Whatever one might think of him and his advising-the-Prince tone, I think Thomas Friedman has presented at least a plausible endgame scenario for Kosovo in his NYT Times columns. We will keep bombing for months, and eventually Serbia will let the Albanians back in. We will claim victory. Variations: we get some kind of an automony deal with peacekeepers, but with Russians on the team, like we didn't offer in the beginning. Or we agree to a split of Kosovo, north and south, most likely a de facto split that is technically denied, like in present day Bosnia.
That makes sense. Arguably it would be a complete failure, much worse than things we could have agreed to before we made a burning ruin of Serbia, co-operated in making a burning ruin of Kosovo, and managed to make the inhabitants of both places hate each other even more than they did at first. But it would look enough like victory -- like we stood up to bullies and made them take it back -- for us to claim loudly that we'd won and swear quietly that we'll never do that again.
I'm still banking that worse things will happen, but I think this is possible.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com