But the fact remains that they did. I was the one who initially suspected a sinister US imprialist plot - but the way things started to unfold convinced me otherwise.
I just do not think there was a coherent strategic plan - just a ritualistic behavior in face of uncertaintly, as predicted by the "garbage can" theory of organizational behavior. That theory predicts that facing uncertainty, organizational actors are likely to pursue solutions that seemed to worked in the past (hence the metaphor of the 'organizational memory' as a garbage can), are easy to implement, and are least offensive to key players - as opposed to a solution that offers maximum benefits (benefit maximization is ex-post-facto rationalization of that course of action). In other words, this is the lowest common denominator/acceptability treshold solution to organizational problems - or "satisficing" as institutionalists dubb it.
Methinks, such was the situation with the Yugoslavia policy. Europeans were anxious to do something to stop another Bosnia unfolding in their 'backyard." They could not agee on a political solution, but from their past experience they knew His Excellency would blink when facing a military force. The fact that Kosovo was not Bosnia, the Yugoslav army was not paramilitary bands operating in Bosnia, and His Excellency would react much differently to a direct threat to his own rule than to a threat to his potential rival Mr. Karadzic did not matter. The groupthink had it that His Excellency would respond to force, so force seemed like a solution.
That solution had also the added value of scoring an easy victory for Euro social dummycrats on humanitarian grounds, and not offending foreign policy hawks at the same time. In a word, it seemed as the lowest denominator policy eveyone would agree to, rather than the best political solution of the problem. Even more importantly, they were so damn unprepared for any military contingency (unlike the Persian Gulf adventure) - that it is virtually impossible that this whole thing was planned as a "new imperialist strategy." It has the signs of Clintonite crisis-management-compromise-building all over it.
Quite frankly, I think it is the only rational explanation of the whole adventure in the apparent absence of the usual imperialist motives of going to a war. But then again, these are just my speculations, as good as anyone else's.
Wojtek