[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 53 (Monday, April 19, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3832-S3834]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             KOSOVO POLICY

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss 
certain aspects of our military campaign in Kosovo that deeply trouble 
me.
  We are now into the fourth week of the NATO bombing campaign, and so 
far things are far worse for the Albanian Kosovars who have been 
systematically uprooted from their homes and either killed or driven 
into exile in neighboring countries. Many of their homes have been 
burned to the ground. Whole villages have been destroyed, with the 
result that hundreds of thousands of people have become refugees with 
no worldly possessions except what they could carry on their backs.
  On March 23, on the eve of NATO's bombing campaign, Secretary of 
State Madeleine Albright stated that there was a specific purpose, and 
that was to:

       Deter Slobodan Milosevic from continuing on this rampage 
     and going in and torching--having his soldiers and special 
     police torch the villages. So it is designed to deter that, 
     and also to damage his capability to do that.

  Well, less than 4 weeks later, it is clear that Secretary Albright 
and the Administration seem to have misjudged Milosevic. NATO bombing 
has in no way deterred the torching and ethnic cleansing. It has, in 
fact, intensified since the bombing began. There can be no doubt that 
if, as Secretary Albright stated, our goal was to deter the rampage 
against the ethnic Albanians, our policy has failed.
  When it became apparent to the Administration that its policy of 
protecting the Albanian Kosovars had failed, the Administration in 
early April shifted the message and claimed that the bombing was 
designed to ``degrade'' Serbia's military capacity. However, we appear 
to be doing this indirectly in that our bombs and cruise

[[Page S3833]]

missiles have been targeting infrastructure, specifically bridges, oil 
refineries, rail lines, and telecommunications, rather than hitting 
tanks, heavy guns and, of course, the troops.
  Despite the massive air campaign, the Serbs' ability to wage war on 
Kosovo continues unabated. Fuel for the Serbian war machine flows 
through Montenegro, whose ports are filled with tankers. Although we 
have sought to blockade the ports, our allies, primarily the French, 
have blocked that effort for fear of widening the conflict.
  What greatly concerns me, however, is that while the Serbian war 
machine continues to roll south unimpeded, it is the American military 
that has been substantially degraded by the shortsighted policies of 
the Clinton administration.
  When NATO bombing began, the military fired between 30 and 50 air-
launched cruise missiles targeted primarily against Serbian air 
defenses. The air-launched cruise missiles are a critical element in 
our military because they can be fired hundreds of miles away from 
heavily guarded targets without directly risking pilots and other air 
personnel. In addition, since they rely on global positioning 
satellites for navigation, they can hit their targets in both good and 
bad weather.
  Unfortunately, there is a crucial shortage of cruise missiles because 
the Administration has had a propensity to use them for some dubious 
purposes in the past. In the short 4-day bombing that occurred in Iraq, 
Operation Desert Fox, the United States used 90 air-launched cruise 
missiles. We fired an additional barrage of cruise missiles against 
Sudan and Afghanistan last summer. In both instances, it is not clear 
that we achieved any policy objectives beyond using up a large 
percentage of our arsenal of cruise missiles.
  Now, what is truly astonishing is that today the United States is 
not, and I emphasize not, producing a single cruise missile. There is 
not a single production line operating that is manufacturing or 
refitting cruise missiles to replace the missiles in our arsenal.
  Today there are only 90 to 100--that's right--90 to 100 air-launched 
cruise missiles in our inventory. They apparently won't be replaced any 
time soon.
  Because of operations in Kosovo, the Office of Management and Budget 
has requested $51 million to convert 92 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles 
into conventional cruise missiles. That is what it cost--almost a half 
million dollars each for that conversion. However, the first converted 
cruise missile would not be available for at least 7 months, by 
November at the earliest. If the production line for new air-launched 
cruise missiles was reopened at Boeing, it would take several million 
dollars of commitment and funding simply to restart it. Even if that 
happened, the line would not even begin producing new missiles for more 
than a year.
  Why have the cruise missile production lines closed? The answer 
appears to be that a new generation of air-launched cruise missiles 
will be added to the Air Force's inventory, and the military hence 
decided it no longer needed to add to its current inventory. However, 
the new generation of missiles will not be available before 2001 or 
2002 at the earliest.
  Given President Clinton's propensity to fire off cruise missiles 
apparently at whim, and given Secretary Albright's blustery rhetoric, 
we wonder if anyone in the Administration in recent years gave 
consideration in advance to reopening the closed production lines to 
allow us to rebuild our inventory before we began the air campaign in 
Yugoslavia. Or did they believe that diplomatic bluster from the State 
Department would convince adversaries that military confrontations 
would not happen until our new generation cruise missiles were on line 
in 3 to 4 years?
  A similar, but less dangerous, scenario exists with the Navy cruise 
missile, the Tomahawk. During the past 10 years, we have had 
approximately 2,500 Tomahawks in our inventory. That number is down 
considerably--down to about 2,000 since we used 330 during the 4-day 
bombing in Operation Desert Fox and 150 by the Navy so far in Kosovo. 
As in the case with the Air Force, the Tomahawk production line has 
also been shut down because a new generation of missiles will be 
produced. However, again that missile production will not be available 
before the year 2003.
  By one estimate, the cost of restarting the Tomahawk production line 
would be $40 million, and it would take 2\1/2\ years before a missile, 
a single missile, would come off that line. Clearly, this is not an 
option. Although the Navy is seeking $113 million to remanufacture 324 
older model Tomahawks, those will not be available in the foreseeable 
future.
  Mr. President, there are very strong indications that if nothing 
changes, the bombing campaign in Yugoslavia could last through the 
summer. Quite frankly, I do not believe that anyone in the 
Administration really knows how long this campaign is going to 
continue. But so long as the air campaign continues, the shortage of 
cruise missiles means that it is our pilots who will have to take 
greater risks and they will be subjected to those risks.
  It is our pilots who will have to hit the facilities that cruise 
missiles could have hit. They will have to deal with the surface-to-air 
missiles and ground fire that have a minimal impact on the unmanned 
cruise missiles. They will have to deal with the vagaries of the 
weather, something that does not affect the capabilities of our cruise 
missiles.
  Moreover, we have many responsibilities and vital interests in other 
areas throughout the world. What would happen if Saddam Hussein began 
posing threats to Kuwait again? What would happen with regard to 
threats that we have seen regularly coming from North Korea? A recent 
article in the Washington Post quoted Russian analysts who have been 
interviewed from time to time and have picked up sensitive material 
advising us of the North Korean officials and their continued threat. 
North Korean officials have indicated that the NATO bombing has had a 
sufficient impact on their Government that could lead to further 
upgrades of its missile and military capability.
  Clearly, the severe shortage of cruise missiles diminishes some of 
our military options and surely makes the world a more dangerous place.

