Spectre of Ground War Haunts NATO Summit

by Jim Lobe

That spectre of a ground war, in which NATO troops fight and die to expel Serbian forces from Kosovo in order to return hundreds of thousands of Albanian Kosovars to their devastated communities, appears to be coming closer to reality.

The ground war will not be found on the official agenda of the summit, which was originally called to celebrate NATO's 50th birthday and define its future mandate. But like that fearsome apparition, it dominated proceedings.

"There's no point in discussing NATO's future if NATO can't win this war," said one State Department official who echoed the growing belief that, to defeat the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, "more and more people here believe that NATO can't prevail without a ground war."

The official, who asked not to be identified, was not expressing the position of either NATO or the administration of President Bill Clinton.

They still insist that NATO's one-month air bombardment of Yugoslavia should be enough to bring Milosevic to heel and permit more than one million Kosovars to return home.

But NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana's decision to revise and update contingency plans for a possible ground invasion, then Clinton's endorsement Thursday, confirm that policy-makers in both Brussels and Washington point are looking toward a major reassessment of NATO strategy.

"I support the secretary-general's decision to update the assessment," Clinton said at a Rose Garden appearance with Solana Thursday afternoon. "I think it is a wise and prudent course."

Their remarks followed press reports that both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac were intending to press Clinton on the ground-troop option, although Chirac also wants the UN Security Council to authorize such a step in advance.

Clinton explicitly ruled out a ground option when NATO began bombing Yugoslavia March 24. But the air campaign to date has not produced any sign that Milosevic will agree to NATO's terms.

Reports from Belgrade make it clear that public opposition to Milosevic has virtually vanished and, despite NATO's claims that it has "damaged and degraded" the Yugoslav military's ability to carry out its Kosovo operations, Serb forces in the province have actually increased their strength by as many as 7,000 troops in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing is virtually complete. Of the estimated 1.8 million ethnic Albanians living in the province before hostilities, some 1.4 million have been forced from their homes, Clinton admitted Thursday.

"If your political objective is to get those people home, you can't do that by bombing from 15,000 feet," says Kori Schake of the National Defense University here. "You're going to have to do it by getting ground troops in there, and that's going to be messy and unpleasant."

The administration has not yet given up on the air war, and some officials believe that steps to be taken in the coming days - notably the introduction of Apache helicopter gun ships which have been shipped to Albania, and the imposition of an oil embargo which Washington hopes may include a naval blockade - may yet force Milosevic to terms.

But the same officials admit that they have underestimated Milosevic's resolve and, unless the Apaches wreak a fearsome toll on Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, they see little -- short of a ground invasion -- that would induce a change of heart in Belgrade.

A ground invasion raises huge questions for the alliance and Clinton.

NATO's original contingency plans, prepared last summer, concluded that it would take 75,000 NATO troops to seize Kosovo and 200,000 to defeat the Yugoslav army and take control of Serbia. If, however, Serb forces already in Kosovo were able to dig in, some military experts here believe that at least 120,000 NATO troops would be needed to take the province against resistance.

Moreover, it will take at least three months or more for NATO is to deploy the forces and logistical infrastructure needed to mount a major campaign, according to John Hillen, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Not only will such a delay permit the Yugoslavs to prepare their defence and finish their ethnic cleansing, but it will also leave only a small window of time to conduct an offensive before the weather turns bad next fall, Hillen says.

A ground campaign also raises a host of political and foreign-policy questions to which Clinton would rather not have to respond.

Overseas, such an escalation would place new pressures on those alliance members, especially Greece and Italy, which have shown little enthusiasm even for the air campaign, to deny their support.

It would also have a major impact on Russia which has already warned in the strongest terms against a ground invasion. US- Russian ties are already at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War.

Another question is where the invasion force might deploy. If in Macedonia, pro-Serb forces could launch a guerrilla war, spreading the conflict southwards, according to Karel Koster, a Dutch association of the British-American Security Information Council (BASIC) here.

Similarly, a NATO build-up in Hungary -- which occupies the most logical invasion route into Yugoslavia -- could be countered by an ethnic cleansing campaign against the 250,000 Hungarians who live in Vojvodina, he says.

At home, Clinton and NATO could face serious dissent, despite current high levels of support for the war in public-opinion polls here and in Britain, France and Germany, if there are significant casualties.

In the United States, Republican lawmakers already are complaining that Washington is shouldering too much of the military burden. If a ground war is deemed necessary the Europeans should bear most, if not all, of the burden, they say.

"But the most important political aspect for NATO," says Koster, is: "We cannot afford to lose this."