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ingly never asked, what if Serbia, the country that fought the Turkish and Austrian empires and defied Hitler and Stalin at the height of their powers, did not yield? How far were we willing to go? Not to ground war, it was announced at the very beginning, tempting Milosevic to test his endurance to sustained bombing. No provision was made for foreseeable contingencies, such as a war of attrition and the flood of refugees it was bound to create—not to speak of the ethnic cleansing that the war has now at least accelerated and intensified.

From the start, there has been a growing gap between the rhetoric and the means with which to back it up. Allied public pronouncements have ritually compared Milosevic with Hitler. But the transparent reluctance to accept casualties signalled an advance signals that the Alliance would not make recoils from the all-out commitment necessary to for the overthrow of the accused tyrant. Now, But if the outcome is to be some kind of compromise, Milosevic will inevitably be legitimized and emerge as a valid interlocutor. The commands that aborted the Rambouillet conference will reemerge. By justifying the war

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in terms requiring total victory while conducting a strategy impelling compromise, the Alliance has maneuvered itself into a trap.

Several fateful decisions were taken in those now seemingly far-off days in February, when other options were still open. The first was the demand that 30,000 NATO troops enter a Yugoslav province identified with that country's struggle for independence, a state with which NATO was not at war, and which a province that had all the emotional significance as of being the locus of the origin of Serbia's that state's independence. The second was to use the foreseeable Serb refusal as justification for immediate military action.

Rambouillet was not a negotiation—as is often claimed—but an ultimatum. This marked an astounding departure for an administration that had entered office proclaiming its devotion to the UN and "assertive multilateralism". The transformation of the Alliance from a defensive military grouping into an institution prepared to impose its values by force occurred in the same months that three former Soviet satellites joined NATO. It undercut repeated American and allied assurances that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO expansion,

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since the Alliance's own charter proclaimed
it to be a purely defensive institution.

Kosovo has thereby become a
symbol of Russia's post-Cold War frustra-
tions. The tribulations of Yugoslavia,
Moscow's Russia's traditional friend (leaving aside
the interruption of the Tito years) empha-
sized Russia's decline and has generated a
hostility towards America and the West
that threaten the emergence of a kind of
Nationalist and Socialist Russia - akin to the
European Fascism of the 1930s. This would
be a sorry end for the Administration's poli-
cy of supporting Russian reform and relat-
ing Russia to the West.

--------- End of column ---------

This is why the expectations
attached to the Russian mediation in
Kosovo seem excessive. A Russian interme-
diary mediator faces a double dilemma: if he is seen
as supporting the NATO program, he will
lose standing at home; if he induces us to
reduce our demands, he will become a
scapegoat in the American domestic debate
over compromising our war aims. Hence
Russian mediation of a ceasefire risks more
gaging US-Russian relations even further.

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[y]

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DEPT:

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Russia's most constructive role in my view
would be as full participant at a conference
for political arrangements in the Balkans
following a ceasefire.

However Kosovo is resolved, the
damage to Russia's pride will linger for a
long time. To its credit, the Administration
has, from the beginning has recognized the
importance of bringing Russia into the
international community. But it has identi-
fied this effort primarily with democratic
reform and market economics inside Russia
and non-proliferation abroad. All this
accentsuates exacerbates the Russian sense of having
come under a kind of colonial tutelage of the
West. Russia, in turn, has clung to many
aspects of its traditional diplomacy, seeking
to reduce our influence, especially in the
Middle East. Russia's image of itself as an
historic player on the world stage must be
taken seriously. This requires less lecturing
and more dialogue; less sentimentality and
more realism that Russia's national inter-
ests are not always congruent with ours;
less sociology and more foreign policy.

Before the attack on its Belgrade
embassy, China's reaction to the air war

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bombing was more muted than Russia's—but equally
negative. Every nation views international
events through the prism of its history. And
to China, the new NATO doctrine of
humanitarian intervention evokes its experience with Europe's
unilaterally proclaimed civilizing mission in
the 19th Century, which that led to the fragmen-
tation of China and a series of Western
interventions. These humillations were fol-
lowed in the 20th Century, first by the
Japanese invasions and then by the so-
called Brezhnev doctrine that proclaimed
the Kremlin's right to punish by force of
arms Communist regimes that strayed from
its ideological line. Indeed, it was to resist
the Brezhnev doctrine that China moved to
restore its relations with the United States
in 1971.

That policy of reliance on close
ties between the United States and China is
now questioned in both capitals. President
Clinton's China policy has built on the conviction
of all his predecessors since Richard Nixon
that both China and the United States have
much to gain from cooperation and risk
exhausting themselves by confrontation.

For China, a breakdown in relations confrontation would

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deal a severe blow to its economic program
and modernization. For America, it would
ensure turmoil throughout Asia, leaving
China's neighbors weakened and torn by
the need to choose between the world's
most populous country, whose 5000 years
of uninterrupted history give it a special
place in Asia, and America, the world's only
-------- End of column --------
superpower.

That cooperative policy is losing
momentum on our side largely because of
the tendency to treat policymaking as a
series of photo opportunities and reactions
to thevents of critics who see in China as our principal
strategic threat, The President has turned
his encounters with Chinese leaders into
television spectacles and/or discussions of
immediate, tactical issues, mostly on trade.

A "strategic partnership" has been pro-
claimed, but real strategic discussions on
the highest level have been rare amidst dis-
putes over issues ranging from Taiwan to
human rights to non-proliferation. During a
nine day sojourn in China, the President
managed only two hours of dialogue with
the top Chinese leaders. And he has felt

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obliged to balance his own China policy
with periodic bows to his critics.

A good example was the visit to Washington in early April of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji—generally considered among the most reformist and market-oriented of the Chinese leaders. That visit was bracketed just before Zhu's arrival by the announcement that the United States would support a UN resolution condemning China's human rights practices, and immediately afterwards by the sale of long-range radars to Taiwan. And during the visit, the Administration declined to sign an agreement regarding China's entry into the WTO, for which the Chinese had made major concessions and which they had reason to believe would be the centerpiece of Zhu's visit. (To compound Zhu's embarrassment, the Administration published all the concessions he had made, causing him to appear both accommodating and ineffective.)

Whatever one's view of the substance of these decisions, their timing conveyed an impression of a government incapable of consistent policy and driven by its

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critics into subordinating to domestic poli-
tics a policy that should be based on nation-
al interests.

The bombing of the Belgrade
embassy was the match that set off the
explosion. Mutual suspicions fed on each
other. The Chinese viewed the President's
original apology—made as a response to a
question at a press conference during a visit
to Oklahoma and linked to a justification of
NATO bombing—as inadequate. ~~Most~~
Americans—including myself—considered
the Chinese violence against the American
embassy unacceptable. But if the Sino-
American relationship is not to spiral
toward a confrontation, it is essential to call
a halt to mutual recrimination and seek to
restore a dialogue.

The leaders of both countries
seem aware that a confrontation would be
catastrophic for both sides as well as for the
peace of the world. But both are under pres-
sure from ideological opponents at home.

However, As for the United States, there is no way to dodge this
debate. In the United States, the critics are
serious and so must be the Administration.

DEPT: PG:

mestral

[y]

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DEPT:

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dispositions, command arrangements and
**diplomacy?** Does the Alliance have a seri-
ous political or military strategy for stabiliz-
ing parts of Europe or adjacent strategic
regions?

Europe (the UK included) has
already begun to draw the conclusion from
Kosovo that it needs to accelerate the elabo-
ration of its own institutions in order to
enhance its autonomy from the United
States—hardly a vote of confidence in the
middle of a war. But if Europe will not sup-
ply the resources for this task—as is likely—
the Alliance will be left with the worst of all
scenarios: a Europe asserting greater free-
dom of action from the United States but
with little actual ability to act alone; and an
America estranged from Europe.