  But the shortage of cruise missiles also reflects on the 
shortsightedness and overcommitments made by the Administration over 
the last few years. At the same time that this Administration was 
committing us to military interventions of some dubious purposes, they 
have been cutting military spending. They have shortchanged our 
military readiness because they have been unwilling to sacrifice 
domestic spending and provide our troops with the necessary means to 
carry out our military objectives, and particularly to have an adequate 
inventory.
  Now that we are engaged in this very serious mission in Kosovo, the 
shortfalls in our military spending are becoming dangerously obvious. I 
believe it is incumbent on the Administration and Congress to 
realistically assess the state of our military readiness and to provide 
the appropriate funds to maintain that we, indeed, have a technological 
support base for our troops and adequate inventories of cruise missiles 
and other military armaments.
  At the same time, we need to have a real debate about the goals in 
this conflict in Yugoslavia and our strategy to achieve those goals. I 
fear the Administration completely miscalculated when it launched the 
air campaign. It is my view that they thought the air campaign would be 
a short campaign. I believe they assumed that the Serbs would 
immediately retreat when the bombs began to descend and that the Serbs 
would passively accept Secretary Albright's demand that NATO troops be 
positioned in Kosovo.
  That has not happened. And now the question is, What is next? Why are 
we to assume that if bombing had not worked in this last 4 weeks, that 
another 4 weeks or another 4 months of bombing will change anything on 
the ground? History suggests that bombing by itself tends to steel the 
will of the people who are under assault. Why would the Serbian people 
react any differently than the people of London, who endured far 
harsher bombings by the Nazis and still never gave in?
  Mr. President, it has been said that when it comes to the Balkans, 
there are no good options. What is clear to me is that even if the 
refugees would somehow be allowed to return to Kosovo, a very large 
occupation force on the ground, including Americans,

