LIKE it or not, the United States is inexorably proceeding towards a ground-force intervention in Kosovo. Even if Slobodan Milosevic strikes a deal, as NATO obviously hopes, the allies will have to deploy some .50,000-60,000 ground troops for a peacekeeping mission that will make southern Lebanon look easy. And that will quite possibly be the best outcome. If the Serbian leader fights on, our policy of gradual pressure will make an all- other-options-exhausted ground war the only alternative to the West’s humiliation. Either way, the U.S. and NATO will have backed into a protracted commitment they barely control.
This is an inevitable consequence of President Clinton’s mix of exceedingly lofty goals (his “vision of the twenty-first century”) and puny means. Vietnam demonstrated the problem with graduated escalation: The attempt to “fine tune” (in the words of McNamara aide John McNaughton) military pressure to send delicate signals leaves the initiative in the enemy’s hands. Milosevic continues to determine the pace and nature of the war. Worse, each phase of graduated escalation helps the enemy prepare for the next. NATO has given Serb forces the time to acclimatize to its actions and learn to operate effectively in Kosovo during the bombing. Small wonder that 30 days into this campaign there are more Serb forces operating in Kosovo than before—and using helicopters and combat aircraft to boot. What appears to have changed since Vietnam is that the Joint Chiefs, “five silent men” in that conflict, are now five silent men leaking their protestations to the Washington Post.
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