No issue is more in need of
rethinking than the concept of humanitarian
intervention put forward as the
Administration's contribution to a new
approach to foreign policy. The air war in
-------- End of column --------

Kosovo is justified as establishing the prin-
ciple that the international community—or
at least NATO—will henceforth punish the

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transgressions of governments against their
own people. But we did not do so in Algeria,
the Sudan. Sierra Leone, Croatia, Rwanda,
the Caucasus, the Kurdish areas and many
other regions. The answer often given is
that we act where we are able to without
undue risk, not elsewhere. But what are the
criteria for this distinction? And what kind
of humanitarian policy is it that expresses
the reluctance to suffer military casualties
by devastating the civilian economy of its
adversary for decades to come?

Moral principles are expressed in
absolutes. But foreign policy must forever
be concerned with reconciling ends and
means. The fact that ethnic cleansing is
repugnant does not obviate the need to
devise the most appropriate response. At
every stage of the Kosovo tragedy, other
mixes of diplomacy and force were avail-
able, though it is not clear that they were
seriously considered. A strategy that, in the
name of morality, devastates both Serbia
and Kosovo and has already produced more
refugees and casualties than any conceiv-
able alternative, deserves to be questioned
on both political and moral grounds.

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The United States can take
pride in elevating human rights to an inte-
gral part of foreign policy. But when one
observes the progression from the call for
moral pressure of the 1970s, to economic
sanctions in the 1980s, to military interven-
tion in the 1990s, the time has come to call
for a definition of purposes and a dialogue
on the relationship between objectives and
methods.

Kosovo is on the verge of turning
into the sort of watershed the Vietnam war
was for an earlier generation. The paradox
is that a country that thinks of itself as acting
in the name of universal values is seen by
too many others as acting arbitrarily, or
inexplicably, or arrogantly. (Kohlraus has
been using the word "impudently".) A reex-
amination of the prevailing premises of our
foreign policy is overdue. This is a tall order
for the last eighteen months of an

Administration heretofore more given to
tactics than strategy, more to soothing
and acts

 domestic criticism than to shaping history

The agenda will not be completed in the
time left. But if the President encourages a
debate on a new agenda before the end of

DEPT:

PG:

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MAY 20 '99 02:19PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

P.3

HAKKOSOVO2
DEPT: VER # 1
BU: HJ: Galley 424
PG: ISSUE:
CREATOR: MWHITA; 05/20/99, 11:05

PRINTED BY: mwhita; 05/20/99, 3:11 PM
WRITER: MWHITA
FROM: ; 05/20/99
FILE: HAKKOSOVO2-MWHITA-PVT
REVISOR: MWHITA; 05/20/99, 14:29

By Henry. A Kissinger

A war at the far edge of the
Balkans has had political consequences
extending far beyond Kosovo.

In Moscow, an outraged sense of
humiliation over NATO's actions has
spread from the elites *Moscow elite* to the population at
large and may blight US-Russian relations
for decades. In Beijing, the virulent *Chinese reaction*
to the bombing of the Chinese *their embassy in*
Belgrade vented frustrations with the
roller-coaster nature of Sino-American
relations that have accumulated *accumulating* for many
months. And in Europe, the seeming unity
of the Atlantic Alliance is brittle. Key allies
are eying the exits; domestic opposition is
mounting in Germany and Italy and was
always powerful in Greece; the newly
*just admitted members allies* in Eastern Europe are
uncomfortable that their first allied activity
is as part of a NATO-initiated war. If the
bombing continues into the summer, the cri-
sis of confidence is likely to become public.

HAKKOSOVO2

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[c]

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DEPT:

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The causes in Russia and China are plain enough. Their leaders are products of societies that interpret foreign policy in the historic terms of national interest. They assume that decisions about war and peace are made according to whether they enhance a nation's security or other vital interests. If they can discern no such traditional rationale to U.S. our behavior, they ascribe our motives not to altruism—the American perception of itself—but to a hidden agenda for domination.

In Europe, the situation is more complex. The allies share our motives but are beginning to question our judgement. And they find themselves under increasing domestic pressure as the civilian damage from the bombing of Serbia compounds the devastation of Kosovo.

The Clinton Administration's style and philosophy have so far exacerbated compounded the crisis. The formative experiences of its key personnel were either in the trenches of the Vietnam protest movement, or in of presidential campaigns—or both. Suspicious of the role of power in foreign policy, they use it ineffectively and without

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DEPT: PG:

conviction. They emphasize the so-called "soft" issues, like the environment, and have little concern with notions of the international equilibrium, which they scorn as outdated. Obsessively driven by public opinion polls, they are ever tempted to perceive foreign policy as an extension of domestic politics. Their diplomacy is quite skillful in dealing with short-term tactical issues but obtuse with respect to strategy; adept at "spinning" public opinion but tone deaf to a generation's worth of lessons about the limitations of air power and the futility of notions of "graduated escalation"

The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate consideration of all its implications—or of possible alternatives. In the days before the start of the bombing, it was conventional wisdom in Washington that Serbia's historic attachment to Kosovo was exaggerated and

---

End of column

---

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DEPT: PG:

ingly never asked. What if Serbia, the country that fought the Turkish and Austrian empires and defied Hitler and Stalin at the height of their powers, did not yield? How far were we willing to go? Not to ground war, it was announced at the very beginning, tempting Milosevic to test his endurance to sustained bombing. No provision was made for foreseeable contingencies, such as a war of attrition and the flood of refugees it was bound to create—not to speak of the ethnic cleansing that the war has now *at least* accelerated and intensified.

From the start, there has been a growing gap between the rhetoric and the means with which to back it up. Allied public pronouncements have ritually compared Milosevic with Hitler. But the transparent reluctance to accept casualties signalled in *advance signals* that the Alliance would not make *recoils from* the all-out commitment necessary to *for the overthrow of* the accused tyrant. Now, *But if the* outcome is to be some kind of compromise, Milosevic will inevitably be legitimized and emerge as a valid interlocutor. The contradictions that aborted the Rambouillet conference will reemerge. By justifying the war

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MAY 20 '99 02:20PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

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DEPT:

PG:

--------- End of column---------

This is why the expectations
attached to the Russian mediation in
Kosovo seem excessive. A Russian interme-
diary mediator faces a double dilemma: if he is seen
as supporting the NATO program, he will
lose standing at home; if he induces us to
reduce our demands, he will become a
scapegoat in the American domestic debate
over compromising our war aims. Hence
Russian mediation of a ceasefire risks mort-
gaging US-Russian relations even further.

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P.9

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DEPT:

PG:

However Kosovo is resolved, the
damage to Russia's pride will linger for a
long time. To its credit, the Administration
has... from the *ils* beginning has recognized the
importance of bringing Russia into the
international community. But it has identi-
fied this effort primarily with democratic
reform and market economics inside Russia
and non-proliferation abroad. All this
accentuates exacerbates the Russian sense of having
come under a kind of colonial tutelage of the
West. Russia, in turn, has clung to many
aspects of its traditional diplomacy, or seek-
ing to reduce our influence, especially in the
Middle East. Russia's image of itself as an
historic player on the world stage must be
taken seriously. This requires less lecturing
and more dialogue; less sentimentality and
more realism that Russia's national inter-
ests are not always congruent with ours;
less sociology and more foreign policy.

