The World Today
August/September 1999

KOSOVO: Lessons to Learn
By Paul Rogers

 

NATO’s fiftieth anniversary summit in Washington last April had been intended to be a full-scale celebration of a half century of security success in Europe. Instead, as the alliance became deeply mired in the Kosovo War, the entire event was scaled down to a much more political occasion, focussing almost exclusively on the need to maintain alliance solidarity. Faced with potentially damaging splits within its political and military elite, and strong public opposition in several member states, especially Italy and Spain, NATO sought to maintain unity as it escalated the air war against Serbia.

Many critics were deeply sceptical of NATO’s insistence that the war against President Slobodan Milosevic could be won by the use of air power alone, with most arguing that a ground invasion of Kosovo would prove essential if the war were not to drag on through the summer and autumn.

In the event, the critics appeared confounded, as Milosevic accepted a negotiated settlement barely six weeks later. The ceasefire not only required him to remove all his military and paramilitary forces from Kosovo, but paved the way for the return of the refugees and reconstituting Kosovo as a UN/NATO protectorate.

On the face of it, the end result of the Kosovo War was a resounding victory for NATO air-power led by the United States. Cruise missiles and other precision-guided weapons had, we were told, created havoc in Serbia’s military, leaving Milosevic no alternative to capitulation.

Yet it is striking how little this version of events has taken hold, both in political and military circles. Indeed, those most concerned with fostering this analysis seem least willing to accept it themselves. The Kosovo War might have been expected to reinforce the Alliance’s future role as the central feature of North Atlantic and European security, but it has, instead, left too many questions unanswered. Much of the uncertainly lies in aspects of the war’s beginning and end, with both events raising awkward questions for NATO.

 

War Aims

The war began on 24 March with a very clear aim for NATO, expressed by the British Defence Secretary, George Robertson: ‘to avert a humanitarian catastrophe by disrupting the violent attacks currently being carried out by the Yugoslav security forces against the Kosovar Albanians and to limit their ability to conduct such repression in the future.’ While the Alliance eventually succeeded in the latter aim, it failed catastrophically in the former.

It is now clear that some form of substantial ethnic cleansing was already intended by Serb paramilitaries—indeed there had been elements of such a plan already in operation in the summer of 1998 and in the early months of this year. While much of it was part of a military operation to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), there are clear indications that it went well beyond this and was a wider scheme to ‘rebalance’ the demography of Kosovo in favour of the Serbs, at great human cost.

In the months prior to the air war, a woefully under-strength force of one thousand four hundred observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was moderately effective in hindering Serb paramilitary action aimed at ethnic cleansing, but the observers were withdrawn immediately before the war. With the expulsion of international journalists as the bombing started, Serb paramilitaries then had a free hand to drive out hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians.

This they immediately proceeded to do, to the dismay and confusion of NATO member states, the UN and scores of humanitarian relief organisations. Far from making the Milosevic regime pull back, the air war had the opposite effect as the regime embarked on a race against time to expel ethnic Albanians and defeat the KLA before the air war intensified.

For NATO, the masses of refugees had one immediate effect, providing a powerful justification for the air war itself, and ensuring that public support was substantial in the United States, Britain and France, the three key states involved. Thus, in one of the war’s several ironies, NATO bombing caused the Serbs to greatly accelerate ethnic cleansing, thereby providing justification for the bombing.

At the same time, this cannot disguise the fact that although NATO went to war against Serbia to stop ethnic cleansing, it failed to do so. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people were dispossessed of their homes, uprooted and forced to flee abroad. Many others survived the eleven weeks of war by hiding in their own homes or seeking refuge elsewhere in Kosovo. Worse still, hundreds and possibly thousands of people were killed, often in horrendous massacres.

 

Escalation

Having failed to force the Milosevic regime to the negotiating table, still less to halt the ethnic cleansing, yet reluctant to even consider a ground intervention, NATO opted to expand the air war. It brought in successive waves of re-inforcements until an air force of over one thousand planes had the regime in its sights. Repeated claims of military success came from NATO headquarters, yet sketchy independent reporting suggested that the aerial bombardment had little effect for several weeks.

Only when the war was into its sixth week did NATO begin the systematic targeting of the economic infrastructure of Serbia. This was a controversial and possibly illegal action that avoided controversy within most NATO member states by means of a careful process of escalation, and some increasingly skillful spin-doctoring from Brussels, as experienced media manipulators were brought in from London and elsewhere.

During the second half of the war, the target list in Serbia was progressively expanded to take in bridges, tunnels, roads, railways, radio and TV stations, a wide variety of factories, oil refineries, energy storage systems, power stations, electricity distribution and water supplies.

The repeated claims from NATO at the outset of the war that Serbian civil society was exempt from the air strikes rapidly proved to be hollow in the extreme. This raised a second irony, that a NATO war directed at the Serbian civilian population could potentially fall foul of the International War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. 1

 

Russian Rescue

Perhaps the most significant political process in the entire conflict was the developing role of Russia. When the Kosovo War began, Russian diplomats engaged in repeated attempts to keep lines of communication open and maintain influence with the Milosevic regime. Yet, in the early weeks of the war, these moves were treated with indifference if not hostility by NATO.

Eight weeks into the campaign, however, and with no sign of capitulation by Milosevic, NATO was far more prepared to accept the need for a Russian role, albeit with Finnish aid. It was by now recognised that the best chance of avoiding prolonged and increasingly controversial air strikes, and even a possible ground campaign, was to encourage Russian assistance in seeking a deal with the Milosevic regime.

Even so, the mere involvement of the Russians does not explain why the war ended when it did. In essence, there are three possible reasons, and all of them are of considerable importance in trying to assess the significance of the conflict for the future of NATO.

