To: Kosovo Talk
From: George Kenney
Subject: Comments on Round 1 A short note regarding the first question and a couple of comments:
The situation in Kosovo prior to the bombing didn't call for humanitarian relief above the norm. The refugees do now, thanks to NATO. But making NATO the caretaker probably ensures the violent disintegration of Macedonia and further internal chaos in Albania. Oh well. There is one thing we could do that partly acknowledges NATO's responsibility: allow as many Albanian refugees as request it political asylum in the U.S. and Western Europe.
Phyllis Bennis, Howard Zinn, and Diana Johnstone all comment on the inappropriate role NATO has taken on. I agree. If and when there is a negotiated cease-fire, it seems doubtful that NATO could or should play any role policing it. I suppose that the Russians would veto NATO as a peacekeeping force if the U.N. can assert its authority, and I hope Bennis is right in thinking the crisis could be taken back by the U.N. Assembly.
I would add to Diana Johnstone's telling remarks about NATO two things: first, many who opposed NATO expansion (including myself) worried that an expanded alliance would become cumbersome and ineffective. Indeed, we are seeing signs of that in NATO's war on Yugoslavia, with multiple levels of decision-making and hesitant, incremental escalation against the consensus advice of American military planners who prefer using overwhelming force (or none at all). I had thought the solution for NATO -- instead of expansion -- was to put it on mothballs until such time as it might be needed, if Russia really collapsed. Now, however, I find Howard Zinn's brief two sentences calling for NATO's dissolution quite compelling. It does seem that the one thing nobody predicted about NATO expansion was that it would become an active, aggressive agent for American power projection. This is exactly the kind of dangerous organization the world does not need.
To: Kosovo Talk
From: George Kenney
Subject: Additional Comments This morning, another NATO briefing. According to spokesman Jamie Shea, "we're not at war with anybody." Hello? One could put the NATO and U.S. mouthpieces next to Milosevic's and not tell the difference. It is impossible to believe a word they say. What really grinds my gears is the line about how the refugee expulsions were expected and that the Serb forces were going to do what they did bombing or no.
Well, OK, probably the Serbs had come up with a mass ethnic-cleansing plan -- in the face of NATO's threats to take over the province by force. It's not that much different than Waco. Who's to know what the Serbs "might" have done? Nobody can know that. But it is obvious that the U.S. government did not expect what happened after the bombing started and more than obvious that it should have, viz. all the recent leaks to the New York Times and the Post about intelligence estimates. Indeed, the whole predicate of the bombing, and now the escalation, is a false assumption that the Serbs will cave in. But if they don't, and I don't think they will, all the momentum of rhetoric, politics and bureaucracy pushes us into a ground war. A limited ground war that stops at Kosovo's borders? I doubt it. The Serbs will keep defending themselves until their entire country is subdued. More likely is a tentative ground war that stops after it gets a bit bloody, a reassessment, and some kind of face-saving compromises. And I'll bet that by the time U.S. ground troops are mixing it up in Kosovo, the Russians will have moved from rhetoric to covert -- and perhaps overt -- military support of the Serbs. What a ******* mess!!
