was necessary. Unfortunately, as in other peacekeeping operations, in this one, in Kosovo and in our presence in the region, force protection has become more important than the execution of the mission for which the people were sent in the first place.
Finally, it is in my view clear that the United States under the Bush administration has been lackluster and uncertain in its commitment to the Balkans, and that that is one of the reasons why the Albanians have decided to take matters in their own hands, believing that they could get away with violence. We all know that during the campaign then-Governor Bush, then-vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, then foreign policy advisor Condoleezza Rice, and others, repeatedly said that the United States did not have fundamental interests in the Balkans and would in fact seek the withdrawal of U.S. forces. And although the rhetoric has softened?the rhetoric in fact has changed to a significant extent—the sentiments that underlay the kinds of conclusions that the Bush campaign reached remain today fundamental to an understanding of American policy. While Secretary of State Powell and even President Bush have reassured our allies that we will remain in the Balkans for some time to come—Secretary Powell even saying that we will not leave—we went in together, we will leave together. These are reassurances directed at Brussels and our allied capitals. They have not been reassurances about the commitments that the United States may or may not have to implementing the mission for which the U.S. has sent soldier in in the first place. Sensing therefore that the United States is not ready to take on a fight, it is not surprising that extremists have dared to push the envelope, and in fact used violence to see if they could get away with it.
So those are the reasons why this has happened. What can we do about it? Let me briefly mention a couple of points.
First, for the moment it looks like the Macedonian security forces may have for now achieved a breathing space of some sort. I think the Macedonian security forces ought to be congratulated in using force in the way they did—not in the way their northern neighbors in Serbia would have used it. They have used it deliberately, they have used it with a minimum of casualties, and they have achieved—at least it would appear, and it is difficult to know exactly what's going on in the mountains of Macedonia—but at least from reporting that we have all seen, it would appear they have taken over the stronghold that the rebels only a few days were holding. And they did so in an admirably restrained way.
But this conflict is not over. The issues that were there remain there today. And in any day the insurgency can start again. So what do we do? What should we the United States, we the Western community, we in that region, try to do to try to solve this problem? First, we should support the Albanian moderate forces to demonstrate to the extremists that violence does not pay. In Kosovo that means handing over control over local affairs as soon as we practically can to the local population, to devolve responsibility from the international community to the local population, holding elections on a territory-wide basis as soon as possible. As the municipal elections last November showed, when you hold elections in Kosovo today extremists lose, moderates win.
In the Presevo Valley we should ensure that Belgrade's commitments to devolve responsibility and control and power to the local authorities in fact is implemented that the Kovich plan that was laid on the table a month ago will in fact become the basis for increasing local autonomy and local power by the Albanian authorities.
And finally, in Macedonia, we should continue to press, as last night Secretary Lord Robertson and Javier Solana of the EU did, to press for all-party negotiations to start addressing the very real grievances that the Albanians have: to change the Constitution, to recognize Albania as a language, as a second language in Macedonia, to devolve power and decentralize power from the center to the regions to the maximum extent possible, and in other ways address the very real reasons that the Albanians feel.
Second, and consistent with support for the moderates, must be a reinvigorated and more vigorous effort to take down the extremists throughout the region?of any kind, but in this case of Albanians. Weapon caches must be seized and destroyed. Leaders and instigators of violence must be arrested and put away. Borders must be sealed to prevent the kind of transfer of weaponry that has happened in the last two, three, four weeks. And the U.S. and NATO must stand ready, as they should have stood ready in my view, to intervene militarily wherever extremists seem to gain the upper hand, if the government's concerns would allow that. That includes most importantly if the insurgency restarts in Macedonia, it is time to be ready and stand to intervene. And Mike will address some of the issues that are involved in that.
Finally, and most importantly, the Bush administration must state publicly and at the highest level, not just in favor of the territorial integrity of Macedonia, which is what we have heard in the last couple of days, but that the United States is behind the mission that the U.S. soldiers are serving; that we believe we the United States must state at the highest level that we are committed to seeing this mission succeed. While Washington is interested in burden-sharing, the administration should publicly acknowledge that the Europeans are rightly and properly carrying the major share of the burden, and that having done so it is now up to the United States to continue to do its share as well, and to do it in order to get the job done. And with that let me turn it over to Mike.
MR. MICHAEL O'HANLON: Thanks, Ivo. Those were very eloquent points. And I fully agree with Ivo's argument. What I wanted to do was to amplify a couple of specific military issues in my overall assessment of the situation. But first I'll begin by saying I'm still pretty nervous about this situation, as I would assume many people here today are as well—otherwise you wouldn't have come—despite the apparent good news of the last couple of days. I am worried pretty fundamentally for a few reasons, and some are military. I'll get into those. But at a broader political level, I still worry that the ethnic Albanian extremists, many of them former KLA, deep down really think we'll take their side. They really think that if they cause trouble and this leads to essentially shelling of ethnic Albanian villages in Macedonia, at the end of the day we'll come to their aid militarily the same way we did in Kosovo. I think there is a fundamental assumption of U.S. friendship, which is both our greatest strength and leverage in one sense, but also potential danger here to the extent that ethnic Albanians feel emboldened to keep on going. That's my first point, why I am nervous at a political level.
