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Kosovo

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ANNOUNCER: Brought to you in part by ADM, feeding the world is thebiggest challenge of the new century, which is why ADM is conductingresearch into agriculture and other new food sources. ADM,supermarket to the world. Additional funding is provided by the JohnM. Olin Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry BradleyFoundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

(Musical break.)

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. The NATO bombingcampaign in Kosovo has entered its second month. President Clintoncontinues to rule out the use of ground forces. But one of today'sguests, Robert Kagan, writes in this week's Weekly Standard thateventually the United States and its NATO allies will send groundforces into Yugoslavia. A month into the war and many questionslinger. Is NATO winning or losing? Is air power enough? And whatdoes our war with Serbia tell us about the proper role of the UnitedStates as the world's sole surviving superpower, or for that matterabout the proper role of regional security agreements, such as NATO? To answer these and other questions, Think Tank is joined by RobertKagan, director of the U.S. Leadership Project at the CarnegieEndowment for International Peace, and a contributing editor to theWeekly Standard; Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow for preventivediplomacy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, andauthor of Turbo Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the GlobalEconomy; and Ted Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreignpolicy studies at the Cato Institute, and author of Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe's Wars. The topic before the house, whyKosovo, this week on Think Tank.

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MR. WATTENBERG: The war for Kosovo has uncovered some surprisingpolitical and strategic fault lines. Many conservatives who werehawks during the Cold War have turned dovish when it comes to dealingwith the situation in Yugoslavia, and many Cold War doves who, in thepast, often shunned the use of violence have turned into vehementhawks. These include several NATO leaders, most notably a one timewar protester named Bill Clinton. All of the turmoil in the Balkansraises an important question for America, what should be the role ofthe world's sole remaining superpower as we move out of this, theAmerican Century, and into what hopefully will be the next AmericanCentury. To find out, we turn to our expert panel. Gentlemen, thankyou for joining us. Let's just go around the room quickly with amildly elemental question. Who's winning this war? Bob Kagan?

MR. KAGAN: Well, right now, I don't think anybody is winning. Ithink it's probably too much of a stretch to say Milosevic iswinning. But it's also clear that NATO is not winning. And, willnot win as long as it limits itself strictly to an air campaign.

MR. LUTTWAK: NATO is not winning so long as it doesn't fight inearnest. Airplanes fly around, but they are used so cautiously that,in fact, we only have the form of air power, not it's real content.

MR. CARPENTER: The air campaign was designed to prevent a Serbmilitary offensive in Kosovo, prevent the conflict in Kosovo fromspilling over into neighboring states, and to undermine Milosevicpolitically. Not only has it failed to achieve those objectives, ithas been spectacularly counterproductive with regard to all threeobjectives.

MR. WATTENBERG: Well, let me say, for my part, that I think weare winning the war. That it is what we in the old Johnsonadministration used to call a graduated response or escalation. And,it is working. And, as a veteran of the Air Force, Airman SecondClass, I believe that, as Billy Mitchell did, that air power can bedecisive. What do you think about that?

MR. KAGAN: I'm glad you brought up the Johnson administration,because I certainly would have brought it up.

MR. WATTENBERG: Well, I'm very proud of it.

MR. KAGAN: I would have thought that the lesson of that is thatgraduated response is not, in fact, a very successful way to fight awar. And Johnson lost his presidency over that strategy.

MR. WATTENBERG: Well, the latter part is not true. Arguable.

MR. KAGAN: The only sense in which NATO is winning is that thecampaign continues and Milosevic is not doing well.

MR. WATTENBERG: Haven't they sort of backed themselves into acorner where they can't lose? I mean, they've set the bar so high,you get almost 50 leaders of state coming here to Washington saying,we won't lose, we can't lose. And here is this little Mickey Mousecountry, little country, Serbia. Isn't it obvious that we're goingto win?

MR. KAGAN: Well, you're asking two different questions. One is,are we eventually going to win? I think the answer is, yes, and it'sbecause we're going to send in ground troops, which is the only wayof winning. If the question is, are we winning now, I don't thinkthe answer is yes.

MR. LUTTWAK: I can agree with what you said. You can say thatNATO is winning. It's winning in a very, very slow, very tortuousway. It's torturing the Serb people with its bombing, and it isallowing the Serbs to torture the Kosovars.

MR. WATTENBERG: I agree with that.

