Taken by themselves, these contradictions in the conduct of a war NATO could never afford to lose are acute. But Kosovo has raised deeper dilemmas. One question, above all, remains unanswered: in the future, will the West be willing to make the same sorts of sacrifices in defense of its values as it has in the past made in defense of its interests?
In public, Bill Clinton and his West European colleagues will close ranks and trumpet the epochal nature of their decision to wage a war in defense of human rights and humanitarian imperatives. They will make much of the successful conclusion to their mission. And they will paper over their bitter private disputes about whether to launch a ground war–or even carry on the air campaign as long as they did.
Every even nominally successful war is followed by a triumphal moment. But this triumphalism, eerily reminiscent of the claims U.S. policymakers made for the virtual omnipotence of American power after the gulf war, should not be taken at face value. For like the gulf war, the conflict with Yugoslavia has revealed as much about the limits of NATO’s military power as about its reach. Exposed is a deep divide between the West’s moral ambitions and its willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to fulfill them.
In Washington, it is now frequently said that the war to undo Milosevic’s campaign for murder and mass deportation of the Kosovo Albanians could help usher in a new global moral order. That claim rests on shaky foundations. Had the West been willing to unleash a ground war to secure its military, humanitarian and human-rights objectives, there would be more room for optimism. But NATO’s unwillingness to attack on land means that the moral claims it is now making for itself need to be treated with skepticism.
Starkly put, Kosovo did indeed break new ground in terms of the lengths that great powers now seem willing to go in ordering their soldiers to kill for high moral principles. But Kosovo revealed little about the far more important commitment that would have been involved had NATO been willing to have its soldiers die for such principles. It is all very well to talk about the defense of human rights. But such talk rings hollow when the commitment is not permitted to go much below 15,000 feet. That, of course, is what British Prime Minister Tony Blair–who, alone among the major Western leaders, emerges from the Kosovo war with his moral authority heightened–was trying to tell Clinton all along.
On a political level, America’s refusal to seriously consider committing ground troops has badly strained the NATO alliance. European leaders, above all in Britain and France, are wondering whether Washington’s unwillingness to accept any casualties makes it a dependable leader of the alliance. Fitfully, the Europeans are beginning to consider other defense structures–ones that would give them their own independent military options. It may turn out that the cost to the European taxpayer will be deemed too high, and that reliance on the Americans will continue for the indefinite future. But the refusal of the United States to participate in any operation in which more than a few American soldiers might be killed makes a mockery of the new role NATO is claiming for itself.
Very soon after the war started, Blair seems to have understood that to rule out a ground war in Kosovo meant that NATO was trying to fight a just war with one hand tied behind its back. Under those circumstances, NATO actually succeeded to a greater extent than might have been predicted. But Blair’s general point remains valid. When you go to war, you have to be willing to wage war. You may be fighting in defense of human rights, but you are fighting a war. And wars are never cost-free. Nor, it might be added, are moral ambitions, unaccompanied by a willingness to sacrifice, likely to be realized very often.
In the case of Kosovo, it is possible that the deal to which Milosevic seems to have agreed may secure the West’s basic objective. Possible; but not certain. Milosevic has a long history of twisting deals to his own advantage. Will the West have the stomach to confront him again if he does so? The yawning gulf between its moral ambitions and the means it has been willing to use to secure them does not offer much reassurance that it will.