Secondly I'm nervous because I really think that these folks, these extremist fighters, are not just worried about Albanian as a second language. I think they are probably more likely better seen in the classic Balkan sense of land-grabbers. To the extent that these folks were fighting Milosevic a few years ago and were outgunned and were trying to—well, to some extent, of course, they did contribute to the cause of the conflict in Kosovo in the first place—to the extent that they were nonetheless on the side of a beleaguered population, we naturally tended to be sympathetic, even though in '98 and '99 we tried to keep the KLA at arm's length.
At this point, however, I think our reasons for sympathy with these groups are diminished, and I think it's probable that they are best seen in the spirit of those who have used violence to acquire more territory for their ethnic group, which has been a pattern we have seen for many ethnic groups, not just Serbs, in the Balkans in the last decade. So I am pretty nervous. I don't think these folks are going to desist necessarily, even if we get an agreement on Albanian universities in Macedonia and a new preamble to the Macedonian Constitution and Albanian as a second language within Macedonia.
My guess is that there is a very good chance to keep fighting. I'd love to be proven wrong about that, but that's my underlying assumption of why I think we better keep our eye on this.
Let me now mention three military points, and I am just going to be pretty concise here because Ivo laid out the broad policy argument, and I'd like to get your input and questions and comments on that. But let me amplify with a couple of military points. Actually I have three points.
One is I don't think Macedonia's military is realistically going to be capable of a serious counterinsurgency operation. I don't think that they are going to do it very well. I commend their restraint over the last couple of days as well, but I think one could also look at that and say what we have learned so far, in the words of one of my colleagues in the elevator a few minutes ago, this military can seize a few major highways in northwestern Macedonia, and the Kosovar and the Macedonian Albanian fighters are smart enough to back off if the Macedonian military decides to seize those highways and a couple of towns in the immediate vicinity. We don't really know yet that they can go out into the hills, into the forests, and track down and if necessary shoot at and neutralize guerrilla extremists. The guerrilla extremists have pulled back. They haven't yet required the Macedonian military to up the ante and to go for that next level of effort.
So the Macedonian military when I look at it it's just not going to be capable of a serious counterinsurgency campaign. That's my first point.
The second point: I don't think it would take that much, given the limited amount of land that's involved here, to seal the border between Kosovo and Macedonia, and/or for NATO to be involved in actually helping the Macedonian military to try to conduct counterinsurgency operations in northwestern Macedonia if necessary.
And then, finally, the United States is not so over-committed globally that we can't consider adding a few hundred troops to this mission.
Those are my three points. Let me try to go through each one in a little bit more detail. There are some hand-outs in this packet that may back up some of what I am saying with some data, if you would like to consult those hand-outs. The one I am going to refer to first is Macedonia's security forces. And as those of you who have been following the newspapers and consulted your own version of the International Institute for Strategic Studies military balance, as you know this is a very, very small military, 16,000 active duty troops—16,000—with a budget of about 70 or 80 million dollars a year, tops 100 million, the equivalent of a few American fighter jets. That's what they can buy in their entire defense budget every year. Half of their military personnel are nine-month conscripts. I don't know the breakdown ethnically, but presumably some fraction of those are ethnic Albanian and presumably not going to be available for this counterinsurgency campaign, at least not in a fully dependable sense. So you are looking at at most a few thousand some professional military.
They just acquired two more helicopters, which was a 50 percent increase in their entire helicopter fleet, and this is in terrain where helicopters are necessary. The terrain of northwestern Macedonia—I have only been briefly to that region myself and seen it, but it is remarkably difficult and imposing terrain. You are not going to do counterinsurgency in this terrain with six helicopters, and you are not going to do it with B-55 tanks either. You are going to be able to seize a few main highways perhaps, but the idea of going into the villages, going into the hills and taking this fight to the insurgents is something that is going to require a lot more than what the Macedonian military has. And I haven't even talked about training. This is not a force that has been in existence for very long. Obviously this was one of the constituent republics of Yugoslavia that has been only in existence now for the space of roughly a decade, and has not really oriented its military towards this kind of mission. So you are looking at a very small, poorly equipped, poorly trained armed force that has not even thought about counterinsurgency for most of its existence. That does not make for a very confidence-inspiring situation if they have to fight.
And even though the KLA is not that strong in a military sense, or what's left of the KLA, it's experienced and has some ability to use terrain, to rely on arm supplies that may still exist inside of Kosovo or Macedonia, and to draw on up to many thousands fighters. We don't really know how big this ethnic Albanian extremist force in Macedonia is today; and we don't know how many of the former KLA within Kosovo would be willing to keep crossing over the border if this conflict escalates. There's a very good chance in my mind that you could wind up with almost as many ethnic Albanian extremist fighters as the Macedonians have in their entire military. So that's sort of point number one.
