Bashing NATO

Bashing NATO It is also with how the bombing campaign was conducted (at such high altitudes that significant mistakes were made with resulting "collateral damage") and the targets chosen (civilian bridges on the Danube, for example). The irony, however, is that since 1999, NATO has cooperated well with Serbia. While the initial military focus was on securing Kosovo from the Milosevic forces, it soon became clear that the principle task it faced - and still faces today - was protecting the Serbian and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo from retaliation by the Kosovo Albanians. This realization was hammered in by the wave of violence against Kosovo Serbs, which took place in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal of Serbian forces. It is soldiers from the NATO-led KFOR that protect the Kosovo Serb enclaves and religious monuments around the clock. Moreover, the Serbian government and NATO/KFOR cooperated effectively in dealing with the Albanian insurgency in the Ground Safety Zone (GSZ) in Southern Serbia in 2000-2001. I believed then it was a significant turning point, as for the first time in at least fifteen years; the Serbian military had worked in partnership successfully with NATO instead of in opposition. The overall return of the GSZ to Serbian control was done so successfully, that the ground-level military commander (General Krstic) and the Coordinator for Southern Serbia, Nebojsa Covic, were invited to the Headquarters of U.S. forces in Europe (located in Stuttgart) to give a detailed briefing on their accomplishments. They also gave a similar briefing to NATO Ambassadors in Brussels and met with the NATO Secretary-General. At the same time, Russian performance in Kosovo has been anything but stellar. First of all, when they had military units in Kosovo as part of the KFOR effort, they were totally ineffectual against the infiltration of the GSZ by armed Albanian extremists. Their troops essentially stayed in their compounds and did no patrolling, leaving their sector wide-open. The United States had to send some of our units to "help out" in order to tighten controls over that boundary line. While one would have imagined with their supposed pro-Serbian tendencies, the Russian troops would have been particularly hard on the Kosovo Albanians, the opposite seemed to be the case. Moreover, their decision to leave KFOR and withdraw all of their Peacekeeping forces from Kosovo is the last step one would expect from a nation now setting "red lines" which cannot be crossed. They certainly would have had far more influence if their troops were still on the ground. So what is one to make of the repeated attacks on NATO by senior leaders of the DSS Party? At first glance, they appear off-target and ill timed. Members of the European Union, the United States, and Russia at least internationally - will make the political decisions about the future of Kosovo. NATO has not in any way been the center of any of the efforts made during the past few years to resolve the Kosovo situation. Moreover, the latest round of consultations over the future status of Kosovo is now just underway. Why pick a fight now with an institution basically on the sidelines of this struggle? There are, in fact, several reasons. a) It fits in well with Vladimir Putin's view of the world. Calling an independent Kosovo "a NATO State" is in line with the Cold War philosophy, which Putin is spouting more and more. It seems that Russia is putting together a block of countries which seem to have in common only a mutual dislike for the West. Serbia is traveling further and further down that slippery slope, probably believing that it is not taking any "irreversible" steps. b) It is an easier target than the EU. Polls consistently show that the EU in Serbia is viewed far more positively than NATO. Attacking NATO costs little and still raises the profile of the Kosovo issue higher. Attacking the EU, which in almost any scenario, would play the major role in any future Kosovo, is at least for now impolitic. c) While we in the West view the NATO/KFOR protection of the Kosovo Serbs as something which should earn some appreciation from the Serbs, nationalists would simply say that if security would have been left in the hands of the Serbian military and police in the first place, the Kosovo Serbs would not be in the predicament in which they find themselves today. They point to the part of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which calls for the return of limited Serbian forces to secure religious sites and ask why this was never implemented. So NATO's efforts are severely discounted and even criticized as being deliberately inadequate. This was reinforced by the consistently over-optimistic security estimates provided by KFOR for a number of years since 1999. d) Looking ahead to the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo Albanians, the DSS foresees the possibility of conflict between elements of KFOR and Kosovo Serbs who refuse to accept the independence of Kosovo. While all of the above are accurate and parts of the puzzle, by far the most important reason is: e) Domestic Politics. The DSS is unhappy with its governmental coalition, where a majority of Ministerial positions belong to other parties. It is unhappy with the personal popularity of President Tadic. It is unhappy with its declining percentage of the popular vote. It is particularly unhappy with the polls, which show the DS far more popular than the DSS. And the DSS knows that it has no real hope of getting votes from the Radicals or Socialists. I have said many times that Zoran Djindjic divided the electorate into three groups: hard-line nationalists, western, democratically oriented moderates, and a middle group with nationalist tendencies who also wanted the benefits of a closer relationship with the West. It is precisely this last group that the DSS is now targeting with a vengeance. They are trying to bring out the nationalist tendencies of that group. The anti-NATO campaign is designed to do just that. As they do, they are deliberately placing the DS in an awkward position. The DS is forced to either ignore the increasingly strident anti-NATO rhetoric or to attack it. If it ignores it, which it has done until now, it is allowing the DSS to chart the direction, which Serbia will take and also appears weak. If, on the other hand, it attacks those statements, it is forced to appear to be defending an institution (NATO), which is very unpopular in Serbia today. The end-result, thus far, is the Foreign Minister taking a Partnership for Peace Document to Brussels in which an agreed-upon sentence that Serbia's goal is closer relationships with the Euro-Atlantic Institutions has been modified to eliminate the reference to NATO. So the attack on NATO is actually part of a broader attack on the Democratic Party and its President. This is also shown in the effort of the DSS to postpone Presidential elections until after the end of the 120-day period of consultations over Kosovo (December 10). What this means in practice is that the DSS either prefers a Radical as President rather than Boris Tadic (which would be the result of elections following any unilateral declaration of independence) or is intentionally raising this option in order to give the West one more reason to prevent any unilateral steps by the Kosovo Albanians. And it is willing to eschew closer ties with the West in favor of an enhanced relationship with Russia if that is what it takes to maintain firm Russian support over Kosovo. In August 2000 during a meeting with Milo Djukanovic, I asked him for his opinion about the new DOS Candidate for President, Vojislav Kostunica. As he usually does when asked a sensitive question, he hesitated a moment, got a certain serious look on his face, and then gave a precise reply. He compared the two Presidential candidates, Milosevic and Kostunica. He said that people consistently made a mistake in calling Milosevic a nationalist. He was actually a pragmatist who used nationalism for his political ends. This explains, he added, why Milosevic was willing on occasions to compromise or even to turn his back on the Croatian Serbs and Bosnian Serbs when it suited his greater interests. Kostunica, in contrast, was a nationalist who would remain true to his principles to the end and would not compromise. This, he added with diplomatic understatement, was a cause for real concern. It is precisely those nationalistic principles, which are now leading Serbia into totally unknown territory. Serbia traveling into unknown territory? Kostunica, Putin (Beta, archive) To this day, antipathy towards NATO remains high in Serbia. It isn't just that it was NATO, which conducted the bombing campaign in 1999 and forced the withdrawal of Serbian military and police units from Kosovo. "Calling an independent Kosovo 'a NATO State' is in line with the Cold War philosophy, which Putin is spouting more and more. It seems that Russia is putting together a block of countries which seem to have in common only a mutual dislike for the West. "

