STRATFOR's Global Intelligence Update May 3, 1999
Weekly Analysis -- The World After Kosovo
Summary:
Whether in a week or a month, the Kosovo crisis is drawing to a close. The basic outlines of the settlement are already visible. The question now is what the world will look like afterwards. We expect a much more sober, cautious, and even mildly isolationist U.S., facing the fact that tremendous power is not the same as omnipotence. We see a dramatic decline in European confidence in American leadership. Germany was particularly concerned about Russia's reactions and is likely to concentrate on maintaining its relations with Moscow independent of NATO's decisions. The big winner was Russia, a country that got money, respect, and the position of honest broker. The most extraordinary outcome of Bill Clinton's Kosovo adventure was that it turned Boris Yeltsin into a statesman, with his representative, Chernomyrdin, taken more seriously in Bonn and Rome than Clinton's Strobe Talbott. That was no small feat for the Clinton foreign policy team.
Analysis:
The Kosovo conflict is drawing to a close. Whether a settlement will take a day or a month, the key elements are now clear. There will be a cease-fire prior to the implementation of any agreement. The Serbs will continue to control Kosovo, and Serbian police will retain some sort of presence. A lightly armed international peacekeeping force will be permitted into Kosovo. Some NATO members will send forces, several non-NATO members, including Russia, will also send forces. The command structure of the force will remain deliberately vague. It will be agreed that Albanians will be able to return to their homes in Kosovo in stages. Many will refuse to go, hoping to be resettled elsewhere. Others will return. Yet others will try to return but will find it impossible. An ineffective peacekeeping force will remain in place for a very long time, with an unclear mission. But the bombing will end; the abuse of Albanians will end. The world will go on.
It is time to think about what that world will look like after Kosovo. Let's begin by considering carefully what has happened in Kosovo. The United States' government had received reports that it found credible of a terrible genocide underway in Kosovo and decided that it had to intervene to stop it. The U.S. began by attempting to dictate terms to the Belgrade government, drafting a document now called the Rambouillet Accords. It gathered around itself its NATO allies, and demanded that all sides agreed to those Accords. There was substantial hesitancy on all sides, but in the end, the Albanians agreed. The Serbs did not. Leading NATO, the United States announced that unless the Serbs agreed to the Accords, precisely as stated with no further negotiation, NATO would begin a bombing campaign against the Serbs. The United States said this with full confidence that Belgrade would capitulate. Belgrade did not. Now, finding that NATO refuses to launch a ground war against Serbia, and finding that it lacks sufficient air power to crush Serb resistance, the United States will eventually be forced to accept a compromise and call it victory.
This will end an era that began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The United States, under President Bush, determined that the Iraqi invasion was unacceptable. His precise reasoning was not as clear as one might think. Part of the reasoning was strategic. Part of it was his repugnance at one nation seizing another. But the core of the intervention was that in a global, strategic sense, it was risk free. Certainly, there was a risk of casualties. However, there were two assumptions on which the intervention rested. The first was that if the United States chose to intervene, it could create, at will, an international coalition to carry out the invasion. The second assumption was that this coalition could in fact liberate Kuwait. In other words, the issue that framed Bush's decision was whether such an intervention was desirable and not whether such an intervention was possible.
The intervention in Iraq was the first of a series of interventions that included Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and now Kosovo. Not all of these ended well. Somalia was, by any measure, a failure. The Haitian invasion displaced the former government but no one would argue that Haiti has been lifted out of its misery. Bosnia was intended to be a short-term intervention but has become a permanent presence. But none of these interventions have forced the United States to face the core question: what are the limits of American power? The Clinton administration faced the intervention in Kosovo as a question of whether the United States would intervene and whether we would permit Serbia to retain sovereignty over Kosovo. It failed to ask the more important question of whether the United States and its allies had the military power in place to achieve its political ends, and whether the amount of military power required should be spent in a place like Kosovo. The United States simply assumed, without the meticulous analysis required, that it had the needed power. It did not.
Thus, the decade begun in Kuwait ends in the skies over Serbia. No American government will, in the near future at least, simply assume that it has the military power needed to impose its will. This is, obviously, a healthy lesson to learn. There is a vast difference between being the greatest military power in the world and omnipotence. The United States rules the seas and can, wherever it chooses, rule the skies. This is not the same as being able to compel other nations to capitulate on matters of fundamental national importance. It must always be remembered that demographics never favor intervention in Eurasia. American ground forces are always outnumbered whenever they set foot in Eurasia. Sometimes air and naval superiority along with superior technology and training can compensate for this demographic imbalance. Sometimes it cannot. Sometimes it can compensate only after a build-up taking many months, as in Desert Storm. The casual assumption that the general superiority of U.S. military power inevitably translates into quick victory in any specific circumstance is obviously wrong and the point has been finally driven home.
