The Ineffective Threat of the Use of Force
In June 1998, columns of Serbian tanks entered Kosovo; they turned Kosovar villages into dust and rubble, and killed more than 250 people.38 Another five to ten thousand refugees poured into Albania, causing a humanitarian crisis in that nation. Albanian premier Fatos Nano warned that the refugee crisis threatened to destabilize the region.39 In July, the Yugoslav army and Serb police launched a major offensive against the KLA, comparable to the ethnic cleansing carried out earlier in Bosnia. More than two thousand civilians were killed, two hundred villages destroyed, and three hundred thousand civilians displaced.
Faced with this new aggression, the Clinton administration began to consider war options. Convinced that putting ground troops into combat in Yugoslavia would be unpopular among Americans, Clinton flatly ruled out this option. Pentagon officials also had serious concerns about sending American troops into the hostile regions of Serbia.40 At the same time, they did not believe that the war could be won from the air. As is often the case, some in the U.S. government believed that a political rather than a military solution was required. The administration did not lack congressional support to send troops into Kosovo, but no one wanted to do it. Speaking about the use of force in general, Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, observed that “such solutions do not eliminate the underlying problem…. They promise to drag on indefinitely, at high cost to our own nation.”41 However, the atrocities committed by the Serb forces in the summer of 1998 made war against Serbia seem inevitable.
Although Clark initially lacked Pentagon backing for the use of force, he had the support of General Naumann and NATO’s Military Committee, which consisted of the top military officers of all member countries and was responsible for advising the North Atlantic Council (NAC) on military matters. On June 11, the NATO defense ministers met in Brussels to consider the use of air strikes and NATO’s role in solving the conflict. The United States and Britain were ready to back up their diplomatic efforts with force, as was NATO secretary-general Javier Solana, who had supported Clark’s views from the beginning. “Milošević has gone beyond the limits of tolerable behavior,” Solana acknowledged, “and…we are showing that we are willing to back up international diplomacy with military means.”42
In May 1998, the United States sent Christopher Hill, ambassador to Macedonia, to join Holbrooke in negotiations with Milošević in Belgrade. Milošević agreed to end the violence in Kosovo, promised that “no repressive action will be taken against the civilian population,”43 and agreed to meet with Rugova. But soon this new agreement, too, was tossed away. Milošević knew that the NATO members did not all agree on the use of force, and he dug in his heels.
On June 16, 1998, NATO staged an air exercise called Operation Determined Falcon to show Milošević what he was facing. About one hundred NATO aircraft took off from their bases, flew through Albania to the Serbian border, and then flew east in Albanian and Macedonian airspace.44 The Kosovars rejoiced at the sound of the engines, and the Serbs heard them, too.
The Europeans, notably the French, remained determined to find a diplomatic solution. France called for an international plan to restore autonomy to Kosovo and hinted that it would be willing to support military intervention. But it still maintained that “a mandate from the UN Security Council would be needed before NATO could go into action in Kosovo.”45 French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine said, “[The] use of force could provoke exactly the opposite of the desired result.”46 Russia and China remained large obstacles to any use of force; they opposed taking an aggressive stand against Yugoslavia or “any action that would penalize Yugoslavia.”47
The differences between American and European attitudes on how to deal with the humanitarian crisis renewed the strain on U.S.-European relations that had developed in the early 1990s over Bosnia. The European leaders’ indecision made it impossible for the United States to negotiate effectively with Milošević. The Germans complained that “there seems to be very little willingness [on the part of the Americans] to treat the Europeans on an equal footing.”48 But the European diplomats were passive, and it fell to the United States to lead the initiative to find a solution in Kosovo. Holbrooke knew that the Europeans had accomplished little since the days of Bosnia, and he recognized that they were “not going to have a common security policy for the foreseeable future. We have done our best to keep them involved,” he said.49 Holbrooke believed that his successful Bosnian strategy—calling for Serbian compliance with the UN and other confidence-building measures—would work again in Kosovo, and Albright agreed.
Still, the violence continued. On September 23, 1998, the Security Council passed Resolution 1199, demanding “that all parties, groups and individuals immediately cease hostilities and maintain cease-fire in Kosovo.”50 The resolution demanded that Milošević comply with the earlier demands of the Contact Group for the withdrawal of forces from Kosovo, allow international verifiers, and resume negotiations. China did not support the resolution and abstained from voting. Unexpectedly, Russia came on board. The Russian representative, Sergei Lavrov, said, “The resolution was in line with Russia’s principles because no measures of force and no sanctions at this stage are being introduced by the Security Council.”51 The Russian vote marked a diplomatic turnaround in the balance of forces on Serbia’s war in Kosovo. With Russia siding with the United States, the threat of force became more real. Milošević understood that a NATO war against Yugoslavia was a possibility, but he did not think it would be prolonged or costly.
