April 19, 1999    
This Date's Issues: 3247• 3248  • 

Johnson's Russia List
#3248
19 April 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Newsweek: Owen Matthews, The New Brain Drain. The ruble crashed just 
as Russia's professionals were getting used to the good life. Now they're 
seeking better prospects abroad. 
2. AFP: Yeltsin warns Clinton against sending troops into Yugoslavia.
3. New York Times letter: U.S. Missed the Chance to Remake Russia.
4. Reuters: Russia still cooperating on Y2K -Pentagon official.
5. Reuters: Russia says grain stocks halved, sees no shortage.
6. Financial Times: Jeanne Whalen, CAUCASUS: Pipeline opens way for riches.
7. Eric Kraus: A word of protest.
8. STRATFOR's Global Intelligence Update: Understanding the War in Kosovo 
in the Fourth Week.
9. Boston Globe: Fred Kaplan, Caught in a cycle of escalation: War on
Serbia 
mimics history.]

*******

#1
Newsweek International
April 19, 1999
[for personal use only]
The New Brain Drain
The ruble crashed just as Russia's professionals were getting used to the 
good life. Now they're seeking better prospects abroad. 
By Owen Matthews 

Two crowds of young people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as 
Russia erupted in indignation over the Kosovo crisis. One group—mostly 
scruffy, poor and loud—chanted "Yankee go home," set fire to American flags 
and bombarded the building with beer bottles and inkwells. The other 
group—better dressed, wealthier and more subdued—cowered quietly nearby at 
the entrance to the immigration department, determined not to let a few 
flying bottles come between them and their objective: interviews with 
immigration officers and a shot at new lives in the West. 
For Irina Kozlova, the chants and missiles actually helped her make a 
decision she'd been contemplating ever since the ruble collapsed and she lost 
her job as an investment analyst. "Since August it's been hard to be 
optimistic about finding work and living normally in this country," says 
Kozlova, 26, who speaks fluent English and made $2,500 a month before the 
economic crisis demolished Russia's fledgling financial markets last year. 
"But now I'm not just pessimistic—I'm scared about what is happening in this 
country. I want to leave." 

Capital flight has sapped Russia's strength since the Soviet Union collapsed 
eight years ago. But the flight of young, talented people—the country's human 
capital—could prove even more damaging. Kozlova is one of the thousands of 
young Russian professionals who have lost their jobs or had their salaries 
slashed over the last eight months as the ruble's value has plummeted. Now 
many of the best-educated and most ambitious are seeking better lives abroad. 
Though the total number of those looking to leave is impossible to tally, 
officials from many of the top-choice destinations of Russian emigrants have 
reported a dramatic rise in interest. Immigration to Israel jumped 100 
percent during the first two months of this year over the same period last 
year, from 1,676 to 3,347, according to the Jewish Agency, an organization 
that facilitates Jewish emigration worldwide. Spokesman Michael Jankelowitz 
says that this year Israel could absorb as many as 68,000 Russian Jews. The 
Canadian Embassy in Moscow reports a 30 percent rise in immigration 
applications, to between 200 and 300 a month, and a threefold increase in 
people inquiring about immigration procedures. 

The visa seekers are generally part of a small but economically crucial class 
of young professionals who have recognized that their best prospects no 
longer lie at home. Their ranks include teachers, scientists, doctors and 
engineers, as well as executives from the country's newly created financial, 
marketing and advertising industries, which have been especially hard hit by 
the ruble crash. "A year ago, there was no better place for a young Russian 
professional than Russia," says Anya Shakh-Nazarova, 24, who returned to 
Moscow last summer after getting a postgraduate diploma in accounting and 
finance at the London School of Economics but has since been unable to find a 
job. "[Before the ruble crisis], I could expect a salary of $3,000 per month, 
and have a much higher standard of living than in the West. But since the 
crisis, the best I've been offered is a third of that—and there's no 
certainty that the company won't close down in a couple of months." 

The shock is worst for those graduating from Moscow's elite universities with 
degrees in subjects that were alien to most Russians a mere decade ago, like 
management and finance. They quickly learned to expect the highest salaries 
and got accustomed to the idea of having cars, decent apartments and two 
foreign holidays per year just like any other European Yuppies. But even 
these modest expectations are now unrealistic in Russia's contracting 
economy. Thanks to the ruble's devaluation, managers and accountants can 
expect to receive a starting salary of $100 per month, roughly a quarter of 
what was offered last year, says Artur Savelov, organizer of this year's 
Moscow Job Fair. Many high-paying Western companies like Procter & Gamble 
have had to scale back recruitment as the ruble's devaluation cuts both 
Russian consumers' spending power and profits. Russian industrial- and 
oil-sector companies are still hiring, but at miserly salaries. Every one of 
the young graduates and college seniors interviewed by NEWSWEEK at last 
week's Career Fair in Moscow said that they had at least considered 
emigrating. "I'm a patriotic Russian, sure, but I also want to live 
normally," says 22-year-old Sergei Kharchenko, a final-year student at the 
State Academy of Management. "I want to go to Britain or Germany, at least 
until things improve over here." 

But just because these young Russians want to start new lives in the West 
doesn't mean they necessarily can—not legally, anyway. Entry criteria are 
often strict, and immigration and work-permit quotas are tight. And Russians 
no longer have a good excuse to leave; in the last mass emigration in the 
late 1980s and early '90s, aspiring emigres could claim political asylum. 
Western organizations jumped at the opportunity to find jobs and housing for 
these "refugees of communism" and Jewish refuseniks. No longer. Despite a 
boom in the U.S. economy, potential immigrants now have to fit a rigorous set 
of professional criteria or join a lottery for "green card" and work permits. 
European regulations are stricter still—not even marrying a European citizen 
guarantees immediate right to work. "It's strange—for years the Soviet 
government wouldn't let you leave, and now the West won't let you in," 
laments Kozlova. 

Russian computer experts and scientists have the best chance of making it 
out, thanks in large part to student visas arranged by sponsoring 
universities. Rustam Turakulov, 24, is one of the lucky ones. With a Ph.D. in 
molecular biology, he was welcomed into the University of California, 
Berkeley, for a two-year postgraduate program. When he completes that, he can 
expect a lucrative job offer somewhere in the United States. "I don't have 
much choice—Russia doesn't seem to want people like me," says Turakulov, who 
made up his mind to apply for the Berkeley scholarship last fall. "Things 
have gotten worse and worse for Russian science, especially since the ruble 
fell. Salaries are tiny, and we rely on Western grants for research. The 
government takes no interest in funding science." 

So far, the brain drain of Russia's brightest and best is only a trickle. But 
with the economy showing no signs of recovery, it could easily turn into a 
tide. Analysts expect the ruble to lose half its value by the end of the 
year. "If you take a census, about 70 out of every 100 young professionals 
want to leave," says Felix Kugel of Manpower, a leading recruitment agency 
that specializes in senior-management headhunting and has seen a sixfold rise 
in job-seekers since the crisis. "There's still a market in Russia for highly 
qualified people, but the pay is much lower and the prospects are more 
limited than before." 

That's especially true of Western-style industries that have come into 
existence only in the last eight years. When it appeared that Russia was 
going to embrace capitalism back in the early 1990s, professionals like 
banking analysts, marketing managers and advertising executives were suddenly 
in hot demand. But once the bubble burst, the bankers and product-pushers 
were the first to go. And given the competition, the language barrier and the 
fact that most Russian professionals of this type are a relatively new breed, 
they're not exactly top candidates for jobs abroad, either. "Unfortunately, a 
Russian marketing professional who would be considered at the top of his or 
her profession in Moscow doesn't stand a chance against someone with a 
Western background," says Anna Kirin, a U.S. citizen of Russian origin who 
used to manage a financial-software company in Moscow. 

In other words, the West doesn't need people like Anya Shakh-Nazarova or 
Sergei Kharchenko. But Russia desperately does. How can the country 
straighten out its banking crisis without accountants, or build a service 
economy without marketing executives? The trouble is that the new values that 
make Russia's young professionals so important to their country's future also 
make them all the more prone to leaving. Freedom of choice, not the stoical 
patience of their parents' generation, is what Russia's Yuppies have learned 
to value over the last decade. And at the moment, the members of Russia's new 
generation are increasingly choosing to stand outside the U.S. Embassy—not as 
protesters, but as visa applicants. 

With Yana Dlugy in Moscow 

*******

#2
Yeltsin warns Clinton against sending troops into Yugoslavia

MOSCOW, April 19 (AFP) - President Boris Yeltsin vowed Monday that Moscow 
would never allow Washington to seize Yugoslavia and turn it into a NATO 
satellite state, as Moscow sought a new peace strategy for the Balkans crisis.
The Russian leader's stern warning came ahead of his first scheduled 
telephone conversation with US counterpart Bill Clinton since the 
Washington-led military bloc launched its air assault in the Balkans on March 
24.

"They want to achieve a victory and make Yugoslavia their protectorate," 
Yeltsin was quoted by Interfax as saying. "We cannot allow this," he said, 
reiterating a previous threat in which he warned that a NATO invasion of 
Yugoslavia could trigger world war.

Yeltsin further said that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would not 
capitulate in the face of the air attacks.

His comments came as top Russian defense and security ministers huddled in 
the Kremlin to decide Moscow's new line on the Kosovo crisis.

The Kremlin's bitter opposition to NATO's air assault has so far failed to 
produce any results.

Yeltsin on Monday said that Russia was ready to act as middleman in future 
peace negotiations between NATO and Milosevic.

"We are prepared to mediate between the USA and Yugoslavia," the Russian 
president was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS.

But as for chances that Milosevic might pull his troops out of Kosovo, 
Yeltsin said merely: "Their hopes are in vain."

The war of words was extended by Moscow's new Yugoslav envoy and former prime 
minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, who remarked that the Belgrade-NATO conflict 
would be much harder to stop than it had been to start.

"Starting this barbaric process was easy but stopping it is not quite so 
simple," Chernomyrdin said in televised remarks. "Unfortunately they are only 
starting to understand this now."

He called the air assault a "dead-end situation."

Also attending the Kremlin meeting were Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, 
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev, armed forces 
chief General Anatoly Kvashnin and top officials in the administration.

Sergeyev emerged from the talks to announce that according to his information 
a troop invasion into Yugoslavia was imminent.

"Everything is leading to that, there is an active preparation for a ground 
operation," the Russian defense minister was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS.

Ivanov, meanwhile, said that Moscow's firm opposition to the NATO strikes has 
not changed.

"Russia's position is correct. There can be no military solution to the 
problem," Ivanov said. "This is a most difficult process of political 
negotiations, of looking for points of agreement."

Moscow has pursued a line of diplomatic missions to end the Yugoslav crisis, 
including a visit to Belgrade by Primakov, but those talks have so far failed 
to produce results.

Another peace mission will be launched Tuesday, when Patriarch Alexy II will 
reportedly leave for Belgrade for a one-day visit for talks with Yugoslav 
leaders and the head of the Serb Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle. 

*******

#3
New York Times
April 19, 1999
Letter
U.S. Missed the Chance to Remake Russia

To the Editor: 
Thomas L. Friedman (column, April 16), referring to President Boris N. 
Yeltsin of Russia, writes: "We are going to miss this guy. Indeed, we will 
one day look back and ask, how did the U.S. use the Yeltsin years? Not very 
wisely." My concern is that one of these days we will wake up to the angry 
question "Who lost Russia?" 

What happened to the West's opportunity to bring Russia into Europe after the 
collapse of the Soviet Union? How much has NATO gained from admitting three 
former members of the Warsaw Pact -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic 
-- rather than bringing Russia into a European alliance? 

And shouldn't we have given Russia a greater role in the Group of Eight? As 
the only superpower, shouldn't the United States have used its economic and 
political power to genuinely assist in structural changes in the former 
Soviet economy? 

DAVID QUENTZEL
Englewood, N.J., April 16, 1999 

*******

#4
Russia still cooperating on Y2K -Pentagon official

MOSCOW, April 19 (Reuters) - A U.S. Pentagon official said on Monday that 
Russia and the United States were still cooperating closely on the ``Y2K'' 
millennium computer bug problem, denying a previous report that Russia had 
pulled out. 

``Nothing relative to the Y2K has been formally called off or suspended or 
anything,'' Rosanne Hynes, head of the Pentagon's Year 2000 committee, told 
Reuters at a Moscow conference on the problem. 

Russian news agency Interfax reported last month that Russia, outraged by 
NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, had called off cooperation on the 
problem, caused by programmes unable to distinguish between the years 1900 
and 2000 because they identify years by the last two digits. 

Russian and U.S. experts both say it is virtually impossible for the bug to 
spark an accidental nuclear launch. But they have have suggested that both 
sides take extra precautions to prevent a computer glitch from causing a 
false alarm. 

The United States has proposed placing Russian and U.S. technicians side by 
side in a joint nuclear command centre during the months before and after 
January 1, 2000, a plan which U.S. officials say has been well received in 
Russia. 

``We're still planning and we've received no communique from the Russians 
saying they're intending to cancel anything,'' Hynes said, adding she had 
just discussed details of the plan with Russian counterparts. 

``The Russians sitting with their U.S. counterparts in that centre will have 
full insight into everything associated with U.S. space launch activity and 
missile launch activity.'' 

Hynes said the Russian defence ministry was taking the problem seriously and 
working hard to address related issues, and the executive director of the 
U.S. President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion said she also had a positive 
impression. 

``I'm very encouraged by what I'm seeing here today,'' Janet Abrams told 
Reuters. 

``It tracks very well with what we're doing. We know everybody has challenges 
and they have other stresses on their governments that we may not have to 
face at this time, so we're encouraged and eager to continue working 
cooperatively.'' 

*******

#5
Russia says grain stocks halved, sees no shortage

MOSCOW, April 19 (Reuters) - Russia had 16.8 million tonnes of all grains in 
storage as of April 1 but saw no emergency even though this was less than 
half the level at the same time in 1998, the State Statistics Committee said 
on Monday. 

Russia had 34.5 million tonnes of grain in stock on April 1 1998, so the 
current level is just 48.6 percent of the volume then, it said in a 
statement. 

"Calculations show that grain reserves on April 1, including expected 
imports, will cover the country's demand for seeds, feed grains for cattle 
and poultry, and grains for processing and other needs until the next 
harvest," the statement said. 

But by the beginning of July, when this year's harvest starts, grain stocks 
will be at their lowest level for the last few years at no more than two to 
four million tonnes, the statement said. 

Russia plans to harvest at least 70 million tonnes of grains this year after 
a disastrous harvest of 47.8 million in 1998. 

Russia has asked the West for a food aid package under which it will receive, 
among other commodities, around 1.5 million tonnes of grains from the 
European Union and around three million from the United States this year. 

********

#6
Financial Times
April 19, 1999
[for personal use only]
CAUCASUS: Pipeline opens way for riches
Azerbaijan and Georgia have co-operated in a project that will yield oil 
transit fees and boost their power, writes Jeanne Whalen

Heads of state and oil barons gathered at Georgia's Black Sea port of Supsa 
at the weekend to celebrate the opening of an 830km pipeline which represents 
a rare joint achievement by the often quarrelsome governments and companies 
around the Caspian Sea.

Completion of the pipeline, stretching from Baku in Azerbaijan through the 
mountains of Georgia and out to the Black Sea, will also boost the power and 
independence of the Caucasian nations that built it, accelerating their move 
towards western oil dollars and away from Russia.

Standing among the Supsa terminal's steel storage tanks as snipers kept watch 
over the crowd, Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze said the pipeline 
marked a turning point in the revival of the ancient Silk Road trading route 
connecting Asia to Europe.

"Georgia doesn't view the project merely from the point of view of its 
economic benefits," he said. "It is even more important as a brilliant 
example of wide regional co-operation."

Georgia will earn $7m (£4.3m) and Azerbaijan $10m a year in oil transit 
tariffs from the pipeline, which will export 5m metric tons of crude a year.

Both countries, along with the US government, are lobbying for construction 
of a second, bigger pipeline that would carry oil through their territories 
and down to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.

Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan's president, used the ceremony to defend his 
government's estimates of oil and gas reserves in his country's sector of the 
Caspian.

These have been called in to question in recent months with the withdrawal of 
two production consortia from the region.

Mr Aliyev said "enemy circles" had spread messages that Azerbaijan "had 
misinformed the world" about its Caspian Sea oil.

Azerbaijan, he added, was ready to sign three new contracts with American oil 
companies.

Completion of the Baku-Supsa line gives the Azerbaijan International 
Operating Consortium (AIOC), the main producer in the western Caspian, a 
welcome alternative to its existing pipeline.

This travels north through the troubled Russian republic of Chechnya and has 
been shut down in recent months during disagreements between the Chechens and 
the Russians over pipeline revenues.

By late May the AIOC will be pumping enough crude to fill the Baku-Supsa line 
to capacity.

Although the race to extract Caspian crude has subsided since the fall in oil 
prices, additional export routes need to be selected.

Several parties used the Supsa ceremony to push for the controversial 
Baku-Ceyhan line.

A working group, including oil companies and the governments of Turkey and 
Azerbaijan, agreed two weeks ago to draft a rough construction plan within 
three months.

"I think that we found that over the last few months the western investors 
are now seriously negotiating with respect to the pipeline," said Richard 
Morningstar, the US government's special envoy to the Caspian.

"With the incentives Turkey is offering, there is no reason why it can't 
become a reality."

However, many producers privately argue that the route, which could cost 
between $2.4bn and $3.7bn (£1.5bn-£2.3bn) to build, fulfils the policies of 
the Washington government more than their own economic interests. They 
maintain that a pipeline south through Iran would prove a less expensive 
alternative. 

*******

#7
From: "Kraus, Eric" <Eric.Kraus@dresdner-bank.com>
Subject: A word of protest.
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 

A word of protest.

A reader of the JRL would easily fall into the misconception that the
community of Russia specialists has allowed its passion for all things
Russian to interfere with basic human decency. Either those of us whom
regretfully but whole-heartedly agree with the NATO action in the Balkans
fail to write, or the submissions are censored in favour of the puerile
rantings of the likes of Ames. In brief:

1. The constant references to Mr. Clinton's sex-life simply demonstrate
the intellectual bankruptcy of the authors. Clinton is neither the first nor
the last President to have an interesting love-life; the increasingly
irrelevant American press simply turned it into a matter of world
concern-remember Kennedy, (or Mitterand, who kept an official mistress and
daughter). 
2. The statement that Kosovo is of vital historic importance to the
Serb people is laughable. Large tracts of Russia are of historic importance
to the Swedes and Lithuanians; no one suggests giving them back. Manhattan
was once 100% Amerindian. Kosovo is (or was) 90% Albanian. They were an
independent Republic under Tito, and had the constitutional right to secede.
3. When, as in Kosovo, an entire people is being slaughtered, then
indignant appeals to international law are irrelevant. Obviously, UN
intervention is impossible with veto power of Security Council members. The
Nuremberg Tribunal has set sufficient international precedent for Mr.
Milosevic
4. This is not solely an "American" war. France has held back from NATO
for many years, and yet they are active participants. Holland is
proverbially neutral and pacifist, and yet, the first MIG shot down was by a
Dutch Pilot. My French and Italian leftist friends are utterly consternated
to find themselves enthusiastically siding with NATO for the first (and
hopefully last) time in their lives.
5. The fact that other oppressed peoples, from the Tibetans to the
Kurds, do not receive the same degree of protection is tragic, but does not
in any way reduce the right of the Kosovars to have their basic human rights
defended. No one claims that NATO will be able to (or will choose to) defend
every suffering person, anywhere-but they certainly deserve support whenever
they do so. 
6. In view of the ghastly record of the Yugoslav Serbs under Milosevic:
Bosnia, Croatia, etc., it is a matter of some puzzlement how anyone who
claims to be civilized can feel any sympathy for them.
7. Milosevic has already succeeded in irremediably breaking up
Yugoslavia. Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia have no sympathy for their Serb
neighbor. Kosovo has been irretrievably lost; Montenegro will be the next
to leave.
8. NATO is not suffering a defeat. As in Bosnia and Croatia, they have
the time, the resources, and the commitment to win Kosovo its independence,
whether from the air or on the ground. It is the profound personal hope of
many of us that the individuals responsible for the atrocities in Kosovo
will be brought to judgment. 

*******

#8
Startfor.com
STRATFOR's Global Intelligence Update April 19, 1999
Weekly Analysis: Understanding the War in Kosovo in the Fourth Week

Summary:

The war in Kosovo grew out of fundamental miscalculations in Washington, 
particularly concerning the effect Russian support had on Milosevic's 
thinking. So long as Milosevic feels he has Russian support, he will act with 
confidence. If Russia wavers, Milosevic will have to deal. With the air war 
stalemated and talks of ground attack a pipe dream, diplomacy remains NATO's 
best option. That option depends on Russian cooperation. However, Russian 
cooperation will cost a great deal of money.

That brings us to the IMF, the Germans, and former Russian Prime Minister 
Viktor Chernomyrdin, who is Russia's new negotiator on Serbia, a leading 
economic reformer and a good friend of the West.

Analysis:

On March 24, 1999, NATO aircraft began to bomb Yugoslavia. We are in the 
fourth week of the campaign, which now appears to be a stalemate. NATO is 
unable to force Belgrade to capitulate to its demands using the force 
currently available. Yugoslavia is unable to inflict sufficient casualties on 
the attackers to dissuade NATO from continuing the campaign nor has it been 
able to drive a wedge into NATO from which a peace party might emerge that is 
prepared to negotiate a conclusion to the conflict on terms favorable to 
Serbia. As in most wars, the rhetoric on both sides is filled with purple 
prose, horrible accusations and much confusion.

Given that the current stalemate cannot be maintained indefinitely, we are, 
almost by definition, at a turning point. While the stalemate can, 
theoretically, go on indefinitely, neither side has it in its interest to 
permit this to happen.

NATO's unity is fragile at best, particularly if the conflict fails to 
resolve itself. Yugoslavia is losing valuable economic assets that it would 
rather not lose. Since neither side appears ready to capitulate and neither 
side wants the current stalemate to continue, it is useful to consider, 
leaving rhetoric aside, how we got here and where all this is likely to go.

It is clear to us that the war began in a fundamental miscalculation by NATO 
planners and particularly by the civilian leadership of the United States: 
Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke and the President. They 
made a decision to impose the Rambouillet Accords on both sides in Kosovo. It 
was simply assumed that, given the threat of bombardment, Slobodan Milosevic 
would have no choice but to capitulate and accept the accords. By all 
accounts, Richard Holbrooke, architect of the Dayton Accords and the person 
most familiar with Milosevic was the author of this reading of Milosevic.

Holbrooke had good historical precedent for his read of Milosevic. After all, 
when Serbs in Bosnia were bombed in 1995, Milosevic capitulated and signed 
the Dayton Accords. Holbrooke's reasoning was that history would repeat 
itself. The evidence that Washington expected capitulation was in its 
complete lack of preparation for an extended conflict. At the time the air 
campaign began, NATO had about 400 military aircraft available for the 
campaign, with less than 200 hundred for bombing missions. Even with the 
availability of cruise missiles, no serious military observer, including 
apparently senior U.S. military officials, believed this to have been 
anywhere near the amount required to inflict serious damage. Indeed, most 
observers doubted that an air campaign by itself could possibly succeed 
without a ground campaign. Thus, Washington and NATO were either wholly 
irresponsible in launching the campaign with insufficient forces, or had good 
reason to believe that Milosevic would rapidly capitulate. Since Albright, 
Berger, Holbrooke and the President are neither fools, nor irresponsible, we 
can only conclude that they were guilty of faulty judgment about how the 
Serbs would respond.

There are three reasons for the difference in Milosevic's behavior in 1999 
and 1995. First, Kosovo is strategically and psychologically critical to the 
Serbs. The demands of the Rambouillet Accords were crafted in such a way that 
the Serbs were convinced that NATO occupation would mean the loss of Serb 
sovereignty over Kosovo. Thus, where NATO was calculating that Milosevic 
could not survive politically if he brought a bombing campaign on Serbia, 
Milosevic was making the exact opposite calculation: that he could not 
survive if he accepted NATO's demands. In fact, Milosevic's view was that a 
bombing campaign over Kosovo would increase his domestic political power, by 
positioning him as a champion of Serbian national unity, thereby limiting the 
ability of his opposition to oppose him.

The second reason had to do with the shift in Russia's position. In 1995, 
Russia was deep into its love affair with the West. That meant that Serbia 
was politically isolated, without hope of support or resupply. Milosevic saw 
the world very differently in 1999. He had observed the U.S. bombing of Iraq 
in December 1998 and Russia's reaction to it. He concluded that not only was 
he no longer isolated, but that the internal dynamics of NATO were such that 
they would limit the intensity and duration of the campaign. Milosevic 
expected a vigorous Russian reaction to war.

It was also his expectation that NATO's fear of a return to the Cold War 
would create a peace faction inside of NATO. He was confident that Greece 
would not join in the campaign, and he had great hopes for Germany, France, 
and Italy. It was Milosevic's view that the Germans would be terrified of a 
breakdown in good relations with Russia; that France would play its normal 
game of being a good NATO member while simultaneously hoping to weaken the 
Anglo-Americans; and that the Italian government was so weak that it would 
not give NATO carte blanche for the use of its air bases, particularly after 
the cable car incident. Thus, Milosevic felt that the geopolitical and 
diplomatic situation had shifted in his favor, and that the NATO operation 
would be limited in time and intensity.

Finally, Milosevic was acutely aware that, although the U.S. and Britain had 
been conducting an air campaign in Iraq since mid- December, the constraints 
on U.S. and British air forces were such that they were extremely reluctant 
to enter into two simultaneous air campaigns whose intensity was not fully 
under their control. Milosevic was convinced that the small number of 
aircraft allocated to the anti-Serb campaign represented resource limitations 
on the United States.

In a sense, both sides miscalculated. The United States assumed that 
Milsosevic would capitulate when he realized that the United States would 
actually bomb Serbia. Milosevic assumed that the Russians would be a more 
limiting factor on NATO behavior and that American concern for the Iraqi 
theater would deter them as well. But of the two, the American miscalculation 
was the greatest. NATO has not yet split as Milosevic hoped, but a split in 
the coming weeks, as discussions of a ground campaign intensify, is not only 
possible, but even likely. Moreover, while the U.S. has transferred air 
assets into the Serbian theater at an increasing rate, the transfer has been 
slow in coming, precisely because it strips air reserves from the United 
States and forces the redeployment of scarce aircraft from the Iraqi theater. 
There is no doubt in our mind that Washington's misunderstanding of 
Belgrade's thinking was much more profound than Belgrade's misreading of its 
opponents.

Thus, Milosevic is quite content to absorb the current level of air attacks. 
He has established what is for him an acceptable reality on the ground in 
Kosovo. He has cemented his political supremacy in Belgrade, helped along by 
Clinton's extraordinary error in identifying the removal of Milosevic as a 
war goal and thereby wedding the idea of Serbian national interest and 
Milosevic's personal survival together in the Serbian mind. Milosevic is 
quite content with the situation as it stands.
He is so content that he has, for the time being, rejected the German 
proposals for a compromise on Rambouillet including non- NATO police forces. 
He sees no need for a compromise right now. Milosevic is waiting for NATO to 
make a move and, in his view, they don't have many moves to make.

NATO has three options:

* Intensified Air War: This is the option it is officially pursuing. The 
available air power is being raised to over 1,000 aircraft, although it is 
not clear when all aircraft will be in theater. There are three weaknesses 
with the strategy. First, air campaigns, no matter how intense, simply have 
not historically succeeded in forcing capitulation. An air campaign can be 
effective in wearing down a military force but to take advantage of it 
requires a ground option. Moreover, wearing down a military force in Serbia's 
terrain and with Serbia's climate will take substantially more aircraft than 
are currently contemplated. Second, building a sufficient attack force of 
aircraft against Serbia will require stripping forces from Iraq and 
elsewhere. As a result, the United States will find itself wide-open for 
attack in other areas. Finally, and most important, NATO is committing the 
fundamental error of air power as a weapon of psychological warfare: 
gradualism. Rather than overwhelming the enemy with sudden, terrible power, 
NATO is permitting the Serbs to adjust themselves psychologically to 
increasing levels of violence. An air war by itself will not cause Milosevic 
to capitulate, let alone resign. The increased commitment to the air war 
compounds the original error and the expectation that it will result in 
capitulation is sheer wishful thinking.

* Ground attack option: This is a complex matter about which we have prepared 
a fuller study "Analysis of NATO's Ground Invasion Options" at 
http://www.stratfor.com/crisis/kosovo/. We will simply summarize our findings 
here. First, the only doable option from Albania alone is an attack on the 
Pagarusa Valley.
Not only is this a complex and costly operation, but it achieves little. 
Second, an invasion of Kosovo proper is impossible from Albania alone because 
the roads will not sustain the necessary supplies to the size force required. 
At the very least, an invasion must also come from Macedonia, but Macedonia 
has refused to permit this. It must also be supported from Greek ports, which 
the Greeks have refused to allow NATO to use. A general invasion of 
Yugoslavia would require the cooperation of both Hungary and Romania as well 
as permission from Austria or Slovakia for transshipment of men, equipment 
and supplies. A build up of military assets for such an operation will take 
many months and the result could be a quagmire like Vietnam if the Serbs 
retreat into their national redoubt, which they plan to do. We simply do not 
see a credible ground attack option available for logistical and diplomatic 
reasons before the end of the summer. The only option, the Pagarusa invasion, 
is so trivial in its effect on Belgrade as not to be worth mounting.

* Diplomatic option: Germany and Russia appear to be working in tandem in 
bringing about some sort of proposal. The United States has adopted the role 
of "bad cop" to Germany and Russia's "good cop." Milosevic is not 
particularly impressed. There is a key here, however: Russia. If Milosevic 
becomes convinced that Russia has abandoned him, he may become much more 
flexible. It is, of course, very hard, for the Russians to abandon the Serbs 
for internal political reasons. However, it is interesting to note that 
Viktor Chernomyrdin, former reform Prime Minister has been appointed to 
manage Russian diplomacy on Serbia. Why Yeltsin would want to frighten 
Milosevic by appointing a liberal who is well liked by the West is an 
interesting question? A press report out of Moscow, saying that they expect 
to start receiving IMF money in a few months may be part of the answer.

The Russians may be for sale. If so, NATO had better go shopping.

Neither the air campaign, nor a ground attack, nor Clinton or Albright's 
ferocious rhetoric worries Milosevic. The loss of Russia as an ally does 
worry him. Now, for political reasons, it is not clear that the Russians can 
completely abandon the Serbs. However, the mere hint of Russian softness 
could cause Milosevic to become more flexible in his terms. But Russia needs 
to be motivated to turn soft, and the color of motivation remains green. If 
we were cynical, we would be tempted to say that Russia encouraged Milosevic 
in order to put Russia in a strong position vis-à-vis Germany and other 
nations able to extend credit. However, since we are not cynical, we will be 
simply startled at the sudden opportunity the West has to work closely with 
the Russians in solving their financial problems.

Washington's nonsense about overthrowing Milosevic, bombing him into 
submission and invading Serbia is of little consequence. At the center of 
this crisis now is Russia, and the price it will charge for placing Milosevic 
back into isolation. Milosevic undertook his adventure in part because of the 
Russia factor. As Russia softens, Milosevic has to weaken. Therefore, the 
question for this week is how Milosevic reads Moscow? If he is getting 
concerned about Russia's commitment to Serbia, then German peace proposals 
might suddenly get a warmer reception. If not, the war goes on.

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*******

#9
Boston Globe
18 April 1999
[for personal use only]
NEWS ANALYSIS
Caught in a cycle of escalation: War on Serbia mimics history 
By Fred Kaplan, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON - Three-and-a-half weeks into the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the 
operation seems to be turning into a case study of how wars escalate: More 
and more weapons and crews are thrown into battle, even as the aims seem 
elusive and the costs spin out of control.

More NATO warplanes are landing at air bases near Yugoslavia, and the number 
of raids is expected to expand by more than 50 percent in coming weeks.

Apache helicopters are expected tomorrow. They will be accompanied by 
long-range artillery rockets and their crews, and by the first handful of M1 
Abrams battle tanks and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. 

Thousands of reservists may soon be called up - the Pentagon is asking 
President Clinton for the authority to summon as many as 33,000, mainly to 
fly and service all the new planes coming into the region.

The Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, meanwhile, seems firmly in charge, 
despite the vast numbers of bombs that have rained down on his country. His 
troops in and around Kosovo have not budged - except to mount the occasional 
incursion across Albania's borders. They burned 45 more Kosovar villages in 
the past 10 days, according to the State Department. Their air defense 
weapons remain so formidable that NATO pilots are still forbidden to fly 
lower than 15,000 feet. This makes it extremely difficult to be precise in 
attacks on military targets.

Last week, General Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the bombing will 
accomplish NATO's military objective of ''degrading'' Milosevic's armed 
forces - but might not bring about the political goal, to compel Milosevic to 
pull out of Kosovo and to let the ethnic Albanians back in.

And so, as the logic of escalation dictates, NATO has no choice but to send 
in more firepower.

''I can't imagine Clinton went into this thinking Milosevic wouldn't cave 
after a few days of airstrikes,'' one Pentagon official said late last week.

It is a syndrome seen in many places, many times before. Country A sends in 
planes, ships, or troops, to persuade Country B to stop its aggression. 
Country B continues, so A sends in more weapons, to no avail. Soon, Country A 
finds its credibility to be on the line. Unable to withdraw, it sends still 
more force into the fray, until maintaining credibility itself becomes the 
mission.

The best-known instance of this was the US bombing of North Vietnam, as 
documented in ''The Pentagon Papers,'' the collection of classified materials 
that Daniel Ellsberg leaked. 

As McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, explained to President 
Lyndon Baines Johnson in a May 1964 memorandum, the bombing would be ''for 
the purpose of changing the North Vietnamese decision on intervention in the 
south.''

The bombing campaign, code-named Rolling Thunder, began on March 2, 1965. 
Within three weeks, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara's chief adviser, 
John McNaughton, found that it was not working.

On March 24, McNaughton wrote McNamara: ''The situation in Vietnam is bad and 
deteriorating.'' The aim now, he continued, should be simply to avoid 
damaging ''our reputation as a guarantor.'' He called for a ''program of 
progressive military pressure,'' so the United States would ''emerge as a 
`good doctor.' We must have kept promises, been tough, taken risks, gotten 
bloodied and hurt the enemy very badly.''

The CIA agreed. ''If anything, the strikes to date have hardened'' attitudes, 
the agency wrote in an April memo. Therefore, it added, ''We must hit them 
harder, more frequently, and inflict greater damage.''

The bombs kept falling, and the troops got bloodied, for another 10 years, at 
gargantuan cost, to no avail.

Kosovo may not be Vietnam; Milosevic may not be Ho Chi Minh; the Yugoslav 
Army and paramilitary police may not be the Viet Cong. Not even the skeptics 
of this campaign think NATO will lose, in the sense that the United States 
lost in Vietnam.

Still, there are parallels: how casually Western political leaders entered 
the conflict; how quickly the assumptions of victory fell apart; yet how 
doggedly they pressed on and escalated the fight.

Last October, when the Clinton administration persuaded the NATO allies to 
authorize strikes against Serbian targets if Milosevic did not stop massacres 
of Kosovar Albanians, the idea must have seemed logical.

Three years earlier, after all, in the fall of 1995, Milosevic had come back 
to the tables, and had signed the Dayton Accord, which led to peace in 
Bosnia. Richard Holbrooke, Clinton's Bosnian emissary, who negotiated that 
treaty, wrote a memoir of that experience, ''To Build a Peace.''

In it, he said that Milosevic had relented because of a successful US bombing 
campaign against his troops just before.

So, in October 1998, when Milosevic refused to let go of Kosovo, Holbrooke 
and others - most notably Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright - figured 
the threat of bombing would make Milosevic cower again.

''They thought they were doing the endgame of the Dayton Accord again,'' said 
Robert Pape, professor of national security studies at Dartmouth College.

Clinton's team was apparently unbothered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff's 
skepticism about airstrikes over Kosovo. The Chiefs had opposed the strikes 
in 1995 as well.

However, Pape said, the 1995 raids were preceded by a Croatian and Muslim 
ground offensive that pushed half a million Serbs out of Croatia.

''The airstrikes prevented the Serbs from providing reinforcements,'' said 
Pape, who has published an exhaustive study of air campaigns. ''As a result, 
had the Muslim and Croat troops kept advancing, the retreating Serbs could 
not have stopped them.''

However, without the Croat troops on the ground, Pape argued, the air raids 
alone would not have compelled Milosevic to sign the Dayton Accords. 
Similarly, he said, without troops on the ground now, NATO strikes are not 
likely to make him sign the Rambouillet accord, which would eventually give 
Kosovo autonomy. 

The issue of ground forces raises the big question: How far are Clinton and 
other NATO leaders likely to go?

Shelton said before the Senate last week that the NATO allies' political 
leaders are so adamantly opposed to a land invasion that they have instructed 
General Wesley K. Clark, NATO's supreme commander, not even to draw up plans 
for it.

This prohibition may have stemmed from a recognition that ''the escalation 
ladder,'' as a military strategist, Herman Kahn, once called it, has no 
logical limits - that its rungs extend as high as one might want to climb 
them - unless limits are explicitly imposed.

Or, another strategist, Bernard Brodie, said: ''One way of keeping people out 
of trouble is to deny them the means of getting into it.''

So the question becomes: What does NATO do next, if, as Shelton himself seems 
to expect, the bombing does not push out Milosevic, yet ground war remains a 
forbidden option? The most likely answer is the one the CIA gave back in 
1965: Bomb some more.

US officials have said the campaign might go on for months, and up to a year. 
They have voiced hope that the relentless pressure will make Milosevic 
scream. Cohen has said one result might be that the Serbian forces get 
weaker, while the Kosovo Liberation Army gets stronger, until the balance 
tips in the Kosovars' favor, and the Serbs are forced out that way.

Some theorize that at some point, after both sides have tired of the 
destruction, a compromise will be put on the table, by a neutral party - such 
as Russia or the UN - and the war will end that way.

But all these possibilities could lie a long way off.

''What we're doing now is still relatively light bombing,'' Pape said. 
''We've got F-16s flying 500 miles per hour at 15,000 feet altitude. You're 
not going to hit very much that way, especially the forces in the field.''

Milosevic's troops will feel more pressure once more A10 planes and Apache 
helicopters take to the air, and once they are backed up by long-range, 
fast-firing artillery rockets. This may start happening in days.

Even then, Pape voiced doubt that bombing alone would do the trick. ''You 
can't find a single instance in history when a state surrenders a major 
interest because of punishment from the air,'' he said.

Still, some of the more optimistic-sounding officials are finding reasons to 
voice hope that, with the bombing getting heavier, the next round of air 
raids might do the trick.

*******