We would be very surprised if the Clinton Administration attempted another humanitarian intervention after Kosovo. Indeed, one of the lessons learned by all future administrations is that interventions should never be casually undertaken until, and unless, the military is given time to plan and implement the intervention, as Bush permitted in Desert Storm. Moreover, since the implementation of an intervention in Eurasia is always costly and time-consuming, what appeared to be a good idea at first glance, might well turn out to be a very bad idea in the long run. Merely wanting to do something does not mean that something can be done. Moral obligations are easy to assume. They are sometimes impossible to carry out. This is a hard lesson to learn. Put differently, talk is cheap. War is hard.
We expect two parallel processes to emerge after Kosovo. We will see a much more passive, indeed, isolationist United States. The hair-trigger assumption of responsibility for Eurasian problems will be replaced by a much more cautious calculation not only of moral considerations, but also of costs and the national interest. The second process, paradoxically, will be a substantial increase in American defense spending. The Kosovo exercise has clearly demonstrated that the draw-down in U.S. military forces has limited American military effectiveness. Military options that were available to President Bush are simply not available, in anywhere near as lavish a quantity, to President Clinton. There is no question of any further cuts in defense spending. The only issue now is how much defense spending will be increased?
The United States will be withdrawing from its aggressive leadership position not solely because it wishes to do so. It will be withdrawing because it has seriously lost the trust of many of its NATO allies. Except for the UK, the rest of NATO has been simply appalled by the U.S. management of the entire affair. The end game is being crafted by Germany, Italy, and Russia because the United States simply locked itself into a position from which it could neither retreat nor go forward. It very quickly became apparent that the air war was not going to force a Serbian capitulation. Rather than commence compensating maneuvers, the United States insisted on rigidity and bellicosity, without developing a crushing military strategy.
German policy is particularly likely to shift after Kosovo. Germany has a fundamental interest in maintaining good relations with the Russians. From a geopolitical and a financial sense, a hostile Russia is the last thing that Germany needs. The near- confrontation between NATO and Russia over Kosovo was a sobering experience for the Germans. For a few days, they looked into the abyss and the abyss stared back at them. Members of the Red- Green coalition in Bonn are inherently suspicious of both the United States and military adventures. They spent the last month trying to demonstrate that they could be good citizens of NATO, putting aside their ingrained, 1960s sensibilities. They emerged with a clear sense that they were right to mistrust American leadership and to worry about military adventures. One of the consequences of Kosovo is that the Europeans in general, and the Germans and Italians in particular, are going to be extremely cautious in agreeing to future creative uses of NATO.
The big winner in all of this is, of course, Russia. It not only got $4.5 billion but it also got everyone's attention, which it didn't have since the good old days of summits with Ronald Reagan. It has not only reminded Europe of its very real military power, thereby setting up the process for extracting money from the West, but it maneuvered itself into the position of being an honest broker, trusted by both Germany/Italy and the Serbs. Indeed, the Russians came out of the crisis looking like sober statesmen, working toward peace and stability. Now, when Boris Yeltsin can be made to look like a sober statesman and facilitator, something has gone dramatically wrong in American foreign policy.
We believe that the Kosovo conflict will become a definitive event in European history. The failure in Kosovo will cause the United States to recoil from casual interventions. More important, U.S. clumsiness in Kosovo will cause the Europeans to shy away from American leadership, particularly concerning European matters. The likelihood of an American administration herding NATO into another military adventure in Europe is minimal. This is a crucial change. There has been a tremendous asymmetry between Europe as a politico-military entity and Europe as an economic entity. NATO has been the primary politico- military expression of Europe, the EU the primary economic entity. This has made it extremely difficult for Europe to express a coherent viewpoint. The EU and NATO were simply not congruent.
The Europeans do have a vehicle for politico-military thinking, the Western European Union, which excludes the United States and is, therefore, far more congruent with the EU. But even that doesn't get to the heart of the problem. Germany's interests are specifically German. France's interests are French. The UK's interests are the UK's and are quite different from the other two. We expect two results from Kosovo. First, a strengthening of purely European institutions at the expense of NATO. Second, a greater caution by individual nations toward multinational commitments, including purely European ones.
Kosovo will undoubtedly bring to a close what we might call the era of casual intervention for the United States. There is nothing like failure to increase sobriety. We suspect that this is the last major foreign policy adventure for the Clinton Administration and would not be surprised to see Albright, Berger and Holbrooke accepting private sector positions in the near future. Most importantly, Kosovo closes what we regard as the interregnum between eras. The Cold War was not replaced by a unipolar world. That was a temporary anomaly. The new era of one superpower and several great powers, loosely united to limit U.S. power, is now beginning.
We'll tentatively christen this the New World Disorder while we wait for the new era to name itself.
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