[[Page S3834]]

would be needed to maintain any semblance of peace, and that force 
would be required to stay not for months but for years, and perhaps 
decades.
  This is not an outcome I can support. We were told by the President 
that we were only going to be in Bosnia for 1 year. Four years later, 
we are still there and there is little sign that Bosnian peace can 
survive without a military presence to maintain that peace.
  I think it was shortsighted of the Administration to allow cruise 
missile production to end and to initiate a conflict without an 
adequate inventory. That same shortsightedness marks our foreign 
policy. And the result today is that we are engaged in a conflict, with 
NATO's credibility on the line.
  I believe the only solution to the crisis in Kosovo is to re-engage 
the Serbs in diplomatic negotiations. Most importantly, we need to 
recognize that the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans have a long history 
and the people living there may never live in peace so long as the 
borders are drawn as they are today. Unfortunate as this may be, it may 
ultimately become necessary to redraw some of those borders in the 
Balkans to reflect political and ethnic realities.
  Mr. President, I came across an article written by David Greenberg. 
Mr. Greenberg writes the History Lesson column for Slate and is a 
Richard Hofstadter fellow in American history at Columbia University.
  This particular article poses the question, What solution does 
history dictate for Kosovo?
  I thought it an excellent treaty on the history and background. 
Knowing the Presiding Officer's familiarity with this particular 
subject, I will read this article into the Record at this time.
  Mr. Greenberg writes:

