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Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo
If Europe, Russia, and international bodies such as the U.N. and NATO end up playing a more prominent role in Iraq's immediate future, all parties, including the United States, would do well to revisit the lessons learned during the U.S.-led war in Kosovo in 1999. As a confrontation over Kosovo's final push for independence looms, this book offers seminal insight into the negotiations that took place between the United States and Russia in an effort to set the terms for ending the conflict. This study in brinksmanship and deception is an essential background for anyone trying to understand Russia's uneasy relations with the West.
America's relationship with Russia has become increasingly important as Washington has engaged Moscow as a critical, but often prickly, ally in the war on terror. From smoky late-night sessions at dachas outside of Moscow to meetings in the White House Situation Room, Norris captures the feel of a war that repeatedly threatened to spin out of control. He offers a vivid portrait of some of the larger-than-life characters involved in the conflict, including U.S. president Bill Clinton, General Wesley Clark, Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, and Russian president Boris Yeltsin. New information includes backstage efforts to open a direct negotiating channel between Milosevic and Washington at the height of the conflict. The book reaches a dramatic crescendo against the backdrop of the war's final days, when Russia unleashed a secret plan to push its forces into Kosovo, ahead of NATO peacekeepers.
America's relationship with Russia has become increasingly important as Washington has engaged Moscow as a critical, but often prickly, ally in the war on terror. From smoky late-night sessions at dachas outside of Moscow to meetings in the White House Situation Room, Norris captures the feel of a war that repeatedly threatened to spin out of control. He offers a vivid portrait of some of the larger-than-life characters involved in the conflict, including U.S. president Bill Clinton, General Wesley Clark, Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, and Russian president Boris Yeltsin. New information includes backstage efforts to open a direct negotiating channel between Milosevic and Washington at the height of the conflict. The book reaches a dramatic crescendo against the backdrop of the war's final days, when Russia unleashed a secret plan to push its forces into Kosovo, ahead of NATO peacekeepers.
360 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
3 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
John Norris
4 books13 followersThe biography of Mary McGrory is John's third book. As his day job, John is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. where he works on international affairs. He has served in a number of senior roles in government, international institutions, and nonprofits, including with the United Nations, State Department, and the International Crisis Group. In addition to his books, John has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and numerous other publications.
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April 10, 2016
This book is essentially a manifesto for neo-liberal interventionism. It makes little attempt at objectivity. The leaders of the Slavic world can do nothing correctly, except as they agree to Western dictums. The book itself is quite valuable, if not necessarily for the reasons the author and publisher think: it documents the inevitable failure of a country (e.g., empire) trying to impose outside values upon traditional and regional communities.
In many ways the book summarizes the lead-up to the war, the nature of the Allied coalition, and the political consequences throughout and following the war. This review will largely avoid those issues as they are thoroughly covered elsewhere. Rather, the reviewing will focus on insights from Norris’ experiences and thoughts resulting from those insights.
The book begins on a painful note. The author of the foreword, Strobe Talbott, is acting like a Clintonian cheerleader. He is guilty of using “loaded language” and bias. (I point that out because it is taboo for official and/or scholarly documents to engage in self-congratulations.) His particular argument asks, quite rightly, what should be the conditions for empire, I mean, intervention. He notes that military force should only be used when diplomatic means are exhausted, that it guarantees safety to both the “victims” of the aggression and the regular citizenry, and that it ensures stability in the region. Talbott claims it gloriously met all of those goals. The truth, though, is that NATO failed--in one aspect or another--in all of the above: It was the Russians, not NATO bombers, that brought Milosevic to the table; the United States rejected numerous diplomatic proposals from the Bosnian Serbs and actually urged Izetbegovic to reject peace and go to war in the mid-1990s (!), and Serbs living in Bosnia and Kosovo today are facing a genuine ethnic cleansing on the level of which Milosevic was accused.
