NATO’s Balkan bombing campaign was victorious, more or less, but there may be as much relief in the West as in Belgrade that it is ending. Given that NATO was imposing, but not taking, casualties, why that reaction? There was broad public outrage in the West against ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and equally broad support for this humanitarian intervention. Why then the sense that not only the Serbs, but we as well, have had a lucky escape?
Steven Rosenfeld, writing in the Washington Post, offered this extraordinary analysis: “It turned out that the principal shortage . . . was of viable military and economic targets. Serbia being … a small, middle-level country, the number of these began to run short. The gap was made up by verging into targets that could be hit only by putting civilians at extra risk. Still, the end of the war came before the NATO publics revolted against the collateral civilian kill.”
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