Memorandum submitted by Jonathan Steele
POLITICAL
1. The crisis revealed beyond all doubt
that the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, was the main
source of instability in the Balkans. Repeated efforts by the
six nations of the Contact Group to negotiate a compromise settlement
over Kosovo throughout 1998 and in early 1999 broke down because
of his non-compliance with the agreements he made. He thus confirmed
that he prefers crises and tension over problem-solving. No future
solutions should be sought which rely on him.
2. The crisis in Kosovo revolved around
the issue of self-determination. Milosevic's abolition of the
relatively full system of autonomy which existed in Kosovo from
1974 to 1989 pushed the territory back into colonial subjugation
from Belgrade. After a decade of repression in which Ibrahim Rugova's
strategy of non-violence in pursuit of independence had failed
to achieve results either from the Yugoslav authorities or Western
governments, it became clear early in 1998 that Kosovar opinion
was swinging in favour of a twin-track approach—support
for the Kosovo Liberation Army as well as for Rugova.
By the autumn of 1998 Western governments ought
to have understood this new reality and accepted its legitimacy.
They should have pressed for a referendum on independence or some
other credible exercise in self-determination for the people of
Kosovo. This should have been accompanied by the drafting, with
or without Yugoslav participation, of a constitution for Kosovo
which would, among other things, guarantee the rights of minorities.
To insist on maintaining Yugoslavia's territorial integrity, when
four of the former republics had already become independent, flew
in the face of common sense. 90 per cent of a territory's population
cannot be held down by 10 per cent, once consent has been broken.
The argument that independence for Kosovo would
de-stabilise Macedonia was shown to be weak when even the influx
of some 200,000 Kosovar refugees over the period of a few weeks
in the spring of 1999 did not do so. Macedonia's governing coalition
of Macedonian and Albanian parties (in each case representing
the radical wings of their various ethnic spectrums) revealed
great resilience and survived the refugee crisis intact.
It may be argued that Milosevic would have reacted
badly to Western support for Kosovo's independence. But he could
hardly have acted more brutally and genocidally than he reacted
to the Kosovars' drive for independence anyway, even without Western
support for it. Had he seen that the West fully and unambiguously
backed the Kosovars' wish for self-determination, he might have
been more restrained. The constant Western support for Yugoslavia's
territorial integrity was a factor in encouraging him to think
the West was not seriously interested in any change in Kosovo
and that he had a free hand to suppress the KLA. A clear position
by Western governments in support of self-determination in Kosovo
would also have made it easier to get majority support in Western
public opinion in favour of military action. The West would have
been seen to be acting against a colonial power, Yugoslavia, which
was repressing an overwhelming ethnic majority.
Now that Yugoslav power over Kosovo has been
removed as a result of the United Nations presence, Western governments
must not repeat the pre-war mistakes. They should make it clear
that they favour self-determination for the people of Kosovo to
be expresssed in a referendum within a fixed number of years,
probably a maximum of two. Between now and then they should call
a conference of Balkan states to prepare international guarantees
for the new state which is likely to emerge.
DIPLOMATIC
1. The Kosovo crisis showed how important
it is to work with Russia on European problems on a full and equal
basis.
Once it became apparent that Milosevic was not
surrendering in the face of NATO's bombing campaign and that Western
governments were reluctant to use ground troops, Western policy
was in dire straits. The public consent for bombing was beginning
to erode. Russia played a vital role in getting Milsosevic to
withdraw his forces by brokering a deal under United Nations'
auspices and making it clear that it would not give Yugoslavia
military aid.
Russia's resistance to the use of force against
Yugoslavia was largely based on its concerns over the future role
of NATO. Russia was not alone in thinking that NATO saw the Kosovo
crisis as a test of NATO's relevance in the post-Cold War world.
This was a theme constantly repeated by Western governments themselves
and reached its crescendo at NATO's summit in Washington in April
1999.
Western governments should not have linked the
Kosovo crisis to the debate over NATO's future. The issues were
separate. By joining them, Western governments unnecessarily raised
the stakes by putting the alliance's credibility on the line as
well as antagonising Russia. Russia had, and has, no inherent
common interest with Milosevic. Suggestions of a shared Christian
Orthodox tradition and Slavic mentality were mainly mythical and
a cover for more pragmatic motives. Milosevic has much more admiration
for the United States than he has for Russia. Similarly, Russia
knows it has a deeper and more fruitful web of interests in Western
Europe than it has in the Balkans, and certainly than in Serbia.
