------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 15:26:23 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: NATO'S BALKAN FOLLY - Marcus Gee, The Globe and Mail The Globe and Mail Wednesday, April 14, 1999 NATO'S BALKAN FOLLY By Marcus Gee In her wonderful book The March of Folly, the late American historian Barbara Tuchman tried to explain why nations do foolish things. Why did the Trojans drag a wooden horse inside their walls when every sign pointed to a Greek trick? Why did the British court a revolt in their valuable American colonies by overtaxing the colonists? Why did the Renaissance popes ignore every call for reform and lose half their flock to the Protestant secession? Simple ignorance is seldom the reason, Ms. Tuchman argues. When the United States embarked on its doomed intervention in Vietnam, for example, its leaders knew very well that they could be wading into a quagmire. A generation of scholarship and political intelligence had told them so. Yet in they went regardless, sinking deeper with every step. "The folly consisted not in pursuit of a goal in ignorance of the obstacles," writes Ms. Tuchman, "but in persistence in the pursuit despite accumulating evidence that the goal was unattainable." So it is for NATO in Kosovo today. Three weeks into our own little quagmire, it is plain that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's goal of protecting the Kosovo Albanians from Serb aggression is unattainable with the present means: air power. Instead of forcing Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to back off, the bombing has furnished him with a perfect excuse to burn and pillage his way through his rebellious province. Yet on we march on this Balkan folly, singing Onward Christian Soldiers as we go. Ignorance did not cause this calamity. Evidence is growing that NATO knew Mr. Milosevic would lash out if attacked from the air. U.S. military officials have told American newspapers that they warned that the Serbian leader would strike brutally at the Kosovo Albanians as soon as NATO began to attack him. NATO's leaders went ahead anyway, gambling that Mr. Milosevic would fold as soon as he knew the alliance wasn't bluffing. When he didn't fold -- when he instead counterattacked by crushing the Kosovo rebels -- they simply shut their eyes and marched on. "Milosevic is losing, and he knows he is losing," insists NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana. NATO will "persist until we prevail," says U.S. President Bill Clinton. All of this is sadly typical. As one historian wrote of Philip II of Spain: "No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence." Ms. Tuchman calls this quality "wooden-headedness." Once they have committed themselves to a counterproductive policy, she says, leaders find it all but impossible to reverse course, even if the evidence of failure is overwhelming. Occasionally a leader will find the moral courage to admit he was wrong. Ms. Tuchman mentions Anwar Sadat, who decided to overturn a generation of Egyptian policy and make peace with Israel, defying the whole Arab world in the process. But examples like that are "as rare as rubies in a back yard." More often, "practitioners of government continue down the wrong road as if in thrall to some Merlin with the magic power to direct their steps." The process is so predictable that Ms. Tuchman has divided it into stages. "In its first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and failing function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify. Rigidifying leads to increase of investment and the need to protect egos. The greater the investment and the more involved in it the sponsor's ego, the more unacceptable is disengagement. In the third stage, pursuit of failure enlarges the damages until it causes the fall of Troy, the defection from the papacy, the loss of a transatlantic empire, the classic humiliation in Vietnam." NATO is now entering the second stage. This is the period, says Ms. Tuchman, when, "if wisdom were operative," rethinking and a change of course would still be possible. Instead, classic stage-two rigidity is setting in. When NATO foreign ministers emerged from their summit on Monday, they said the bombing would continue for "as long as it takes." Instead of changing course, NATO will raise its investment by sending 300 more planes into the fray. More bombs will fall. More Serb soldiers and civilians will die. Albanians will keep fleeing and dying. And for what? Why does NATO persist with a policy that is demonstrably failing? Above all, to save face. NATO began bombing because it had said it would begin bombing if Mr. Milosevic refused to sign a peace agreement. Now it keeps bombing because it said it would keep bombing unless he gives in. The allies bomb not to save Albanians -- we admit that bombing won't do that -- but to rescue their own credibility. This one, we keep hearing, is too big to lose. We can't change course now. We just can't. And the march of folly goes on.
[PEN-L:5305] (Fwd) NATO'S BALKAN FOLLY - Marcus Gee, The Globe and Mail
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Wed, 14 Apr 1999 23:17:48 -0500