MR. LUTTWAK: The whole moral claim for this war is that this is ahumanitarian war. It's a disinterested war. We're doing it forthat. And, you'll notice that nothing has been done for them, and asa former Airman Second Class, I'm sure you know that what's happenedis that cowardice has been institutionalized. Cowardice has beenturned into the operational format. You fly 15,000 feet. Therefore,you don't fly low. Since you fly at 15,000 to be safely above theantiaircraft, much of the time you protest that you cannot bomb atall because of bad weather. What they mean by bad weather is not thekind of clouds that stop you from bombing. It's the kind of cloudsthat stop you from bombing at your ideal safe altitude when you'redoing visual recognition type bombing.

MR. WATTENBERG: Would you be prepared to accept an amendment toyour statement, this is not cowardice but caution?

MR. LUTTWAK: No.

MR. WATTENBERG: It's cowardice?

MR. LUTTWAK: I insist, it's institutionalized cowardice. It is aconsensus from the president to the operational commander. In thiscase, it would be the SACEUR, the Supreme Allied Command in Europe,this nation allows this, an agreement. You see, in the beginning ofthe war, for example, among the aircraft that were based in Italywere the A-10s. The A-10 is a specialized, one purpose, anti-tankaircraft.

MR. WATTENBERG: It's the Warthog?

MR. LUTTWAK: The Warthog, exactly. It is sort of designed arounda very big 30-millimeter cannon, very powerful, high velocity cannon,and a huge magazine. The A-10 was present at the base in Italy fromthe beginning of the war. When the ethnic cleansing started, it tookthe specific form of small groups of Serbs, 80 to 150, terrorizingentire villages of Albanians because they were backed up by three,four, five, six armored vehicles, you know, troop carriers, tanks andstuff. The A-10s are sitting in Italy 20 minutes away. The A-10sare not sent in. The British do not send in the Harriers. TheBritish, French, German, Italian armed helicopters are not sent in.

MR. WATTENBERG: May we stipulate that there have been a lot ofmistakes in this war? Would everybody agree?

MR. LUTTWAK: It's not a mistake. I'm not changing stance. It'snot a mistake. It's not like I made the wrong turn. From thebeginning, we have watched the ethnic cleansing happen. We have seenit being carried out by very few Serbs. You know the total number ofSerb soldiers and police operating in Kosovo below 20,000. Only lastweek they were reinforced maybe above. And for years we've beenspending a lot of money to retain, among other things, the Apachehelicopters at a very high state of readiness. They complain, theywhine when they don't have them at a very high state of readiness. Well, they were ordered into the theater, into Albania, from Germany30 days ago, and they still have to fly the first mission.

MR. CARPENTER: Ben, the key is that even people who thought thiswas an appropriate mission for NATO I think have to concede that theexecution has bordered on absolute ineptitude. The administrationand NATO appear to have no contingency plans. The point with theApache helicopters, why were they unavailable? If NATO thought thatthere was a possibility the rosy scenario would not turn out, thatMilosevic would not cave in after a few days, one would think thosewould be made available.

MR. WATTENBERG: Ted, I wanted to ask you the question, you wereagainst going in originally. Are you among those number who say,well, now that we're in, we have to win, or do you say out now?

MR. CARPENTER: No. I'm a strong believer in limiting one'slosses, in walking away from a policy mistake, not escalating mattersand committing an even greater folly. And I think that's what we'reon the verge of doing.

MR. WATTENBERG: If you were president, you'd pull the troops outnow?

MR. CARPENTER: I would search for a graceful diplomatic exit. The Russians have been offering one on several occasions, and I thinkNATO would be wise to take it as soon as possible, because thealternative is to escalate, is to put in ground forces. We have thena much more difficult war, and it's not going to be the kind ofantiseptic war that NATO has had so far.

MR. WATTENBERG: But, you know, again, getting back to some of theVietnam rhetoric, there was a statement which I will try to clean up,which is, if you've got them by their private parts, their hearts andminds will follow. If you keep pounding on them by air, you don'thave to have a land war if they say, okay, and the deputy primeminister of Yugoslavia this week said, you know, we're going to losethis thing. Let's sit down and talk. Isn't it almost a no-brainerthat we're going to prevail?

