BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The United States and its NATO allies began on Wednesday the most extensive combat operations in the alliance's half-century existence, unsure of success and jittery about the consequences of their action.
At news conferences and in public statements, as attacks on Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia commenced, leaders in Washington, allied capitals in Europe and the NATO headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels all struck a posture of unflinching unity. But beneath this veneer of public resolve, the air was heavy with uncertainty and misgivings.
"We're all nervous," said one high-ranking NATO official.
Added a European diplomat, admittedly speaking more dramatically than most: "The situation we are now in is catastrophic. We Europeans are worried about a Saddam Hussein scenario, where we bomb and we bomb and nothing happens. Then we will have an Iraq in the heart of Europe."
The mood was similar on the other side of the Atlantic.
"This is an unpredictable, messy and dangerous business," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and a respected member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He derided congressional colleagues who were demanding exact timetables and exit dates from the Kosovo crisis.
Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, worried about far more cataclysmic consequences.
"I believe we are coming close to starting World War III," Stevens said during an animated Senate floor debate Tuesday evening. "At least I know we are starting a process that is almost going to be never-ending."
This unusually high level of concern as military action began in Kosovo came despite the West's relatively successful deployment of forces in nearby Bosnia-Herzegovina and a casualty-free, three-month air campaign in the skies over Iraq.
The reasons underlying those concerns are numerous:
* The bombing could ignite a broader war, possibly infecting the alliance by heightening tensions between Greece, which is sympathetic to the dominant Yugoslav republic of Serbia, and Turkey, which has religious ties to Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population.
* The campaign might not be enough to force Milosevic to accept the presence of NATO ground forces as peace patrols in Kosovo; if it isn't, the alliance might not have a politically sustainable alternative strategy.
* Doubts exist about the legality of the airstrikes under international law. Though the United States insists that U.N. resolutions leave room for the mission, some European governments have argued that a new resolution is needed.
* The rugged terrain, poor weather and robust Serb air defenses could combine to make the mission extremely dangerous, and the heightened risk of casualties could quickly erode congressional and public support for the action. That, in turn, could have disastrous consequences for the alliance and for America's global leadership role, foreign policy specialists fear.
"The American people are not sold on the necessity of this intervention," said Richard Haass, a Bush administration foreign policy adviser and author of "The Reluctant Sheriff," a recently published book that explores America's equivocal approach to its role as the globe's lone superpower. "If the United States is shown not to have the stomach for this intervention, then bad guys around the world will note that lesson."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, summed up: "This is a test of American leadership ... something we have to see through now that we've started it."
Letters to neighbors
To reassure Yugoslavia's nervous neighbors that they won't be drawn into another war in the Balkans, NATO secretary-general Javier Solana has dispatched letters to Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania and Slovenia promising support if they are threatened by Yugoslavia, an alliance official said.
NATO has been markedly and painfully slow to come to grips with the Kosovo crisis, the most violent ethnic conflict raging in Europe, where the province's ethnic Albanians, including a faction of armed rebels, are pitted against Yugoslavia's Serb majority and Serb-dominated power structure.
Nearly 10 months ago, alliance ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, started talking about "military implications of further deterrent measures" to staunch the bloodletting that began a year ago.
Last October, the alliance came close to ordering military attacks but backed off when Milosevic agreed to a cease-fire and troop withdrawal -- agreements that he violated. Five months of diplomatic cat-and-mouse games with Belgrade ensued, as the fighting and nightmare ordeals of civilians in Kosovo continued.
Deadlines in negotiations that opened in France last month were set, then forgotten and extended, and a new round of talks held.
'String of warnings'
There was "a string of warnings and ultimatums that were not carried through," William Hague, leader of Britain's opposition Conservative Party, complained Tuesday to the House of Commons. "The credibility of NATO has been called into question."
"If you threaten or promise action, you have to follow through from time to time on your promises," an official at the alliance argued. "Otherwise, your threats don't mean anything anymore."
The problem, some military analysts say, is that the means chosen by NATO to follow up on 10 months of tough talk -- massive and repeated aerial bombardments -- might be inadequate to the challenge of ending the violence in Kosovo and forcing Milosevic to back down.
Jane Sharp, senior fellow at the Center for Defense Studies at King's College in London, said in a telephone interview that, far from undermining Milosevic, NATO attacks are likely to consolidate his hold on power and Serb public opinion.
"People in London remember the Blitz, and it pulled us together," Sharp said, referring to the air raids by the Nazi Luftwaffe on the British capital during World War II that killed more than 29,000 people and injured 120,000. "I don't know of a single case where the bombing caused a weakening of civilian morale."
If Milosevic takes the punishment and doesn't yield, the sole way to guarantee the safety of the Albanians of Kosovo would be to send in heavily armed troops backed by tanks and other armored vehicles to push back the Yugoslav army and security forces, many experts inside and outside NATO say.
But that has always been a nonstarter for NATO countries.
The anonymous European diplomat said military planners in the alliance drew up a plan for hostile intervention in Kosovo and found that 200,000 troops would be needed. Though that figure is less than a third of the 700,000 deployed in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, it is a commitment that would likely draw little political support in the United States or among its European allies.
"No government here is willing to do that," the diplomat said. "We're in the dark about what to do if the bombings don't give us what we want."
John-Thor Dahlburg and Tyler Marshall wrote this piece for the Los Angeles Times.
Pub Date: 03/28/99