Commander William Earl Fannin, Class of 1945, Capstone Essay Contest
The anger of many Russians at the NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in the spring of 1999 largely was ignored in the West. Such cavalier dismissals may become luxuries that NATO cannot afford as it expands its missions and intervenes more aggressively in European affairs.
NATO's air campaign against Kosovo in the spring of 1999 was a drastic departure from previous NATO policy. By expanding its mission, NATO for the first time became an aggressor instead of a defender in European affairs. Many people, especially those in Eastern Europe, viewed this change in policy as the beginning of a new reign of terror in the world. In their view, NATO overstepped its original mandate, becoming the strong arm of the United States and acting however and wherever it pleased.
In March 1999, I was working in a downtown office in St. Petersburg, Russia. My coworkers and I had been cursorily following the Serbian atrocities in Kosovo, and like most Americans we were not overly concerned. Even when NATO and the United Nations started making threats, we did not pay much attention because this type of thing had been going on for so long in that region. On the afternoon of 25 March, I was working at my desk when a coworker came running to tell me I needed to see what was on CNN. I followed him to the nearest TV, where I was surprised—and yet somewhat excited—to see that NATO air strikes had begun against targets in Serbia and Kosovo. We watched clips of precision bombing and news commentators reporting from in front of backdrops of demolished buildings for nearly an hour. Then I returned to my desk, feeling patriotic and proud to be an American, and continued with my work until about 1700, when I was interrupted by a telephone call. On the other end was the security officer at the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg. She informed me the Russians were not at all happy about the bombing campaign in Kosovo, and that many U.S. companies, including the organization for which I worked, had been named in multiple bomb and death threats. There were major violent demonstrations going on outside the U.S. embassy in Moscow and smaller, though no less vehement demonstrations going on outside the consulates of most NATO countries in St. Petersburg. The security officer advised us that all U.S. citizens should stay indoors and avoid confrontation until the air strikes stopped.
I hung up the phone sobered. After getting word out to all the Americans and Western Europeans working for us, I had a chance to sit down with some of my Russian friends and discuss what was going on and why it mattered to anyone outside of the Balkans. As an American, I had not thought about whether the air strikes were legal or what message they would send to the rest of the world. I had not thought about the authority cited in ordering the air strikes. No one disagreed that Slobodan Milosevic was wrong, but I had thought little past that. If Milosevic was doing the things the CNN anchor claimed he was doing, he needed to be stopped and deserved to be punished, right?
My Russian colleagues disagreed. They both were furious and somewhat scared at what was going on in Serbia. They were furious because NATO had committed an act of war against a historic Slavic ally. They were scared because if NATO had empowered itself to police civil conflict in Southern Europe, what was going to keep NATO from moving a few hundred miles to the east where civil wars raged in Armenia, Georgia, and Chechnya?
Since its inception, NATO's basic role has been "to safeguard the freedom and security of its member countries."' Throughout the Cold War, NATO served as the primary deterrent to war in Europe. It was devised to stop the spread of communism; in response, the Soviet Union and its fraternal socialist allies in Eastern Europe established the Warsaw Pact. This balance of power kept the peace and kept war at bay in Europe for more than 40 years. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, however, NATO has been largely without a well-defined purpose. It has found itself the defender of countries with no clear enemy
Almost overnight, NATO's raison d'etre passed into history. NATO leaders found themselves at the head of the world's most powerful standing armies with no one to fight. Like all good capitalists, however, they found new things to do. Looking out over the wreckage left behind by communism, NATO decided that its next mission would be to promote democracy and enforce human rights across Europe. It began doing this under the auspices of U.N. peacekeeping forces. NATO already had the command infrastructure and logistics in place to support operations in Europe. Teaming with NATO was a very efficient and effective way for the United Nations to enforce its policies in the region, and gave NATO a new lease on life..
In 1991, the eruption of civil war in Bosnia presented the U.N.-NATO alliance with its first major test. After diplomacy failed to stop the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the United Nations imposed arms embargoes hoping to stop the spread of violence. In conjunction with these embargoes, the United Nations authorized the use of some NATO forces as peacekeepers to monitor the trafficking of arms in former Yugoslav republics and to keep an eye on Serbian Army activity. NATO commanders, however, were not completely satisfied with the results of their union with the United Nations. The U.N. Security Council gave them very little latitude for action in the field and put so many restrictions on NATO soldiers that they believed there was little good they could do.
In the spring of 1999, NATO deviated drastically from its previous policy of supporting the United Nations and took matters in Kosovo into its own hands. The United Nations had refused to act (at least not the way NATO wanted) and it was bogged down in political debate. People in Western Europe and the United States, saturated with news coverage of the carnage on television every day, demanded that more action be taken.
As a military campaign, NATO's bombing in Kosovo was extremely successful and will be a significant conflict for military theorists to study for decades to come. Nearly 14,000 strikes were flown over Kosovo and Serbia during the course of the campaign, with only an estimated 500 civilian casualties and no Allied combat deaths. Compared with the other major air campaigns of the 20th century, these numbers are remarkable. NATO's Kosovo campaign also accomplished something that never had been done before: it brought a foreign power to its knees without a single Allied infantryman going in harm's way. Politicians and military leaders in the West undoubtedly will hope for similar such victories from air power in the future.
The world outside of Western Europe and the United States, however, may well continue to wonder whether the NATO air attacks were legal and where they might be employed next. Non-NATO nations likely will continue to ask where NATO derives the authority to attack a sovereign country in the midst of an internal conflict. Even though NATO has worked closely with the United Nations in recent years, a line must be drawn between the two organizations. The United Nations was founded to bring peace to the world; by treaty, the vast majority of nations in the world have agreed that the United Nations shall have the ultimate authority to settle international disputes and conduct police actions when necessary. NATO, on the other hand, is an organization of 19 countries bound by treaty to defend one another. From this point of view, NATO was no more justified in attacking Kosovo than Iraq was justified in invading Kuwait.
My Russian colleagues agreed with me that something had to be done to stop Milosevic and that the NATO air strikes were very effective. They were afraid, however, that NATO, inflated by its recent success, might try to expand its operations to places where its forces would be less welcome. They also were very frustrated that there was nothing they could do to stop the air strikes. NATO had attacked a fellow Slavic country, and yet my Russian colleagues knew there was nothing their country could have done to stop it—even if they had had the political will.
In future operations, even if NATO believes it is justified in its actions against states not belonging its organization, Western leaders need to keep the world's view of their actions in mind as they decide policy. With the Kosovo precedent behind us, it will be all too easy for NATO to enforce its will again with force in a place where it has no legal right to be. The rest of the world will tolerate NATO aggression only so long before taking action against its members, either in the form of armed opposition or terrorism. To keep world peace, the member states of NATO need to examine their place in world politics and ensure that they are staying within the boundaries they set for themselves.
Ensign Vest, originally a member of the class of 1999, resigned to do missionary work with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, before joining the class of 2001. He will begin flight school in August 2001.