Clinton Rallies the International Community
In clear defiance of the west, three days after UN Resolution 1199 was passed, Yugoslav forces renewed their bombing runs. When the village of Gornje Obrinje was attacked on September 26, 1998, it decided to fight rather than surrender. The village was largely destroyed. Most homes were burned. Cattle were left dying in the street. The Serbs stripped men of weapons, then killed them. The descriptions of the killings—of men and boys being beaten to death or shot at close range, of entire families found dead in the forest—resembled accounts of earlier Serb attacks on Croats and Bosnians. Once again there were beatings in the police station and on the street; men humiliated and forced to sing Serb songs.52 The Yugoslav army and Serb police latest move largely drove the KLA into the mountains.
With no end in sight to the violence, President Clinton sought to rally international support for the use of force. Placing calls to French president Jacques Chirac and German chancellor Helmut Kohl, he got their agreement in principle for an air campaign. Banimino Andretta, Italy’s acting defense minister, said that his country’s forces were ready to join their NATO allies. Russia joined the group in backing Holbrooke’s diplomatic efforts, but Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov restated Moscow’s opposition to any military strikes. Secretary Albright replied that the United States would not be deterred from acting because of Russian opposition.
On September 24, 1998, pressure from the United States led NATO to adopt an Activation Warning Order (ACTWARN), signaling a warning status for the deployment of air forces. The North Atlantic Council’s approval of a limited air option and phased air operation (code named Operation Allied Force) moved NATO one step closer to a war against Serbia. ACTWARN was not binding, but on October 12 the NATO countries took one step closer to action, specifying which forces they would contribute for an impending strike by approving activation orders (ACTORDs) authorizing preparations for a limited bombing campaign. With more than four hundred aircraft standing by ready for a possible air campaign, NATO authorities voted to authorize strikes if security forces did not withdraw from Kosovo within ninety-six hours.
To give Holbrooke the maximum leverage during his ongoing negotiations, the activation warning orders were issued before his meeting with Milošević in Belgrade. First, Holbrooke demanded that Milošević withdraw an estimated four thousand Serb troops from Kosovo. Second, he demanded that Miloševi
ć allow up to two thousand civilian observers or verification cease-fire monitors under the auspices of the OSCE to ensure that the troops were withdrawn. Finally, he demanded that Milošević set a timetable for negotiations and adhere to it. Milošević agreed all too quickly, raising swift doubts about his sincerity in the minds of U.S. officials. So Solana and Clark flew to Belgrade to sign an agreement with Yugoslav military officials that would permit NATO reconnaissance planes to fly over Kosovo to verify the withdrawal. To everyone’s amazement, by the end of October, large numbers of Yugoslav troops withdrew, and the Kosovo Verification Mission monitors were deployed. Holbrooke was cautiously hopeful that the agreement could end the conflict.
But the Serbian pullout was by no means complete. Large numbers of Serb police forces stayed in Kosovo, and violence continued. On October 24, 1998, the Security Council passed Resolution 1203, which reinforced previous resolutions and stressed the need to address the current “humanitarian situation and to avert the impending humanitarian catastrophe.”53 On November 17, the Security Council passed Resolution 1207, calling on Yugoslav authorities to comply with the requests of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and arrest certain persons.54 Milošević ignored both resolutions.
At the beginning of 1999, the Contact Group was still looking for ways to avoid fighting in Kosovo, although France had reluctantly lined up behind the American threat of NATO bombing. French defense minister Alain Richard said, “We will share our part of the responsibility as the head of Europe and the Alliance.” But France articulated caveats, including that did not demand a Security Council mandate or threaten a veto; it emphasized its opposition to Kosovar independence and insisted that its troops would only get involved once U.S. troops were involved as well.
Before proceeding with its air strikes, the Contact Group—which by now expanded to include Italy and Germany—decided to make one last attempt at a negotiated settlement, scheduling a meeting at a chateau in Rambouillet, France, near Paris, in February 1999.
The Road to Rambouillet
In January, before the negotiations at Rambouillet, the Serbian forces intensified their activities in Kosovo. On January 15, all adult males in the village of Racak were hunted down and killed. As Milošević braced for the coming NATO attack, he only intensified the terror campaign in Kosovo. The massacre in the village of Racak was a preview of atrocities to come.
The Serb offensive that followed, called Operation Horseshoe, was a massive campaign to kill or expel all Kosovar Albanians. NATO observers thought the Serbs were preparing for a spring offensive that would target KLA strongholds. As Clark said later, “We never expected the Serbs would push ahead with the wholesale deportation of the ethnic Albanian populations.”55 According to Clark, the Serb forces numbered about fifteen thousand at this time. They included the regular Serbian police, the blue-uniformed Serbian Interior Ministry troops, the local police, and paramilitary troops commanded by indicted war criminals such as Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan.56 Their tactics—sealing a town, killing all military-age males, and sending the rest of the population packing—were seen as evidence of a planned genocide directed from the highest levels of government.57 In January and February, Yugoslav officials reportedly collected “key documents and records from different villages in central or western Kosovo for ‘safekeeping,’” and “valuable religious icons, paintings, and historical manuscripts were removed from museums and libraries and trucked north toward Belgrade.”58 Belgrade was preparing a full-on campaign to create an ethnically pure Kosovo.