HAKKOSOVO2

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MAY 20 '99 02:21PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

P. 11

[d]

HAKKOSOVO2

DEPT:

PG:

That cooperative policy is losing
momentum on our side largely because of
the tendency to treat policymaking as a
series of photo opportunities and reactions
to <u>the assault of critics</u> who see <u>in China</u> as our principal
strategic threat. The President has turned
his encounters with Chinese leaders into
television spectaculars <u>and/or</u> discussions of
immediate, tactical issues, mostly on trade.
A "strategic partnership" has been pro-
claimed, but real strategic discussions on
the highest level have been rare amidst dis-
putes over issues ranging from Taiwan to
human rights to non-proliferation. During a
nine day sojourn in China, the President
managed only two hours of dialogue with
the top Chinese leaders. And he has felt

HAKKOSOVO2

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P.12

[lc]

HAKKOSOVO2

DEPT:

PG:

A good example was the visit to
Washington in early April of Chinese
Premier Zhu Rongji—generally considered
among the most reformist and market-ori-
ented of the Chinese leaders. That visit was
bracketed just before Zhu's arrival by the
announcement that the United States would
support a UN resolution condemning
China's human rights practices, and imme-
diately afterwards by the sale of long-range
radars to Taiwan. And during the visit, the
Administration declined to sign an agree-
ment regarding China's entry into the WTO,
for which the Chinese had made major con-
cessions and which they had reason to
believe would be the centerpiece of Zhu's
visit. (To compound Zhu's embarrassment,
the Administration published all the con-
cessions he had made, causing him to
appear both accommodating and ineffec-
tive.)

Whatever one's view of the sub-
stance of these decisions, their timing con-
veyed an impression of a government inca-
pable of consistent policy and driven by its

HAKKOSOVO2

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P.13

[c]

HAKKOSOVO2

DEPT:

PG:

The bombing of the Belgrade
embassy was the match that set off the
explosion. Mutual suspicions fed on each
other. The Chinese viewed the President's
original apology—made as a response to a
question at a press conference during a visit
to Oklahoma and linked to a justification of
NATO bombing—as inadequate. Most
Americans—including myself—considered
the Chinese violence against the American
embassy unacceptable. But if the Sino-
American relationship is not to spiral
toward a confrontation, it is essential to call
a halt to mutual recrimination and seek to
restore a dialogue.

HAKKOSOVO2

Page 11 of 17

HAKKOSOVO2

DEPT:

PG:

The basic issue is the following: is
it whether it is the emergence of China as a major power

that threatens American vital interests? Or
is it whether it is the policies of the Chinese leadership
that demand a policy of confrontation?

Though critics of China are sincere ingenious in
emphasizing discovering basic obstacles challenges, Sino-
American disagreements have not yet
reached a point that they could not be over-
come by patient and firm diplomacy. And
there are many areas of congruent interests.
But if it is the emergence of China as a major
power or its internal structure that are to be
challenged, we will be embarked on a lonely
course without international support that a
wise policy would make every effort to
avoid. There is no more important task for
American foreign policy than to design a
strategy recognizing adversarial elements
yet drawing China into cooperative rela-
tions. We must not repeat in Asia the super-
ficialities that dominated our policy and
brought us such grief in the Balkans.

Despite the seeming unity of the
NATO summit, Kosovo has made a debate
about the Alliance's NATO's future inevitable. It is

HAKKOSOVO2

MAY 20 '99 02:22PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

P. 15

HAKKOSOVO2

DEPT:

PG:

being delayed by horror at Milosevic's bar-
barities and by the paradox that Europe's
new left wing governments—especially in
Germany and Italy—are afraid of being
accused of undermining their conservative
predecessors' legacy of pro-American and
pro-NATO foreign policy. (Which is why — at least in Germany — our traditional friends, the conservatives, are far
more reserved about Kosovo than the new government.) But these new
governments are likely to consider that they
have now paid enough homage to the tradi-
tions of allied solidarity. They can be
expected to be influenced by the mounting
indignation of their rank and file, who
would be protesting in the streets of
Germany in the tens of thousands had for-
mer Chancellor Helmut Kohl won the elec-
tion and carried out a similar policy. Once
the Kosovo crisis is over—and especially if
the final terms are at variance with the pro-
claimed goals—these constituencies will
become more dominant.

The issues ducked at the NATO
summit brook no further delay. Specifically,
what is the proper mission of NATO in so-
called "out of area" conflicts? What are the
relative roles of Europe and America with
respect to allocation of resources, military

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[c]

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DEPT:

PG:

dispositions, command arrangements and
diplomacy? Does the Alliance have a seri-
ous political or military strategy for stabiliz-
ing parts of Europe or adjacent strategic
regions?

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[c]

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DEPT:

PG:

transgressions of governments against their
own people. But we did not do so in Algeria,
the Sudan, Sierra Leone, Croatia, Rwanda,
the Caucasus, the Kurdish areas and many
other regions. The answer often given is
that we act where we are able to without
undue risk, not elsewhere. But what are the
criteria for this distinction? And what kind
of humanitarian policy is it that expresses
the reluctance to suffer military casualties
by devastating the civilian economy of its
adversary?

Moral principles are expressed in
absolutes. But foreign policy must forever
be concerned with reconciling ends and
means. The fact that ethnic cleansing is
repugnant does not obviate the need to
de devise the most appropriate response. At
every stage of the Kosovo tragedy, other
mixes of diplomacy and force were avail-
able, though it is not clear that they were
seriously considered. A strategy that, in the
name of morality, devastates both Serbia
and Kosovo and has already produced more
refugees and casualties than any conceiv-
able alternative, deserves to be questioned
on both political and moral grounds.

HAKKOSOVO2

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P.18

[t]c

HAKKOSOVO2

DEPT:

PG:

The United States can rightly take
pride in elevating human rights to an inte-
gral part of foreign policy. But when one
observes the progression from the call for
moral pressure of the 1970s, to economic
sanctions in the 1980s, to military interven-
tion in the 1990s, the time has come to call
for a definition of purposes and a dialogue
on the relationship between objectives and
methods.

Kosovo is on the verge of turning
into the sort of watershed the Vietnam war
was for an earlier generation. The paradox
is that a country that thinks of itself as acting
in the name of universal values is seen by
too many others as acting arbitrarily, or
inexplicably, or arrogantly. (Yeltsin has
been using the word "impudently.") A reex-
amination of the prevailing premises of our
foreign policy is overdue. This is a tall order
for the last eighteen months of an
Administration heretofore more given to
tactics than strategy, more to soothing
domestic criticism than to shaping history.
The agenda will not be completed in the
time left. But if the President encourages a
debate on a new agenda before the end of

HAKKOSOVO2

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MAY 18 '99 05:52PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

P.5

HAKKOSOVO

DEPT:

PG:

power in foreign policy; they use it ineffec-
tively and without conviction **and ineffectively**. They empha-
size the so-called "soft" issues, like the envi-
ronment, and are little concerned with such
notions as the international equilibrium.
Extraordinarily driven by public opinion
polls, they are ever tempted to perceive
**convert** foreign policy as an extension **into an aspect** of domestic
politics. Their foreign policy is quite skillful
in dealing with short-term tactical issues
but obtuse with respect to strategy; it is
adept at "spinning" public opinion but tone
deaf to the sensitivities of other societies.

The neglect of long-range strategy
explains how it was possible to slide into the
Kosovo conflict without adequate consider-
ation of all its implications. In the days
before the start of the bombing, it was con-
ventional wisdom in Washington that
Serbia's *Serbian* attachment to Kosovo was tenuous.

Slobodan Milosevic was said to be looking
for a pretext to get rid of the incubus it represented—
which three days of bombing was supposed

to supply. Key questions were seemingly
never asked. «okay? mark» But What if Serbia, the country
that **had** fought the Turkish and Austrian

HAKKOSOVO

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DEPT: PG:

empires and had defied Hitler and Stalin at the
height of their respective powers, did not yield? How
far were we willing to go? Not to ground
war, it was announced at the very begin-
ning, tempting Milosevic to test his ability
to endure endurance of sustained bombing. No provision
was made for foreseeable contingencies,
such as a war of attrition and the flood of
refugees it was bound to create—not to
speak of the ethnic cleansing, which the war
accelerated.

