Open-Ended Interventions and American Limitations: Kosovo, Iraq, and Beyond

According to German Defense Minister Peter Struck, NATO troops won't be leaving Kosovo by 2006, as had been planned: "…we'll have to stay much longer….we'd planned to withdraw bit by bit, but that's not going to happen now." Struck said this following last week's pogrom against Serbs, carried out by Albanians bent on creating an independent, ethnically-pure state.

Yet wasn't Kosovo supposed to be the prime example of a "successful" intervention? After all, all the original perpetrators of this crime said so – from Jamie Shea to Madeleine Albright, from Wesley Clark to Javier Solana, and, naturally, Bubba himself.

Now, with the situation rapidly deteriorating, the Serbian army is more than ready to defend its people – and Russia supports this. The Albanians' great fear is that, even in its dilapidated state, the Serbian Army "…could probably be in Tirana in 48 hours," as one former soldier put it. It's highly unlikely that NATO would allow a Serb return, of course, as this more than anything would cause immediate retaliation from the Albanians.

The Bitter Aftertaste of "Success"

Contrary to the lies of the Clinton Administration and the mass media, there was no ethnic cleansing, and no attempt at it, by Serbs against Albanians sufficient to necessitate military action in 1999. Extremists were kept under control, admittedly sometimes more violently than was necessary. Yet critics forget that the Albanian KLA was waging a guerrilla war, sometimes using human shields. The KLA had, in fact, been classified a terrorist organization by Washington until Clinton needed to enlist it for his own purposes.

The NATO intervention has had regional fallout. Before it, Macedonia's borders had been protected by the Yugoslav Army's attentive policing. But after the troops were

forced to leave in 1999, Albanian extremists were able to cross the Macedonian border with impunity. And Kosovo itself has become a killing field in which the Albanians "cleansed" the province of minority Serbs, Roma, Macedonian Muslims, and Turks.

In addition, there has also been a major increase in Albanian-Albanian vendetta killings, the mafia's new law of rule, and a new role for Kosovo as staging-post for foreign Islamic terrorists. UN officials in the province began to hear, not only from Serbs but also from Albanians, that "things were safer in the old days." So much for the West's plans for the "rule of law" in a multi-ethnic Kosovo.

After moving into Kosovo in 1999, NATO looked on helplessly as civilians were murdered, over a hundred churches destroyed, and other atrocities enacted. Yet UNMIK and KFOR did next to nothing. Why? Pure, outright fear of provoking retaliation from the Albanian thugs they'd empowered in the first place. And so, having no emotional or cultural stake in what happened, they fulfilled their jobs as bureaucrats and policemen.

However, they knew the score. Knowing the Albanian skill at causing strategic provocations to foment wider revolt, they did not arrest criminals even when they knew their identities, and let others literally escape. They did not extradite wanted war criminals such as Agim Ceku despite numerous chances to do so, and did not press too hard to solve the myriad murders by "unknown perpetrators." The occupiers' strategy throughout has been to keep a lid on things at all costs, knowing full well that any attempt to really uphold the "rule of law" would result in massive violence of the sort that would drive NATO out of the province with its tail between its legs.

Yet now that the lid has been decisively blown off, NATO's final moment of truth may be well be at hand. As an experienced UN official in Kosovo told me yesterday, "…things are soon going to get much, much worse. What we saw last week- this is just the beginning."

The Failure of the West

A pogrom of Kosovo's Serbs and Serbian culture heritage is taking place, and it's not hard to see where the blame ultimately falls, says Antiwar.com's Nebosja Malic:

"…The [NATO] Alliance, so full of bluster when it bombed Serbia from afar, now seems both unwilling and unable to stop what is effectively genocide, or at the very least a humanitarian catastrophe. Both reasons, people may remember, cited in justification of the original intervention in 1999. What is happening in Kosovo right now is a direct consequence of that intervention. When KFOR and UNMIK ousted Serbian law enforcement and military – indeed, the Serbian state and society – from Kosovo in June 1999, they assumed responsibility for the protection of all in the province. From the first exodus of over 250,000 non-Albanians in 1999, to the present pogrom, they have consistently failed in that responsibility. They should start living up to it right now, this very minute – or admit failure, leave forever, and pay damages to the victims of their criminal stupidity. And leave the resolution of the conflict to people who are both willing and able to see it through. In the meantime, any blood spilled in the province over the past four days, and likely to be spilled yet, is on NATO's hands."

On to Iraq – Forever?

The question, then, is the following: if the 1999 war of "liberation" in Kosovo has resulted in blowback against the liberators, and occupation will be necessary for well over 7 years, then what can be said about Iraq? After all, in Kosovo, the revenge of the liberated took three or four years to fully manifest. In Iraq, it was present from Day 1.

Indeed, almost no one dares to call the Iraq occupation "successful."

Confronted by this reality, Washington's leading lights are at a loss to figure out how the Department of Defense will fund an occupation that has dragged on far longer than it had planned:

"'…three weeks was about enough to fight the kind of war we were trained and optimized to fight,' judges West Point-trained military analyst Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. 'We had a military that was designed for sprints.'

"But in Iraq today, he said, 'The problem is that it's not a sprint anymore, it's a marathon.'"

This "design flaw" simply beggars belief. The U.S. military has traditionally maintained the ability to fight a war on two fronts simultaneously. What did they expect – that they'd last one and a half weeks each?