Reading Between the Lines
While NATO was technically victorious, it nearly lost the war and created several far greater disasters. Many of the Allies did not even want to proceed with air strikes, and the more traditional and Christian members like Italy and Greece nearly withdraw when NATO insisted on bombing Orthodox Christians during Pascha. Another point of contention was Russia. When Russia advised Serbia in this war, Russia was weak, bankrupt, and internally divided. That said, Russian special forces nearly captured several key airports in Kosovo. They actually could have done this quite easily, but Yeltsin was not committed. Had Russia proceeded, and American brass admits it could not have stopped Russia, then a combined Russian-Serbian movement would have easily won the war. Think about it for a second: if a poorly equipped, disillusioned Russian force under Yeltsin could have accomplished this, imagine what a modern Russian army under Putin could have done?
Had several Allies withdrawn from the campaign (which even US State officials expected them to do), combined with Russian forces seizing key Kosovar airports, along with NATO’s inability to decide on air strikes or sending ground troops, and with the general instability of the region (Norris, 30), NATO—or more precisely, the Anglo-Americans—would have lost this war. While sending ground troops would have ended the conflict quickly, the costs would have been enormous. Norris hints as much and this is one of the areas his book is quite useful: he truly does give an insider's perspective.
Presuppositions Determine Evidence
Despite the flaws and biases of this book, CNN, and the Clinton Administration, Serbophiles have to face up to the fact of genocide and war crimes. Did Milosevic carry out ethnic cleansing against the Albanians? Given the fact that the Hague could never decisively prove this at the ICC (along with Milosevic’s mysterious death), the answer has to be “no.” Were Serbs guilty of violence against the Albanians? Probably, but this was no different from the Allied treatment of German civilians during WWII (Dresden, anyone?).
As other CIA analysts (Schindler) have noted, Muslim forces have long used “safe havens” as staging points for attacks on Serb forces; therefore, when the Serbs retaliate, it seems like they are attacking civilians.
Conclusion
Despite the “CNN-idolizing” feel of the book, the author has correctly identified Kosovo has a symbolic defining point between East and West. In other words, the actions in Kosovo will determine not only Russia-America relations, but also how the “international community” can respond to situations within national borders.
The most obvious reason leading to American bombing is the alleged ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Milosevic. I say “alleged” because the charges against Milosevic were never proven at The Hague. (There is a reason Milosevic died under mysterious circumstances). In fact, one cannot escape the impression that the West orchestrated this war. The West routinely rejected halts to the bombing and rejected several overtures at peace, overtures largely favorable to NATO and brokered by Russia (p. 19-21). As other analysts have made clear, NATO needed Kosovo as an oil transit. Accordingly, peace was unacceptable as long as Kosovo remained in Serb hands.
One other point of contention: The CIA had already identified the Kosovo Liberation Army as a terrorist group. Given that, how come Norris never discussed the criminal (and violently anti-American) actions of the KLA? The fact he doesn’t mention this shows how much this book is pure propaganda. (Milosevic pointed this out to Albright, which Albright derisively dismissed. One thinks the reason is obvious).
Given that this book is written by an “Establishment man,” and to a large degree, the author’s protests notwithstanding, this book unofficially represents the Western Establishment on interventionism. Given that high pedigree, high standards are required of the book. Unfortunately, this book fails on a scholarly level. I do not fault the author for not citing sources—much of the information can be found elsewhere, and the author does give a thorough bibliography and an extensive index. Rather, the author uses loaded language on every page. I think if one looks beneath this language one sees a “quiet desperation.” The Clinton Administration must justify its position continually. Kosovo today is a failure by anyone’s reckoning. (Interestingly, google "UN Resolution 1244" in connection with Hillary Clinton, and you will see Clinton urging the international community to violate this resolution, which is law. The administration knows it has broken international law in intervening, and their record since then is a poor one. In other words, the Regime (rightly) suspects its authority and dignity is now illegitimate and it lacks moral force for any of its actions. Clinton, Talbott, and Norris are right to be nervous.
So should one buy this book? It really is valuable in giving info one wouldn't find elsewhere; unfortunately, $50 is a lot to ask for mediocre writing.
In many ways the book summarizes the lead-up to the war, the nature of the Allied coalition, and the political consequences throughout and following the war. This review will largely avoid those issues as they are thoroughly covered elsewhere. Rather, the reviewing will focus on insights from Norris’ experiences and thoughts resulting from those insights.