Point number two is the counterinsurgency doctrine tends to say you really need five times to ten times as many troops as you have rebels if you want to win, because counterinsurgency, as we learned in Vietnam and as the Serbs lived in Kosovo, and the Soviets in Afghanistan, this is not the kind of war that you win by delivering a lot of ordnance into a forest or a countryside. You have got to seize control of territory. You have got to do patrols, you have got to do monitoring, you have got to develop human intelligence networks. You have got to be physically present and in considerable numbers; because otherwise the guerrillas can essentially just disappear?the fish can disappear into the sea from which they emanated and revert to a more passive or quiescence form of conflict until the opportunity presents itself to be more aggressive. So if you are only present with one troop or two troops for every rebel soldier, you are not going to win. And classic counterinsurgency doctrine would say that if the ethnic Albanian extremists may have 500 or a thousand fighters, and may be able to go up to two or three or five thousand, you may need thousands, or even several tens of thousands of people to do this operation right—should it escalate.
I apologize for speaking in such dire military terms, and I hope very much the diplomatic developments of the last couple of days intensify and wind up resolving this conflict before it gets to the point that I am talking about, where you are involved in a more serious counterinsurgency effort. Obviously that's the gamble the Bush administration is making. Let's all hope they're right. Let's all hope I'm wrong in raising these worries. But all I'm saying is the Macedonian military is not big enough to get this mission done, and that should make us worried.
Now what does NATO have in the vicinity already? NATO has 40,000 forces in Kosovo; about 20,000 still in Bosnia. These rough numbers are probably adequate, if redeployed all to this vicinity of southern Kosovo and the Macedonian border. However, of course, they can't all leave where they are today in other parts of the Balkans. The KFOR force, numbering 40,000, has a lot of other responsibilities near Mitrovica and other parts of Kosovo, so it's not realistic to think that we can reinforce with more than a few hundred people from other parts of Kosovo. So I think realistically NATO should be talking about a possible expansion of several thousand people in its total KFOR presence to be put along the border with Macedonia.
I did a very rough calculation with a very rough rule of thumb, trying to figure out how many forces would be needed per kilometer of border in order to do a pretty good job of sealing this border. There's no real great analogy. I don't have the definitive military doctrinal document or perfect historical analogy to calculate a given number. But if you look at Bosnia in the early days—we went in in 1995 with IFOR. We had roughly 60,000 forces in NATO in the initial IFOR presence for close to a thousand kilometers of separation line between the two main entities within Bosnia. If you apply that same number of troops per kilometer to the border between Kosovo and Macedonia, on the grounds that that force was doing something in Bosnia in '95 roughly comparable—or it was being sized to do something roughly comparable to what this force might have to do today along the Kosovo—Macedonia border—you wind up estimating something like 5,000, 6,000, maybe 8,000 troops required to seal that border. And I think today we have no more than a couple thousand in that general vicinity who are really dedicated to that operation. Of course they are not really dedicated at all to that operation, because NATO has not firmly committed to closing the border. But nonetheless we have perhaps 1,000, 2,000 in that general vicinity. My guess is that number should triple or quadruple. And the best way to do it is to have NATO to add forces to the overall KFOR mission—maybe 5,000 more people, of which roughly 1,000 would be American, if you just do things by the same proportions that we have them in the Balkans today.
And that brings me to my last point, which is some will say: Isn't the U.S. military so overcommitted globally that we can't even think about this sort of additional deployment? And, by the way, for this and other work Ivo and I thank Carla Nieting and Mike Ozanko (ph) and Marcia MacNeil and Rob Dubrowski (ph) and others who have helped us put these materials and this whole event today. But in one of the other graphics that I have got in the packet, troops in Kosovo, troops in Bosnia, you can see that the U.S. contribution is pretty limited to the overall NATO presence in the Balkans—roughly 20 percent of a force that is not that big today. Again, 20,000 total NATO troops in Bosnia; 40,000 in Kosovo. We are down—and this news sort of escaped the attention of most journalists—we are actually headed down now to only about 3,500 troops in Bosnia, which is one sixth of the number we began with in 1995; and it's one half of the number that was present last year when Mr. Bush was on the campaign trail, decrying the overcommitment of the U.S. military. So we are already in the process of reducing our Bosnia commitment by another 3,000 troops from when President Bush was still Governor Bush. So even if we added 1,000 more to KFOR, it's still a net reduction in the overall U.S. military commitment globally.
And, finally, I would just challenge the basic assertion that was made by the Bush campaign last year, and that has continued on to the Bush presidency, that it's peacekeeping missions like these that really tax our military. It's really not true. If you look at the overall number of deployments of the U.S. military around the world, the only place where we have substantial numbers of people doing peace operations is in the Balkans. It's the only place. We have a few hundred here, a couple dozen there in certain other regions of the world. This is the only place where we have a substantial presence in terms of a peace operation. The size of our presence has already come down drastically. It was 20,000 U.S. troops in 1996; now it's down to about 11 or 12 thousand, between Kosovo and Bosnia combined, and still declining. And there is no reason why we can't consider a modest increase.