MR. KAGAN: No, because you're making an assumption there that weare going to be able to carry out a bombing campaign as long as isnecessary to bring Milosevic to heel. I think Milosevic feels thatwe will not, in fact, be able to sustain the will in the West tocontinue a bombing campaign, especially if the bombing campaign isnot, in fact, solving the problem that it was meant to solve, whichis the slaughter in Kosovo. Especially as civilian casualties inSerbia and the suffering of the population of Serbia increases withno clear end in sight. And especially as Russia and Miloseviccontinue to throw out little peace feelers that are intended tofracture the alliance. We have a problem of staying power as well. It's not just a question of Milosevic. How long can the alliancecontinue doing this, another month, another two months? I'mconcerned that eventually the will to continue this bombing campaignthat does not produce results will evaporate. And that's why I thinkwe have to go toward a more serious prosecution of war.

MR. WATTENBERG: But they are beginning now to hit the power grid,to hit the media, probably to hit the bridges. I mean, I think, ifyou're serious, as Ed says, you should have done this more quickly,and you would have saved more lives. And you have 19 powerfulnations against one little state. I mean, you don't have to be anexpert in real politique, if you're a Yugoslav, to say, we'd betterget out of this thing. They're not going to have a country left.

MR. KAGAN: They may not have a country left, but Milosevic onlycares about one thing, which is his own position and power. Hedoesn't care how much the Serbs suffer any more than Saddam Husseincares how much the Iraqis suffer. And we are not, at this moment, byratcheting up slowly, now I know you don't want to get into tactics,but nevertheless if you ratchet up slowly, as you ratchet up slowly,the population and the person that you're trying to effect theirdecisions, they gradually accommodate themselves to each ratchetingup of the pressure. And, as long as Milosevic can hold out hope thatthe allies will not, in the end, be able to maintain the coalitionthroughout a long bombing campaign, he's going to hang in there onthe basis of that hope.

MR. LUTTWAK: In regard to the graduated bombing of Serbia, I'mmuch more sympathetic. And the precise point you just made, when thebombing started, there was a possibility that the alliance couldcrack. Within a few days, the Italians, for example, asked for anEaster truce. However, because the bombing was so gradual, someasured, the fact is that the alliance has, in fact, kept together,has maintained and increased its cohesion. And, therefore, Milosevicis facing a relentless machine there, which I think will break hisresolve.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me interrupt you, what are we doing there? As somebody who will answer this in a positive way, why don't westart with you, and let's devote the rest of the program to what thebig picture is?

MR. KAGAN: Well, what we're doing there is, we're pursing whathas been an abiding American interest for 50 years at least of tryingto maintain both stability and some semblance of a decent order inEurope, which happens to be special in terms of what Americans careabout.

MR. WATTENBERG: So, you don't agree with Ed that, oh, it's justhumanitarian?

MR. KAGAN: No, I don't agree that it's just humanitarian. Ialso, by the way, don't think that you can so neatly dividehumanitarian concerns on one said, and interests on the other. Weare, after all, as are some other nations, but we are uniquely, theUnited States is uniquely, a power whose foreign policy is shaped andcarved by principles that we represent at home. We have conductedour foreign policy for 50 years, at least, and I would say for longerthan that.

MR. WATTENBERG: So by your scenario, Bob, what do we get if wewin?

MR. KAGAN: We gain some purchase on the future. We make it clearto potential aggressors, not only in Europe, but elsewhere, topotential committers of genocide, especially in Europe, but possiblyelsewhere as well, that the United States and its allies do intend totry to preserve as much of a decent order as is possible, and protectits interests when those interests are threatened.

MR. WATTENBERG: What's wrong with that? We've lived through ahorrific 20th Century where people have been, particularly in Europe,have been engaged in blood sport for the first half of this centuryat least, killing each other, and here's this group of the 19 nationsfinally saying, never again, for the 21st Century, there's a brightnew day ahead. What's your problem?

MR. CARPENTER: Well, I think it's an inappropriate comparison tocompare 2000 deaths in 13 months of civil war, which is what occurredup to the point of NATO bombing with the holocaust of the otherhorrific episodes of real genocide in the 20th Century. As far as --

MR. WATTENBERG: I agree with you, but the Serbs had done realgenocide earlier in Bosnia, 200,000 people.