What temporarily united Milosevic and Moscow were shared suspicions
about NATO's intentions.
Western governments should therefore have been
more creative in considering alternative political "hats"
for an international intervention in Kosovo, which could have
gained consent from Russia as well as other non-NATO governments
in Europe.
One option would have been to organise a "coalition
of the willing", as was done for intervention in the Gulf
War and most recently for East Timor. In practice this might have
ended up being the same states which eventually took part in the
NATO operation, but without the NATO label it would not have run
up against Russian resistance. Nor would it have been seen by
them as establishing a precedent for NATO to intervene in other
out-of-area crises as and when it sees fit.
Another option would have been to enlist the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in which
Russia is a full member. The OSCE is linked to the United Nations
as its de facto regional arm in Europe. The East Timor
intervention force has shown the value of leaving regional problems
to be solved by regional organisations. If the OSCE had been the
authority which approved military action against Yugoslavia, it
would have been up to individual member-states to decide whether
to commit forces or facilities to the campaign. This too would
have been a kind of "coalition of the willing" without
any binding commitments for the future of precedent-setting complications.
3. A "coalition of the willing"
would also have avoided the problems caused in various NATO member-states
by the military campaign against Yugoslavia. There were several
moments when the German and Italian governments came under strong
pressure from their parliaments and public opinion to denounce
the bombing, or at least distance themselves from it. NATO had
to expend a great deal of political and diplomatic clout in trying
to maintain alliance unity in the justifiable fear that any cracks
would have encouraged Milosevic to go on resisting.
The Kosovo crisis has shown that, even when
NATO is actively engaged, the alliance's old principle of unanimity
is ill-suited to complex circumstances where the clarity of "collective
defence" is not available. NATO should consider operating
on a basis which takes more account of the sovereignty of its
individual members. This has long been true in the nuclear field.
Some NATO members have their own nuclear weapons. Others have
renounced them. During the Cold War some agreed to accept other
NATO members' nuclear weapons at bases on their territory. Others
rejected this.
In the post-Cold War world this flexibility
should be extended to conventional warfare. It makes bad political
sense to press a government such as Germany, Italy or Greece into
taking an active part in an intervention like Kosovo if it has
fragile support. Governments in the European Union are right to
strive towards a Common Security and Foreign Policy, though there
are bound to be difficulties on the way and some opt-outs will
be inevitable. The same is even more true of military intervention.
Now that the certainties of the Cold War confrontation are over
and Europe's problems are more complex and intricate, the imposed
unity of NATO decision-making is out-of-date. During the Kosovo
war, the practice whereby ambassadors and ministers from 16 countries
conferred on the choice of bombing targets made it absurd.
CRISIS PREVENTION
AND PEACE-KEEPING
1. One of the most conspicuous failures
by foreign governments, before the military intervention in Kosovo
and subsequently, was their slowness in supplying international
observers and civilian police even when the political opposition
to their deployment had been lifted.
The so-called Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement
of October 1998 authorised the despatch of 2,000 foreign observers
to Kosovo. Five months later, when they were withdrawn in March
1999 on the eve of the bombing, no more than 1,400 had arrived.
Similarly, the UN Security Council resolution which ended the
war in June 1999 called for international police. Months later
the full complement had not been deployed, even though law and
order in Kosovo was fragile, Serb and Roma civilians were under
pressure from criminal harrassment, and the troops of KFOR were
not mandated to handle policing.
The lesson of this failure is that a Europe-wide
emergency corps of police needs to be created which can intervene
at short notice for peace-keeping. The recent earthquakes in Turkey
and Greece produced an admirably rapid response by international
rescue teams. Natural disasters are relatively easy to handle
since the teams rarely stay in the emergency zone for more than
a week, perhaps two at a maximum, so that their commitment of
time is small.
We need to look seriously at the creation of
a new corps which would be more than an international rescue team
but less than a standing army. Units could be earmarked from national
police forces in Europe to train jointly with units of other countries,
and be available for deployment at short notice for assignments
of up to three or six months. Such a corps could come under the
jurisdiction of the OSCE.
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