Also, there are other places in the world—and I'll just simply highlight that I've laid out some of these in the Foreign Affairs article that is in your packet as well, that other places in the world we could consider reducing U.S. troop deployments abroad if we really feel like we are so overcommitted and overdeployed. This is a place where there is a real problem, and a real problem that exists today, and we really would be well advised to prepare for a possible deterioration, instead of just hoping for a diplomatic miracle that to my mind is less than 50/50 in likelihood. And I'll stop there. And we both look forward very much to your comments and questions.
There's a microphone here. And if you can state your name and affiliation it would be helpful.
Q: Miles Pomper from Congressional Quarterly. The president has to decide by—and the secretary of State—have to decide by the end of this week on whether to certify that Serbia is cooperating with The Hague Tribunal and to go forward with the aid. Do you think in light of the other events in the Balkans that they should go forward with the money? I mean, especially in the Macedonia question and southern Serbia.
MR. DAALDER: The two are at least legally not related—what's happening in Macedonia should not have any influence on exactly what the certification will be with regard to how Belgrade deals with its cooperation in the War Crimes Tribunal and other matters. But of course they are related in the sense that if the United States, as the only country that is providing assistance to the former Yugoslavia were to decide to cut off that aid, it would be a major statement by the United States with regard to its policy towards the region in general, and Serbia in particular. Which is why I predict—I don't have to put a lot of money on it, but I could probably put a lot of money on it—that the new administration will of course certify in some way or the other that Belgrade has done sufficiently in terms of its cooperation in order to have the aid continue. They may set another deadline themselves; they may put out some markers that you want to have a continued increase in cooperation. But Belgrade has done more than would have been the case if Mr. Milosevic was still in power—in fact, a lot more—sent two people to The Hague; they have allowed an office to be opened in Belgrade; they have allowed—they have met with the prosecutor at the highest level of the government. So it becomes very difficult under those circumstances to say we want to cut off the assistance at this point. I think in six days we'll have that decision in that way.
Q: Steven Schwartz from the Forward weekly. I spent most of the last year in Kosovo and Macedonia. I agree with everything both of you said. But I have a question about the closure of the border, having observed it myself. As you say, virtually it looks to a lay person as almost indefensible terrain , except by irregulars, almost unmanageable as a military project.
The Kosovo-Macedonia border has never been surveyed in my understanding in large part, and it seems like an extremely porous—the classic smugglers' haven type of border. So I mean closure of that border could conceivably be a major technological—technical project as well as military project, wouldn't you say?
MR. O'HANLON: Yeah, I think it's a very good point. I think there's a chance we won't succeed. But I also think that success in this case has to be measured in terms of shades of gray. And if there's simply one route, or one or two routes that become still available to Kosovar Albanian extremists and others are shut down, that probably limits their ability to route total number of weapons into Macedonia. They can always try to divert, try to take advantage of the routes that we haven't managed to shut down. But as a matter of general argument, to the extent that they have to prepare major supplies to get into position to then ferry over by land, by human courier, what have you, in a couple of places, it raises the stakes. And if we happen to catch an arms shipment being directed towards that region, we have sort of taken away most of their effort in a given sector. In other words, today they can just sort of filter these arms all over the place —small road here, back road there. We are not really trying to stop them. If they have to depend on just a couple of places that we can't get to, then again their vulnerability—any one thing going wrong—increases, and the overall volume of supply is probably going to decline as well. So I share your point. To assume that sealing the border is going to solve this problem is probably optimistic, and NATO may have to think about actually going into Macedonia at some future date. But I think we could probably reduce the quantity of supplies being shipped in by some appreciable percent—50, 75—just by doing what we can along the border.
MR. DAALDER: Let me just add to that. There's one strategy is just to focus on the border. Another strategy is to focus on the two sides of the border in addition. That is, try to get and interdict the weapon supplies before they reach the border, by taking down the caches that are there and the kind of weapons supplies, which is what we have been doing. And the question is: Can we do more on the basis of the intelligence that we have about where the weapons are? And secondly, if the decision is made, you can also fight on the Macedonian side of the border by intercepting the shipments as they arrive to the customer, and by trying to take down the customer.
So if you don't look at the sealing of the border as the solution, which probably it isn't—but if you look at the problem in a holistic fashion, which is you want to deal with these people from the point of supply to the point of delivery, and everywhere in between, the chances that you will in fact have a major influence on the totality of the weapons that are being brought to bear in Macedonia is going to be higher.
MR. O'HANLON: It's also not strictly a military problem. I think once the ethnic Albanian extremists realize NATO is actually prepared to shoot at them, they will actually rethink what they are doing. There's a chance anyhow. Because, as I say, we have a lot of leverage with them. They really think we're their friends. They really think that we are going to come to their aid at the end of the day. They start seeing us not only put up patrols but actually taking some shots at people who refuse to stop, I think there's a chance they will say, you know, there is probably more we can lose out of this than gain. I am not promising or guaranteeing that outcome, but I really do think that the political dimension of NATO making a firm statement cannot be underestimated—should not be.
