© BU Underground 04/30/99

It is almost a month since the NATO began its military campaign against Yugoslavia, and yet the purpose and the goals of intervention are not clearly defined. President Clinton and his counterparts from other NATO countries cannot make up their mind about the objective(s) of the NATO action. Is it to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, or to preserve regional stability, or to force the Yugoslav president Milosevic into signing the dictate from Rambouillet, known as the Rambouillet Peace Accord, or all the above? Let us examine if any of the stated goals have been achieved.

Did the NATO intervention prevent the humanitarian catastrophe? From 1997, when the ethnic Albanian militants, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), began their insurrection, till March 24, 1999, when the NATO intervention started, the number of killed did not exceed 2,000, including Albanians, Serbs and other ethnicities. Furthermore, despite periodic outbursts of violence between the KLA and Serbian police, there was no major refugee problem. The situation changed drastically since the beginning of the NATO intervention. The number of killed civilians is several hundreds and is rising steadily. Losses of Yugoslav Army, KLA and NATO are not available, but it is reasonable to expect that they are comparable to the civilian losses. At the same time, the number of refugees sky-rocketed. Reports indicate that the number of ethnic Albanian refugees is close to 1,000,000. The number of Serbian refugees are seldom reported, but in his recent interview for the National Public Radio, a Yugoslav sociologist and an opponent of Milosevic’s regime, Aleksa Djilas, pointed out that the number of refugees among the citizens of Belgrade, who left their homes facing daily bombardments, is at least 200,000. All these evidence indicate that the NATO interventions has provoked, not prevented a humanitarian catastrophe.

Did the NATO intervention promote regional stability? In his televised address to the nation, President Clinton invoked a domino theory to point out that Milosevic's policy in Kosovo endangers stability of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, a country at the southern border of the Kosovo region. Clinton argued that the Macedonian sizable Albanian minority (about 1/3 of the total population) might be dragged into the Kosovo conflict and thus spill it over the Yugoslav border. This, in turn, would destabilize the entire Balkan region and therefore, the NATO's intervention was needed to prevent this from happening. It turned out that the intervention made this situation even worse. The inflow of refugees from Kosovo significantly altered the demographic picture of Macedonia, causing the uneasy relationship between the Albanian minority and Macedonian Slavs to become even more tensed. Violent anti-NATO demonstrations in the Macedonian capital Skopje erupted and close encounters between Macedonian army and NATO troops occurred. Bulgarian government have been reported to offer military supplies to Macedonia. If Macedonia is indeed vital for stability of the Balkan region, the NATO intervention certainly made it much more unstable than it was ever before.

Finally, is signing of the Rambouillet document by Milosevic now more likely than it was before March 24? Most of NATO politicians admit that the Rambouillet document is dead. It is funny that the same politicians who supported of the NATO intervention as a mean of forcing Milosevic into signing the Rambouillet accord, abandoned it few days after first bombs fell on Yugoslavia. As bombs continue to fall, with no end in sight, there has been no honest attempt by western statesmen to find a new peace formula. They opt for continuation of the military intervention, as if the violence is the best solution they can come up with, while leaving the peace efforts to Russians. How convenient.

In summary, our analysis shows that the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia has been ill conceived and that it failed each of its declared objectives. This should be a good enough reason for immediate secession of bombing and resumption of peace negotiations, this time with no preferential treatment of any of the warring parties. However, the insistence of NATO on continuing and expanding the intervention, including the possibility of ground war and increasing the involvement of other Balkan states, suggests that the stakes of NATO go beyond the declared ones. One cannot but think that humanitarian catastrophe, regional stability or Milosevic's intransigence could only be the pretext for the intervention whose true objectives are kept hidden from the public.

Dimitrije Stamenovic, Associate Professor, BME
Nebojsa Bjelotomic, BME 2000
George Bozovic, CAS 2002
Gordana Bosnic, SAR
Nenad Bursac, BME
Predrag Bursac, BME
Zivorad Vasic, MET 1999
I. Veljkovic, AEM
Jelena Veljkovic, GRS
Andrija Kostanjevac, SMG 1999
Jessica Owens, CAS
Snezana Pejic, SMG 1999
Marko Popovic, GRS
Dimitrije Stepanenko, GRS
Jelena Tomic, CAS 2002