The Policy Bomb

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Nor does it have means at hand to alleviate the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of Kosovars trapped in half a dozen remote pockets by marauding Serbian forces. Intelligence officials are warning that hunger, disease and exposure could soon start wiping out the displaced ethnic Albanians. Military officers rule out using NATO troops to carve out a land corridor to feed the hungry. Airdrops aren't practical either, since slow transports would have to fly dangerously low to deliver their cargoes and the Serbs might pick off the supplies.

Washington officials insisted last week that Milosevic is beginning to feel the pain. But they've been insisting that for the past four weeks, and so far Belgrade has sent out no diplomatic feelers, and no one in Serbia shows visible signs of cracking. "Any meaningful diplomacy, besides just wheel spinning, requires Yugoslavia to change its positions and accept NATO's basic principles," says a discouraged senior State Department official. "I can't see anything happening."

All the West's peace settlements require Milosevic, in effect, to surrender, and that means the allies are going to have to beat him decisively. Even then, NATO is still not sure what it would do next. The ideas the West is mulling--partition, protectorates, autonomy, regional-stability pacts, complex territorial rearranging of the volatile Balkan jigsaw--raise questions as explosive for the region as the current crisis. Nor do they go to the heart of the problem: Milosevic himself. In his constantly evolving dialogue with the American people, Clinton seemed to realize that last week when he said, "The last thing we need in the Balkans is greater Balkanization. The best solution is not endless rejiggering of their borders" but a democratic Serbia led by someone other than Milosevic. A good peace plan, no doubt, but if Iraq is any lesson, NATO has no idea how to accomplish it. And in the meantime, Milosevic will have left Kosovo a desolate, smoking ruin.