Q: Umberto Pascali with the Executive Intelligence Review magazine. I think in fact the problem is much broader than a military problem as such. Prime Minister Georgievsju from Macedonia, if I am not mistaken, on the 18th gave a televised address to the nation which was very tough with the NATO—particularly with the U.S. and Germany that control that part of the border in Kosovo, saying that NATO does not want to recognize that the KLA are coming from Kosovo, because this will mean to recognize the failure of the NATO forces in Kosovo. And the problem there from what I understand, from what I saw there, is that all the northern part of Macedonia, northwestern part, it is not just ethnic Albanians—they are different or some racial thing or such. It's an organized crime economy. Now, according to all the statistics, it seems that NATO and the U.N. to cover Kosovo, Kosovo becomes the center for smuggling, something like 80 percent in Europe. Now, there are 40,000 troops there. And the problem is not just the KLA goes through the border during the night. These people are seeing airplanes going through—everybody can see that; you know, it's not a very strange thing. During the preparation for the NATO bombing when General Michael Jackson was there with the NATO troops in Macedonia, a lot of—a deposit of weapons were established for the KLA to do the war against the Serbians. And it seems that these deposits are still there. In the city that was—the town—the village that was taken over by KLA, it was one of these.
Now, to come to my question. The problem is that the problem would not be limited to Macedonia. There are reports that in Montenegro already there is a KLA force ready to strike. In northern Greece, it seems the Greek authorities are very concerned. And there is, of course, a lot of money coming through these illegal activities, to the point that Prime Minister Georgievski was talking about Western democracy must be careful, because they are establishing a new Taliban force in the middle of Europe like the region of Afghanistan, and then surprised that these people are the top terrorists.
The problem will be beside the military approach that I think will be limited to as many troops as you want, first there must be troops committed to stop these KLA people. But the problem will be an economic strategy that was not a process at all from what I can see. The only economy flourishing on both sides of the border and in Albania is this sort of black economy, criminal economy, whatever you want to call it. The problem is which steps can be taken for a coordinated effort to deal with the economic and otherwise by the U.S. to really solve the peace problem?
MR. DAALDER: Let me make three points. First, I am not surprised that the Macedonian president and prime minister would not try to lay the blame outside the country. And to argue that this was only Kosovars coming across the border, as opposed to having some indigenous origins is an argument which makes sense from a political point of view, but not from a point of view of what is actually happening on the ground. True there are people coming from Kosovo armed and unarmed to be part of the insurgency. But to argue that there is nothing home-grown about the insurgency is politically useful but has no basis in reality.
Second, I find this notion of this extraordinarily well organized KLA that has penetrated every part of the Balkan society and is manipulating left and right—Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, you name it—Greece—you know, I wish these people were well organized, because then they'd finally have a basis for doing what certainly needs to be doing, which is economic change.
But this notion here that you have an extraordinarily well organized network is just not—it's belied by the facts. What you have is a series of small groups—entities who are cooperating on a case—by—case basis in both violence and in the international criminal and smuggling operations. But this well organized sort of almost Mafia—like entity where everybody knows exactly what everybody else is doing, and there is some guy in Switzerland who is—again, that's not how it works. These are individuals, individual groupings. Even the "KLA" quote/unquote within Kosovo is deeply divided, and it is not clear who is in control of what part of the KLA anywhere—so let alone this whole generic threat that is out there.
And, third, you are absolutely right—of course economics ultimately is going to be the way to resolve many of these issues in the region. But you can't get to the economic aspects of it and the integration and the investment that is necessary until you have a secure environment, until you deal with the security aspects. Nobody is going to invest in this part of the world, as long as their investment is not—has some chance of actually making money. I mean, that's how we do these things in Europe, in the United States, and other places. So there is in fact a basic security requirement that needs to be met. There is in that sense a political, diplomatic and military prerequisite for dealing with the economic—or for trying to lay the basis for an economic regeneration of the region. And the notion somehow that you just throw some money at it and this will be resolved usually doesn't help. That's what we've done in Bosnia. We've thrown $5 billion at it, and it hasn't done a lot, because the basic political and security environment doesn't exist there.
Q: John Gimblett from the British Embassy. It seems obvious that there is no purely military solution to this problem. It seems equally evident that now in the wake of their recent limited successes would be an excellent time for the Macedonian government to take the initiative to try to set up the sorts of all-party talks that Ivo referred to. And it is to be hoped that they don't fall into the trap of getting complacent because of those apparent successes in the last few days.
I had two questions really arising out of that optimistic scenario of a political process. One is: How do you give proper credit to the moderate Albanian forces? How do you avoid strengthening the voice of those in the Albanian community who believe that taking up arms actually gets them noticed, because in some ways a new political process would validate that very proposition?
And I have a second one—I might come back to it after you answer the first one.