Bashing NATO

It is also with how the bombing campaign was conducted (at such high altitudes that significant mistakes were made with resulting "collateral damage") and the targets chosen (civilian bridges on the Danube, for example).

The irony, however, is that since 1999, NATO has cooperated well with Serbia. While the initial military focus was on securing Kosovo from the Miloševic forces, it soon became clear that the principle task it faced - and still faces today - was protecting the Serbian and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo from retaliation by the Kosovo Albanians.

This realization was hammered in by the wave of violence against Kosovo Serbs, which took place in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal of Serbian forces. It is soldiers from the NATO-led KFOR that protect the Kosovo Serb enclaves and religious monuments around the clock.

Moreover, the Serbian government and NATO/KFOR cooperated effectively in dealing with the Albanian insurgency in the Ground Safety Zone (GSZ) in Southern Serbia in 2000-2001. I believed then it was a significant turning point, as for the first time in at least fifteen years; the Serbian military had worked in partnership successfully with NATO instead of in opposition.

The overall return of the GSZ to Serbian control was done so successfully, that the ground-level military commander (General Krstić) and the Coordinator for Southern Serbia, Nebojša Čović, were invited to the Headquarters of U.S. forces in Europe (located in Stuttgart) to give a detailed briefing on their accomplishments. They also gave a similar briefing to NATO Ambassadors in Brussels and met with the NATO Secretary-General.

At the same time, Russian performance in Kosovo has been anything but stellar. First of all, when they had military units in Kosovo as part of the KFOR effort, they were totally ineffectual against the infiltration of the GSZ by armed Albanian extremists. Their troops essentially stayed in their compounds and did no patrolling, leaving their sector wide-open.

The United States had to send some of our units to "help out" in order to tighten controls over that boundary line. While one would have imagined with their supposed pro-Serbian tendencies, the Russian troops would have been particularly hard on the Kosovo Albanians, the opposite seemed to be the case.

Moreover, their decision to leave KFOR and withdraw all of their Peacekeeping forces from Kosovo is the last step one would expect from a nation now setting "red lines" which cannot be crossed. They certainly would have had far more influence if their troops were still on the ground.