The cease-fire Holbrooke had negotiated with Milošević in October 1998 did not end the fighting because it did not secure the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo. Instead, it spent the NATO consensus and support for forceful air intervention to secure nothing more than a cease-fire that Milošević never intended to honor. This approach was taken in spite of the lessons presumably learned in Bosnia. The presence of Serb forces was the primary cause of continuing violence in Kosovo, and we should have demanded their removal. Peace would have to be imposed, not brokered.
Meanwhile, the United States and the Contact Group met in London and set a final deadline of February 19 for the Yugoslav government and the Kosovar Albanians to accept a negotiated settlement. “[T]he Contact Group has made it unmistakably clear that the consequences of failure to comply will be swift and serious,” Albright declared.59
The peace negotiations at Rambouillet began on February 6, chaired by the British and French foreign ministers, Robert Cook and Hubert Vedrine. The French and British invited the OSCE, the EU, and the Russians, as well as U.S. Ambassador Chris Hill. Conspicuously absent, however, were NATO’s commander, General Clark, or any other high-ranking U.S. military officers. Kosovar Albanian leaders from both KLA and LDK were invited, as were the representatives of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The threat of air strikes did compel the Serbs to attend. But Milošević himself expected the talks to fail, and he declined to attend, sending Serb president Milan Milutinovic as his deputy.
Milošević took NATO’s absence to suggest that the United States and the Contact Group would not follow through on their threat of air strikes. Three factors caused him to question NATO’s credibility: that NATO did not compel him to attend the peace talks, as it had for the Dayton negotiations (Milošević claimed that he might be exposed to arrest if he went to Rambouillet); that the OSCE still had a thousand unarmed civilian monitors in Kosovo, whose safety would be endangered by bombing; and President Clinton’s perceived reluctance to commit ground troops. (Clinton had pledged to decide by February 1 whether he would send U.S. ground troops to Kosovo; on February 4 he said only that he was “committed to considering”[emphasis added] authorizing the troops.)
The Rambouillet conference moved forward largely as a result of the determined efforts of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who arrived after the meetings began and proceeded to personally manage the extremely complicated relations within the Contact Group and among Russia, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the OSCE, Serbia, the Kosovars, Congress, and the media.
The Contact Group presented its demands at Rambouillet as nonnegotiable: (1) the KLA must disarm; (2) Serb forces must withdraw from Kosovo, under the supervision of thirty thousand NATO troops; (3) Yugoslavia must restore Kosovo’s autonomy and independent institutions. The issue of the future status of Kosovo would be considered in three years.
U.S. diplomats found the Kosovo Albanians to be much less helpful than they had hoped. But the Albanians were not given crucial draft texts of political and security agreements, and therefore they never had the opportunity to express their concerns. Conference organizers permitted twenty-nine-year-old Hashim Thaci, a former Kosovar Albanian student leader who helped found the underground movement that became the KLA, to be seated as head of the Kosovar delegation, but after twelve days they handed him an annex to the agreement that called on the KLA to disarm and disband.
After two weeks, there was progress, but at least one major sticking point: the Albanians refused to sign the agreement unless it guaranteed them a referendum on independence within three years. Albright was disappointed by the Kosovar Albanians’ lack of cooperation; Albanian delegates blamed hardliners inside the KLA for this failure. Veton Surroi, a moderate in the sixteen-member Albanian delegation, blamed Adam Demaci, a former influential political adviser to the KLA, for wrecking the consensus.
Still, by the time the Rambouillet meetings broke off in late February—with plans to begin again in March—the Kosovar Albanian delegation had committed to sign the agreement when the talks resumed. The sequence was supposed to unfold as follows:
Kosovar accepts the three-year interim self-government offer
The agreement is imposed on Belgrade, using NATO air strikes, if necessary
NATO ground troops are introduced to enforce the political settlement
The eighty-two-page Rambouillet agreement spelled out terms that m
et most of the Kosovars’ goals, but the Contact Group had ruled out their key goal: independence. Moreover, in an effort to accommodate the Serbs, the negotiators agreed to the disarming of the KLA without a parallel disarming and withdrawal of the Serb army, and they failed to impose meaningful limits on the number of Serb soldiers and police who could remain in Kosovo. They also offered to secure limits on the size of the peacekeeping force that would be deployed in Kosovo. Without even attending the meeting, then, Milošević had gained most of what he wanted.
The Rambouillet summit was doomed from the start. One major error was to grant the French demand that General Clark be barred from the conference, despite the Kosovars’ request to meet with him. An effective NATO ground presence was essential to establishing a credible threat, and air strikes were critical to sustaining Albanian morale. Clark should have been present. The Contact Group’s refusal to accept the KLA as a permanent feature of the geopolitical landscape was yet another substantial policy error. And there were other errors: the war crimes provisions of the agreement was downgraded, and the United States missed an opportunity to repeat its Christmas warning.
Perhaps the greatest flaws in the agreement were its concessions to Milošević. It permitted Serbia to maintain a large and intimidating force in Kosovo: four thousand military and police forces, twenty-five hundred Ministry of the Interior special police, and fifteen hundred army troops. It offered no provision for resolving the situation after the three-year interim—for example, through a referendum, a major demand the KLA eventually demanded. And it outlined no mechanism for enforcement.
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