BOSTON -- When this weekend's NATO meeting in Washington was planned, it was envisioned as a grand celebration of the alliance that for 50 years, to most people in the West, has symbolized diplomatic vision and the just power of collective self-defense.
Force of circumstances has converted this ceremonial event into a council of war. It is the opportunity, however, to start a soul-searching reappraisal: Is NATO capable of meeting the post-cold-war security needs of Europe?
When NATO lurched into an air war over Serbia a month ago, it gave Slobodan Milosevic a license to strangle the democratic opposition in Serbia and to accelerate the expulsion of more than half a million ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Milosevic immediately expanded his counter-insurgency campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army and adopted the maximal goal of the radical fringe in Serbia: outright expulsion of all ethnic Albanians.
NATO leaders, trapped by their threats and misjudgments, now see no choice but to soldier on, devastating Serbia from the air and preparing a ground invasion. For others who are not welded to NATO's course, however, this is the moment to raise fundamental questions that have long been swept under the rug: Why has NATO, which is so powerful militarily, been so inadequate to the challenge of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans, not only during the past year when open warfare engulfed Kosovo, but over the preceding decade?
Is a military alliance dominated by the United States incapable of mobilizing political and diplomatic leadership within Europe? Will its expansive ambitions and peace-through-war mind set merely block diplomatic agreement in the Balkans, and provoke a new cold war with Russia?
In the late 1980s as the Soviet Union collapsed, U.S. strategic thinking lapsed into a dangerous combination of self-congratulation and indifference to the emerging crises of the new era. The wars in the Balkans could have unquestionably been snuffed out in their early stages if the U.S. had been willing to contribute to the United Nations and to European peace-keeping efforts in Croatia and Bosnia. Instead the U.S. withheld both money and military means that could have allowed non-US dominated initiatives to succeed. As the war burned deeper through Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, most American leaders were content to sit on the sidelines, carping but assuming no responsibility and no risk. The US fell behind in meeting its treaty obligations to the UN until the accumulated arrears reached nearly $2 billion. The US also missed no opportunity to undercut Europe's primary peace-making mechanism, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, by belittling its efforts and withholding needed funds.
The reason U.S. strategists were consistently hostile to these organizations was that they were not fully dominated by Washington. Even though they had no military content, U.S. strategists saw their political stature as potentially competitive with NATO. One cost of this policy of passive aggression was that neither the UN nor the CSCE (which in 1995 was renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE) was able to fully develop their potential in conflict resolution and peacekeeping.
As the 1990s wore on, U.S.-dominated NATO remained militarily mighty, but recklessly aloof from the catastrophe in the Balkans. Like a fire department that does not show up until the house has burned down, it waited until the Bosnian war was essentially over before doing a a round of safe, symbolic bombing, and sending an occupation force to oversee the cold peace. Meanwhile the Clinton administration had become mesmerized with its concept of extending NATO membership eastward toward Russia. This was perceived first in Russia, and more recently in Serbia, as a dangerous, potentially hostile expansion of the US sphere of influence.
Because the development of the OSCE and the UN had been purposefully blocked, neither organization has been able to fulfill its potential to buffer the collision of Serbian and ethnic-Albanian nationalism in Kosovo.
At Rambouillet the U.S. negotiators attempted to impose an "agreement" whose terms were crafted to satisfy the Kosovo Albanians. This would have put Kosovo under the control of a NATO force, and on a fast track to total independence. Absurdly, NATO then threatened to bomb Serbia to obtain Milosevic's signature. He, of course, called NATO's bluff, leaving the embarrassed State department "no choice" but to bomb.
In fact, there was then, and still is, a choice. A negotiating effort that had not been totally controlled by the U.S. would have had a much greater chance of working through to an agreement. A peace-keeping force that was not US-dominated and perceived as expansionist would have a far better chance of Serb acceptance and Russian support.
Perhaps it is churlish, on NATO's birthday to point to its flaws, but the real business of European security in the post cold war world does not consist of demanding signatures on non-existent agreements and bombing around, from three miles up. It consists of meticulous confidence building, skilled diplomacy, even-handed negotiation and sustained involvement on the ground. NATO has provided next to none of this. As its leaders huddle in Washington this weekend, it is proper to point this out.
Randolph Ryan, a former editorial-page writer for the Boston Globe, has worked in the Balkans for the past three years.