MR. CARPENTER: Even that is -- if you examine the estimates bythe international committee of the Red Cross now in the StockholmInternational Peace Research Institute, neither organization has adog in that fight, the estimates are, in fact, 55,000 to 75,000 dead. The 200,000 Bosnian --

MR. WATTENBERG: It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people.

MR. CARPENTER: Granted, but it's still basically garden varietycivil war. You need to ask what do we win? Okay. We prevail. Weget Milosevic to cave. We've already contributed to greaterinstability in the Balkans. We basically get most of the Balkans asa bouncing baby American protectorate. That might appeal tomasochists, but I can't imagine why that's a great gain.

MR. WATTENBERG: A NATO protectorate.

MR. LUTTWAK: But, this is an American policy, let's not kidourselves.

MR. KAGAN: But, why should we not be involved in this?

MR. LUTTWAK: I didn't say that this was -- the motive of this warwas humanitarian. I said a war ostensibly being fought forhumanitarian reasons doesn't look good when the whole world sees thispowerful United States, and its NATO allies, not being willing torisk the lives of three pilots to save thousands of Albanians. Thisis how the coward behaves, the bully behaves. So one consequence ofthis war is that for the little peoples of the world the message is,if you're protected by NATO --

MR. WATTENBERG: I just want to keep you out of hot water. Whenyou're talking about cowards and bullies, you're not talking aboutAmerica's brave fighting men and women.

MR. LUTTWAK: No, I'm talking about the system --

MR. WATTENBERG: I just want to keep you --

MR. LUTTWAK: No, the system that withdraws from Somalia after 18people are killed, the overall political system, it's you and me, theCongress, the president, it's been absorbed by the joint chiefs, andof course in conjunction with NATO, where you have this secondgeneration of military officers in most countries, which have nomilitary experience. The whole notion of actually fighting, actuallykilling, actually being killed has become very alien. You know,things are all ritualized. But, this is all beside the point.

MR. WATTENBERG: This is sort of the Cap Weinberger, Colin Powelldoctrine of never fight a war unless you can win it in advance, andvery antiseptically.

MR. LUTTWAK: You know, Americans are not -- the American peopleare not really sentimental. They're going to figure out that allthis -- in the end that, you know, perhaps we don't have to spend somuch money.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Let's go back to the question that weasked. Why are we there? You're a strategic, long-term thinker,okay --

MR. LUTTWAK: I think that one element of why we are there is thatduring the Cold War we learned the habit of intervening in conflicts,in order to prevent them escalating, because of the fear that theymight become a Cold War conflict. And so we learned the habit ofstopping wars, getting in and stopping them. Well, you know --

MR. WATTENBERG: It worked pretty well.

MR. LUTTWAK: It worked -- first of all, it worked very badly forthe people whose wars were stopped, because wars that could havestarted and ended in weeks became 50 year conflicts, which wereinterrupted by cease fires, and armistices. Armistices are notpeace, you know, they congeal war. Behind the armistice line youkeep building up, you don't really have peace. It was a disaster forthe Arabs and Israelis who could have started and ended the war inthree weeks, but they were stopped. It was a disaster, of course,India-Pakistan, Korea, all these situations of frozen war. War cando its task of bringing peace, by burning the resources and the willto fight war. That's how peace -- but it was essential and I acceptit, because we could not afford the risk of escalation. Well, we'vecarried this habit over into the post Cold War era. We don't havethe risk of reciprocal interventions leading to nuclear war, yet wehave this notion that the moment a war breaks out you have to have acease fire.

MR. WATTENBERG: Ed, let me interrupt you because we're gettingclose to the end, why are we there, or do you think there's a goodreason for us to be there? Mr. Kagan thinks there is. Mr. Carpenterthinks there is not. I think there is a very good reason. Do youhave a position which you will state?

MR. LUTTWAK: I think that the United States should not haveintervened in this conflict, but should have thrust theresponsibility on the Europeans, and forced them to do it, which itcould have been done. Instead, because of what I consider anunnecessary activism, the United States maneuvered itself into therole of --

MR. CARPENTER: I would basically agree with that, but this isbroader. It's a manifestation of foreign policy hypochondria. We'renot distinguishing between developments that matter to the UnitedStates, the behavior of a People's Republic of China, or thewillingness of the major powers of Europe to stay at peace with oneanother. That's the kind of order, that's the kind of stabilitythat's important to the United States, not conflict that might createthat might create a little instability in some peripheral region.

