Georeactor Blog

While traveling in Spokane and Glacier I read a short essay/book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World and talked to a Lyft driver who'd never been on a train. I also saw a Rezvani Tank (a retrofitted Jeep) and the new Tesla Model Y (light bar).

This post is the one time per year when I read a book on the breakup of Yugoslavia:

Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo (John Norris, 2005)

In the late 90s, "Yugoslavia" was led from Belgrade, with Kosovo and Montenegro on the verge of splitting off. After peace talks failed, the military and local ethnic Serbs forced ethnic Albanians and KLA militias out of Kosovo. In 1999, the US and NATO responded to the refugee crisis and conducted air strikes against Yugoslavia. President Clinton framed it as a limited war, announcing quickly that there would be no ground troops.
Norris had a role in the State Department, so he gives us a look behind the scenes with US diplomats' thinking and messaging. This book's publication in 2005 had some odd timing, because readers would be thinking about the invasion of Iraq and the insurgency. Discussions from the Kosovo War about a 'coalition of the willing' and 'quagmire' appear to link the two.

Intervention was a hard sell because Serbia had strong diplomatic ties to Russia and France, and cultural ties to Orthodox Christians in Greece. While hesitation within NATO could be handled by diplomacy, Russia could block UN resolutions and was willing to provide Serbia with intelligence, possibly escalating to weapons and troops. Yeltsin's team repeatedly warned that American intervention strengthened the Communist party and made it difficult to maintain his role as the US's preferred moderate. As mentioned in The Clinton Tapes, Russia also worried about the Kosovo situation reflecting on potential breakaway territories such as Chechnya. Russia would send representatives to Belgrade, maintaining an air of diplomacy, often rejecting the Kosovar refugee crisis as inauthentic (shades of the White Helmets and other reality wars).

Milošević initially believed that he could wait out NATO, because Clinton had already denied ground troops and had just conducted a similar air campaign in Iraq (Operation Desert Fox). He'd also managed to stay in power through the Bosnia crisis and avoid an ICTY indictment because he was needed at the negotiations in Dayton. The unconventionally modern and targeted bombing allowed Serbian leaders to openly hold a rock concert in Belgrade in March, reinforcing national stability.

On the US side Al Gore took a higher-level role such as reaching out to former Russian PM Viktor Chernomyrdin, who had worked with him in the early 90s on cooperation and trade agreements (Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission). Gore had urged Clinton to speak against Milošević back in the 1992 campaign, and was one of the strongest supporters for an air war. Both sides wanted a diplomatic win because Chernomyrdin was seen as a possible successor to Yeltsin, and Gore would launch his presidential campaign in the summer. Most of the actual sit-down negotiations would be conducted by Strobe Talbott, a Deputy Secretary of State (he wrote a foreword for this book).

After the initial strikes were too limited for the war's proponents at NATO and the State Department, different types of civilian infrastructure were targeted until it was too much for Milošević to bear. Russia wanted to secure pauses in bombing and dismantle the KLA, fearing a reversal of fortune for local ethnic Serbs. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke out against bombing, but the US asked him not to be involved - after Bosnia, there were fears that peace led by the UN or anti-war countries would be unable to protect civilians against armed groups. Chernomyrdin and Secretary Albright would both suggest Finland's president Ahtisaari as their negotiator (he would later negotiate peace in Aceh and win the Nobel Peace Prize).
By early May the US and Russia had written a roadmap for Yugoslavia to concede. That month, negotiations faced setbacks: the bombing of the Chinese embassy, Yeltsin narrowly avoiding impeachment, the Russian foreign minister ignoring deals with Chernomyrdin, and ICTY's public indictment of Milošević. The optics of meeting indicted Yugoslav leaders, or conducting meetings in between NATO bombing, repeatedly postponed meetings in Belgrade.

The final deal promised military-to-military talks, a UN resolution for the NATO-led peacekeepers (KFOR), and an end to bombing. Each component of this deal threatened to wait for the others (for example: it would be risky for the Yugoslav army to make troop movements while NATO was targeting them).
As the first KFOR peacekeepers moved in, Russians from the Bosnian mission jumped ahead to take control of Pristina's airport. This is one of the frustrating parts of the book because Norris has theories, but we don't have comparable access to Russian or Serbian sources.

• Russia had wanted to have their own command and/or Berlin-esque sector within the KFOR plan. Milošević may have agreed to the peace deal with assurances that Russia would keep control of part of Kosovo.
• Russia's negotiators - Chernomyrdin and the Russian foreign minister - may have been left in the dark, with Putin / Russian intelligence / military leaders in the Balkans directing the operation themselves. Yeltsin's health and control over the military was a frequent concern for the US team.
• Hungary (a new NATO member) and Ukraine successfully blocked Russian flights from reaching Kosovo. The KFOR commander was ordered to block runways, but refused.
• There's some analysis of whether Russia wanted to negotiate a larger role in KFOR, to humiliate and confuse NATO, or to arrange a standoff at the airport.
• A Russian-produced movie suggested they removed a KLA warlord

Norris credits NATO's intervention with saving lives and dismantling Milošević's political support in Serbia by 2001. It's a rebuke to nationalism that the quest for a Greater Serbia led to it losing its remaining provinces and the very name of Yugoslavia.
When reading over the negotiations today, you also have to process that Kosovo did ultimately become a de facto country in 2008. Studies show non-Albanians returning to Kosovo peaked in 2010. In Gjakova, where war crimes trials are ongoing, the return of ethnic Albanians led to a stark expulsion of Serb and Roma populations. One Serb has faced harassment by civilians and police since her return in 2021.
There are currently about ~350 UN personnel (mostly civilians) and 4,741 KFOR troops stationed in Kosovo. There are about twice as many Italians as Americans, and many from nearby Albania, Croatia, and Slovenia.

