Why We Bomb You

Jonathan Rauch | May 1, 1999

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Still, that distinction alone does not quite suffice. For it is entirely possible that the Milosevic regime's startling brutality in Kosovo is a fact in which NATO is itself implicated. We know that, even absent NATO's military involvement, Milosevic was preparing a large attack on Kosovo (which, recall, is part of his country). But what kind of offensive would he have mounted if NATO had kept its planes on the ground?

We will never know, but certainly the air war gave Milosevic every reason to roll up Kosovo quickly and ruthlessly, before the bombing debilitated him. The bombing also gave him every reason to displace rivers of civilians, both to give NATO headaches in neighboring Albania and Macedonia and to provide human shields for his troops in Kosovo. Without the bombing, the West might have used its sway in Kosovo much as it did in the Krajina: to restrain an ethnic cleansing that it could not stop. Milosevic might have conducted a lightning military sweep against the Kosovo Liberation Army and its sympathizers, in which civilians might have been victimized rather than targeted.

But for NATO's intervention, in other words, Kosovo might have looked like the Krajina--which NATO tolerated. If that is the case (though who knows?), then NATO's access of rectitude in Kosovo has cost many innocent lives.

No moral clarity there. So we are back, once again, where we began. Why Kosovo but not the Krajina?

Because, Mile, the Krajina campaign worked. It made peace possible, and the gain was worth the cost. Tudjman's action ended a war, whereas Milosevic's action threatened to start one.

The allies say they are fighting in Kosovo because the wholesale cleansing of a civilian population is intolerable, but we know, from the Krajina, that the wholesale cleansing of a civilian population is only sometimes intolerable. What we are really bombing your city for, Mile, is peace.

You laugh, bitterly. Bombs for peace? Your daughter cowering in the basement, for peace? Yes: just so. And just as the Krajina action was tolerable because it worked, so the bombing of your city (and possibly the invasion of your country and the killing of some of your countrymen, and some of mine) will be tolerable--if it works.

``Working,'' in this instance, does not necessarily mean imposing the terms of the Rambouillet agreement (absurd now, despite NATO's insistence), or escorting all or even most of the Albanian refugees back to secure homes in Kosovo, or keeping Kosovo unpartitioned, or putting Milosevic out of business. Those things would be nice, but they are not essential. Rather, what is essential to justify the action in Kosovo is what was also essential to justify the inaction in the Krajina: the attainment of a lasting peace.

I don't know what NATO will do, but what it ought to do is wage war until Milosevic drops his price enough to allow a deal. To make peace and declare victory will mean betraying some NATO rhetoric and some, or many, Kosovar refugees, who will never see home again. Those betrayals, like the cleansing of the Krajina in 1995, will be rotten. But they will be tolerable--if they work.