From the start, there has been a growing
gap between the rhetoric the administrata-
tion has employed (a habit left over from
domestic political battles) and the means
with which to back them up. Since the
beginning of the crisis, allied public pro-
nouncements have ritually compared Milosevic
with Hitler. But our the military dispositions and transparent reluctance
to accept Allied/American casualties signals our
their unwillingness to conduct the kind of strug-
gle necessary for the overthrow of such an
the accused tyrant. But If the outcome were is to be
some kind of negotiation, however, Milosevic could
would emerge as legitimized. All the ambiguities
that had aborted the Rambouillet conference

HAKKOSOVO

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[c]

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DEPT:

PG:

could *would* reemerge and be compounded by the onus of dealing with the proclaimed equivalent of Hitler. Thus the Alliance, under American leadership, has set a trap for itself by justifying the war in terms requiring total victory, while their strategy impels compromise. "excellent point. mark"

Several fateful *One of the most important* decisions were taken in those now seemingly far-off days in February, when *its* choices were still open to Washington. *to it*, The first was to insist under *with the* threat of force on placing 30,000 troops into a province that was waging a *the origin of the* struggle for independence against *right? mark* of a state with which NATO was not at war. The second was *and* to use the foreseeable refusal to accept this ultimatum as justification for military action. This proposal—hailed by American and British leaders as the opening of a new phase of humanistic diplomacy—marked an astounding departure for an administration that had entered office proclaiming its devotion to the UN and "assertive multilateralism."

This transformation of the Alliance from a defensive military body *alliance* into an institution prepared to impose its values *on a country with which it was not at war* by military

HAKKOSOVO

Page 5 of 16

P.8

[c]

HAKKOSOVO

DEPT:

PG:

It tended to undercut repeated American
and Allied assurances to the Russians that the Russians they had
nothing to fear from NATO expansion since
the Alliance's own charter proclaimed it as a
purely defensive institution.

In this manner, Kosovo has become a
symbol of Russia's post-Cold War frustra-
tions. Moscow's inability to protect a

The tribulations of Russia's traditional friend (leaving aside despite the inter-
ruption of the Tito years) brought home
Russia's decline and has generated a hostili-
ty to America and the West that has spread
beyond the Moscow elites into the population
at large, threatening the emergence of a
kind of Nationalist and Socialist Russia akin

to the European Fascism of the 1930s. "do you really take this threat that seriously? mark". This
would be a sorry end to for a decade of devoted
efforts by the Clinton Administration to
support Russian reform and relate Russia to

the West. This sincere and dedicated effort has always suffered from the reluctance of the Clinton Administration to
engage in a genuine strategic dialogue rather than a consultation consisting of a technical elaboration of American
views on functional questions. In this manner, Kosovo has turned into a crisis of US-Russian relations going far
beyond the Balkans.

HAKKOSOVO

Page 6 of 16

HAKKOSOVO

DEPT:

PG:

This is why such I believe that exorbitant
expectations are attached to the Russian
mediation in Kosovo. A Russian leader who
wants to stay in office cannot be perceived
at home as supporting the NATO program
in Yugoslavia. Hence a Russian mediator
faces a double dilemma: if he is seen as sup-
porting NATO's demands, he loses standing
at home; if he induces us to reduce our
demands, American political leaders will use Russia risks becoming as a scape-
goat of American critics of compromise.

domestic criticism to which they will be subjected. Either way, if Russia's mediation of a cease-
fire risks mortgaging US-Russian relations between
Moscow and Washington even further.

Russia's most constructive role, in my view, «okay? mark»
would be as full participant at a conference
for political arrangements in the Balkans
following a ceasefire.

Before the attack on its Belgrade
embassy, China's reaction to the bombing
was more muted than Russia's but equally
intense. Every nation views international
events through the prism of its history. And
to China, the new NATO doctrine of
humanitarian intervention evokes its expe-
rience with Europe's unilaterally pro-
claimed civilizing mission in the 19th

HAKKOSOVO

HAKKOSOVO

DEPT:

PG:

ensure *spell an Asia in turmoil* throughout Asia, leaving
China's neighborstorn and weakened and torn by the
need to choose *constantly* between America, the
world's only superpower, and the world's
most populous country with 5000 years of
uninterrupted history.

I agree with the Clinton administration
that engagement with China is in our
national interest. But the policy is losing
momentum *impetus* because of the tendency to see
policymaking as a series of photo opportuni-
ties and the Clinton strategy of neutralizing
domestic critics *opposition* by preempting
theirits criticisms. The President has turned
his encounters with Chinese leaders into a
-------- End of column --------

combination of television spectaculars and
discussions of immediate, tactical issues,
mostly on trade. Though a "strategic part-
nership" has been proclaimed, it has been
given little content. Real strategic discus-
sions on the highest level have been rare.
During a nine day sojourn in China, the
President managed only two hours of dia-
logue with the top Chinese leaders. And he
has felt obliged to balance his own China
policy with periodic bows to his critics.

HAKKOSOVO

Page 9 of 16

MAY 18 '99 05:54PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

P.12

[c]

HAKKOSOVO

DEPT:

PG:

A good example was the visit to Washington in early April of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji—generally considered among the most reform-minded <u>reformist</u> and market-oriented of the Chinese leaders. That visit was bracketed by the announcement just before Zhu's arrival that the United States would support a UN resolution condemning China's human rights practices, and by the sale of long-range radar to Taiwan immediately afterwards. And during the visit, the Administration declined to sign an agreement regarding China's entry into the WTO, for which the Chinese had made major concessions and which they had reason to believe would be the center-piece of Zhu's visit. (To compound Zhu's embarrassment, the Administration published all the concessions he had made, causing him to appear accommodating without being able to achieve his goal.) The merit of these decisions is not at issue here. Whatever one's view of their substance, the <u>their</u> timing conveys an impression of a government driven by its critics and incapable of consistent policy.

HAKKOSOVO

Page 10 of 16

P.13

HAKKOSOVO

DEPT:

PG:

In this atmosphere, the bombing of the Belgrade embassy proved the match that set off the explosion. It was compounded given impetus by the President's original apology—made not in a prepared statement but as a response to a question at a press conference during a visit to Oklahoma and linked to a justification of NATO strategy. I have described the Chinese reaction, especially the violence against our embassy, as "unacceptable." But if the Sino-American relationship is not to spiral toward a confrontation, it is essential to examine just how precarious our relations with other major powers like China have become.

Kosovo is in the process of turning into the sort of watershed the Vietnam war was for an earlier generation. A debate over the very *going to the premises of the Clinton Administration* foreign policy is looming—and necessary. The paradox is that an administration that thinks of itself as acting in the name of universal values is seen by too many others as acting arbitrarily, or inexplicably, or arrogantly. (Yeltsin has been using the word "garble, mark" "co_p_ tly.")

HAKKOSOVO

Page 11 of 16

HAKKOSOVO

The United States can rightly take pride
in elevating human rights to an integral part
of foreign policy. But when one observes the
progression from the call for moral pressure
of the 1970s, to economic sanctions in the
1980s, to military intervention in the 1990s,
the time has come to call for a definition of
purposes and a dialogue on priorities.

Whether the Administration initiates it or
not, it will soon be imposed on us by our
NATO allies.

The inevitable debate about NATO's
future is being delayed by horror at
Milosevic's barbarities and by the paradox
that Europe's new left wing governments—
especially in Germany and Italy—are afraid
of being accused of undermining their con-
servative predecessors' legacy of *pro-American and pro-*
NATO foreign policy. (Which is why—at
least in Germany—our traditional friends,
the conservatives, are far more reserved
about Kosovo than the new government.)
But these new left-wing governments may
well consider that they have now paid
enough homage *their dues* to the traditions of allied
solidarity. They can be expected to pay
increasing attention to the mounting indig-

DEPT:

PG:

HAKKOSOVO

Page 13 of 16

HAKKOSOVO

DEPT:

PG:

nation of their domestic constituents *rank and file*, who
would be protesting in the streets by the
*in their tens of tens* of thousands had former Chancellor
Helmut Kohl won the election and carried
out a similar policy.