One explanation could be that the NATO air assault was having a profound effect on the Serb military. There is some truth in this, especially in the final days of its occupation of Kosovo. By the eleventh week of the war, the KLA was becoming increasingly effective in forcing Yugoslav Army units out from their carefully concealed positions.

In one incident, on 7 June, two Yugoslav Army battalions were caught in the open in the Mount Pastrik area of Kosovo, and were attacked with multiple cluster bombs by B-52s, killing several hundred troops in a matter of minutes. 2 But this was right at the end of the war, when a ceasefire was already being negotiated.

In the subsequent withdrawal, the much greater surprise was that well over forty thousand Serb troops retreated from Kosovo, with almost all their equipment in good order and with morale remarkably high. It became clear that a sustained programme of concealment, sheltering and repeated use of decoys had made a nonsense of NATO claims to have severely degraded the Serb military.

A second explanation is that the air war against the Serbian economy was becoming increasingly effective. There is probably some truth in this, especially in terms of the effect on urban life, as the attacks on power and water supplies and transport links intensified. Yet Serbia is predominantly a rural economy, with more than a third of the adult working population involved in agriculture. While the economic war was biting deep, the country could have survived the effects of the air assault for many more months.

The final explanation is a combination of two factors, the maintenance of NATO unity and, more significantly, the role of Russia. While Milosevic undoubtedly hoped for increasing NATO disunity, his core problem was the refusal of the Russian leadership to provide sufficient political support.

In the face of such ‘treachery’, and recognising that the air strikes would continue and might even escalate to a ground war, a negotiated withdrawal with military forces intact was the best option. In perhaps the greatest irony of the entire Kosovo War, the NATO alliance, the very creature of the forty-year Cold War, was rescued from its predicament in Kosovo by its historic enemy and very raison d’être—Russia.

 

Dilemmas of Dominance

Within hours of the war ending, NATO was intent on minimising Russia’s post-war role in Kosovo. This policy came apart almost at once as the Russians moved a symbolic military force from Bosnia into Kosovo and occupied the airport at Pristina. From then on, Russian inclusion in the occupation was assured, a further indication of the core Russian involvement in ending the war.

This alone, is indicative of NATO’s dilemma in seeking a dominant role in post-Cold War European security. Russia may be an economic pygmy and its conventional military forces may be negligible, yet its political influence in key parts of Eastern Europe remains considerable. One lesson of the Kosovo War is that this cannot be ignored.

There are further military and political lessons. In spite of the proximity of air bases and the use of massive stocks of precision-guided missiles (PGMs), NATO found it very difficult to hit a wide range of military targets, and used some of its more advanced PGMs at a remarkable rate. While this was music to the ears of the arms manufacturers, it raised many awkward questions for those who hailed the Kosovo War as an unbridled victory for air power.

It was also the case that the great majority of the air strikes were undertaken by US forces. Put bluntly, the combined air power of the European members of NATO could not have undertaken the operation. If Europe were to take charge of its own security, and be capable of such military action, it would involve a comprehensive re-orientation and integration of its forces, and a marked increase in defence spending.

NATO’s eventual success in Kosovo was sufficient to quell the debate in Western Europe and the United States over the side-lining of the UN, especially the lack of a specific Security Council resolution authorising NATO action. Elsewhere, though, there was a much more jaundiced reaction, especially in China where the Embassy bombing was seen as a direct affront to China’s international status. Even two months after the bombing, relations with the US had not improved—indeed, according to some sources, they were worsening. 3

Finally, there is the aftermath. As well as the cost of the air war and the damage done by Serb paramilitaries in Kosovo, there are the economic and social consequences for Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania, not to mention Romania and Bulgaria.

In addition to the massive programme of reconstruction and economic aid that will be required, NATO and Russia are likely to base around fifty thousand troops in Kosovo. There will also be thousands of police, administrators and community developers, many of the latter faced with the low profile but immensely difficult task of fostering reconciliation.

 

Prevention is better

There are several initial lessons for European security. One is that the NATO action may have been intended to avert a humanitarian disaster but instead, and for nearly three months, greatly exacerbated it. A second is that Europe relied heavily on the United States which, in turn, had great difficulty in achieving a range of military objectives. Thirdly, the role of Russia became increasingly important and was ultimately central to an early ending of the conflict.

Perhaps most problematic of all has been the role of the OSCE in relation to NATO, not just in Kosovo but throughout the 1990s. For the past decade, European security has focused primarily on NATO, even if some sections of the political and military elite have sought a stronger European identity. Compared with NATO, though, the OSCE has been a poor cousin deeply under-funded and consigned to marginal roles. This is part of a wider attitude, which pays all too little attention to conflict prevention.

During the autumn and winter of 1998-99, an under-resourced, under-strength and often poorly trained group of OSCE monitors had a substantial impact in limiting Serb paramilitary operations. No one is suggesting that the OSCE, as it was then, presented an effective non-military alternative in the run-up to the war, yet its performance, at a tiny fraction of the human and material cost of that war, was by no means unimpressive.

Perhaps the real question for European security that arises from the Kosovo War is whether it should systematically embrace a much greater commitment to conflict prevention, rather than concentrating so persistently on a military route to security.

 

Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, where he works mainly on the changing causes of international insecurity.

 

Endnotes

Note 1: Jonathan M. Miller, ‘Be Careful, Waging War Against Civilians is Against the Law’, International Herald Tribune, 13 May 1999.  Back.

Note 2: William Drozdiak, ‘B-52 Strike “Pulverises” Serb Troops in Kosovo’, International Herald Tribune, 9 June 1999.  Back.

Note 3: ‘Washington Outlook’, Aviation Week and Space Technology, 5 July 1999.  Back.