Indeed, after the experience of the Kosovo campaign – which lasted 78 days, and was fought with the help of over a dozen allied states – the government surely should have known better.

The Army's Gloomy Future

The failure to look realistically at Iraq realities last year is having deleterious effects now not only in regards to funding, but also on the morale of army personnel, many of whom have decided to retire after their tour finishes (if it ever does). Pentagon officials fear that the large-scale departure of experienced soldiers will mean the loss of qualified personnel necessary for training the next generation of troops.

How long a "marathon" Iraq will be is anyone's guess. Estimates range anywhere from 10 to 25 years. Yet the government can't make its plans in a vacuum. The world in 10 or 25 years is going to be a far different place. Pakistan seethes, with popular unrest against Musharraf's pro-Americanism. And NATO's continued and unnecessary expansion, conducted merely for the ultimately political purpose of enriching U.S. defense contractors, is already increasing Russia's fears, and, consequently, a military buildup of her own. Most significantly, as the U.S. continues to bankrupt itself on unnecessary wars in distant lands, China will continue its untroubled rise to power.

This was once a concern to U.S. military planners. Now only the all-but-forgotten CIA seems to be pointing it out. The irony is that, in scrapping its Cold War infrastructure designed for major conventional-style combat in favor of lighter weaponry useful for guerrilla and urban warfare, the U.S. ignores the much longer-term threats from countries such as China, which represent something much more akin to the old Soviet menace. If history is cyclical, then the U.S. is in danger of ending up behind the curve.

Bush Bails Out on the Troops

Yet with no Plan B, and an election looming, George W. Bush, the patriotic President, has quietly decided against replenishing army funds when they run out in October:

"…Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker told the Senate Armed Services Committee the $38 billion he has for 2004 war operations will last only until the end of September, as he spends $3.7 billion a month in Iraq and about $900 million a month in Afghanistan."

Bush last year incurred public worries over a soaring budget deficit as he sated the never-ending requests for military funds – $63 billion here, $87 billion there – and so his advisors have now decided that it's better to let the occupying forces go broke, running out of essential supplies, so that Bush isn't perceived as plundering the taxpayer yet again. According to Editor & Publisher, a planned press conference on war costs was shelved last week, to shield leaders from embarrassment. Oh, he does plan to inject more cash, but not until months after the November elections. How the soldiers in Iraq will cope from September until then is apparently not the president's concern.

The report also mentions the Pentagon's efforts to hush up a rising suicide rate among soldiers in and returned from Iraq. Yet George W. Bush – clearly just the sort of heroic Commander-in-Chief who would personally lead his men across the Delaware – is content to smile and pose for the cameras beside wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital.

Wavering Allies

Allies already wavering in their commitment to do Bush's dirty work will desert altogether in the coming months. Spain is considering withdrawing its troops. Similar rumblings are being felt in the Ukraine and beyond. While Poland, a key sycophant of the Bush Administration, has vowed to stay, but a change in government, as in Spain, could alter that stance quite easily. There is a new independent mood on the continent. In the wake of the Madrid attacks, the EU is formalizing a specific anti-terrorism policy, one both independent and opposed to that espoused by the Bush Administration.

Even Britain, Bush's ever-loyal poodle, can no longer be counted on to yap happily as King Tony's War bankrupts the country:

"…a war chest of £3.8bn for military operations in Iraq is set to run out within three months, official figures released last week indicate. Defence economists estimate that keeping British troops in the country is costing taxpayers up to £125m a month. However, figures released at the same time as the Budget show the special contingency reserve for Iraq has just £300m left to pay for operations in the coming financial year."

This is not to mention that the UK is sending an additional 750 troops to Kosovo, to mop up yet another self-created mess. According to Mark Stoker, an economist at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the cost to British taxpayers for "peacekeeping" could top £1.5bn for 2004 alone. "…National Audit Office figures on peacekeeping in Kosovo suggest that maintaining a 15,000-strong force in Iraq could be costing between £100m and £125m a month," he stated. This means that "little if any" funds will be left for the rest of the "war on terror" – not very clever considering that Britain is likely to experience a Madrid-style terror attack in the not-too distant future.

Like the U.S., Britain's ostensible goal in intervening around the world is national self-defense. Yet, despite all the shows of military might projected over great distances, both homelands sit plump and fat, delectable and defenseless targets for terrorists. Both governments fully realize the utter impossibility of protecting their people: America is a vast and populous nation, and Britain though much smaller has a huge population of Islamic immigrants, and direct connection to the vulnerable European continent. Realizing this, both governments seek to transform people's fear into trust by staging grand, showpiece displays of military might.

But it's not very persuasive, and it doesn't come cheap. Occupying Kosovo out of dubious humanitarian reasoning, and conquering Iraq out of equally sketchy security concerns, has only drained Western coffers of government while causing destruction and loss of life on a massive scale.

America must relearn the lessons of its own history, and return to the values of its founders, who disdained empires and sought to preserve the Republic against the rise of an imperial regime. In he short term, American foreign policy as it is currently configured means a long series of wars that erupt and re-erupt on the fringes of the Empire. In the long-term, however, our prospects are much worse. A policy of global interventionism can only mean economic eclipse, political and social turmoil, and the fall of the world's last superpower – perhaps even more rapidly and dramatically than it rose.