Question: Can Alliance Muster Will to Win?

President Clinton and other NATO leaders walk to lunch outside the Ronald Reagan Building on Saturday. (AP) Related Links NATO Widens Security 'Map' Full Coverage of NATO Summit Summit Photos: Day 1 | Day 2

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 25, 1999; Page A1

As the NATO alliance gathered, with its fortunes and perhaps its survival on the line, there was only one important question beneath the determined show of common cause. Can 19 unruly democracies – representing three-fifths of the world's economy and a larger share of its aggregate military power – muster the collective will to defeat a Kentucky-sized republic with not quite half the gross domestic product of Burma?

When a war pits the rump state of Yugoslavia against a coalition with 37 times its standing army and 696 times its national wealth, will is unavoidably the central issue. NATO has the wherewithal to do as it likes in the Balkans, provided it is prepared to pay the price. After 32 days of bombing and three days of summitry, the answer to that question remains unknown.

Interviews this week with senior members of all 19 NATO delegations, and most of the 25 informal partners in attendance, displayed more boldness among the summiteers than most experts thought likely before the war began. Germany, represented by a premier who spent his youth as a radical Marxist, has sent its armed forces to war for the first time since World War II. Greece, whose historic ties with its Christian Orthodox coreligionists in Serbia are the equal of Russia's, complains about the bombing but has not used its veto to stop it. Turkey, already suffering from eight years of trade embargo with its southern neighbor Iraq, is willingly risking its crucial land links through Serbia to markets further north.

"Could we have conceived of such agreement among 19 members at any other time?" asked French President Jacques Chirac, no stranger to disagreement in NATO councils.

Yet deep strains also cut across the alliance, and the disagreements have shaped the Kosovo war. Restrained by the limits of consensus as well as ordinary military prudence, NATO has held back from use of its overwhelming advantages over Serbia. No one can say whether those limits will prevent the allies from reaching their goals in Kosovo, or how the alliance will respond if the answer proves to be yes.

"The stakes for NATO are NATO," said one senior U.S. policymaker. "It's the relevance and vitality of the organization."

Asked about the consequences of failure, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said in an interview: "It doesn't arise and it won't arise. We will succeed. ... The proposition which a lot of people are asserting that you can't get there from here with air power has not been proved, not been proved."

Qualms and Limits

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"What worries me is that we may find ourselves in a situation similar to Vietnam…"

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Germany and the Czech Republic, among others, have told allies that their governments could fall if NATO signaled even a possibility of invading Yugoslavia with ground troops. Reluctance to use force in some NATO capitals brought a "phased" air campaign reminiscent of the strategy, by now deeply unpopular in Western militaries, of "gradual escalation." Because the allies could not agree to authorize Phase III, which would have added hundreds of new targets to the air campaign, they continued to fudge the issue by giving commanders wide authority to select targets.

One friend said Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO's supreme military commander, is deeply frustrated at an unwanted role as "Wes Westmoreland," a reference to Gen. William Westmoreland and the war in Vietnam, where Clark fought as a newly commissioned lieutenant. Qualms about escalation and international law have left the alliance unable to say what it means by a new oil blockade against shipborne oil to Serbia. Fear of casualties limits allied pilots to bombing from what the Air Force calls "medium altitude," about three miles high.

Cabinet-rank officials from several countries, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed anxiety that NATO's commanders have "no clear feeling of political support," as one NATO foreign minister put it. A defense minister fresh from allied headquarters in Brussels said: "What worries me is that we may find ourselves in a situation similar to Vietnam, in which political limitations on military action were quite destructive to the efficiency of the military action."

Gen. Klaus Naumann, whose post as chairman of the NATO Military Committee puts him at the collision point between political and uniformed leaders of the alliance, embodies the dilemmas. Last week he expressed admiring surprise that NATO has held together so well in a "war of coalition in the communications age." But he does not disguise his doubts, in interviews, that bombs and missiles will achieve their political goals.

So far, the evidence is against the air campaign. The concrete results after just over a month exceed NATO's worst-case scenarios in several respects, with most of the Albanians homeless, half of them deported by force and thousands – possibly tens of thousands, by preliminary intelligence estimates – dead. Against this balance sheet, the damage NATO has wrought on Serbia is related only hypothetically so far to its goals.