The issues ducked at the NATO summit
 brook no further delay. Specifically, what is
 the proper mission of NATO in so-called
 "out of area" conflicts? What are the relative
 roles of Europe and America with respect
to *in availability of* resources, military dispositions, com-
mand arrangements and diplomacy? How
does a basically military organization find a
political role in stabilizing still tenuous
*unstable* parts of Europe? Europe (the UK included)
has already begun to draw the conclusion
from Kosovo that it needs to accelerate
*the building of its own institutions in order to*
become more independent *enhance its autonomy* from us - hardly a
vote of confidence in the middle of a war. At
the same time, it is not clear that it *But if it will com-
mit not supply the resources that greater autonomy*
would require. *for this task*. Thus we risk being *we will be* left with
the worst of all worlds: a Europe asserting
greater freedom of action from the United
States but with little actual ability to act

HAKKOSOVO

Page 14 of 16

HAKKOSOVO

Our relationship with Russia is drifting
into toward a perilous ______ dead end. However the
Kosovo conflict is resolved, ends the damage
______ End of column ______

____ end inflicted to on Russia's pride will last a long
time. To its credit, the Administration has,
from its beginning, recognized the impor-
tance of bringing Russia into the interna-
tional community. But it has identified this
primarily with democratic reform and mar-
ket economics inside Russia—exacerbating enhancing the Russian
sense of having become a kind of colonial
appendage to the West. In this phase, atten-
tion must be paid to Russia's image of itself
as a historic player on the continental stage.
This requires less lecturing and more dia-
logue; less elaboration of an agenda devised
in Washington and more scope for the
expression of Russian concerns; less sociol-
ogy and more foreign policy.

With respect to China, the leaders of both
countries seem aware that a confrontation
would be catastrophic for both sides as well
as for the peace of the world. But both gov-
ernments are under pressure from ideologi-

DEPT:

PG:

[c]

HAKKOSOVO

Page 15 of 16

MAY 18 '99 05:55PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

P.18

[L]

HAKKOSOVO

DEPT:

PG:

cal opponents at home. As for the United
States, there is no way to dodge this debate.
The critics are serious and so must be the
Administration. There is no more important
task for American foreign policy than to
design a strategy that recognizes China's
flaws yet still provides <u>adversarial elements yet masters them by</u> a clear definition of
the importance of cooperative relations
with Beijing. We must not repeat in Asia the
superficialities that dominated our policy
and brought us such grief in the Balkans.
This is a tall order for the last eighteen
months of an administration heretofore
more given to tactics than strategy, more to
soothing domestic criticism than to shaping
history. The agenda will not be completed
in the time left. But if the President encour-
ages a debate on it before the end of his
term, he will have left an important legacy.

HAKKOSOVO

Page 16 of 16

2778 WORDS

KISSINGER NEWSWEEK ARTICLE 5/19/99 II

A war at the far edge of the Balkans has had political consequences extending far beyond Kosovo. An outraged sense of humiliation has spread from the Moscow elite to the population at large and may blight US-Russian relations for decades. The virulent Chinese reaction to the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade vented frustrations with the roller-coaster nature of Sino-American relations accumulating for many months. And the seeming unity of the Atlantic Alliance is brittle: key allies are eying the exits; domestic opposition is mounting in Germany and Italy and was always powerful in Greece; the just admitted allies in Eastern Europe are uncomfortable that their first allied activity is as part of a NATO initiated war. If

2

the bombing continues into the summer, the crisis of
confidence is likely to become public.

The causes in Russia and China are plain enough. Their leaders are products of societies that interpret foreign policy in the historic terms of national interest. They assume that decisions about war and peace are made according to whether they enhance a nation's security or other vital interests. If they can discern no such traditional rationale to our behavior, they ascribe our motives not to altruism - the American perception of itself - but to a hidden agenda for domination.

3

The Clinton Administration's style and philosophy have so far compounded the crisis. The formative experiences of its key personnel were either in the trenches of the Vietnam protest movement, or of presidential campaigns - or both. Suspicious of the role of power in foreign policy, they use it ineffectively and without conviction. They emphasize the so-called "soft" issues, like the environment, and have little concern with notions of the international equilibrium, which they scorn as outdated. Obsessively driven by public opinion polls, they are ever tempted to perceive foreign policy as an extension of domestic politics. Their diplomacy is quite skillful in dealing with short-term tactical issues but obtuse with respect to strategy; adept at "spinning" public opinion but tone deaf to a generation's worth of lessons about the limitations of air power and the futility of notions of "graduated escalation."

[4]

The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was
possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate
consideration of all its implications or of possible
alternatives. In the days before the start of the bombing, it
was conventional wisdom in Washington that Serbia's historic
attachment to Kosovo was exaggerated and that Slobodan
Milosevic was looking for a pretext to get rid of the incubus
it represented - which a few days of bombing was supposed to
supply. Key questions were seemingly never asked. What if
Serbia, the country that fought the Turkish and Austrian
empires and defied Hitler and Stalin at the height of their
powers, did not yield? How far were we willing to go? Not to
ground war, it was announced at the very beginning, tempting
Milosevic to test his endurance to sustained bombing. No
provision was made for foreseeable contingencies, such as a
war of attrition and the flood of refugees it was bound to

[4]

5

create - not to speak of the ethnic cleansing that the war has
at least accelerated and intensified.

From the start, there has been a growing gap between the
rhetoric and the means with which to back it up. Allied public
pronouncements have ritually compared Milosevic with Hitler.
But the transparent reluctance to accept casualties signals
that the Alliance recoils from the all-out commitment
necessary for the overthrow of the accused tyrant. But if the
outcome is to be some kind of compromise, Milosevic will
inevitably be legitimized and emerge as a valid interlocutor.
The contradictions that aborted the Rambouillet conference
will reemerge. By justifying the war in terms requiring total
victory while conducting a strategy impelling compromise, the
Alliance has maneuvered itself into a trap.

[4]

6

still open. The first was the demand that 30,000 NATO troops enter a Yugoslav province identified with that country's struggle for independence, a state with which NATO was not at war and a province that had all the emotional significance of being the locus of the origin of that state's independence.

Rambouillet was not a negotiation - as is often claimed - but an ultimatum. This marked an astounding departure for an administration that had entered office proclaiming its devotion to the UN and "assertive multilateralism." The transformation of the Alliance from a defensive military grouping into an institution prepared to impose its values by force, occurred in the same months that three former Soviet satellites joined NATO. It undercut repeated American and allied assurances that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO

7

expansion since the Alliance's own charter proclaimed it to be
a purely defensive institution.

Kosovo has thereby become a symbol of Russia's post-Cold
War frustrations. The tribulations of Yugoslavia, Russia's
traditional friend (leaving aside the interruption of the Tito
years) emphasized Russia's decline and has generated a
hostility towards America and the West that threaten the
emergence of a kind of Nationalist and Socialist Russia - akin
to the European Fascism of the 1930s. This would be a sorry
end for the Administration's policy of supporting Russian
reform and relating Russia to the West.

This is why the expectations attached to the Russian
mediation in Kosovo seem excessive. A Russian mediator faces a
double dilemma: if he is seen as supporting the NATO program,
he will lose standing at home; if he induces us to reduce our
demands, he will become a scapegoat in the American domestic

8

debate over compromising our war aims. Hence Russian mediation of a ceasefire risks mortgaging US-Russian relations even further. Russia's most constructive role in my view would be as full participant at a conference for political arrangements in the Balkans following a ceasefire.

