McCAIN OUTLINES VIEWS ON BALKANS
CRISIS
"As we all know, wars seldom go according to plan. That
is all the more true when leaders don't seem to have a plan -
a viable plan, anyway - as appeared to be the case as we went
to war with Serbia. That criticism, I concede, is a little exaggerated,
but it is not entirely facetious. To request an additional 300
aircraft three weeks into the war is not an indication that everything
is on track.
"Administration officials repeatedly claim that they expected
the tragic events that occurred after the air campaign began,
a claim that has been greeted with much deserved derision by
just about everyone.
"We went to war to coerce Slobodan Milosevic into accepting
the terms of the Rambouillet accord, an accord that was intended
to end atrocities against the Kosovars, to provide Kosovo with
political autonomy protected by a NATO peacekeeping force, and
to prevent open hostilities in Kosovo from inciting hostilities
in other countries and destabilizing the region.
"Within two weeks after the first NATO airstrike, Serb military
and paramilitary forces were in complete control of Kosovo after
having waged a campaign of atrocities against ethnic Albanians
the likes of which we never expected to see again in Europe.
Moreover, as part of their aggression Serbia has deliberately
promoted instability in Macedonia, Albania, and threatened aggression
against Montenegro.
"If the Administration had expected these developments to
occur, they might have warned the Kosovars who signed the Rambouillet
agreement with the implicit promise that NATO would protect them.
"I think it is safe to assume that no one, including me,
anticipated the speed with which Serbia would defeat our objectives
in Kosovo, and the scope of that defeat. Yes, the war is only
three weeks old, and yes, NATO can and probably will prevail
in this conflict with what is, after all, a considerably inferior
adversary. But victory will not be hastened by pretending that
things have just gone swimmingly.
"Worse, unless we all, administration supporter and detractor
alike, look critically at both why we went to war in the Balkans,
and why we have failed to achieve our ends, I fear the administration
and our NATO allies might commit the gravest mistake we could
make at this time: changing our ends to make our means more effective
rather than employing more effective means to achieve our ends.
"Surely, some of our terms for peace will have to be modified
to correspond to new realities on the ground and to achieve our
ultimate ends, which are security for the Kosovars and peace
and stability in the Balkans. Genuine autonomy for Kosovo that
includes the presence in Kosovo of 5000 Serb military and security
personnel is hard to conceive as practical anymore. I think it
would be a pretty hard sell to convince Kosovars that it is safe
to return to communities that are policed by the very people
who so savagely depopulated them. Nor do I think it likely that
the Kosovo Liberation Army can be persuaded again to accept any
status less than independence.
"We might need to expand our demands to accomplish our essential
purpose. But I worry the administration might do the opposite.
I worry that our purpose will be reduced because the administration
is unwilling to change the means we use to accomplish it. Degrading
Serb's military was not identified as an end of our intervention
until air strikes failed to achieve our initial goals. It isn't
an end; it's a means to an end. It doesn't even mean anything.
Knock out one tank or one SAM site, and you have degraded their
military.
"It seems clear to most observers that NATO's use of force
against Serbia suffered from the beginning from two critical
tactical errors. The first is an excessively restricted air campaign
that sought the impossible goal of avoiding war while waging
one. The second is the repeated declarations from the President,
Vice President, and other senior officials that NATO would refrain
from using ground troops even if the air campaign failed. These
two mistakes were made in what almost seemed willful ignorance
of every lesson we learned in Vietnam. I am not haunted by memories
of Vietnam, but I must admit I never thought we would again witness
in my lifetime the specter of politicians picking targets and
ruling out offensive measures in the absurd hope that the enemy
would respond to our restraint by yielding to our demands.
"As almost anyone with any war experience knows, you're
never supposed to show the enemy what you won't do to win. You
only make more likely the failure of whatever action you are
willing to take. Air strikes that did not immediately bring home
to the Serb people as well as the Serb regime just how overwhelmingly
powerful a force they were now confronting predictably failed
to dissuade Milosevic from ruthlessly pursuing his abhorrent
goals.
