-Caveat Lector-
For whatever it's worth:
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U.S. Consensus Grows to Send Ground Troops
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 6, 1999; Page A01
With remarkable speed, a consensus supporting the deployment of U.S. ground
forces in Kosovo has formed in Washington and it appears to be pulling
public opinion in the same direction.
Even as the Clinton administration continues to rule out ground forces
until "a permissive environment" exists in Kosovo, a chorus of foreign
policy experts and key members of Congress have been making the case that
deployment may be inevitable.
They argue that, with the air war failing to achieve its immediate
objectives of stopping Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, it may take
such a risky commitment to deal with the mushrooming humanitarian disaster
unfolding on the ground there and to salvage the credibility of the NATO
alliance.
"Very early on, there was among the foreign policy establishment a
realization that this was real, that this was not just a bit of bombing,
but that it basically was a declaration of war," said Ivo Daalder of the
Brookings Institution and a former National Security Council adviser to
President Clinton. "People realized what we were engaged in was war and
that the stakes were far grander and far larger than the administration
painted them."
Foreign policy analysts say some of the old notions of left and right have
gone out the window in the post-Cold War environment. Instead, the
consensus for what could be a wider war in Europe fuses humanitarian
instincts of many on the left who are outraged by the scenes of refugees
flooding into Macedonia with realpolitik advocates who argue that U.S.
power and prestige must be protected in a conflict with a leader like
Milosevic.
Dissenters have been few and far between, despite a post-Vietnam reluctance
to commit ground forces in combat and a perception that the American public
won't tolerate casualties on the battlefield. Some Republicans strongly
oppose the use of ground forces, but with Congress in recess until next
week, it isn't clear how divided the legislative branch is about what the
administration should do next.
The clearest sign of a rapidly developing consensus within the foreign
policy establishment came last Friday, when former secretary of state Henry
A. Kissinger and two former national security advisers, Brent Scowcroft and
Zbigniew Brzezinski, appeared on PBS's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and
argued that Clinton should not rule out the use of ground troops.
There are some signs that the drumbeat in favor of ground forces -- coupled
with images of the flood of refugees -- has begun to affect public opinion.
Last week, a poll by CBS News found 41 percent of the public in favor of
deploying ground troops to end the conflict and 52 percent opposed. A
Newsweek poll released over the weekend showed that 54 percent favored
sending in ground forces "to subdue Milosevic" and that 71 percent thought
such forces would be required to resolve the conflict.
Public opinion analysts cautioned, however, that the public still has
reservations about the use of force under messy conditions. "There's very
little appetite for casualties," said Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research
Center. "Support there now would evaporate if the specter of a quagmire
were to be evoked by Kosovo."
For now, the events in Yugoslavia have brought together disparate elements
along the political spectrum in support of a more robust U.S. response to
the evidence that Serbian forces have used the bombing campaign as an
excuse to drive ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo.
"With the Cold War over, one of the things that happened on the liberal
wing of politics is an increasing desire to do humanitarian things with
foreign policy," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for
America's Future.
The arguments in favor of preserving U.S. and NATO credibility have, if
anything, been made even more strongly by the foreign policy elite. On
almost any day, the editorial pages of major newspapers and television talk
shows have been filled with such commentary from former secretaries of
state and members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services
committees.
The policy debate has grave implications for Clinton and Vice President
Gore but also may affect attitudes toward Republican candidates seeking the
2000 presidential nomination. Republican candidates remain divided on the
deployment of ground forces.
Analysts said yesterday the war in Yugoslavia has given a short-term boost
to Arizona Sen. John McCain (R), who was an early and outspoken advocate of
using whatever means necessary to win the war and explicitly put the issue
of ground troops on the table when others were not talking about it. "He's
taken amazing strides in making himself a credible candidate," said Robert
Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R), who leads the GOP field in the polls, was
judged more harshly for having been more tentative in his statements,
although he attempted to clarify his position yesterday during a telephone
interview from Texas. He wouldn't say definitively whether he judged the
administration's current policy a failure but said a stable Europe and the
refugee crisis meant it's in the U.S. interest "to win" the war. "All
options ought to be on the table," he said. "If the mission is to win, then
I think all options ought to be available to the military planners."
On the issue of ground troops, Bush said, "I don't have all the
intelligence briefings, but the commander-in-chief must say this is the
mission and use whatever means necessary to achieve our objective. If his
military briefers say it's important to use troops to achieve the mission,
I would be supportive, if two things exist: first, a strong commitment to
win, and second, a clear exit strategy."
Former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger wrote in Sunday's New York
Times that in the late 1980s, the Bush administration decided that the
splintering Yugoslav Federation "was a swamp into which we did not want to
walk."
Bush was asked whether he thought his father's administration had made the
correct judgment. "I don't have any comment on that," he said. "I haven't
seen the piece. My assessment now is to say to Milosevic, who is on a
terrorist campaign of ethnic cleansing, that we are going to stop you."
Among other GOP presidential candidates, Elizabeth Dole has said she would
not rule out the use of ground forces, while Patrick J. Buchanan, former
vice president Dan Quayle, former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander,
magazine publisher Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes, conservative activist Gary
Bauer, Ohio Rep. John R. Kasich and New Hampshire Sen. Robert C. Smith said
they oppose their introduction. Quayle, who was vice president to Bush's
father, has argued that NATO countries other than the United States should
supply ground troops if they are needed.
However strongly the consensus among the foreign policy establishment
appears for possible deployment of ground troops, several analysts said the
president will still face skepticism from the public if he decides they are
needed, if for no other reason than the bombing campaign has been judged a
failure.
Citing the anti-terrorist raids in Afghanistan and Sudan last summer and
the most recent strikes against Iraq and now the campaign against
Milosevic, Daalder said Clinton will have trouble persuading the country
that a ground phase of the war will be successful.
"The administration has oversold its previous use of air power," he said,
"and those chickens are coming home to roost."
Polling director Richard Morin and researcher Ben White contributed to this
report.
� Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
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