However Kosovo is resolved, the damage to Russia's pride will linger for a long time. To its credit, the Administration has, from its beginning, recognized the importance of bringing Russia into the international community. But it has identified this effort primarily with democratic reform and market economics inside Russia and non-proliferation abroad. All this exacerbates the Russian sense of having come under a kind of colonial tutelage of the West. Russia, in turn, has clung to many aspects of its traditional diplomacy, or seeking to reduce our influence, especially in the Middle East. Russia's image of itself as an historic player on the world stage must

9

be taken seriously. This requires less lecturing and more
dialogue; less sentimentality and more realism that Russia's
national interests are not always congruent with ours; less
sociology and more foreign policy.

Before the attack on its Belgrade embassy, China's
reaction to the bombing was more muted than Russia's but
equally negative. Every nation views international events
through the prism of its history. And to China, the new NATO
doctrine of humanitarian intervention evokes its experience
with Europe's unilaterally proclaimed civilizing mission in
the Nineteenth Century that led to the fragmentation of China
and a series of Western interventions. These humiliations were
followed in the Twentieth Century, first by the Japanese
invasions and then by the so-called Brezhnev doctrine that
proclaimed the Kremlin's right to punish by force of arms
Communist regimes that strayed from its ideological line.

10

That policy of reliance on close ties between the United States and China is now questioned in both capitals. President Clinton's China policy has built on the conviction of all his predecessors since Richard Nixon, that both China and the United States have much to gain from cooperation and risk exhausting themselves by confrontation. For China, confrontation would deal a severe blow to its economic program and modernization. For America, it would ensure turmoil throughout Asia, leaving China's neighbors weakened and torn by the need to choose between the world's most populous country, whose 5000 years of uninterrupted history give it a special place in Asia, and America, the world's only superpower.

[y]

11

That cooperative policy is losing momentum on our side largely because of the tendency to treat policymaking as a series of photo opportunities and the assault of critics who see in China our principal strategic threat. The President has turned his encounters with Chinese leaders into television spectaculars and/or discussions of immediate, tactical issues, mostly on trade. A "strategic partnership" has been proclaimed, but real strategic discussions on the highest level have been rare [amidst] disputes over issues ranging from Taiwan to human rights to non-proliferation. During a nine day sojourn in China, the President managed only two hours of dialogue with the top Chinese leaders. And he has felt obliged to balance his own China policy with periodic bows to his critics.

A good example was the visit to Washington in early April of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji - generally considered among the

[y]

12

That visit was bracketed by the announcement just before Zhu's arrival that the United States would support a UN resolution condemning China's human rights practices, and by the sale of long-range radars to Taiwan immediately afterwards. And during the visit, the Administration declined to sign an agreement regarding China's entry into the WTO, for which the Chinese had made major concessions and which they had reason to believe would be the centerpiece of Zhu's visit. (To compound Zhu's embarrassment, the Administration published all the concessions he had made, causing him to appear both accommodating and ineffective.)

Whatever one's view of the substance of these decisions, their timing conveyed an impression of a government incapable of consistent policy and driven by its critics into

13

subordinating to domestic politics a policy that should be
based on national interests.

The Chinese viewed the President's original apology - made as
a response to a question at a press conference during a visit
to Oklahoma and linked to a justification of NATO bombing - as
inadequate. Most Americans - including myself - considered the
Chinese violence against the American embassy unacceptable.

But if the Sino-American relationship is not to spiral toward
a confrontation, it is essential to call a halt to mutual
recrimination and seek to restore a dialogue.

The leaders of both countries seem aware that a
confrontation would be catastrophic for both sides as well as
for the peace of the world. But both are under pressure from
ideological opponents at home. As for the United States, there

14

The basic issue is whether it is the emergence of China
as a major power that threatens American vital interests, or
whether it is the policies of the Chinese leadership that
demand a policy of confrontation. Though critics of China are
ingenious in discovering basic challenges, Sino-American
disagreements have not yet reached a point that they could not
be overcome by patient and firm diplomacy. And there are many
areas of congruent interests. But if it is the emergence of
China as a major power or its internal structure that are to
be challenged, we will be embarked on a lonely course without
international support that a wise policy would make every
effort to avoid. There is no more important task for American
foreign policy than to design a strategy recognizing
adversarial elements yet drawing China into cooperative

[y]

15

relations. We must not repeat in Asia the superficialities that dominated our policy and brought us such grief in the Balkans.

Despite the seeming unity of the NATO summit, Kosovo has made a debate about NATO's future inevitable. It is being delayed by horror at Milosevic's barbarities and by the paradox that Europe's new left wing governments - especially in Germany and Italy - are afraid of being accused of undermining their conservative predecessors' legacy of pro-American and pro-NATO foreign policy. (Which is why - at least in Germany - our traditional friends, the conservatives, are far more reserved about Kosovo than the new government.) But these new governments are likely to consider that they have now paid enough homage to the traditions of allied solidarity. They can be expected to be influenced by the mounting indignation of their rank and file, who would be protesting in

[y]

16

the streets of Germany in their tens of thousands had former
Chancellor Helmut Kohl won the election and carried out a
similar policy. Once the Kosovo crisis is over - and
especially if the final terms are at variance with the
proclaimed goals - these constituencies will become more
dominant.

The issues ducked at the NATO summit brook no further
delay. Specifically, what is the proper mission of NATO in
so-called "out of area" conflicts? What are the relative roles
of Europe and America with respect to allocation of resources,
military dispositions, command arrangements and diplomacy?
Does the Alliance have a serious political or military
strategy for stabilizing parts of Europe or adjacent strategic
regions?

[y]

17

elaboration of its own institutions in order to enhance its autonomy from the United States - hardly a vote of confidence in the middle of a war. But if Europe will not supply the resources for this task - as is likely - the Alliance will be left with the worst of all scenarios: a Europe asserting greater freedom of action from the United States but with little actual ability to act alone; and an America estranged from Europe.

No issue is more in need of rethinking than the concept of humanitarian intervention put forward as the Administration's contribution to a new approach to foreign policy. The air war in Kosovo is justified as establishing the principle that the international community - or at least NATO - will henceforth punish the transgressions of governments against their own people. But we did not do so in Algeria, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, Croatia, Rwanda, the

[4]

18

Moral principles are expressed in absolutes. But foreign
policy must forever be concerned with reconciling ends and
means. The fact that ethnic cleansing is repugnant does not
obviate the need to devise the most appropriate response. At
every stage of the Kosovo tragedy, other mixes of diplomacy
and force were available, though it is not clear that they
were seriously considered. A strategy that, in the name of
morality, devastates both Serbia and Kosovo and has already
produced more refugees and casualties than any conceivable

19

The United States can rightly take pride in elevating
human rights to an integral part of foreign policy. But when
one observes the progression from the call for moral pressure
of the 1970s, to economic sanctions in the 1980s, to military
intervention in the 1990s, the time has come to call for a
definition of purposes and a dialogue on the relationship
between objectives and methods.

Kosovo is on the verge of turning into the sort of
watershed the Vietnam war was for an earlier generation. The
paradox is that a country that thinks of itself as acting in
the name of universal values is seen by too many others as
acting arbitrarily, or inexplicably, or arrogantly. (Yeltsin
has been using the word "impudently.") A reexamination of the
prevailing premises of our foreign policy is overdue. This is

20

a tall order for the last eighteen months of an Administration heretofore more given to tactics than strategy, more to soothing domestic criticism than to shaping history. The agenda will not be completed in the time left. But if the President encourages a debate on a new agenda before the end of his term, he will have left an important legacy.

