STRATFOR's Global Intelligence Update Weekly Analysis June 7, 1999
Of G-8, Rambouillet, Compromise and Surrender
Summary:
Things are becoming curious indeed. When Milosevic agreed to the G-8 accords, we thought this meant he was agreeing to the terms agreed to in Bonn: a UN peacekeeping force under UN command in which some troops would be drawn from NATO, but many others would be from non-NATO countries. NATO, it turned out very quickly, had a different understanding of the Bonn G-8 agreements. NATO was reading it as essentially the same as the Rambouillet accords that Milosevic had rejected. Who had agreed to what is emerging as a mystery of the first order?
Analysis:
We have argued for the past several weeks that the basic outlines of a settlement are in place and that domestic politics have been holding up a settlement. Neither NATO nor the Serbs could afford to let it appear that they were defeated. Thus, a delicate ballet had to be acted out in which a settlement could be portrayed by each side as a victory or, at the very least, as something other than a defeat. That is why the G-8 agreement hammered out in Bonn was so important. It was a document that allowed both sides to claim that they had not been defeated. For that to work, however, each side had to avoid being greedy. Like a couple sharing a bed in a bad marriage, each had to leave enough cover for the other. What happened this weekend seems to be that NATO could not resist the temptation to take Milosevic's cover away from him. Worse yet, NATO tried to steal Yeltsin's cover. The result is a settlement in trouble, at least for now.
Let's begin by reviewing the core issue separating NATO and Belgrade. Serbia had refused to sign at the Rambouillet agreements because of two core issues, both having to do with the concept of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. First, Serbia would not agree to the withdrawal of all troops from Kosovo. Some troops, numbers unspecified, had to remain. Second, Serbia was not prepared to allow a heavily armed NATO force to occupy Kosovo. It was prepared to allow a United Nations peacekeeping force into Kosovo. There were other issues, but none were as central as these two. NATO told the Serbs to take it or leave it. Serbia left it.
The Russians, essentially supporting the Serb position, entered the discussions. After intense negotiations between primarily the Germans and Russians, followed by broader discussions, the G-8 accords were established in Bonn (the text is available at http://www.stratfor.com/crisis/kosovo/specialreports/special62.htm? section=3 ) The G-8 accords constituted an agreement between NATO and Russia. It was the price that Russia demanded in order to attempt to negotiate a settlement with Belgrade. The G-8 accords were a redefinition of the NATO demands into terms that Moscow felt Belgrade would accept and which could fit into Russia's and Belgrade's core concept of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. It was never conceived of by anyone, at the time it was negotiated, as a Serbian surrender. Rather, it was perceived as a center-point between NATO and Serbian demands that would allow for a workable settlement. Russia agreed that an armed force would occupy Kosovo. NATO agreed that that force would be under United Nations and not NATO command. The force was not defined but it was clearly intended that the force would include large numbers of non-NATO troops.
It should be remembered that the G-8 accords were pressed on the Americans and British by the Italians and in particular by the Germans. Fearful of an extended bombing campaign, completely opposed to a ground war, and terrified of long-term Russian hostility, the Germans and Italians were the architects of the G-8 agreement. They wanted that agreement in order to find some way out of what appeared to be a hopeless deadlock. They were the driving force behind the G-8 accords and they clearly saw them as a compromise between the Serb position and Rambouillet.
The G-8 agreement accepted the principle of the return of Kosovo Albanians to their homes and the creation of an autonomous Kosovo under Serbian sovereignty. But the important price NATO paid in the Bonn G-8 talks was the agreement that the United Nations and not NATO would command and control troops moving into Kosovo. It was not clear what the command structure would be beyond this, nor was it clear what precisely the composition of the occupying force would be. However, it was clear that it would be a United Nations force with significant non-NATO presence. When the Russians first brought the agreement to the Serbs, they focused on the composition of the forces, demanding that no NATO country that had bombed Serbia participate in the peacekeeping force. That is where the negotiations stood before Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari went to Belgrade last week. On one side, there were the G-8 agreements; on the other side were the Serb demands that only limited NATO forces be admitted to Kosovo.
Thus, when Milosevic agreed to the G-8 agreement, he did not see himself as surrendering to NATO or as agreeing to Rambouillet. Rather, he was agreeing to the proposal negotiated by NATO with the Russians in Bonn. He was agreeing to a substantial NATO presence, but not to an exclusive NATO presence or to de facto NATO control of the province. At least that is what anyone familiar with the original G-8 agreements would have imagined him to be agreeing to. It is not clear what went on at the meeting between Viktor Chernomyrdin and EU representative Martti Ahtisaari in Belgrade last week, but Milosevic's agreement to the G-8 terms was not surprising or stunning. It appeared to us to be the logical result of the Russian peace process, which seemed to have reached a compromise between the Rambouillet position and the Serbian position. We had been expecting a move by the Serbs to accept a United Nations force containing large numbers of NATO troops.
It was, therefore, quite surprising to hear NATO officials and the Western media talking about Milosevic's capitulation. It was also surprising to hear the terms to which NATO thought Milosevic had agreed. According to NATO's account of things, Milosevic had simply surrendered. Apart from a purely formal nod to the United Nations, it became clear that NATO saw itself as occupying Serbia. Indeed, it was not clear that any non-NATO troops would be coming in and if they were, whether they would be permitted outside of NATO command. Thus, NATO's take on what Milosevic had agreed to was pretty much the old Rambouillet terms. It was not surprising to us that Milosevic had agreed to the G-8 agreements. We were very surprised that he had, in effect, agreed to the Rambouillet accords.
