The Real Winner in Kosovo

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post, 28 April 1999

What happens now? However this war ends, one thing is certain: The winner will be Russia.

The Clinton administration is desperate for an exit. That exit will take the form of a
diplomatic
agreement. It will constitute capitulation with some ad hoc face saving. And it will be brokered by
the Russians.

Why is this likely? Because beneath the bluff and the bluster, the administration has been
frantically signaling in every possible way for the Russians to bail it out.

Clinton’s conciliatory line on Russia has been remarkable considering how unconciliatory
Russia
has been to Clinton. Russia has delivered him slap after slap over Kosovo. Prime Minister
Yevgeny Primakov turned his U.S.-bound plane around in mid-transit to protest the bombing.
Russia then issued loud criticism coupled with ostentatious support for Milosevic and a fawning
visit to Belgrade by Primakov.

Russia kicked NATO’s representatives out of Moscow. It sent a spy ship into the Adriatic to
shadow the U.S. fleet. It threatened to send military supplies to Belgrade. It boycotted NATO’s
50th-year summit in Washington.

Quite a flurry of slaps, particularly coming from a beggar nation. (Primakov’s canceled U.S.
trip
was to have been devoted largely to cup-rattling.) And how has the administration reacted? With
utmost delicacy.

It talks incessantly about how constructive Russia has been in Bosnia — and could be again in
Kosovo. It dropped demands for a NATO-led force in Kosovo, which was anathema to Russia.
An “international presence” is the new term of art. Meaning: with Russians, perhaps under
Russians. Hint, hint.

Madeleine Albright flies to Oslo to meet the Russian foreign minister. She is stiffed, and
smiles.
Presidential speeches make sure to mention how the Russians would be welcome in any peace
negotiation. Gore calls Primakov. Clinton calls Yeltsin. All welcome the Chernomyrdin peace
mission to Belgrade.

“We want to work constructively with Russia,” reads NATO’s 50th-anniversary communique,
a
document drafted (says the NATO secretary-general) to encourage Russian mediation. Clinton
and Yeltsin talk again. A high-level U.S. envoy is sent to Moscow to confer with Chernomyrdin.

You don’t need a secret decoder to read the message: Bail us out. We’ll pay you back.

The outlines of a negotiated deal are becoming visible. Some Serb forces will be withdrawn
from
Kosovo, but not all. (The NATO communique: “Milosevic must withdraw from Kosovo his
military, police and paramilitary forces.” The key word “all” is missing.) Albanians will be allowed
to return to some part of Kosovo, perhaps with an international presence controlled by the U.N.
(where Russia and China have vetoes) and dominated by Russians and other Slavs.

Oddly, while working on a deal, the administration is at the same time pushing to impose a
naval
blockade on Yugoslavia. That would mean boarding and/or firing upon ships carrying oil and
potential war materiel to Yugoslavia. Russia has said it will run any such blockade. So: for
Kosovo, Clinton is unwilling to risk the life of a single foot soldier, but instead is willing to risk a
shootout with Russia in the Adriatic. His very own Cuban missile crisis. (This is taking Kennedy
worship a bit too far.)

Whatever the details of the deal, the losers and winners are foreordained: NATO will have
retreated. The Kosovar Albanians, having suffered death and dispossession, will never even get
back to where they were before Clinton embarked on his little Balkan adventure. Serbia will retain
control of all or part of Kosovo.

And the Russians? The Russians, hailed as the diplomatic brokers, will be honored for their
service to peace. They will pocket a few more billion in aid, which will temporarily transit
Moscow on its way to Swiss banks. Russia’s voice at the U.N., so muted since 1991, will grow
louder. Its sway in European and NATO councils will have increased (if there is anything left of
NATO by then).

Most important, Primakov will have proved to the world — and to pro-Western Russians —
that
an anti-American foreign policy puts Russia back on the stage and gives it diplomatic clout, while
the pro-American policy followed since the Gulf War yielded Russia nothing but a ticket to
oblivion.

We will have vindicated Primakov’s vision of Russia as leader of the opposition, friend and
broker
of rogue regimes (Serbia, Iraq), balancer of American power. This might even get him elected
president next year when Yeltsin’s term expires.

Clinton will finally have his legacy.