MR. WATTENBERG: Ted, we have talked before on this program. Youmay correct me if I'm wrong, but you have been against any extensionof American power?

MR. CARPENTER: That's not true. That is absolutely not true.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. That's why I said correct me if I'm wrong. Which one were you or the Cato Institution saying right on, this iswhere we have to go.

MR. CARPENTER: I never quarreled with the need to contain Sovietpower during the Cold War.

MR. WATTENBERG: I understand that.

MR. CARPENTER: That was the kind of important, macrointernational development.

MR. WATTENBERG: But, post Cold War, zero.

MR. CARPENTER: Well, we have intervened in places where it wouldbe difficult to come up with a list of countries that are lessstrategically or economically relevant to the United States.

MR. KAGAN: Can I just say --

MR. WATTENBERG: Please.

MR. KAGAN: -- that there is a certain sense in which the Cold Warhas made us stupid. It's as if the only foreign policy we canimagine is the foreign policy of containing the Soviet Union. Therewas no foreign policy before that and there's no foreign policy afterthat. I think it's worth recalling that the people who wererebuilding the international order, Dean Acheson and company, afterthe Second World War, before the Soviet Union had emerged in theirminds as the threat that had to be dealt with, they were trying toprevent another World War II. They were trying to prevent another1930s. And they set out on a project to try to create aninternational system, with the United States as the core, that wouldprevent, you know, more Ethiopias, more invasions of Manchuria, allthe events of the 1930s from turning eventually into something muchbigger. And it seems to me after the Cold War, we have to have thesame general wisdom that the founders of the post World War II periodhad.

MR. WATTENBERG: I want to ask, we're just about at the end. Iwant to ask one other question. Isn't this, in its essence, from anAmerican point of view and from a European point of view, as well,not withstanding the fact that we hear it's all this money, and thedeficit and the budgets, and billions in bombs, this is anextraordinarily cheap war. I mean, we may call up 30,000 reservists,we haven't yet. The people are on payroll in America, and in NATO. Some extra fuel costs, some extra bomb costs, nobody has gottenkilled yet. If there are casualties, they will probably be quitelimited, and if you win against that on the one side, if you win youcan enter the next century and say, we are involved, there is ademocracy coalition in the world. We're prepared to asset ourselves,we're not going to make the errors of the 20th Century.

MR. CARPENTER: Well, let me comment, first of all I think if theCold War has made us stupid, the 1930s analogy has made usultra-stupid. This is Madeleine Albright's obsession, and theobsession of so many in the foreign policy community, that the onlymodel of international affairs is the 1930s. But, that's not atypical model. And it's one thing to prevent aggression by a majorpower, a power that can truly disrupt the international system, andpose a direct threat to America's security. It's something else tobecome the babysitter of the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, CentralAfrica, and heaven knows where else. Our current policy shows aninability to make these kinds of basic distinctions between thingsthat matter and things that we can safely pass off onto others.

MR. WATTENBERG: Ed, cheap war?

MR. LUTTWAK: It is a cheap war, except for the people in the areathat we are claiming to help. For them it has been a very expensivewar.

MR. WATTENBERG: Obviously. All right. Last question around thehorn, quick answer. What's the upshot of it going to be, what'sgoing to happen?

MR. CARPENTER: I think it's a race between a diplomatic, facesaving exit for NATO, orchestrated by Russia, and escalating andfighting a war for credibility, I hope the former option proves theeffective one.

MR. LUTTWAK: If the outcome is not a diplomatic outcome withRussia in the picture, whatever the outcome is it will be disastrous.

MR. KAGAN: I think eventually the Clinton administration and NATOare going to move to the realization that we're going to have to useground troops in order to win, and then I think we will win fairlyhandily, and it will be a good outcome.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Thank you, Robert Kagan, Ted Carpenter,and Ed Luttwak. I think that the United States in this instance isdoing about the right thing. And thank you. For Think Tank, I'm BenWattenberg.

ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our showbetter. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media,1150 Seventeenth Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20036, or emailus at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBSOnline at www.pbs.org. And please let us know where you watch ThinkTank. This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content. Brought to you in part by ADM, feeding the world is thebiggest challenge of the new century, which is why ADM is conductingresearch into aquiculture, and other new food sources. ADM,supermarket to the world. Additional funding is provided by the JohnM. Olin Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry BradleyFoundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

(End of program.)

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