"For air strikes to have any chance of preventing Milosevic's
awful atrocities they needed to be, from the beginning, massive,
strategic and sustained. No infrastructure targets should have
been off limits. And while we all grieve over civilian casualties
as well as our own losses, they are unavoidable. When nations
settle their differences by force of arms a million tragedies
ensue. That's why we try to avoid it. War is a much more terrible
thing than cruise missile attacks on Iraqi radar sites. But losing
a war is worse.
"Force should always be a part of but not a substitute for
diplomacy. Whether our diplomacy in the months preceding the
use of force was well conceived and well conducted we will no
doubt debate at length in the future. I do believe that the threat
of force is a necessary component of diplomacy when trying to
affect the behavior of tyrants like Milosevic. But we've all
heard reports that some administration officials believed that
the threat of force alone was such a powerful incentive for Serb
cooperation that the threat may have dominated other aspects
of diplomacy. I don't know whether the charge is deserved or
not. But I do know that we were not adequately prepared to make
good on that threat, which suggests that its use was somewhat
cavalier.
"When a president threatens war he should plan for it. And,
at a minimum, when he intends to use very limited means to wage
war, he should have a contingency plan ready for their probable
failure. President Clinton seems to have had neither a Plan A
nor a Plan B. And, for reasons that completely elude me, he and
the Vice President doggedly persist, in opposition to widespread
bipartisan criticism, in publicly ruling out any preparation
for the possible deployment of ground troops.
"If war against Serbia was necessary then winning the war
is necessary as well. That is a trite remark, I know. But the
administration's policy is so mystifying to me that it begs such
obvious criticism.
"Did we have sufficient reason to go to war? There is, of
course, widespread disagreement about that. Both supporters and
opponents marshal sound arguments in their favor. I have a general
rule that the use of force, with all its attendant tragedies,
should be reserved for grave threats to both our strategic interests
and our political values. Indeed, I believe our national security
policy should and generally has concentrated on questions where
our interests and values clearly converge. Containment and the
Reagan Doctrine are obvious examples.
"We all agree that America's most important values -- "life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- are under vicious
assault by the Milosevic regime. But there is an honest debate
about whether our vital interests were at risk in this conflict.
"Many critics have cited events in Rwanda, the Sudan and
elsewhere as examples comparable to or exceeding Kosovo of horrific
inhumanity in areas outside the vital interests of the U.S. where
we declined to intervene with force. As my friend and articulate
advocate for a narrowly defined nationalist foreign policy, Pat
Buchanan says, "Whose flag flies over Pristina has never
been an American concern."
"I don't know if we could have stopped ethnic cleansing
in Kosovo by means short of force. I think the United States
should inaugurate a 21st Century policy interpretation of the
Reagan Doctrine, call it rogue state rollback, in which we politically
and materially support indigenous forces within and outside of
rogue states to overthrow regimes that threaten our interests
and values. Surely, Milosevic's regime, which has started four
wars in the last ten years and is infamous for its brutal racism,
merited such treatment. But I don't know if there was sufficient
time for either more effective diplomacy or assistance to Milosevic's
opponents to prevent him from laying waste to another subject
population. Perhaps there was, and it is a question well worth
exploring at a later time.
"Nevertheless, I sincerely believe that Serbia's assault
on Kosovo did threaten our interests, and thus its defeat is
a cause worth fighting for. I'm not convinced that it would have
destabilized the entire region. It might have, and God knows
it threatens to do so now if we don't bring this conflict to
a successful conclusion as soon as possible. But I do believe
that Milosevic's ambitions directly threaten two extremely important
American interests: our global credibility and the long-term
viability of the Atlantic Alliance.
"First, our credibility. It seems to me obvious on the face
of it that after two separate American presidents warned Milosevic
that the United States would not tolerate Serb aggression against
Kosovo, and after President Clinton twice delivered ultimatums
to Milosevic to come to terms at Rambouillet or else, that the
failure to make good on those threats would devastate our credibility
everywhere in the world. And by that I don't mean President Clinton's
credibility our Secretary Albright's credibility or any other
individual's credibility. I mean our credibility - American credibility.
