Lessons From NATO Intervention in Kosovo

Twenty years ago, on 24 March, the United States of America launched Operation Allied Forces against strategic positions in Serbia. The bomber campaign eventually banned ethnic cleansing by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo. This kind of effort is rare in our history. Its success, however, offers lessons for us even today until we continue to face humanitarian crises caused by war.

Milosevic launched his fourth war in the former Yugoslavia in 1998, this time in order to address his Albanian “problem by using his army to expel 60 per cent of Kosovo's population. Taking on European and American inaction for years until many people were killed in Bosnia earlier in the decade, Albanians feared that history would be repeated in Kosovo. So they organized themselves. They joined various communitarian factions, opened an office in Washington D.C. and began engaging in one of the oldest American traditions to bring petition to their government to do something to stop the killings and violations in Kosovo.

Communism was critical. Albanian-Americans, at gatherings, television shows, and campaigns provided a real moral clarity for members of Congress, Clinton administration and the public. The community had also spent over a decade earning the trust and respect of elected members.

That communicative commitment made it possible to receive superparty support in Congress for military intervention during a difficult time in the United States. The country had only experienced accusations and attempts to remove President Bill Clinton. Tensions among political parties were high. Yet senators Mitch McConnel and Joe Biden worked together with their senator colleagues to support an intervention and a superparty group in the House of Representatives that included Republicans from New York Susan Molinari and one of the authors of this scripture [Engelin].

These members had acted on the basis of ongoing reporting of atrocities committed. Also important, however, is that we all realised that the campaign of ethnic cleansing and the mass refugee crisis it created would have serious consequences for the entire Balkans, and then for Europe. Over 1.2 million Kosovo refugees fled to Albania and Macedonia, poor neighboring states that were unable to hold. These countries would be destroyed if we allowed ethnic cleansing to continue. The crisis would also lead to increased violence in the region and with refugees trying Western Europe.

With the superparty support in Congress for the intervention and with the clarity that it was in our interest as a nation to do it, the Clinton administration did the important job of including our NATO allies. They also actively brokered the peace negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo. We joined these talks in Ramboullett, France, where we witnessed Kosovo's efforts to reach a accord and incompatibility of the former Yugoslavia negotiators. Milosevic was hoping the Americans would withdraw.

Military intervention became the only option for ending the terrible violence in Kosovo when the peaceful process failed. The important thing was that the United States succeeded in convincing NATO allies to join. From the start, Operation Allied Forces would be a limited campaign. Americans were not willing to send land troops. The bomber campaign lasted 78 days. When it was over, Belgrade withdrew its troops, and Kosovars returned to their homes. Later, Milosevic would be arrested and sent to justice in Hague for war crimes. Kosovo would, with the American leadership, a new independent and democratic state.

As Kosovo and the region face other challenges, lessons from the Kosovo War are clear. The engagement of the nonpolitical community can make over-partyism possible, which enables U.S. engagement worldwide. That leadership is essential when our national interests are endangered.

Today, the Balkans are at peace, democracy [even though ineligible] reigns, and many of the states have already joined it. NATO. All this is true because many people in Washington in 1999 had the courage to think not about the party but about our national security.

♪ ERISCOPY by THE HIL.