What seems to have happened was that NATO reinterpreted the G-8 agreement into the Rambouillet agreement and Milosevic's acceptance of the G-8 formula as his capitulation to the Rambouillet accords. NATO was also making it clear that Russian participation, an essential element of the G-8 agreements, was both of marginal importance and only on NATO's terms. In other words, NATO was basically asserting that there were no G-8 accords independent of the Rambouillet formula.
That created a major crisis inside of Serbia over the weekend. Why had Serbia endured two months of bombing simply in order to give in to the original terms? The bombing was endurable and NATO was not capable of invading. What was the point of this sacrifice if the only outcome was to accept what could have been had without any sacrifice? Indeed, that was extremely confusing. If Milosevic had in fact agreed to the terms that NATO was now dictating, his behavior was in fact inexplicable. Therefore, by Sunday, the real question was this: just what had Milosevic agreed to during his meetings with Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari? If he had agreed to the G-8 proposals, as all three participants had agreed, then how had the G-8 agreements transmogrified into the settlement NATO was now trying to impose? Was the Bonn G-8 formula simply a phantom of our imagination or was it a substantially different formula than Rambouillet?
It seems to us that NATO deliberately chose to interpret Milosevic's agreement to the G-8 proposal in the most extreme form imaginable-a form not easily drawn from the G-8 proposal. Even the document purportedly presented to Milosevic was not as extreme as NATO's interpretation. NATO's motive in this conversion was, of course, to demonstrate that Milosevic had not compromised but capitulated. This was critical in order to demonstrate that the air campaign was successful and that the war was not pointless. Clearly, NATO believed Milosevic's decision to accept the G-8 was driven by the fact that he was desperate and, being desperate, he would now accept any interpretation of the G-8 accords that NATO placed on him. NATO read Milosevic as too badly beaten to resist the reinterpretation.
More interestingly, NATO seemed to feel that the Russians would accept the reinterpretation as well. Remember that the G-8 accords were not negotiated between NATO and Serbia. They had nothing to do with Serbia. They were negotiated between NATO and Russia, and NATO's concessions were Russia's price for beginning the mediation campaign. By turning G-8 into Rambouillet and the Russian compromise solution into a Serbian surrender, NATO put the Russian government into an incredibly difficult situation. As a result, political pressure began to rise in Moscow against the agreement and the treatment of Russia by NATO. Last week's compromise turned into this weekend's surrender. By Sunday night, both Milosevic's capitulation and the compromise were up in the air.
What in the world happened? There are several possible explanations.
* NATO's leaders, particularly Clinton and Blair, and also the Brussels bureaucracy felt themselves under tremendous pressure to produce what appeared to be a victory. They tried to "spin" the G-8 into a Serbian surrender for domestic political purposes, either unaware of the consequences in Belgrade and Moscow or convinced that they could get Serb acceptance of NATO's reinterpretation of G-8. They stole Milosevic's cover for their own use, gambling that he was too badly beaten to reverse course.
* Chernomyrdin was telling different things to different sides in order to get a settlement. The Russian role has been ambiguous at times. It is possible that Chernomyrdin's transmission of the meaning of G-8 to the various parties differed substantially. NATO may well have had a private understanding that G-8 meant Rambouillet, with a wink and nod to the UN. Milosevic may have had a private understanding from Chernomyrdin that G-8 meant the UN with a wink and nod to NATO. By the time everyone compared notes, they were on the Serb-Macedonian border. It is particularly interesting to find out what Chernomyrdin told the Russian leadership.
* Russia has sold out the Serbs. We predicted a crisis in Kosovo on January 4, 1999 precisely because of Russo-American tensions. When Primakov fell, we stated that this represented a major geopolitical setback to Milosevic. We have always argued that the Russians made possible Milosevic's position. The Russians began to weaken their support for Milosevic when the IMF's $4.5 billion loan was made available. Perhaps one of Strobe Talbott's missions in Moscow was to negotiate a side deal with the Russians for delivering Milosevic to NATO. If so, it is not clear what the quid pro quo is. It is also not clear what the response in the Duma will be if it is revealed that Yeltsin approved a sell-out of Milosevic for unspecified goodies later on.
What is certainly clear is that the G-8 agreements are not merely a restatement of the Rambouillet accords. When Milosevic realized NATO thought that they were, it appears that he balked. Now, if the Russians have truly abandoned him, if the third possibility is really what happened, then the Russians are now quietly telling him the game is up and Serbia stands alone. Milosevic will really have no choice but to capitulate. If, however, the first possibility is true, and NATO has spun the agreement to make it appear to be a surrender then NATO may well have sown the wind. If Serbia genuinely rejects the G-8 reinterpretation and is backed by Russia, then American and British spin-doctors will have to answer to NATO partners who are sick of the war. If this is Chernomyrdin's ego or incompetence getting in the way of the settlement, then we may be back to the beginning of a long, miserable haul.
Whatever happened, the G-8 Ministers are going to meet tomorrow and NATO will get a chance to explain to the Russians how they got from here to there. Ahtisaari has postponed his trip to China and will have an opportunity to explain what he thought Milosevic was agreeing to when he said he accepted the G-8 agreements. All of the strings can be untangled. It will be an interesting few days while they are.
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