Resolve

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"NATO is fighting for the cause of humanity"

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Among the most striking features of the summit, for an organization accustomed to caution and opacity in its rhetoric, is the display of resolve among NATO's national leaders.

"Right now in the heart of Europe, NATO is fighting for the cause of humanity," Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien told the opening session of the summit. "NATO cannot fail. NATO will not fail."

Jose Maria Aznar Lopez, the center-right prime minister of Spain, is, at 46, one of several heads of government here who is younger than the alliance. "I belong to the first generation of Europeans who have not lived through the horrors of war or suffered its aftermath," Aznar said. "I am proud, for it has enabled me to avoid the nightmare of having to make unwanted decisions." Now, though, Spain's decisions "are dictated . . . by human pain and suffering."

Iceland's Foreign Minister Halldor Asgrimsson, speaking at a sparsely attended National Press Club appearance: "Indifference in the face of the atrocities would make us accessories to [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic's crimes of attempted genocide. Haven't we yet learned the lessons of Auschwitz and Buchenwald?"

Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, attributed NATO's unaccustomed steel to years of humiliating inaction in Bosnia, the last Balkan war. "We were under strong criticism for five or six years for being unable to act," the 44-year-old Christian Social Party leader said Thursday. "People understand [what is] right, that this needs to be done."

A New Kind of War

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"…relations between nations can no longer be founded on respect for sovereignty."

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Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek, a senior strategist of the Solidarity movements that toppled Communist rule, described Kosovo as a new kind of war, "the first signal of the coming century." In the 21st century, he said, "relations between nations can no longer be founded on respect for sovereignty – they must be founded on respect for human rights."

Traveling to what he called the "capital of middle America," Prime Minister Tony Blair argued before the Chicago Economic Club for a new international doctrine justifying foreign military intervention in sovereign countries to stop genocide which, he said, "can never be a purely internal matter."

For some at the summit, that sentiment marks a new height of ambition for NATO. "This has been a great victory for human rights, a grand idea, that has developed step by step in this century with setbacks and tragedies along the way," Chirac said.

For others, the cause is reassuring in its limits.

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek, arriving late Friday afternoon, said he supports the war in Yugoslavia precisely because NATO's goals are "humanitarian, not geopolitical or strategic."

New Members

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"They know that it is not only a guarantee of our security, but also a major commitment"

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NATO's new members – Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary – are somewhat discomfited to find themselves at war within a month of joining.

"Let me assure you that the citizens of the Czech Republic are well aware of what NATO membership means to them," Czech President Vaclav Havel said.

"They know that it is not only a guarantee of our security, but also a major commitment."

But NATO Secretary General Javier Solana recently scolded the Czech ambassador to NATO, Karol Kavanda, accusing Prague of lukewarm support. "We are hoping for diplomatic options, but don't see any openings now," said one Czech diplomat.

Of the three new members, Poland is the strongest supporter of the military campaign. Its leadership says it is committed to victory and prepared to escalate the war, to the point of contributing ground combat troops if necessary.

"In Poland there were questions," Defense Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz said. "Will NATO really help us if we are under attack, or will there be a repeat of 1939," when the West failed to stop the Nazi conquest.

"Now we have a clear demonstration that NATO can and will act, and that is very important to us."

Geography as Destiny

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"We don't only read and listen about the war, we feel it."

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The young couple stood quietly in the corner of the hotel reception room – Alia Nazarbayev, 19, an arts student at George Washington University, and her husband, Aidar Akaev, 22, a business student at the University of Maryland.

A few feet away, a new Kazakh American business association raised a glass to Alia's father, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan. From his first meeting Friday with the International Monetary Fund to an embassy-hosted fete for Exxon, Texaco, Mobil and Chevron, Nazarbayev's agenda has been focused almost exclusively on economics.

Officially, Kazakhstan "regrets" the use of NATO military force in Yugoslavia, its U.S. ambassador, Bolat K. Nurgaliyev, said Thursday. "Our understanding is that even bad peace is better than good war."

