Playing NATO Poker in the Balkans

If anyone is wondering what is going on in the Balkans, the answer is simple: NATO has switched sides. It was not long ago that Lord George Robertson, NATO’s Secretary General, raged about NATO’s obligation to attack Yugoslavia to protect the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo. At the time he was British Minister of Defense. Now at the helm of NATO, Robertson, a left-wing radical-turned-liberal, is determined to make sure that, “[t]hese ethnic Albanian armed groups – and others – know that their time is coming to an end.”

To this end, in Kosovo, he is allowing the same Yugoslav military that NATO not long ago vilified as a gang of genocidal Nazis into the Albanian-populated “buffer zone” on the border of Kosovo; and in Macedonia he supports that government’s promise to “neutralize and eliminate” the Albanian rebels.

Not to worry, though, Lord Robertson assured the NATO allies that the Yugoslav military – which incidentally is headed by the same General who led it during what NATO called the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo – would show “moderation and sensitivity” as it moves back into Kosovo. Which is it, NATO, is the Yugoslav Army "serial ethnic cleansers" or models of "moderation and sensitivity"?

Indeed, the NATO Secretary General is speaking in the exact same terms regarding Macedonia's reaction to the Albanian insurgency as did former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic when faced with the same insurgency in his own country – just before he was bombed for it.

Lord Robertson said Monday that, “The objective is a united Macedonia, a Macedonia united against those who use violence to try to achieve political objectives.” Substitute Serbia for Macedonia and you have the standard Milosevic speech while the Kosovo Liberation Army was busy attacking Serb police and military forces in attempt to break Kosovo away from Yugoslavia. It seems, as Orwell would report it, that NATO is no longer at war with Eurasia after all; NATO is at war with Eastasia and Eurasia is an ally. Eurasia had always been an ally.

Meanwhile, Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski goes further than Milosevic at his meanest, vowing that his country's policy was to "liquidate terrorists." This time, however, it is a policy that NATO openly supports. Said Robertson Monday, "The Macedonian government has acted with commendable restraint and determined firmness and they have said they intend to continue with this policy which has been so successful to date.”

For those confused about how yesterday’s “freedom fighters” can become today’s “terrorists,” one lesson is that this is no longer your father’s NATO. Once the impenetrable defensive line against Communism’s determined advance, NATO has been adrift since the end of the Cold War. Seeking a raison d’etre, and in the hands of many who had spent their early careers opposed to its very existence, NATO was transformed at the Washington Summit of 1999 into an organization that no longer merely defends members against attack. There, the organization declared that it would concern itself with “economic, social and political difficulties…ethnic and religious rivalries, territorial disputes, inadequate or failed efforts at reform, the abuse of human rights, and the dissolution of states.” Now that's a tall order.

In this new game of NATO poker, it seems that a West-installed leader in Serbia trumps a pair of KLA thugs in Kosovo. Therefore a Serbia headed by Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who polite voices never mention made his career attacking Milosevic for not being nationalistic enough in Bosnia, is a much better ally than that old drug-running Marxist KLA. The royal flush, of course, will be the hand that allows the Serbs back into Kosovo to clean up the mess that NATO created in the first place trying to secure the province for KLA rule, while giving the green light to Macedonia to do the same. Round and round we go. Unfortunately for the innocents, that hand will also bring more suffering for a people who have already had to live through being "rescued" once by NATO. Perhaps the remaining hope is that heretofore poker-faced President Bush will call the bluff: ending U.S. participation in a failed mission and taking a good, hard look at what NATO has become under Clinton and his left-wing friends in Europe.

March 30, 2001

McAdams has monitored elections throughout Central and Eastern Europe with the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. He is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Security Policy.