Making Sense of Kosovo

Confused about what is going on in Kosovo?

Of course you are -- everyone is.

This is being written as the first NATO troops are pouring into Kosovo, and the Serbs in turn are being "cleansed." The bombing campaign has ended and -- if we are to believe the media -- the war is over

Of course, it would be better not to believe the media. If the war had gone longer, they would inevitably have become more critical, but as it was, they basically fed the American people the Clinton administration's line. The people have been told that this was about one crazy dictator, holding his own people captive while he committed atrocities against the Kosovars.

The Americans are not well equipped to understand what is really happening. We don't like to read history -- even our own, let alone that of other peoples. In fact, we don't like to look backwards at all; for most of us, it's only the future that counts. It strikes most Americans as perverse -- if not immoral -- to be ready to kill and die as part of a quarrel that began centuries ago and is not expected to end within one's own lifetime. This cast of mind does not serve us well in dealing with the Balkans, where -- though it's an unfair stereotype to think that all the people there hate and fight each other all the time -- there are basically permanent hostilities and alliances.
This a world in which the Serbs (and Greeks), usually backed by the Russians, are permanent enemies of the Albanians (and Turks). For the moment, all that has happened is that the U.S. and at least some of its European allies have decided to side with the Albanians (and Turks) against the Serbs (and Greeks). This presents a danger of putting us into a collision with the Russians. It also means we are into a situation which will not "resolve" itself anytime soon; we may be stuck there for as long as we have been stuck in Korea.

Is there another way it could go?

The best that can be said for NATO so far in this affair is that it has been acting like a "vigilante" -- stepping in to enforce the law when no one else will. "Vigilantism" has a bad name these days -- for good reason -- but historically, "vigilance committees" have sometimes been the first step in the establishment of law and order. The question is: "Can we turn this experience into such a first step, rather than just an exercise in the great power politics of the U.S. and its main allies?"
We have to replace the haphazard intervention of "the world's only remaining superpower" with a mechanism for enforcing accepted international rules -- a mechanism which is answerable to the world community. This time, it was stopping "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, which most people can agree with at least in principle. Ten or fifteen years ago, on the other hand, the U.S. was waging wars of agression against popular forces in Central America. So many of us don't trust the "good faith" of the U.S. when it comes to deciding what is worth fighting for.

In other words, the United Nations has to have a strike force, fleshed out with contingents from member states, and the will to use it where needed. It is too much to ask that such a force have the ability to enforce international law against really big countries -- when American states sentence juvenile offenders to death, for example -- but we may be able to get a handle on smaller "brush fire" situations. And an international force would hopefully have the staying power to hang in there until the job is done. (As it is now, we only respond to situations which show up on CNN, and then only until it starts to cost us casualties. Remember Somalia?)

So with that in mind, here are a few resources to get a handle on what is going on and what we can do to make something positive come out of it.

General Information

Yahoo's page of information and resources (including a large number of links to relief organizations)
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees daily crisis up-dates on the refugee situation
Jane's Defence, regular crisis reports
Rambouillet "Interim Agreement", the document to which Yugoslavia refused to adhere, setting off the NATO intervention

Activist Resources

Anti-War