BALKANS NEED MORE THAN A BAND-AID
The tentative Kosovo peace agreement offers hope that this round of violence and atrocities is ending. But given the treasure and prestige the U.S. expended, and our experiences in Bosnia, we should not apply merely another peacekeeping Band-Aid to a Balkan wound that is likely to keep festering.
Another open-ended commitment of thousands of American troops is no solution and will only exacerbate our declining military readiness. The fact is that true peace will not be achieved
in the Balkans one crisis at a time. We should nudge our European allies to help us create conditions that reflect the self-determination of the people in the region. That could mean redrawing borders throughout the Balkans, perhaps leading to majority Albanian, Serbian, Croatian and secular Muslim states. Organizing a democracy around ethnic or religious groupings has many precedents throughout Europe and Asia, yet that opportunity is being denied the people of the Balkans.
Our recent Balkan operations have been waged for the purpose of getting people who know mostly hatred of one another to live in harmony amidst constant reminders of recent atrocities on all sides. Multi-party democracy and economic prosperity have not taken root because of the intense ethnic and religious divisions. Why not allow governments to be formed along these natural lines, and create the conditions for economic stability and regional peace?
Our limited objective of peace in one province of Serbia falls short of a worthy end for the extraordinary means we've taken. Between Bosnia and Kosovo, the U.S. has spent a staggering $25 billion. The President has called up 30,000 reservists, nearly expended the military's inventory of cruise missiles, and diverted U.S. military assets from around the globe.
In fact, the conflict in Kosovo is the latest in a growing number of open-ended military commitments we are making with a Pentagon budget that has been cut by 40 percent since the Cold War.
This has highlighted a military readiness crisis caused, in part, by too many missions and too few troops. Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense William Cohen testified to Congress that, "We're either going to have to have fewer missions or more people, but we cannot continue the kind of pace we have."
Our goal should be a more comprehensive settlement than what's on the table; one that relies less on a permanent U.S. military presence. The Dayton accords for Bosnia -- where some 6,000 American troops remain -- were supposed to prevent a spillover of the conflict into Kosovo. Similarly, a fix that only affects Kosovo will not prevent future problems in Montenegro or Macedonia.
Success in the Balkans should not be measured by the number of American forces we've committed with no end in sight, but by how well we create the conditions for a peace that can last without them.
June 9, 1999