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Last week ethnic Albanians were being forced from their
homes by the tens of thousands. This week ethnic Albanians are locked in Kosovo, and the thousands that had fled for their lives have been told to return home. Hundreds of Serbs, who a month ago disliked their leader Slobadan Milosevic, are now dancing on bridges, acting as human shields to try to prevent NATO bombing. Three American service men were kidnapped by Serb forces and paraded before international television crews. The Serbs threatened to try them for war crimes one minute and talked of releasing them the next.
Sound confusing? It is.
Kosovo has no easy answers. The only thing that is assured is that forcing the Serbs out of Keosovo will come at a heavy cost. The reason for NATO involvement is simple, though not very glamorous: containment of the fighting in Kosovo. This was the same argument used for intervention in Vietnam, which makes justifying the attack on Kosovo all the more difficult. This time, however, the situation is different. Containing the crisis will surely cost the lives of NATO troops, some of whom may be family, classmates and friends, but preventing full-scale war in Europe is worth that price.
The Balkans are a particularly unstable place. After all, the word Balkanization means to divide into small, hostile parts. The Balkans have a long history of bloody ethnic conflict. The Serbs still celebrate the anniversary of the first time they lost Kosovo in 1389 to the Ottoman Turks as a day of national rebellion (it’s sort of like Pearl Harbor and the Fourth of July all rolled into one).
Europe has witnessed how easily fighting in the Balkans can spread. World War I started when a Serb terrorist assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Europe cannot risk a similar event in today’s nuclear world.
The only way to effectively contain the fighting is to remove the Serbs from Kosovo and reinstate its status as a self-ruling state in Yugoslavia.
Pushing the Serb forces out of Kosovo will be much more difficult than the Gulf War. There, the battlefields were on wide-open desert, which could easily be attacked from the air with great success. Kosovo, on the other hand, is located in a mountainous region with steep, meandering valleys. It is impossible to attack troops hidden in the mountain valleys with jets:— there are just too many places to hide.
According to the Economist magazine, in order to remove the 40,000 Serb troops in Kosovo it will take an estimated 150,000 ground troops to ensure a decisive victory. The fight may cost many of those soldiers their lives.
The biggest reason for action in Kosovo is the cost of doing nothing is too great. If NATO threatens dictators like Milosevic and does not have the guts to take action to back up those threats, they will encourage other dictators to take heart that NATO will huff and puff but will never blow any houses down.
President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.” NATO has a big stick, and has tried to walk softly. That has failed. Now, they must take that big stick and whack Milosevic.
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