"The consequences of that damage would be severe. Surely,
other rogue state dictators would be encouraged to challenge
us more aggressively. But I fear that other, larger powers, would
become bolder as well, not necessarily or only by posing security
challenges, but by complicating our leadership on international
questions from proliferation control to economic crises.
"Friend and foe alike perceive a gap between a great power's
rhetoric and its actions as weakness. Our enemies, of course,
will soon test our resolve in other ways to determine how far
they can exploit our debility. Our friends will seek new arrangements
to compensate for what they perceive as our unreliability. Thus,
whether we had a strategic interest in the Balkans or not we
acquired one the moment we threatened force. Credibility is a
strategic asset of the highest order, and well worth fighting
to maintain.
"Second, I fear that NATO, the most successful alliance
in history, would not survive another decade much less another
half century should we fail to impose our will on an inferior
but dangerous European power. Alliances are not ends in themselves.
They are formed to protect our interests. We shouldn't neglect
our interests to form alliances.
"Flush with success but unable to modernize its mission,
NATO is suffering an identity crisis, a crisis that has sparked
three troubling developments.
"First, our allies are spending far too little on our mutual
defense. The day is fast approaching when each member's forces
won't be able to communicate with each other on the battlefield.
It is imperative that we persuade our allies to increase their
support of the Alliance. Not only because American popular support
for NATO will erode in the absence of greater allied burden sharing,
but to maintain the alliance as an effective fighting force.
"Second, Europe's growing determination to develop a defense
identity separate from NATO. Once only the product of French
resentments, the idea of a separate defense identity is now even
entertained in London. We must be emphatic with our allies. We
welcome their efforts to assume more of their own defense, but
only within the institutions of NATO. Defense structures accountable
to a European organization other than the Alliance would ultimately
kill the Alliance. Would Turkey be excluded? I suspect it would.
Would Turkey then remain in NATO, and would NATO survive Turkey's
withdrawal? Doubtful.
"Moreover, its not hard to envision our allies intervening
militarily, under the auspices of their new defense organization
and without our concurrence, in very difficult problems that
they are unprepared to resolve, necessitating an eventual appeal
to NATO to bail them out. America's support for membership in
NATO would soon evaporate in those circumstances.
"That support will also disappear if the United States and
its allies cannot come to an agreement on when we should act
in mutual defense of each other's interests outside Europe. I
doubt we can achieve such a consensus if we fail to agree on
where we should act in defense of our interests in Europe.
"Most Americans believe we intervened in Bosnia and in Kosovo
at the behest of our NATO allies. They are, of course, not exactly
mistaken in that view. In part, we are in the Balkans because
our allies want us to be involved in efforts to prevent conflict
there from threatening their interests. Most Americans, at least
before we went to war with Serbia, could not see the connection
between our security and Milosevic's crimes.
"They can, however, see the impact of Saddam's refusal to
honor the terms of the Gulf War cease-fire, and they don't understand
why some of European allies decline to help us enforce those
terms. Most Americans recognize the threat of proliferation,
and they can't understand why our allies are often dismissive
of our attempts to keep rogue states from acquiring these weapons.
"If the United States bears the greatest share of our mutual
defense, then we expect our allies to pay as much attention to
our concerns, in and out of Europe, as we do to theirs. And if
we are unwilling to help defuse what President Clinton called
a "powder keg in the heart of Europe" then the prospects
of achieving consensus on an out of area mission is very remote.
"I believe these two strategic interests of the United States,
together with our obligations to defend the values which define
our nation, justified the use of force against Serbia. And if
those interests and values were at risk before we intervened,
they would be gravely, probably mortally wounded if we do not
prevail.
"That is why I find it so utterly inexplicable that the
President, having identified a serious threat to our national
interests and values, refuses to employ the means necessary to
defeat it. It has struck me that the President has spent at least
as much time assuring us, and our adversary, that he will not
deploy ground troops as he has explaining to us why we went to
war in the first place. I doubt anyone in this room or any military
strategist anywhere would justify mapping the limits of our resolve
to an enemy we are presently at war with.
