By David Young

At the time of the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999, the premise of Western governments was that confronting ethnic cleansing was more important than respecting the international borders. The message was that would-be tyrants in future needed to know – and be deterred by – the cost that would be imposed on them by the international community if they sought to inflict such atrocities. The U.S. decision to throw its full political-military weight into Kosovo reflected eagerness to make up for perceived moral failures in the 1990s (notably Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia). President Bill Clinton was eager to restore America’s image as the global policeman backing up the recently proclaimed new world order. And he wanted to restore the strategic authority of the United States.

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By Francois Clemenceau

At last there is a book- authoritative but not yet translated into English- that answers the tormenting question of why the two most wanted mass murderers of the Yugoslav civil wars have never been brought to justice a decade after international warrants were issued for them. Despite repeated reports of their imminent arrests, the pair – Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who headed the Bosnian Serbs’ army – have managed to elude capture and extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.

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Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Robert E. Hunter examines the current state of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. He focuses on the challenges presented by so-called “caveats”– limitations that individual nations place on their NATO forces– and the difficulties that they are causing for NATO commanders on the ground. Hunter’s article deals not only with the alliance’s immediate prospects in Afghanistan, but also with the long-term repercussions that could result from NATO’s first major military defeat.
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The clashing views of Moscow and Washington about the future of Kosovo were laid out powerfully and clearly in a recent semi-public exchange between two well-placed individuals on opposite sides of the argument. Dimitri K. Simes, a scholar specialized in the affairs of his native Russia, who now heads the Nixon Center in Washington. Ambassador Frank G. Wisner, the U.S. special representative to the talks on Kosovo’s future headed by United Nations envoy, Martti Ahtissari.

Their dialogue of articles and letters was circulated by the Committee for the Republic, an informal circle of policy intellectuals in Washington. One of the circle’s members is former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman to whom some of the correspondence was addressed. European Affairs found it a clarifying account of the fundamental arguments on both sides. (more…)

The White House announced today that it wants a new ambassador at NATO, Kurt Volker, currently Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the Department of State. His nomination will be submitted for senate confirmation shortly. The Bush administration seems to expect easy confirmation for Mr. Volker who has been a key aid under Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Dan Fried in rebuilding U.S.-European relations in the second Bush term.

European Affairs published a profile of Mr. Volker in conjunction with an interview with him in the current issue. He outlined the Administration priorities for its remaining months in office.

Before his appointment as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the Department of State, Mr. Volker served as the Director of NATO Policy and Acting Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council.

The current Ambassador, Victoria Nuland, a career diplomat who has been in the post several years, is reportedly leaving government. Her husband, author Robert Kagan, recently published A Dangerous Nation on the history of American foreign policy. The second volume is due to appear this spring. His book was reviewed by European Affairs.