Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That was in January, when Senator John McCain of Arizona was as unknown to most Americans as a place called Kosovo. But since the NATO air assault against Yugoslavia began five weeks ago, McCain, a 62-year-old former Navy pilot and Vietnam War hero, has won attention and praise as the candidate who didn't hesitate to call for considering the use of ground troops and who criticized the Clinton Administration for squeamishly "trying to avoid war while waging one." His blunt talk was in such demand that his staff lost track of the number of Kosovo-related...
Trouble is, few people disagree with the moral imperative of a war grounded in humanitarian principles. Milosevic's relentless pogrom in Kosovo ensures that. But from Day One, NATO's promise of victory by air power has seemed a limp match for the human costs of the campaign. And as the political leader who got the West into this war, Clinton is charged with the responsibility to make it work...
That's why last weekend's NATO summit loomed as such a defining moment. When Clinton invited the 42 members and partners of NATO to Washington for a 50th birthday party, he envisaged a glittering capstone to his diplomatic legacy, grandly positioning the alliance as the bigger, broader 21st century mainstay of pan-European security. Instead he found himself presiding over a council of war. Those who feared that the decision to forgo ground troops from the start is dooming the allied cause set up a clamor for NATO to reconsider. A month after firing off its first cruise missiles...
...faint hope that NATO could negotiate a quick way out still beat in some hearts. Clinton "supposed" something useful might come of former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's efforts, but once the terms of Milosevic's summit-eve offer to contemplate some international peacekeeping force emerged, they were no more acceptable than his previous overtures. The allies would still love to have Moscow mediate a settlement as a way to bring it back into partnership with the West...
...NATO is in an invidious position: While everyone expects Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to lie about what he's up to in Kosovo, there's a heavy onus on the fighters of the good fight to come clean when they mess up. And when they're evasive or even just slow about taking responsibility, their credibility is damaged. But for all of NATO's assurances that it is taking the utmost care to target the Serb military needle in the haystack of innocents, the reality is that Kosovo remains densely populated with civilians -- the majority of them still ethnic Albanian...