America's Kosovo quagmire / opportunity

[Gordon Fitch]

> [From "Is Serbia's Victory Kosovo's Loss?" by Steven Erlanger in today's NY 
> Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/29/weekinreview/29ERLA.html).  Here we 
> go again:  American credibility at stake ... growing military involvement in 
> a hostile land ... no exit.]
> 
> In the United Nations Security Council resolution that ended the war ... 
> there is no discussion, let alone promise, of independence for Kosovo. 
> Resolution 1244 "reconfirms the commitment of all member states to the 
> sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of 
> Yugoslavia," of which Kosovo remains a part. Kosovo is promised only 
> "substantial autonomy and self-government" after a period of international 
> supervision. ...
> 
> So the situation in Kosovo is likely to become more explosive, not less, 
> ensuring the need for NATO troops to remain for a long time to come. The 
> reason? Independence is likely to become not just a dream deferred, but 
> denied. And as the contradiction between Western verbal encouragement for 
> Albanian self-determination and its opposition to independence becomes 
> clear, the potential for violence against NATO troops will grow.
> 
> The same may be said of Albanian politicians. All of them, from the more 
> moderate, pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the Democratic League of 
> Kosovo, to the former Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci, support 
> independence. But with Mr. Kostunica as a negotiating partner, politicians 
> like Mr. Rugova are going to have to consider options short of independence. 
> And that could place their own lives at risk.
> 
> The newly altered landscape is precisely what makes Republican presidential 
> candidate George W. Bush's recent promise to pull American soldiers out of 
> Balkan peacekeeping duties so wrongheaded, says Ivo Daalder, a Balkans 
> expert and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Kosovo was an 
> American-led war with an American-dominated outcome, so to pull out now, 
> when the Albanians feel under the most pressure since the end of the war, is 
> likely to increase the overall risk to all troops there," he said. "It would 
> be viewed by the Europeans and the Albanians as a betrayal."

It is curious that the _Times_ flacks pretend to take Bush's
anti-interventionism seriously.  The advantages to world
Capital of numerous imperial occupations are too significant
to be threatened by idle electioneering.  What is at issue
between Gore and Bush in this matter can only be the style in
which pretexts for invasion are composed ("our national
interest" versus "humanitarian concern"), not the invasions
themselves.