Why did we bomb Belgrade?

Abstract

In principle, the question was answered by our political leaders in the days following the start of NATO's air campaign against Serbia. In practice, the answers raised new questions as to why these intelligent men were saying such things.Using similar words in various formulations, George Robertson and Robin Cook explained (repeatedly) that the political objective was to avert a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo and/or to prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe. This was to be achieved by strategic and precision bombing of military targets (initially in Serbia) in order to reduce the capability of Serb forces to: continue with their violence; repress the Kosovar Albanians; order ethnic cleansing. There was an obvious disjunction between the stated military objective of degrading Serbia's military capability (a slow process) and the immediate political objective of halting the forced expulsions and associated killings in Kosovo. Indeed, bombing Belgrade seemed likely to inflame the situation, and made sense only if one believed that this demonstration of NATO resolve would cause Slobodan Milosevic to halt the process himself. That did not happen. We were then told-despite events in Bosnia and Croatia-that no one could have foreseen that Milosevic could have been so wicked. The continued bombing was justified by describing what was happening in Kosovo (which was terrible enough) using exaggerated and emotive language, including talk of genocide which, in common parlance, clearly did not apply. Meanwhile, our leaders continued to demonize Milosevic.In the past, demonizing has been used to justify offensive military action that in other circumstances might be questionable. Abdul Nasser (whom Britain likened to Hitler) at the time of the Suez crisis is one such example; Muammar Qadhafi as ruler of Libya is another.So what exactly was afoot? Was this a punishment beating in the Balkans, where NATO, dissatisfied over UN ineffectiveness, was taking the law into its own hands? Or was there something more to the whole affair?This article is divided into two parts. The first is descriptive, reviewing the situation through to the end of 1998 and then summarizing events during the first six months of 1999. The second part revisits the evidence, following up

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