CONGRESS and the people should support the administration's policy on Kosovo, including air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. One goal is to avert humanitarian disaster, to prevent more death and destruction than the bombing causes. The other is to keep NATO intact for the security of Europe.

Before shooting at the policy, Congress should consider carefully the possible consequences of defeating it in Washington.

On the ground in Kosovo, the Yugoslav army would likely roll forward, not to destroy the guerrilla army that would recede in the hills, but to kill ethnic Albanians, destroy villages and cleanse the north and west of the province of Albanian people.

As for NATO, it would cease to exist in a meaningful way. It could make no more ultimatums. It could enforce no peace. Its word would not be taken. Its unity would vanish. The United States would have led NATO to the brink and then turned tail.

Bombing military targets in Serbia is a dreadful business that must not be considered lightly. The same must be said of failing to do so, letting bluffs be called, making idle threats, leading others into harm's way, tolerating slaughter.

Short, intensive bombing of Serbian positions in Bosnia in September 1995 ended genocidal atrocities there, brought the parties to the Dayton peace conference that November and produced a peace that endures.

The political outcome in Bosnia is imperfect, and no exit strategy for the peacekeeping troops exists. But the killing stopped and the threat of wider European conflict receded.

The happiest outcome, should bombs be provoked in Kosovo, is that Serbian strongman, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, would be required to accept the NATO-led peacekeeping force into Kosovo.

The worst is that atrocities, similar to those recently committed by his military units, would continue to induce ethnic Albanians to flee advancing troops in fear of genocide.

Kosovo, or the parts in the north and west that matter most to the legends of Serb nationalism, would be cleansed. The human suffering would be great, the disintegration of fragile Macedonia would be brought nearer and the possibility of a wider European war would be renewed.

Either forecast requires that the NATO ultimatum, having been made, be kept credible.

Mr. Milosevic has claimed many victims. The will and unity of the North Atlantic alliance should not be among them.