"I agree that Russia is a concern. But I do not believe
that Russia's leaders, who govern a country that practically
lacks an economy, perceive their relationship with a renegade
Serbian regime to be a paramount interest that takes precedence
over the advantages it needs to acquire through a good relationship
with the West. But if reason does entirely desert Russian leaders,
it will happen not because we threatened or even introduced ground
troops into Kosovo, but because we allowed this conflict to drag
on indefinitely while irrational nationalism grew and eventually
overwhelmed Moscow.
"It seems clear to me that the best course for us, NATO,
Kosovo, Russia and even Serbia is to begin fighting this war
as if it were a war, with huge stakes involved, instead of some
strange interlude between peace initiatives. That means, regrettably,
an immediate and manifold increase in the violence against Serbia
proper and Serbian forces in Kosovo. I still fear that NATO's
political leaders are interfering with General Clark's prosecution
of the war. Again, avoiding casualties, theirs and ours, is not
our primary objective. Winning is, the sooner the better.
"To that end, we should commence today to mobilize infantry
and armored divisions for a possible ground war in Kosovo. Hopefully,
taking this overdue action will convince Milosevic that there
is no self-imposed limit to our determination to liberate Kosovo
from his tyranny. But if it doesn't, we will be prepared to do
what we must to end this conflict on our terms.
"The Serbs will fight, and we must prepare the country for
the inevitability of casualties. But we should not let ignorance
frighten us into paralysis. NATO is more than a match for the
Serbian military, a military, after all, that has faced no greater
challenge than fighting a small, outgunned KLA, and terrorizing
old men, women and children. Serbia is a country the size of
Ohio, with ten million people and an army with outdated Soviet
equipment, much of which I hope has been destroyed by our airstrikes.
"The concern that we will become bogged down in a long campaign
in Serbia, and then stuck in a permanent garrison of Kosovo is
overstated. We are a vastly superior power, and we are fully
capable of completely destroying Serbian opposition. Moreover,
should we be forced to intervene on the ground, I doubt very
much that the Milosevic regime could survive the inevitable defeat
of the Serbian military. And with the collapse of the regime,
I would hope that prospects for peace and stability in the region,
and the restraint of ethnic hostilities improve. At any rate,
I doubt a successor Serb regime would be in a hurry to recover
Kosovo by force. United States forces should not be permanently
stationed in Kosovo to protect its integrity. I don't believe
we would stay for years and certainly not decades as some opponents
of U.S. intervention warn.
"Finally, Congress should -- this week -- debate and vote
on a resolution authorizing the President to use whatever force
necessary to force Serbia from Kosovo. Silence and equivocation
will not unburden us of our responsibility to support or oppose
this war. I do not recommend this course lightly. I know that
should Americans die in a land war with Serbia, I will bear a
considerable share of the responsibility for their loss. I and
any member who shares my views must be as accountable to their
families as the President must be.
"But I would rather face that sad burden than hide from
my conscience because I sought an advantageous political position
to seek shelter behind. Nor could I endure the dishonor of having
known my country's interests demanded a course of action, but
avoided taking it because the costs of defending them were substantial,
as were its attendant political risks.
"Contrary to popular belief, members of Congress are honorable
people. The only honorable course is for us all to vote our conscience.
If those who oppose this war and any widening of it prevail,
so be it. The President will pursue his current course until
its failure demands we settle on Milosevic's terms. Those who
feel that course is preferable must accept blame for whatever
negative consequences ensue from our failure.
"Should those of us who want to use all force necessary
to end this war on our terms prevail, then, as I said, we must
accept responsibility for our losses. But all members of Congress
should then cease further debate and unite to support the early
accomplishment of the mission.
"Let me close by urging the Administration and the Congress
to show the resolve and confidence of a superpower. Our cause
is just and our early success is imperative. Let us keep our
nerve, and see the thing through to the end no matter how awful
the images of war appear on our televisions. The costs of failure
are infinitely greater than the price of victory."
