Commentary No. 19, July 1, 1999
"The Clinton-Milosevich Chess Match"
The whole world has been watching the Clinton-Milosevich chess match since the beginning of 1999. In early June, most commentators seemed to believe that Clinton has won, and handsomely. Clinton proclaimed victory. So did his NATO allies. So did a large percentage of the world left, which is highly impressed with the demonstration of U.S. military power. Milosevich said that he won, but most people, including most people in Serbia, seem to think this is simply silly.
I believe assessment should be far more prudent. For one thing, the game is not over until it is over, and we are still in the middle of it. In the second place, assessment of chess moves should always be made in terms of alternatives. So let us look at the alternatives, as of the time of the Rambouillet meetings. The Rambouillet meetings were convened by the NATO powers in order to impose a "settlement" on the Kosovo crisis. These days, there is endless reference to the Rambouillet agreements, even in United Nations resolutions, but in fact there were no such agreements. There were basically three participants at Rambouillet: the Yugoslav government, an Albanian delegation (comprising both the KLA and Rugova), and certain NATO governments (who behaved as a relatively cohesive group at the meeting).
What happened at the meeting was that the NATO powers drafted a set of terms and asked the Yugoslavs and the Kosovars to agree to them. What is now forgotten is that there was not one set of terms but two successive sets. The first set was accepted by the Yugoslavs and rejected by the Albanians. The second set (the set now referred to as the "Rambouillet agreements") was accepted by the Albanians and rejected by the Yugoslavs. Neither set was accepted by both parties. It is after the second failed agreement that the NATO powers gave their ultimatum to Belgrade, and then invaded.
Let us look in more detail at what these terms were. The first set provided for withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo, and the entry of a NATO force into Kosovo. These terms Milosovich accepted, or at least swallowed. The Albanian delegation demurred. They told Mrs. Albright that the terms had to include a referendum on independence. She added this clause, providing for one in three years. The NATO powers then added as well a secret annex (secret to the rest of us, but of course not to the Yugoslavs) providing the NATO troops with the right to enter at will the rest of Yugoslavia other than Kosovo. This Milosevich was not prepared to swallow.
So, we had a war. What happened in the war? Yugoslavia was badly bombed. We learn now after the event that the bombing did far less damage to Yugoslav military capacity than NATO had hoped. The bombing did damage severely Yugoslavia's economic infrastructure, and current expectations are that GDP will go down 40% in the coming year. During the war, the Serbs engaged in ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, and current estimates are that some 10,000 persons were killed, and the homes of many more destroyed. No doubt there had been contingency plans to do this, but the fact is that before the war started, the amount of killing and destruction of homes had been relatively minor. It was the war that permitted, even encouraged, implementing this program.
Now to the war itself. Clinton clearly did not want to engage ground troops. He knew that politically this would be a real loser at home. Nonetheless, Yugoslav resistance and the endless stream of Kosovo refugees, was pushing him into a corner where he would have had to engage land troops, and suffer the political losses this would incur. So, somewhat desperately, he enrolled the Russians as mediators. The Russians were happy to agree.
NATO claims that they got unconditional surrender on the part of the Yugoslavs. Did they? Let us compare what NATO got with what the Yugoslavs were ready to give them at Rambouillet. They got the withdrawal of Serbian troops and the entry of NATO forces into Kosovo. They did not get version two of the agreements: the referendum on Kosovo independence, or the right for NATO troops to enter freely the rest of Yugoslavia. Furthermore, they got two things they had tried hard to avoid at Rambouillet. The final agreement required a U.N. resolution, and hence the right of the U.N. to have a say in the future. And they got the entry of Russian troops into Kosovo.
So let us add this up. Had Clinton stuck to the original terms of Rambouillet, the U.S. would have gotten a better deal in Kosovo from its own point of view than what they got after a war. In addition, they got ethnic cleansing. To be sure, the ethnic cleansers were Serbs. But the fact is that these Serbs, however malignant, would not have been able to engage in the ethnic cleansing had Clinton stuck to his own original terms at Rambouillet. In the world of moral responsibility, Clinton has to share the blame. And in the world of practical politics, it does not add up to a stunning victory.
The entry of the Russians into Kosovo is not to be underestimated. They have reasserted, and this for the next fifty years at least, their inescapable role as a power in the Balkans, exactly what the U.S. had wished to avoid. Incidentally, it is a piquant detail that the key Russian move, the occupation of the Pristina airport, was made possible by Mrs. Albright. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson had wanted to send British and French troops into Kosovo on June 11. Mrs. Albright flew to Macedonia to persuade him to put off entry one day, so that the U.S. Marines, who weren't yet "ready" (I thought the Marines were always ready) could go in at the same time. This delay of one day was exactly what made it possible for the Russians to occupy the Pristina airport, and therefore obtain a de facto Russian zone (even if we don't call it that). In the annals of diplomacy, Mrs. Albright will surely occupy a special place for this brilliant tactical move.
Where then are we now in the chess game? Milosevich seems to have survived at home. Yugoslav politics are infinitely more open than Iraqi politics, and there is real opposition to him in both Serbia and Montenegro. But I would give him odds on remaining in power until the end of his term, which is 2002. Clinton has avoided the worst (sending in ground troops). At home, he comes out neither ahead nor behind. But, if conditions deteriorate in Kosovo, if (in particular) the Kosovo Liberation Army decides in the month or two to come that it doesn't really intend to disarm and starts shooting not at the absent Serbs but at the present NATO troops, Clinton (and Gore) could pay a heavy political price at home. In chess terms, the end game promises to be very tricky.
So, why did Clinton throw away a good Rambouillet deal (which he himself proposed) in favor of one that he was unable to enforce? I come back to what I argued in a previous comment (No. 13, April 1, 1999), that the real objective of Clinton had nothing to do with ethnic cleansing, or the strategic importance of U.S. troops in the Balkans, or any of the other ostensible reasons. The real objective was to lock the Europeans into a renewed NATO and prevent the emergence of a European army outside of NATO. Has he succeeded at least in this objective? For the moment, he seems slightly stronger on this front than he was in 1998. But the rumblings are there all over Europe, even on the European right, about the importance of rethinking their military preparations. It is by no means sure that the U.S. has won in this regard more than a momentary respite.
Immanuel Wallerstein
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These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
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