The book begins on a painful note. The author of the foreword, Strobe Talbott, is acting like a Clintonian cheerleader. He is guilty of using “loaded language” and bias. (I point that out because it is taboo for official and/or scholarly documents to engage in self-congratulations.) His particular argument asks, quite rightly, what should be the conditions for empire, I mean, intervention. He notes that military force should only be used when diplomatic means are exhausted, that it guarantees safety to both the “victims” of the aggression and the regular citizenry, and that it ensures stability in the region. Talbott claims it gloriously met all of those goals. The truth, though, is that NATO failed--in one aspect or another--in all of the above: It was the Russians, not NATO bombers, that brought Milosevic to the table; the United States rejected numerous diplomatic proposals from the Bosnian Serbs and actually urged Izetbegovic to reject peace and go to war in the mid-1990s (!), and Serbs living in Bosnia and Kosovo today are facing a genuine ethnic cleansing on the level of which Milosevic was accused.
Reading Between the Lines
While NATO was technically victorious, it nearly lost the war and created several far greater disasters. Many of the Allies did not even want to proceed with air strikes, and the more traditional and Christian members like Italy and Greece nearly withdraw when NATO insisted on bombing Orthodox Christians during Pascha. Another point of contention was Russia. When Russia advised Serbia in this war, Russia was weak, bankrupt, and internally divided. That said, Russian special forces nearly captured several key airports in Kosovo. They actually could have done this quite easily, but Yeltsin was not committed. Had Russia proceeded, and American brass admits it could not have stopped Russia, then a combined Russian-Serbian movement would have easily won the war. Think about it for a second: if a poorly equipped, disillusioned Russian force under Yeltsin could have accomplished this, imagine what a modern Russian army under Putin could have done?
Had several Allies withdrawn from the campaign (which even US State officials expected them to do), combined with Russian forces seizing key Kosovar airports, along with NATO’s inability to decide on air strikes or sending ground troops, and with the general instability of the region (Norris, 30), NATO—or more precisely, the Anglo-Americans—would have lost this war. While sending ground troops would have ended the conflict quickly, the costs would have been enormous. Norris hints as much and this is one of the areas his book is quite useful: he truly does give an insider's perspective.
Presuppositions Determine Evidence
Despite the flaws and biases of this book, CNN, and the Clinton Administration, Serbophiles have to face up to the fact of genocide and war crimes. Did Milosevic carry out ethnic cleansing against the Albanians? Given the fact that the Hague could never decisively prove this at the ICC (along with Milosevic’s mysterious death), the answer has to be “no.” Were Serbs guilty of violence against the Albanians? Probably, but this was no different from the Allied treatment of German civilians during WWII (Dresden, anyone?).
As other CIA analysts (Schindler) have noted, Muslim forces have long used “safe havens” as staging points for attacks on Serb forces; therefore, when the Serbs retaliate, it seems like they are attacking civilians.
Conclusion
Despite the “CNN-idolizing” feel of the book, the author has correctly identified Kosovo has a symbolic defining point between East and West. In other words, the actions in Kosovo will determine not only Russia-America relations, but also how the “international community” can respond to situations within national borders.
The most obvious reason leading to American bombing is the alleged ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Milosevic. I say “alleged” because the charges against Milosevic were never proven at The Hague. (There is a reason Milosevic died under mysterious circumstances). In fact, one cannot escape the impression that the West orchestrated this war. The West routinely rejected halts to the bombing and rejected several overtures at peace, overtures largely favorable to NATO and brokered by Russia (p. 19-21). As other analysts have made clear, NATO needed Kosovo as an oil transit. Accordingly, peace was unacceptable as long as Kosovo remained in Serb hands.
One other point of contention: The CIA had already identified the Kosovo Liberation Army as a terrorist group. Given that, how come Norris never discussed the criminal (and violently anti-American) actions of the KLA? The fact he doesn’t mention this shows how much this book is pure propaganda. (Milosevic pointed this out to Albright, which Albright derisively dismissed. One thinks the reason is obvious).
