Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...missiles to turn out Baghdad's lights during the Gulf War, retaliate against terrorists and assassins, and force the Serbs to the peace table in Dayton, Ohio. Now Serbia and Yugoslav President Milosevic are in the crosshairs again. If the massacres of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo do not stop, NATO warns, and Serb troops and special police are not pulled out, the missiles will fly. NATO has put together a plan of action that would begin with a strike by dozens of Tomahawks launched from U.S. warships and submarines that were in the Ionian Sea last week. If not headed...
...NATO approached the use of force against Serbia without enthusiasm and only after horrifying pictures of atrocities and refugees finally pushed the member governments to act. They would still prefer to work something out with Milosevic. Says an alliance official: "We're not going to [bomb] if we can get away with not doing it." U.S. policymakers regularly speak of "the credible threat of force," as if they were convinced that words will make Milosevic give in. But the calculus of Clinton's carrot/stick diplomacy means that sometimes diplomats have to go to the stick...
...current face-off with Milosevic, the missiles' biggest drawback is that they are effective only against targets that don't move. That means they cannot be used to drive out the troops and police who are brutalizing Kosovo's civilians. So the NATO plan is to use the cruise missiles as a first strike, to disarm Serbia's dangerous air-defense system and make the sky safe for follow-up attacks by allied planes...
...missiles; fighter-bombers would have to go hunting for them. Second, after the Tomahawks take their shots at the air defenses and command and communications centers in Kosovo, there is to be a pause of a few days to let Milosevic rethink his defiance. If he stands firm, will NATO have the political will to launch the second-stage attack, with hundreds of planes blasting military targets all over Kosovo and Serbia...
...last week was any measure, maybe not. Despite relentless efforts by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in one of her busiest weeks ever, NATO still was unable to reach unanimity on the so-called activation order that would hand over the missiles and planes to the NATO commander, U.S. Army General Wesley Clark. Milosevic's repression in Kosovo, she insisted, "has passed the threshold of horrors... There has to be an activation order." She warned that "time for diplomacy is running out," then sent Holbrooke to Belgrade to try again...