MR. DAALDER: All right, and you're right, and I am bothered by this notion that the way you get attention—and in fact people start paying attention to what you want and giving what you want is through violence. And that's what happened yet again. It was the use of violence that brought the issue, assuming the optimistic scenario works, higher on the Macedonian agenda. And to what extent that undermines the moderate Albanians within Macedonia, or indeed elsewhere, is the real question. I mean, one way to answer it is to make the moderate Macedonians the supreme interlocutors in trying to resolve this issue, so that they can come home and say, Okay, maybe violence got this on the agenda, but we brought it home for you. So when the University of Kosovo opens up, when there is an Albanian-language TV station, when the Albanian language is recognized as an official language in Macedonia, when the Constitution is changed. The answer is not the insurgents who are sitting in the hill who got you that; it is us through tough negotiations, and see what a political dialogue and a political solution can get us. It's now also up to the moderate Albanians to sell and spin whatever success they may be able—they're getting out of the political dialogue.
And then we need to be aware in the West that in fact we only pay attention to this problem when there is violence. Mr. Solana wasn't there in Macedonia in the last seven or eight years, except when there was violence. In fact, we don't hold press conferences at Brookings unless there is violence. So there is a natural tendency. But preventive action therefore becomes extraordinarily important. And I would argue we have been warned right now in Macedonia. We may have been able to escape—and you know, I agree with Mike that chances are we may not. But we may escape a really, really major problem here. But we are going to face this problem in Montenegro if we are not very careful either. If Montenegro is independent, they have an Albanian problem. So far the ethnic issue in Montenegro has been dealt with very well, but it's been dealt with very well in order to get Western support for independence. Once they are independent, against Western support, who knows what can happen there. So a preventive strategy to deal with Montenegro is also going to be important.
Q: —Lewis from the Center for Research on Diplomacy and Democracy. I share with Michael and his worries, and I think it was your message on the poorly equipped military capabilities of Macedonia. I have been there last year as an observer too. And my question is: While President Bush is busy promoting his domestic policy, what do you think as an expert in the field—and also for Ivo—that keeps the administration holding back in providing full military support in Macedonia, considering that our country, our nation has always been the leader in containing peace around the world? And is there any specific issue politically that holds us back or the administration providing military support? It is so clear that that's what they need the most.
MR. O'HANLON: If you'll permit me, I'm going to give a fairly political answer to this question. I think that Republicans tend to be very good at foreign policy; they tend to be very bad at Balkan policy. Obviously that's sweeping generalization with all the risks and all the caveats that go along with any such generalization —
MR. DAALDER: Particularly the first part. (Laughter.)
MR. O'HANLON: But, nonetheless, as we look back to 1992 and '93 in Bosnia, clearly the Bush administration did not distinguish itself. And one could say, Yes they did—they made a very clear judgment that this was a part of the world that we didn't need to worry about—and they made that judgment once and for all, and then followed through on their conviction. No, that's not the case, because just before George Bush left office, when he was a lame duck, he made the Christmas warning, saying, I might have let Bosnia go up in smoke, but I am not going to let my successor allow Kosovo to go up in smoke. He essentially put the U.S. credibility on the line over Kosovo, even though he was unprepared to do anything about stopping violence in Croatia and Bosnia. And so I just think—and it's much of the same team obviously that's back in place now, Cheney and Powell being paramount, but also Wolfowitz and others.
So I really think on the Balkans, as good as Republicans tend to be at foreign policy, and as much as I have aspirations for this team, and particularly the team on this side of the river, I think that on this particular issue in this part of the world they have not been very good. I don't even know who to hinge my hopes on. On other issues where you can see a debate in the administration there have been some very good articles in recent days in the major newspapers on the schisms in the administration, and interesting and important policy debates. My tendencies tend to be with the State Department and Powell on most of them, but you know there's a serious debate on a number of issues, and it looks very healthy to me. But on this issue I don't see any debate in the Bush team at all. They just don't want to be bothered with the Balkans. And therefore I am very nervous.
Q: Al Millikan, Washington Independent Writers. If violence severely escalates, do you see any possibility to something similar to what you described in this article of NATO's bomb and pray strategy designed in Washington?
MR. DAALDER: In terms of Macedonia? Well, a NATO bomb and pray strategy didn't work very well in Kosovo, and it sure as hell is not going to work in Macedonia. I mean, the only way you are going to be able to—at least in Kosovo you would argue there was armor out there—it tended we weren't very good at hitting it. There was a major infrastructure in terms of the Serbian economy and military infrastructure that we could hit from the air. If we want to do counterinsurgency work there against a bunch of Kalishnikov-carrying Albanian rebels and insurgents and extremists, from 15,000 feet in the air, good luck—it ain't going to work. So if we are going to intervene, we have to do it in the old-fashioned way —boots on the ground and probably some helicopters in the air. But the notion that we can do the kind of intervention that the United States has become particularly—well "good" is not the right word, but particularly fond of, which is high up in the air, launching cruise missiles in this case, it is going to be worse than not intervening.
MR. O'HANLON: I thoroughly agree. I'd just add one quick point. To stop this insurrection you need to do two things. You need to limit the ability of Kosovo extremist fighters to bring fighters and equipment into Macedonia; and you need to limit the proclivity of the Macedonian Albanian population to become guerrillas. So classic counterinsurgency doctrine says you have got to prevent the insurgency from growing from within the population that you are trying to convince to adopt some other political solutions.