Given that this book is written by an “Establishment man,” and to a large degree, the author’s protests notwithstanding, this book unofficially represents the Western Establishment on interventionism. Given that high pedigree, high standards are required of the book. Unfortunately, this book fails on a scholarly level. I do not fault the author for not citing sources—much of the information can be found elsewhere, and the author does give a thorough bibliography and an extensive index. Rather, the author uses loaded language on every page. I think if one looks beneath this language one sees a “quiet desperation.” The Clinton Administration must justify its position continually. Kosovo today is a failure by anyone’s reckoning. (Interestingly, google "UN Resolution 1244" in connection with Hillary Clinton, and you will see Clinton urging the international community to violate this resolution, which is law. The administration knows it has broken international law in intervening, and their record since then is a poor one. In other words, the Regime (rightly) suspects its authority and dignity is now illegitimate and it lacks moral force for any of its actions. Clinton, Talbott, and Norris are right to be nervous.
So should one buy this book? It really is valuable in giving info one wouldn't find elsewhere; unfortunately, $50 is a lot to ask for mediocre writing.
Read
April 8, 2009http://nhw.livejournal.com/364087.html[return][return]John Norris was a colleague of mine when this was published, but previously worked as director of communications for Strobe Talbott, then the US Deputy Secretary of State. This book is an insider's account of the April-June 1999 negotiations behind the scenes of the Kosovo crisis, largely from the perspective of Talbott's entourage. John is as modest on the page as he is in real life, and does not use the first person, either singular or plural, even once as far as I can tell.[return][return]There are two big policy lessons that come out of the book for me. First, it was a very big mistake for NATO (and especially the US) to rule out the use of ground troops right at the start of the conflict. Wars are not about being nice to the other side. Much better to have said "We'll use them if we have to", which is always the real policy position; NATO's initial determination not to use ground troops made the air campaign look half-hearted to the Serbs. I have always believed that it is very significant that Milosevic's unexpected acceptance of the first draft of the mediators' peace terms happened within a few hours of the first serious meeting at the White House to discuss a ground war. Serbia's intelligence services are dilapidated but I'm sure they picked up what was going on.[return][return]Second, the role of Russia is of crucial importance to multilateral diplomacy, or at least it was here. Just understanding what was going on in Yeltsin's Russia was difficult enough. John adds to the stock of stories that I've already heard about disjointed, rambling phone calls from Boris Yeltsin to Bill Clinton, and adds an account of a meeting with the foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, which was interrupted by a phone call from the newly appointed prime minister Stepashin to tell him if he was being sacked or not (he wasn't). The Russian army then shifted troops from Bosnia to Kosovo without telling anyone else, except President Yeltsin, who omitted to let the foreign ministry know about it.[return][return]There are some interesting personal vignettes: Wesley Clark being gradually cut out of the decision-making matrix as his relations with the Pentagon deteriorated; Richard Holbrooke likewise, as Talbott and his team got tired of his undermining them; Vladimir Putin's late but suitably sinister appearance in the narrative; the negotiating back channel that almost opened up between Robert Gelbard and Bogoljub Karic; President Ahtisaari of Finland, accidentally locked into a small room during a break in negotiations, reassures Talbott that "One of the good things about being president is that they never let me go missing for very long".[return][return]And in general it's a pretty good picture of the blow-by-blow coalition-building that is the essence of international diplomacy. Here of course the emphasis is on two quite different but crucial coalitions - the US and European coalition with the Russians that in the end imposed terms on Milosevic, and the coalition of different interests within the Washington/NATO power structures, especially the uneasy relationship between the US military, US allies (specifically the British military) and the diplomats, which while not quite as dysfunctional as the equivalent relations in Moscow still sounds pretty tense. The third aspect, the US relationship with NATO and the EU, gets somewhat less coverage than one might have expected - presumably because this was mainly finessed by the regular US diplomatic missions in European capitals rather than by Talbott's team - but it's there nonetheless.[return][return]I think the book's one weakness is that, while we get a very good sense of the size of the trees, we don't really get a feel for the forest. By the time the story properly gets going, NATO's air war on Kosovo has been going for several weeks, and the uninformed reader might have difficulty working out how we got there; likewise the account of what happened after the crisis of the Russian troops in Kosovo had been resolved covers five years in about as many pages, an abrupt shift of gear after the minute-by-minute narrative of the previous chapters. The odd expository paragraph is dropped in here and there but it might have been better for the general reader to consolidate them properly at the beginning.
October 26, 2016
Good read, eerily reminds me of the current Syria situation, and echoing other reviews is a must-read for a look at modern diplomacy.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews