The most important thing at the moment is to protect ordinary people in Kosovo, to prevent massacres and expulsions. In the new wars we are witnessing, the victims are always civilians. The Yugoslav army and police are using tactics reminiscent of Bosnia and, indeed of wars in Africa and other places. They start by shelling. Then they move in and kill or expel the population. Then they loot and burn the houses. The KLA seem powerless to stop them.
The withdrawal of the orange Organisation On Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) vans left the Kosovo Albanians without even the figleaf of international protection. Jonathan Steele reports villagers literally quaking with fear. I have talked to terrified people in Pristina who do not even dare to go to sleep. The absolute urgent priority is to get international troops into Kosovo.
Presumably, Western leaders are hoping that Milosevic will capitulate as a result of bombing and that after the first wave, he will accept the Rambouillet Agreement and the presence of Nato troops in Kosovo. That is the only rational explanation for the bombing and, if that were to happen, there might turn out to be a case for it. But this outcome seems unlikely. The bombing will give Milosevic an excuse to mobilise nationalist sentiment, to intensify his offensive and to crack down on what is left of the democratic opposition in Serbia.
The new wars are wars directed against civilians and against civil society. Last night, the independent radio station B92 - a lifeline for Yugoslav democrats - was banned and Veran Matic, the editor in chief and President of ANEM (Association of Independent Electronic Media) was arrested. Human rights and peace activists in such groups as the Helsinki Committee, Women in Black or the Belgrade Circle, were described by the deputy prime minister and radical nationalist Seselj as 'agents' of the US. In September, when Nato threatened to bomb, Seselj said: 'We can't shoot down every Nato plane but we can grab those agents who are at hand.' Thus, the few domestic contraints on Milosevic that exist are likely to be weakened as a result of bombing.
The nightmare scenario is one in which Milosevic continues his offensive and Nato engages in successive waves of bombing in a fruitless attempt to force agreement. Moreover, the new wars have a tendency to spread through the pressure of refugees, through networks of gunrunning and other forms of illegal trading and through knock-on effects of ethnic nationalism. If the violence continues, there is danger that it will spread to Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro and even that war will be resumed in Bosnia. Ever since 1991, the nightmare scenarios in the Balkans have tended to come true.
Bombing must be followed by the deployment of ground troops. Can it really be true, as Blair and Clinton insist, that there are no contingency plans to send in troops without an invitation from the Yugoslav government? There are 12,000 troops in Macedonia and eventually there will be 28,000. Yugoslav troops in Kosovo number nearly 40,000, although much of the current violence is being carried out by police forces.
NATO officials say they need at least 100,000 troops to carry out an invasion; that means that American troops would have to be involved and the Americans are totally opposed to ground deployments, which could involve the risk of loss of American lives.
Would so many troops really be needed? These are wars in which violence is directed against civilians and the warring parties avoid battle. Would the Yugoslav army risk battle with Nato? Is it not possible to establish bridgeheads within Kosovo with fewer troops in selected areas where civilians could be protected? If Nato is serious about preventing genocide in Kosovo, sooner or later, the troops will have to be found, among the Europeans if the United States is unwilling. Political leaders ought to make it clear that troops will be deployed in Kosovo whether or not Milosevic agrees. The insistence that there are no contingency plans for an invasion makes it easier for Milosevic to defy Nato bombs.
Every Western political leader has insisted that they will not allow what happened in Bosnia to be repeated. They say the credibility of Nato is at stake. Yet the withdrawal of the OSCE monitors made it clear that Western leaders still privilege the lives of their own nationals over the lives of ordinary people. The OSCE monitors did at least have diplomatic immunity. They were less at risk than the civilian population of Kosovo.
What went wrong in Bosnia was the relutance to risk the lives of peace-keepers. It is the same syndrome in Kosovo. Nato credibility will never be restored unless Nato succeeds in stopping the violence in Kosovo. And that means troops on the ground to protect civilians.
Mary Kaldor, of the London School of Economics, is author of New and Old Wars; Organised Violence in a Global Era.