So NATO being more vigilant along the border is one part of the solution. Another part of the solution is not doing anything to fundamentally harm the civilian population base of ethnic Albanians within Macedonia. That's why we need to ask the Macedonians for restraint; and that's why we cannot bomb our way out of this problem. We have to be much more discriminating. And if we ever use weaponry and use force against people in this conflict in a direct way, we have got to know who we are shooting at, individual by individual—otherwise we are going to make the problem worse, not better.
Q: Andy Loomis, Search for Common Ground. I would like to push that one step further. I completely agree that the question of whether or not this is home—grown—and this is the point in my opinion—the danger in Macedonia has been continually this catching on widespread among the Albanian population. So the question is: In your opinions, what U.S. policies could be effective now to address that very question? I mean, we don't do well in addressing societal change kind of questions, but what we need to do at some level is prevent this sort of catching on. Can you speak to that in terms of policy? Clearly the Defense Department can't do it. Can you speak to the broader question?
MR. DAALDER: I'm actually not convinced that the Defense Department isn't part of the answer. That is, the worse that you can do is to let an ineffective Macedonian military try to take care of an insurgency through means that almost by definition will make the matters worse rather than better. That is, if the Macedonian army—if the rebels had decided to resist, and that the way the Macedonian army had dealt with the resistance was to level the village in order to save it, in a way others have done previously, including Serbs in Kosovo, that would have led to the very radicalization of the Albanian population that Mike just talked about, and would have led to the conflagration that we were trying to avoid. And in fact if that happens, which is still a very large possibility—I mean, just because we have won one battle doesn't mean we have won this warvit is much better and much preferable for the United States and NATO to do the counterinsurgency operations—one, because they are more likely to be successful; and, two, they are more likely to do it in a way that doesn't radicalize but in fact deradicalizes the situation. So there is a military component—a crucial military component to it.
And secondly there is a political component to it. There is a very real sense of grievance that has a basis in reality, and it is incumbent on the United States, it is incumbent on the Europeans, it is incumbent on the local parties themselves to address those real grievances in all—party talks, and to deal with the problem. Today you still have a political and institutional basis for resolving the problem. You still have a government that has Albanians and Macedonians sitting next to each other, willing and capable of talking. You therefore can resolve this through dialogue. Tomorrow, after the Albanians are radicalized, after the Macedonians have started paramilitary organizations with of the kind we were starting to hear from late last week and into the weekend, we may well be beyond that. And then if we intervene—as we will, in my view, because we cannot allow Macedonia to split for regional and stability reasons—then we will have to stay for a very long time to rebuild the institutional and political bases for finding a solution to the problem. So you have got to intervene now. For the moment we can make a political intervention. But you have to be ready if necessary to do it militarily. And that might be in a day—because this thing can go wrong very, very rapidly.
Q: —You've talked a lot about sticks. What about carrots that the U.S. can offer them? Can we offer them money for this kind of political settlement between the Albanians and the Slavs? I mean, that seems to be our usual method of solving problems —
MR. DAALDER: Let's turn to Brussels and ask them to provide the money. (Laughter.) And it works. Brussels has offered 40 million euro, I think, One, there's the university, which is an OSCE-funded private university. There is the television station, Albanian-language television station that I think the EU is providing funding for. So there is that. I think inside Kosovo, which is part of this problem—this is an Albanian problem, but that doesn't stop at borders. Inside Kosovo I think the United States is right to call for elections sooner rather than later, even if they don't meet the very high standards that the OSCE has. You know, I'll go with the Florida standard: if it's good enough for us, it's good enough for them. We should elections early enough in order to devolve responsibility from the international community to the local community. And they ought to take place this summer rather than as some would think next year. So the incentive is to give Albanians a stake in the society in which they are living?be it in Kosovo, be it in Macedonia, be it in south Serbia, be it ultimately in Montenegro. That's where the incentives come in. And if that takes money, you know, part of it is money. But it takes very little money in these kinds of societies to have a large positive influence.
Mr. Massari?
Q: I am Mauricio Massari from the Embassy of Italy. A question for Ivo or for Mike. Where do you draw the line between the ethnic reasons of these groups and just criminal reasons? And even if you satisfy all the requests in terms of being engaged in—these people being engaged in incentive institutions in Macedonia, also having elections in Kosovo—this does not guarantee that you will do away with this kind of phenomenon. So I mean I wonder whether or not—I see the point of, say ,we had elections in Kosovo. This should undermine the case for these groups creating this kind of trouble. But at the same time there it is not 100 percent guaranteed. And as such today—this is also a question—do you think when we say, okay, devolving to the Kosovars, the Albanians, the responsibility for its government, that at that point we should also say this responsibility includes the fight by the Albanians and the Serbs against crime of these people? Because I mean we not only give them the self-government and political inclusions, but we also have to continue to bear the burden of fighting this crime.
Thanks.