But the word Kosovo is scarcely mentioned among the Kazakhs. As he sat Friday night in a posh hotel suite, Nazarbayev noted that the war is "a long way geographically" from his borders.

Indeed, geography is policy for NATO members and others – like Kazakhstan – linked to its broader "partnership for peace."

For Yugoslavia's immediate neighbors, this is anything but a television war. They are acutely aware of their vulnerabilities, by air, land and sea.

Gabor Iklody, director general of Hungary's Foreign Ministry, said NATO's only member on Yugoslavia's border can play "a very active role in the search for a durable solution" to the crisis in Kosovo, but "not particularly by sending troops to a neighboring country."

Turkey, linked to Kosovo by the hand of history, remembers precisely. "Kosovo was in the Ottoman Empire 524 years," President Suleyman Demirel said on PBS's "NewsHour" on Thursday. Yet Turkey is also acutely aware that Serbs blame it for stirring up ethnic opponents and are capable of toppling two pillars of its economy: trucking companies and migrant workers.

In Romania, it is not trucks but ships that are on the government's mind.

"We are very badly situated," said Andrei Gabriel Plesu, a philosophy professor turned Romanian foreign minister, during an interview at his embassy on Sheridan Circle. Romania is losing $30 million to $50 million a week since NATO bombs began dropping Serbian bridges into the Danube River, paralyzing shipborne traffic along the critical trade route linking Romania and its Black Sea ports to Western Europe.

Italy's commercial air traffic has been severely disrupted as a result of NATO flights. The noise of alliance jets coming and going is particularly acute along the Adriatic coast. There is real concern about damage to summer tourism, and worry about the potential influx of more ethnic Albanian refugees. Italy already has about 200,000 Albanians from earlier upheavals.

"We don't only read and listen about the war, we feel it," Bulgarian Deputy Defense Minister Velizar Shalamanov said in an interview Friday at the Radisson Barcelo Hotel in Northwest. "We're indirectly part of the conflict."

Most of Bulgaria's 8 million residents oppose the war, he said. But the government, desperate for NATO membership, has allowed the allies to use Bulgarian airspace. Asked whether Bulgaria's concerns had been satisfied in consultations with NATO over the war, Shalamanov only laughed.

Invasion or Compromise

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"We will need to go quickly when the circumstances are ripe."

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Standing on a tarmac at Langley Air Force Base, Britain's chief of staff, Gen. Sir Charles Guthrie, spoke Wednesday of the astonishing "velocity" of Serb violence against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo since the war began, and about the limits of the air campaign to affect it. "I am frustrated I haven't been able to do that, to stop it, quicker," he said.

Around a dark wooden table the next day with reporters and editors of The Washington Post, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook ruminated about a scenario that the Clinton administration dodged all week – sending ground troops into Kosovo without a peace agreement with Milosevic. "A permissive environment certainly would require one in which there was no other functioning army in Kosovo fighting us," he said. "That doesn't necessarily require we have to have permission from Milosevic."

In a borrowed aircraft normally used by Vice President Gore, British Defense Minister George Robertson plunged into a similar discussion about the need to win, even if that means changing tactics.

"We will need to go in quickly when the circumstances are ripe," he said. The 30,000 troops that NATO countries pledged to "implement" a peace pact that Belgrade would not sign are no longer enough, he said. The British are willing to send more.

Canadian Prime Minister Chretien said before arriving in Washington that Canada would supply ground troops and support a NATO decision to use them in combat if necessary. Speaking to reporters here, Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and Defense Minister Art Eggleton insisted that the air campaign is working, but that it was only "prudent" to look at other options, including the introduction of ground troops.

But Iceland's foreign minister, Halldor Asgrimsson, spoke for many allies with this blunt reply: "We do not support ground troops."

"I would exclude NATO land troops being introduced in the present situation," said Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen. "It is quite clear that this is not an option."

France, which supports invasion planning, nevertheless insists on Security Council authority that the Clinton administration thinks is out of reach. Chirac acknowledged there are "still strong differences of views between the United States and France" on the legal need for such a resolution.

The French legal analysis is widely shared among mid-sized European nations who feel their dependence on international law. "The moment we want a solution, we need the Security Council," Petersen said.