Los Angeles Times - June 4, 1999
PERSPECTIVE ON KOSOVO Like It or Not, Russia's the White Knight This Time By bringing Moscow front and center in peace negotiations, NATO is weakening itself as key arbiter.
By ROBERT HUNTER
Robert E. Hunter, a Senior Advisor at Rand Corp. in Washington, Was U.S. Ambassador to Nato From 1993-98
The Kosovo peace plan accepted on Thursday by the Serbian parliament was the product of intense bargaining between NATO--represented by the United States--and Russia's Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. Major elements of the plan still need to be worked out before peace can come. But one thing is already clear: NATO's putting Russia front and center in Kosovo diplomacy will have long-term consequences for the Atlantic alliance. It marks the limit of NATO's willingness to pay the costs of its security ambitions.
The decision to engage Chernomyrdin as lead negotiator with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic grew out of a simple fact: Neither the U.S. nor its allies were ready to risk the casualties of a ground campaign.
Unwilling to solve the Kosovo crisis on its own, NATO found itself having to ask Russia for help. That was designed to complete Serbia's diplomatic isolation, test whether Russia truly has influence with Milosevic and relieve Washington of some of the opprobrium of dealing directly with the devil. At the same time, getting Chernomyrdin into the act has reduced Russia's isolation from Europe and helps it cope with the domestic political impact of NATO's bombing campaign.
Not surprisingly, however, Moscow has had its own motives for working with NATO and playing the part of lead negotiator. Moscow, too, has wanted to show that it is not completely counted out of European security and diplomacy. Thus, Russia has frozen its relations with NATO, but it has not withdrawn its troops from the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia. By the same token, Moscow still has hopes of gaining economic support from the West. Being helpful over Kosovo at least helps pacify creditors and it could pay future dividends.
But the Russians are also trying to exact a security price, while keeping just short of jeopardizing the goodwill needed to loosen Western purse strings. The Kremlin's short- and longer-term goals are the same: to reduce NATO's preeminence in European security and to require it to show greater respect for Russian interests in making its decisions.
This strategy has been apparent in Russia's efforts to modify NATO's demands for stopping the bombing and settling the Kosovo war. This, not some purported Russian kinship with Serbia or an insider's knowledge of Milosevic's diplomatic bottom line, explains Moscow's efforts to water down NATO's demands. Thus the Russians insisted that NATO modify its goal of excluding from Kosovo all Serbian forces, paramilitaries and police. And they chipped away at NATO's original goal that a peacekeeping force have the same no-nonsense character and complete NATO control that characterizes the Stabilization Force in Bosnia. The Kosovo peace plan provides instead for only an "international security presence, with an essential NATO participation . . . [and] a unified control and command." Remarkably, in their zeal to keep the Russians engaged, the allies joined in this process of "negotiating with ourselves" before the first words were exchanged with Milosevic.
The Russians also want to increase the role of the U.N. at NATO's expense. This gambit gained added impetus from the luckless NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, thus presenting the allies with two potential vetoes of a U.N. Security Council resolution that has the resilience NATO wants.
Looking to the future, Moscow also sees potential in reducing NATO's capacity for unilateral action. It is aware that many European allies are now even more reluctant to contemplate further ventures beyond Yugoslavia or again to take military action without a U.N. blessing. The Russians also want to change the terms of their cooperation with NATO, organized through the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council that meets in Brussels but which Moscow put in the deep freeze when the NATO bombing began. Likewise, some Russian officials and informal commentators are already ratcheting up resistance to the further enlargement of NATO, especially to include the Baltic states. In both cases, Moscow is signaling the need for a greater say in what NATO does if the relationship is to be put back on track. And the Russians are again arguing that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is more legitimate than NATO in organizing security on the continent.
To meet its moral responsibility to the refugees and retain its credibility, NATO must clear up the ambiguities in the Kosovo peace plan to achieve the allies' basic, unadulterated demands. And while welcoming Russian engagement in European security, NATO must resist any veto over its future actions. But its unwillingness to send ground troops to Kosovo has already sent a powerful message: A Russia asked to rescue NATO from its own limitations is also a Russia better able to challenge NATO's ambition to be the key arbiter of European security for the 21st century.