So what is one to make of the repeated attacks on NATO by senior leaders of the DSS Party? At first glance, they appear off-target and ill timed. Members of the European Union, the United States, and Russia at least internationally - will make the political decisions about the future of Kosovo.

NATO has not in any way been the center of any of the efforts made during the past few years to resolve the Kosovo situation. Moreover, the latest round of consultations over the future status of Kosovo is now just underway. Why pick a fight now with an institution basically on the sidelines of this struggle?

There are, in fact, several reasons.

a) It fits in well with Vladimir Putin's view of the world. Calling an independent Kosovo "a NATO State" is in line with the Cold War philosophy, which Putin is spouting more and more. It seems that Russia is putting together a block of countries which seem to have in common only a mutual dislike for the West. Serbia is traveling further and further down that slippery slope, probably believing that it is not taking any "irreversible" steps.

b) It is an easier target than the EU. Polls consistently show that the EU in Serbia is viewed far more positively than NATO. Attacking NATO costs little and still raises the profile of the Kosovo issue higher. Attacking the EU, which in almost any scenario, would play the major role in any future Kosovo, is at least for now impolitic.

c) While we in the West view the NATO/KFOR protection of the Kosovo Serbs as something which should earn some appreciation from the Serbs, nationalists would simply say that if security would have been left in the hands of the Serbian military and police in the first place, the Kosovo Serbs would not be in the predicament in which they find themselves today.

They point to the part of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which calls for the return of limited Serbian forces to secure religious sites and ask why this was never implemented. So NATO's efforts are severely discounted and even criticized as being deliberately inadequate. This was reinforced by the consistently over-optimistic security estimates provided by KFOR for a number of years since 1999.

d) Looking ahead to the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo Albanians, the DSS foresees the possibility of conflict between elements of KFOR and Kosovo Serbs who refuse to accept the independence of Kosovo.

While all of the above are accurate and parts of the puzzle, by far the most important reason is:

e) Domestic Politics.

The DSS is unhappy with its governmental coalition, where a majority of Ministerial positions belong to other parties. It is unhappy with the personal popularity of President Tadic. It is unhappy with its declining percentage of the popular vote. It is particularly unhappy with the polls, which show the DS far more popular than the DSS. And the DSS knows that it has no real hope of getting votes from the Radicals or Socialists.

I have said many times that Zoran Đinđić divided the electorate into three groups: hard-line nationalists, western, democratically oriented moderates, and a middle group with nationalist tendencies who also wanted the benefits of a closer relationship with the West. It is precisely this last group that the DSS is now targeting with a vengeance. They are trying to bring out the nationalist tendencies of that group. The anti-NATO campaign is designed to do just that.

As they do, they are deliberately placing the DS in an awkward position. The DS is forced to either ignore the increasingly strident anti-NATO rhetoric or to attack it. If it ignores it, which it has done until now, it is allowing the DSS to chart the direction, which Serbia will take and also appears weak.

If, on the other hand, it attacks those statements, it is forced to appear to be defending an institution (NATO), which is very unpopular in Serbia today. The end-result, thus far, is the Foreign Minister taking a Partnership for Peace Document to Brussels in which an agreed-upon sentence that Serbia's goal is closer relationships with the Euro-Atlantic Institutions has been modified to eliminate the reference to NATO.

So the attack on NATO is actually part of a broader attack on the Democratic Party and its President. This is also shown in the effort of the DSS to postpone Presidential elections until after the end of the 120-day period of consultations over Kosovo (December 10).

What this means in practice is that the DSS either prefers a Radical as President rather than Boris Tadić (which would be the result of elections following any unilateral declaration of independence) or is intentionally raising this option in order to give the West one more reason to prevent any unilateral steps by the Kosovo Albanians. And it is willing to eschew closer ties with the West in favor of an enhanced relationship with Russia if that is what it takes to maintain firm Russian support over Kosovo.

In August 2000 during a meeting with Milo Đukanović, I asked him for his opinion about the new DOS Candidate for President, Vojislav Koštunica. As he usually does when asked a sensitive question, he hesitated a moment, got a certain serious look on his face, and then gave a precise reply.

He compared the two Presidential candidates, Milošević and Koštunica. He said that people consistently made a mistake in calling Milošević a nationalist. He was actually a pragmatist who used nationalism for his political ends.

This explains, he added, why Milošević was willing on occasions to compromise or even to turn his back on the Croatian Serbs and Bosnian Serbs when it suited his greater interests.

Koštunica, in contrast, was a nationalist who would remain true to his principles to the end and would not compromise. This, he added with diplomatic understatement, was a cause for real concern. It is precisely those nationalistic principles, which are now leading Serbia into totally unknown territory.