       Ever since the United States began contemplating doing 
     something about war and ethnic cleansing in the collapsing 
     state of Yugoslavia in 1991, all sides have invoked history 
     as a guide to action. Those who opposed involvement in Bosnia 
     in the early '90s--and who doubt that NATO can bring peace to 
     Kosovo today--argue that the long record of intractable 
     ethnic tension among the Balkan peoples means we should stay 
     out. Any settlement, they say, is doomed to be temporary. 
     Robert Kaplan's book ``Balkan Ghosts,'' which advances this 
     thesis regarding Bosnia, reportedly convinced President 
     Clinton to steer clear of military action there for a time.
       Interventionists also invoke history. They note the 
     longstanding claim of ethnic Albanians to the territory of 
     Kosovo dating back to 1200 B.C., when the Albanians' supposed 
     ancestors, the Illyrians, settled there. This ancient history 
     forms the basis of demands for self-determination on the part 
     of the long-suffering Albanian Kosovars. But the Serbs, too, 
     stake a historical claim. Their Slavic forebears migrated to 
     Kosovo around A.D. 500, and they contend that Serbs have 
     lived there ever since.
       In fact, each of these assertions is subject to 
     qualification, as is made clear in Noel Malcolm's masterly 
     (but misnamed) ``Kosovo: A Short History'' (my main source 
     along with Hugh Poulton's ``The Balkans: Minorities and 
     States in Conflict''). The tie of today's Albanian Kosovars 
     to the ancient Illyrians is fairly attenuated. And while 
     Slavs did move into the area around 500, when the Bulgarian 
     Empire conquered the Balkans, the Serbs didn't gain control 
     of Kosovo until the 12th century, when a dynasty of their 
     leaders known as the Nemanjids invaded it after a period of 
     Byzantine rule.
       For two centuries the Nemanjids basked in their Balkan 
     kingdom. Serb nationalists today are fond of noting that in 
     1389 it was in Kosovo that the Serbian Prince Lazar and his 
     armies made their last stand against the invading Ottoman 
     Empire at the Battle of Kosovo. They're less likely to note 
     that the Albanians of Kosovo fought alongside them. (Explicit 
     references to the Albanian people as opposed to the Illyrians 
     begin to appear around the 11th century.)
       During Turkey's 500-year rule, most of Kosovo's Albanians--
     and Albania's Albanians, also subjects of the Ottoman 
     Empire--converted to Islam. The Serbs remained Orthodox 
     Christians. That may be one reason that the Serbs sought 
     independence first. In 1804 they rose up and in 1828 broke 
     free. Kosovo, however, remained largely content under 
     Turkish rule. Serbs, believing that Kosovo still 
     rightfully belonged to them, did briefly conquer it in 
     1877 when, along with Russia, the new Serbian state made 
     war on Turkey. But under the Russian-Ottoman armistice a 
     year later, Serbia was forced to withdraw.
       At this point, the Albanians--of both Kosovo and Albania 
     proper--commenced their so-called ``national awakening.'' A 
     group called the League of Prizren, named for the Kosovo town 
     where it met, lobbied for autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. 
     A generation later, this movement flowered into insurrection, 
     as Albanians throughout the western pocket of the Balkans 
     revolted. Albania secured statehood in 1912, but before the 
     status of Kosovo could be resolved, the entire region was 
     rocked, in quick succession by the First Balkan War (1912), 
     the Second Balkan War (1913) and, for good measure, World War 
     I (1914-18).
       First to invade Kosovo in these years were the Serbs. The 
     Serbs were knocked out by the Austrians, who were knocked out 
     by the French. The French handed the province back to their 
     allies the Serbs. After the war, the Allies, following 
     Wilsonian ideals of self-determination, straightened up 
     Europe into tidy nation-states. With minimal thought on the 
     part of the mapmakers, Kosovo was folded into Serbia, which 
     joined five neighboring Balkan territories to form the new 
     state of Yugoslavia. Albania appealed to the Allies for 
     control of Kosovo but, considered an insignificant state, was 
     rebuffed in deference to Serbian claims.
       As the largest republic in the multinational state, Serbia 
     dominated Yugoslavia. Its capital of Belgrade, for example, 
     was the nation's capital too. Under Serbian rule, Kosovo 
     again became a battleground.
       In the late 19th century, Serbian nationalists had built up 
     national myths about the heroics of Prince Lazar and cast 
     Kosovo's status as a Jerusalem-like holy land populated with 
     Orthodox religious shrines. Throughout the 1920s and '30s, 
     the central government in Belgrade pushed Albanians out of 
     the region and moved Serbs in--efforts the Albanian majority 
     resisted, often to their peril.
       In World War II, Kosovo again resembled Europe's Grand 
     Central Station. The Axis powers rolled in and carved up the 
     region: Albania's Fascist government, headed by a puppet of 
     Mussolini's, seized the biggest chunk, while Bulgaria and 
     Germany each occupied a strip. Communist partisans retook the 
     province in 1944, and when the war ended, the partisan leader 
     Josip Broz Tito became dictator of the reconstituted Yugoslav 
     federation. The Communists considered ceding Kosovo to 
     Albania but instead decided that it should revert to its 
     antebellum status quo. They deemed Kosovo not an autonomous 
     republic but a province of Serbia.
       In the name of Yugoslav unity, Tito suppressed most 
     assertions of ethnic identity. He jailed or killed thousands 
     of Albanian Kosovars and banned Albanian-language 
     publications. But he was, to some degree, an equal 
     opportunity tyrant: He also halted Serbian efforts to settle 
     Kosovo. In 1968, with uprisings sweeping the globe, student 
     protests triggered a wave of demands for greater Kosovar 
     autonomy. Tito acceded to a series of reforms, culminating in 
     a new Yugoslav Constitution in 1974, which gave Kosovo 
     control over much of its internal affairs. That year marked 
     the high point for Kosovar aspirations to independence, and 
     it remains the benchmark for NATO's demand at Rambouillet for 
     a restoration of Kosovo's ``pre-1989'' autonomy.
       Tito died in 1980. The next year, Albanian Kosovar students 
     erupted again, with some Kosovars clamoring for republichood. 
     Belgrade, no longer restrained by Tito's aversion to 
     exacerbating ethnic conflict, cracked down. Polarization 
     followed: Slobodan Milosevic--first as a Communist and then 
     as a Serbian nationalist--whipped up anti-Albanian sentiment. 
     In 1989, he stripped Kosovo of its cherished autonomy. 
     Meanwhile, Albanian Kosovars proclaimed their territory a 
     republic and, through channels violent and nonviolent, sought 
     actual independence. Unrelenting, Milosevic undertook the 
     massacres of the last year, which finally precipitated NATO's 
     bombing.
       That, in a nutshell, is the history of Kosovo. If you can 
     find a solution to today's mess in there, let me know. Take a 
     snapshot at 1200 B.C. and the Albanians can claim it; look at 
     A.D. 1200 and it's a Serbian kingdom. The United States 
     prefers to use the 1974 benchmark. Milosevic points to 1989. 
     But even at those points, the snapshot looks pretty blurry.
       Before NATO began bombing Yugoslavia March 24, the proposed 
     Rambouillet solution--restoring Kosovo's autonomy but not 
     granting it independence--seemed like a plausible outcome. 
     Now it's hard to imagine Kosovars accepting any kind of 
     Serbian rule. If victorious, NATO may grant Kosovo 
     independence or perhaps divide it up. History won't decide 
     Kosovo's fate. Our actions in the weeks ahead will decide 
     history.
  I bring this to the attention of my colleagues simply to highlight a 
little history and point to the complexities in reaching a resolution 
to this very difficult foreign policy question.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VOINOVICH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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