MR. DAALDER: Even a well functioning society such as the United States has crime, you know. That is going to be part and parcel of the way we are going to address all of these people. But if we can get to the point in the Balkans where the issue we are most concerned about is crime, I am happy. For now the issue I am most concerned about is ethnic hatred that has a basis in some fact that rapidly escalates to splitting the society into two. And what's worrisome about Macedonia was how rapidly within days people started talking in ways that we had seen in Kosovo and in Bosnia and in Croatia. The two Albanians that were killed by Macedonian police in front of the TV camera—the stories from the Macedonians and the international observers who were there—the journalists—was that these guys had a car full of hand grenades, and one of them was ready to throw the hand grenade at the whole police—the whole security post before they were shot. The story in the Albanian community was that he had a cell phone in his hand, and that all the TV pictures were doctored. And you know, I think it was in the New York Times or whatever newspaper it was, where they went to the funeral of these guys, and every single one of these Albanians believed that this was a classic execution by the Macedonians—even given all the incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. That's what happens. Very rapidly people don't talk to each other, they start moving in different directions; you're different because you're Albanian, et cetera.
If we can counter that part of the problem, if we can figure out a political and institutional basis for addressing that part of the problem, we'll deal with the criminal elements after that. And of course the Albanians, or whoever is in control of the local government, will have a major responsibility for addressing it. And so do we in helping them out to do it. But ultimately if you don't solve that first issue, you are not going to get the—you know, the criminal parts of it is going to be secondary.
I don't believe that what's happening in this part of the world is just because there are a bunch of criminals running around. That's a cop-out. This is a much deeper problem than to argue that this is all about smuggling and a bunch of criminals.
One final question.
Q: Valentin Stan, GWU. You spoke at the beginning of your intervention about the possibility of Yugoslavia's splitting out and Kosovo becoming a new Albanian independent entity. But you seem to admit that the situation for the time to come—I don't know if that will happen. But should Kosovo become an independent entity, that would be a very powerful incentive for Albanian extremists to go on fighting in order to create another independent entity, this time in Macedonia, because obviously this policy would be paying off. And I remember at the beginning of the conflict in Kosovo the State Department officials were very committed to maintaining the integrity of Yugoslavia. In the last month the official statement by the Department of State is, "We are supporting Resolution 1244"—that is less than before. And these commitments to the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia in terms of Kosovo is decreasing in the last month. Don't you think that the much firmer commitment to the integrity of Yugoslavia might deter the Albanian extremists from going on fighting for another independent entity? Thank you.
MR. DAALDER: I am surprised you say that the American support for the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia has weakened over the last few months. I would argue it has strengthened. But, be that as it may, the future of Kosovo is indeterminate. There is no—at the moment the international legal status is determined by 1244. I believe that if Kosovo were ever to become independent with international recognition it will earn that independence through the behavior of the people who live there. And if they earn that independence and negotiate that independence in a peaceful manner with other parts of Yugoslavia, then I don't have a problem with Kosovo being independent. Those are lots of ifs. We are nowhere near even getting close to those ifs. One is the if—how does Kosovo govern itself? How does it behave? How does it deal with minority issues? How does it deal with the criminality elements? All of those questions need to be answered, and they can only be answered through experience. But it also means they ought to start getting the chance to in fact start ruling themselves.
And secondly the big if is: What is the nature of the dialogue between Pristine, Belgrade, Podgorica, to just name three of the elements that need to be resolved in this issue quite apart from other parts—
[TAPE CHANGE.]
MR. DAALDER: —We're not down; we are not at that road yet. We are not going to be down that road for many, many, many years that I can see, so am not too terribly worried that this is going to be the beginning of the end. I think Kosovo's independence is the end of the end, if it ever comes to that.
MR. O'HANLON: I would just very quickly add that I do think we need to emphasize to the ethnic Albanian population in the region that Kosovo and Macedonia are different. Kosovo was a major region within Yugoslavia; it was not a distinct republic, but it was an autonomous region; it was a political entity. It had a certain meaning. And, more to the point, Milosevic targeted the ethnic Albanian population within Kosovo. And that's why we came to their defense, and that's why given what happened at the hands of Serb nationalists two years ago the Albanians have a greater claim to consideration—ultimately consideration of independence than they did before.
Macedonia is much different. In Macedonia, ethnic Albanians are the problem. Now, I grant that there are political issues that make it more complicated than that more broadly. But the reason this is becoming a problem of violence is because of ethnic Albanian extremist fighters. And NATO needs to make it very clear to them we have no sympathy for what you are doing in Macedonia. I think we have sort of gone two thirds of the way towards that position. But I think we need to raise the specter that we will use force against them if we need to to prevent this thing from getting worse, because at the end of the day we are not taking sides in the Balkans one group over another. We make each determination based on trying to preserve peace and dignity and stability. And three years ago that meant helping the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo against the Serb nationalists. Now it means helping the Macedonians against the ethnic Albanian extremist fighters. There is a political dimension to this as well that makes it more complicated, but that's the basic military fact. And I think we need to make the argument even more forceful, because I am not sure the Albanians are hearing it.
MR. DAALDER: I think that's about as good a point to end this at that I can think of. I want to thank my colleague, Mike, and most of all want to thank all of you for coming. Thanks very much.
[APPLAUSE AND END OF EVENT.]