Notes

• The book discusses the house arrest, staged press events, and release of Ibrahim Rugova, which is only two sentences of his Wiki article today. A Reddit comment argued that he lost influence after his nonviolent resistance movement failed and the KLA took over.
• NATO also lost credibility after bombings which hit civilians, including refugees inside Kosovo and a train of civilians in Serbia. During the ICTY's review of NATO actions, an independent expert (who I'll call W) presented an analysis of both bombings. W is a German 'computer whiz' who noticed that General Clark's presentation sped up videos 3–4x. In January 2000, Arnd Festerling published that story and NATO's admission in the Frankfurter Rundschau, and received a journalism award. W believed in a deliberate NATO cover-up, and told the ICTY that the train was deliberately targeted. A website about Grdelica was not archived, but I did find it mentioned in a travelogue by someone who visited the town after the war. I wasn't able to confirm, but W appears to have since retired and started a model railroad business.
• The book mentions a few people set up side channels to negotiate peace, with varied degrees of authorization and seriousness. A businessman mentioned in the book, Bogoljub Karić, wrote this in 2023:

"I proposed state participation in the implementation of my Model by privatizing 51% of the capital of all companies in Kosovo, selling them to foreign companies from technologically advanced countries, and distributing 49% of the capital's value to the workers. Had my Model been implemented, there would have been no war, and Kosovo would be a highly developed region today" (??).

• Norris later joined President Obama's advisory Global Development Council and the Gates Foundation, then moved to a consulting role last year.
• When Jesse Jackson went to Belgrade to negotiate the release of three American POWs, he was accompanied by Serbian-American and then-Congressman Rod Blagojevich. At an event in 2019, two of the POWs appeared with Jesse Jackson, and Blagojevich's wife read a letter. I can't find information about the third POW after late 1999.

Wag The Dog

In 1991, after the risk of a chemical or biological attack during the Gulf War posed a new global threat, the collapse and retreat of Iraqi forces added to the confusion and uncertainty in post-Cold War international relations. A French essay series The Gulf War Did Not Take Place tried to describe the nature of the war and media coverage.

The 1993 book American Hero had a similar take on the Gulf War, which became the 1997 movie Wag The Dog. In the updated plot, the US president distracts the country from a sex scandal by faking an invasion of Albania with a media influence campaign. It was obviously influenced by Clinton and Bosnia up to that point, but to many it predicted Clinton ordering air strikes in Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo around the time of his impeachment.
When Albright was working on negotiations before the war, Charles Krauthammer suggested Kosovo would be "a version of Wag the Dog in which we lose to the Albanians". Two Serbian TV stations aired the movie as the first bombs hit outside Belgrade. Conservative columnist Mona Charen wrote "Is bombing Kosovo a case of 'wag the dog'?" making points about how Sarajevo, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda had been handled completely differently from the Kosovo emergency. (Charen became a 'Never Trumper').

After SNL's phone call between Clinton, Hussein, and Lewinsky for Desert Fox, the cast found less memorable satire about "that country, Kosovo" and "that depends on what your definition of 'bomb' is".

Wars at a Distance

The capture of US soldiers during the Kosovo War / Operation Allied Force is one of the first events I can remember seeing in real time on the news, so maybe that's why I feel like assigning it meaning. But it's mostly forgotten. After reviewing lists by the Military Times, I think there are two congressmen who are veterans of Operation Allied Force: Cory Mills and Scott Franklin. Also former Senator Martha McSally.

There was some controversy this year when journalists found the new Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson had tweeted "Make Kosovo Serbia Again" back in 2023. This is ironic to put in my own post, but a young person reaching this opinion is a truly toxic case of terminally online, where you're so deep in the propaganda, you're picking up the propaganda made for other generations of distant foreign nationalists. Fortunately her post is not characteristic of US foreign policy. Trump recently included Serbia and Kosovo in a list of negotiations where he thinks he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

If the Persian Gulf War "did not take place", consider the recent US-Iran conflict. ArmsControlWonk noticed from the beginning that Israeli air strikes did not start or concentrate on nuclear facilities, pointing to 'regime change'. Cynically this was a move to prevent US diplomats from restoring the JCPOA. Removing air defenses then provided the US with an obvious and 'safe' way to co-sign the war and threat assessment. Iran communicated carefully before retaliating against a well-defended base in Qatar. Each side is telegraphing 'I don't want a war, I just need to do this one thing'. I don't think we fully know what happened here, especially if the nuclear program continues.

Bosnia in trouble

This week is the 30th anniversary of Srebrenica. By December Bosnia was effectively split at Dayton, and the two halves have since been kept on the same page by courts and a foreign High Representative. In 2021 that office went to a German, and China and Russia rejected his appointment (nullifying the office in critics' eyes).

In February Milorad Dodik, the current leader of Republika Srpska, was convicted and sentenced to jail time for refusing to follow court orders, yet he evaded arrest. In May analysts warned about "the most dangerous moment in Bosnia since 1995". There were rumors that Dodik might leave the country, negotiate a soft landing, or even have Hungarian troops ready to extract him. Recently he flew by helicopter to court and made an appearance in exchange for the warrant to be dropped. Mixed feelings from both sides. Republika Srpska hardliners may plan on seceding with or without him.