2868 WORDS

A war at the far edge of the Balkans has had political consequences extending far beyond Kosovo. An outraged sense of humiliation has spread from the Moscow elite to the population at large and may blight US-Russian relations for decades. The virulent Chinese reaction to the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade vented frustrations with the roller-coaster nature of Sino-American relations accumulating for many months. And the seeming unity of the Atlantic Alliance is brittle: key allies are eying the exits; domestic opposition is mounting in Germany and Italy and was always powerful in Greece; the just admitted allies in Eastern Europe are uncomfortable that their first allied activity is as part of an *unilateral* NATO war.

[4]

2

against a neighbor. If the bombing continues into the summer,
the crisis of confidence is likely to become public.

The causes in Russia and China are plain enough. Their
leaders are products of societies that interpret foreign
policy in the historic terms of national interest. They assume
that decisions about war and peace are made according to
whether they enhance a nation's security or other vital
interests. If they can discern no such traditional rationale
to our behavior, they ascribe our motives not to altruism -
the American perception of itself - but to something more
cynical. They will interpret what seems like indifference to
their concerns to a hidden agenda for domination.

[4]

3

The Clinton Administration's style and philosophy have so
far compounded the crisis. The formative experiences of its
key personnel were either in the trenches of the Vietnam
protest movement, or of presidential campaigns - or both.
Suspicious of the role of power in foreign policy, they use it
ineffectively and without conviction. They emphasize the so-
called "soft" issues, like the environment, and have little
concern with notions of the international equilibrium, which
they scorn as outdated. Obsessively driven by public opinion
polls, they are ever tempted to perceive foreign policy as an
extension of domestic politics. Their diplomacy is quite
skillful in dealing with short-term tactical issues but obtuse
with respect to strategy; adept at "spinning" public opinion
but tone deaf to a generation's worth of lessons about the

4

limitations of air power and the futility of notions of
"graduated escalation."

The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was
possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate
consideration of all its implications or of possible
alternatives. In the days before the start of the bombing, it
was conventional wisdom in Washington that Serbia's historic
attachment to Kosovo was exaggerated and that Slobodan
Milosevic was looking for a pretext to get rid of the incubus
it represented - which a few days of bombing was supposed to
supply. Key questions were seemingly never asked. What if
Serbia, the country that fought the Turkish and Austrian
empires and defied Hitler and Stalin at the height of their
powers, did not yield? How far were we willing to go? Not to
ground war, it was announced at the very beginning, tempting
Milosevic to test his endurance against sustained bombing. No

[y]

5

provision was made for foreseeable contingencies, such as a
war of attrition and the flood of refugees it was bound to
create - not to speak of the ethnic cleansing that the war has
at least accelerated and intensified.

From the start, there has been a growing gap between the
rhetoric and the means with which to back it up. Since the
beginning of the crisis, allied public pronouncements have
ritually compared Milosevic with Hitler. But the transparent
reluctance to accept casualties signals that the Alliance
recoils from the all-out commitment necessary for the
overthrow of the accused tyrant. But if the outcome is to be
some kind of compromise, Milosevic will inevitably be
legitimized and emerge as a valid interlocutor. The
contradictions that aborted the Rambouillet conference will
reemerge and be magnified by the onus of having dealt with the
proclaimed equivalent of Hitler. The Alliance, under American

the Alleane leadership, has maneuvered itself into a trap. By justifying the war in terms requiring total victory while conducting a strategy impelling compromise.

Several fateful decisions were taken in those now seemingly far-off days in February, when other options were still open. The first was the demand that 30,000 NATO troops enter a Yugoslav province identified with that country's struggle for independence, a state with which NATO was not at war (and) a province that had all the emotional significance of being the locus of the origin of that state's independence.

The second was to use the foreseeable Serb refusal as justification for immediate military action. Rambouillet was not a negotiation - as is often claimed - but an ultimatum.

[y]

7

Alliance from a defensive military grouping into an institution prepared to impose its values by force, occurred in the same months that three former Soviet satellites joined NATO. It undercut repeated American and allied assurances that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO expansion since the Alliance's own charter proclaimed it to be a purely defensive institution.

8

This is why the expectations attached to the Russian mediation in Kosovo seem excessive. A Russian leader cannot stay in office and be perceived as a messenger for NATO's demands. A Russian mediator faces a double dilemma: if he is seen as supporting the NATO program, he will lose standing at home; if he induces us to reduce our demands, he will become a scapegoat in the American domestic debate over compromising our war aims. Hence Russian mediation of a ceasefire risks mortgaging US-Russian relations even further. Russia's most constructive role in my view would be as full participant at a conference for political arrangements in the Balkans following a ceasefire.

[y]

9

this primarily with democratic reform and market economics
abroad, this
inside Russia and non-proliferation, which only exacerbates
the Russian sense of having come under a kind of colonial
tutelage of the West. Russia, in turn, has clung to many
aspects of its traditional diplomacy, or seeking to reduce our
influence, especially in the Middle East. Russia's image of
itself as an historic player on the world stage must be taken
seriously. This requires less lecturing and more dialogue;
less sentimentality and more realism that Russia's national
interests are not always congruent with ours; less sociology
and more foreign policy.

10

with Europe's unilaterally proclaimed civilizing mission in
the Nineteenth Century that led to the fragmentation of China
and a series of Western interventions. These humiliations were
followed in the Twentieth Century, first by the Japanese
invasions and then by the so-called Brezhnev doctrine that
proclaimed the Kremlin's right to punish by force of arms
Communist regimes that strayed from its ideological line.
Indeed, it was to resist the Brezhnev doctrine that China
moved to restore its relations with the United States in 1971.

That policy of reliance on close ties between the United
States and China is now questioned in both capitals. President
Clinton's China policy has built on the conviction of all his
predecessors since Richard Nixon, that both China and the
United States have much to gain from cooperation and risk
exhausting themselves by confrontation. For China,
confrontation would deal a severe blow to its economic program

[y]

fenn p'

12

level have been rare! During a nine day sojourn in China, the President managed only two hours of dialogue with the top Chinese leaders. And he has felt obliged to balance his own China policy with periodic bows to his critics.

A good example was the visit to Washington in early April of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji - generally considered among the most reformist and market-oriented of the Chinese leaders. That visit was bracketed by the announcement just before Zhu's arrival that the United States would support a UN resolution condemning China's human rights practices, and by the sale of long-range radars to Taiwan immediately afterwards. And during the visit, the Administration declined to sign an agreement regarding China's entry into the WTO, for which the Chinese had made major concessions and which they had reason to believe would be the centerpiece of Zhu's visit. (To compound Zhu's embarrassment, the Administration published all the

[y]

13

Whatever one's view of the substance of these decisions,
their timing conveyed an impression of a government incapable
of consistent policy and driven by its critics into
subordinating to domestic politics a policy that should be
based on national interests.

The Chinese considered the President's original apology - made
not in a prepared statement but as a response to a question at
a press conference during a visit to Oklahoma and linked to a
justification of NATO bombing - as inadequate. Most
Americans - including myself - considered the Chinese violence
against the American embassy unacceptable. But if the Sino-
American relationship is not to spiral toward a confrontation,

[y]

14

The leaders of both countries seem aware that a
confrontation would be catastrophic for both sides as well as
for the peace of the world. But both are under pressure from
ideological opponents at home. As for the United States, there
is no way to dodge this debate. The critics are serious and so
must be the Administration.

The basic issue is whether it is the emergence of China
as a major power that threatens American vital interests, or
whether it is the policies of the Chinese leadership that
demand a policy of confrontation. Though critics are ingenious
at discovering basic challenges, Sino-American disagreements
have not yet reached a point that they could not be overcome
by patient and firm diplomacy. And there are many areas of
congruent interests. But if it is the emergence of China as a

15

major power or its internal structure that are to be challenged, we will be embarked on a lonely course without international support that a wise policy would make every effort to avoid. There is no more important task for American foreign policy than to design a strategy recognizing adversarial elements yet drawing China into cooperative relations. We must not repeat in Asia the superficialities that dominated our policy and brought us such grief in the Balkans.

["[y]", "16", "in Germany - our traditional friends, the conservatives, are\nfar more reserved about Kosovo than the new government.) But\nthese new governments are likely to consider that they have\nnow paid enough homage to the traditions of allied solidarity.", "They can be expected ~~to pay increasing attention to the~~\nmounting indignation of their rank and file, who would be\nprotesting in the streets of Germany in their tens of\nthousands had former Chancellor Helmut Kohl won the election\nand carried out a similar policy. Once the Kosovo crisis is\nover - and especially if the final terms are at variance with\nthe proclaimed goals - ~~they can be expected to pay more~~\n~~they can be expected to pay more~~\n~~the proclaimed goals - ~~they can be expected to

17

Does the Alliance have a serious political or military strategy for stabilizing parts of Europe or adjacent strategic regions? Europe (the UK included) has already begun to draw the conclusion from Kosovo that it needs to accelerate the elaboration of its own institutions in order to enhance its autonomy from the United States - hardly a vote of confidence in the middle of a war. But if Europe will not supply the resources for this task - as is likely - the Alliance will be left with the worst of all scenarios: a Europe asserting greater freedom of action from the United States but with little actual ability to act alone; and an America estranged from Europe.

[y]

18

policy. The air war in Kosovo is justified as establishing the
principle that the international community - or at least
NATO - will henceforth punish the transgressions of
governments against their own people. But we did not do so in
Algeria, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, Croatia, Rwanda, the
Caucasus, the Kurdish areas and many other regions. The answer
often given is that we act where we are able to without undue
risk, not elsewhere. But what are the criteria for this
distinction, and what is the moral difference between these
expediences compared to the much decried expediences of the
so-called realists? And what kind of humanitarian policy is it
that expresses the reluctance to suffer military casualties by
devastating the civilian economy of its adversary?

19

obviate the need to devise the most appropriate response. At every stage of the Kosovo tragedy, other mixes of diplomacy and force were available, though it is not clear that they were seriously considered. A strategy that, in the name of morality, devastates both Serbia and Kosovo and has already produced more refugees and casualties than any conceivable alternative, deserves to be questioned on both political and moral grounds.

20

Kosovo is on the verge of turning into the sort of watershed the Vietnam war was for an earlier generation. The paradox is that a country that thinks of itself as acting in the name of universal values is seen by too many others as acting arbitrarily, or inexplicably, or arrogantly. (Yeltsin has been using the word "impudently.") A reexamination of the prevailing premises of our foreign policy is overdue. This is a tall order for the last eighteen months of an Administration heretofore more given to tactics than strategy, more to soothing domestic criticism than to shaping history. The agenda will not be completed in the time left. But if the President encourages a debate on a new agenda before the end of his term, he will have left an important legacy.

2868 WORDS

A war at the far edge of the Balkans has had political consequences extending far beyond Kosovo. An outraged sense of humiliation has spread from the Moscow elite to the population at large and may blight US-Russian relations for decades. The virulent Chinese reaction to the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade vented frustrations with the roller-coaster nature of Sino-American relations accumulating for many months. And the seeming unity of the Atlantic Alliance is brittle: key allies are eying the exits; domestic opposition is mounting in Germany and Italy and was always powerful in Greece; the just admitted allies in Eastern Europe are uncomfortable that their first allied activity is as part of an unilateral NATO war

2

[4]

3

4

The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was
possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate
consideration of all its implications or of possible
alternatives. In the days before the start of the bombing, it
was conventional wisdom in Washington that Serbia's historic
attachment to Kosovo was exaggerated and that Slobodan
Milosevic was looking for a pretext to get rid of the incubus
it represented - which a few days of bombing was supposed to
supply. Key questions were seemingly never asked. What if
Serbia, the country that fought the Turkish and Austrian
empires and defied Hitler and Stalin at the height of their
powers, did not yield? How far were we willing to go? Not to
ground war, it was announced at the very beginning, tempting
Milosevic to test his endurance of sustained bombing. No

5

[y]

6

leadership, has maneuvered itself into a trap. It justifies
the war in terms requiring total victory while conducting a
strategy impelling compromise.

Several fateful decisions were taken in those now
seemingly far-off days in February, when other options were
still open. The first was the demand that 30,000 NATO troops
enter a Yugoslav province identified with that country's
struggle for independence, a state with which NATO was not at
war [and] a province that had all the emotional significance
of being the locus of the origin of that state's independence.

[4]

7

8

[y]

9

this primarily with democratic reform and market economics inside Russia and non-proliferation, which only exacerbates the Russian sense of having come under a kind of colonial tutelage of the West. Russia, in turn, has clung to many aspects of its traditional diplomacy, or seeking to reduce our influence, especially in the Middle East. Russia's image of itself as an historic player on the world stage must be taken seriously. This requires less lecturing and more dialogue; less sentimentality and more realism that Russia's national interests are not always congruent with ours; less sociology and more foreign policy.

[y]

10

11

and modernization. For America, it would ensure turmoil
throughout Asia, leaving China's neighbors weakened and torn
by the need to choose between the world's most populous
country, whose 5000 years of uninterrupted history give it a
special place in Asia, and America, the world's only
superpower.

That cooperative policy is losing momentum on our side
largely because of the tendency to see policymaking as a
series of photo opportunities and the assault of critics who
see in China our principal strategic threat; and on the
Chinese side, because of Taiwan and disputes over issues
ranging from human rights to non-proliferation. The President
has turned his encounters with Chinese leaders into television
spectaculars and/or discussions of immediate, tactical issues,
mostly on trade. A "strategic partnership" has been
proclaimed, but real strategic discussions on the highest

12

level have been rare. During a nine day sojourn in China, the
President managed only two hours of dialogue with the top
Chinese leaders. And he has felt obliged to balance his own
China policy with periodic bows to his critics.

[y]

13

14

[y]

15

Despite the seeming unity of the NATO summit, Kosovo has
made a debate about NATO's future inevitable. It is being
delayed by horror at Milosevic's barbarities and by the
paradox that Europe's new left wing governments - especially
in Germany and Italy - are afraid of being accused of
undermining their conservative predecessors' legacy of pro-
American and pro-NATO foreign policy. (Which is why - at least

[y]

16

in Germany - our traditional friends, the conservatives, are
far more reserved about Kosovo than the new government.) But
these new governments are likely to consider that they have
now paid enough homage to the traditions of allied solidarity.
They can be expected to pay increasing attention to the
mounting indignation of their rank and file, who would be
protesting in the streets of Germany in their tens of
thousands had former Chancellor Helmut Kohl won the election
and carried out a similar policy. Once the Kosovo crisis is
over - and especially if the final terms are at variance with
the proclaimed goals - they can be expected to pay more
attention to their constituencies.

[4]

17

[y]

18

[4]

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[y]

20

MAY-17-99 MON 11:37

GOLDHAMMK

RHA NU. 501/450300

12

That visit was bracketed by the announcement just before Zhu's
arrival that the United States would support a UN resolution
condemning China's human rights practices, ~~and~~ the sale of
long-range radars to Taiwan immediately afterwards. And during
the visit, the Administration declined to sign an agreement
regarding China's entry into the WTO, for which the Chinese
had made major concessions and which they had reason to
believe would be the centerpiece of Zhu's visit. (To compound
Zhu's embarrassment, the Administration published all the
concessions he had made, causing him to appear ~~accommodating~~
~~and ineffective~~ without being able to achieve his goal.)

The merit of these decisions is not at issue here. ~~of the decisions~~
Whatever one's view of their substance, their timing conveyed

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