    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 5, 1999]
    [Pages 695-698]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 695]]

    Interview With Tom Brokaw of the National
    Broadcasting Corporation in Spangdahlem, Germany
    May 5, 1999

    Appreciation of the Military

        Mr. Brokaw. What do you get out of a trip like this, when you come
    over here and see these people and all the armaments and all this
    emotion that you, as Commander in Chief, obviously are responsible for?
        The President. Well, first of all, it's very reassuring because you
    see how hard they train, how hard they prepare, and how well they
    execute. So, in that sense, it's reassuring.
        Secondly, I get to thank them and to tell them that the American
    people are with them and grateful for what they're doing. And of course,
    this morning I got the very important briefing from General Clark and General Naumann about
    where we are in this campaign, what we need to do, and what their
    recommendations are.
        So from a purely military point of view, in addition to trying to
    solidify the unity of our coalition--meeting with the Belgian and the German Prime
    Ministers--and looking at the humanitarian effort and seeing the
    refugees, seeing the service people is very, very important. And of
    course, by coming here, the American people see what they're doing more
    because of your coverage of it.
        Mr. Brokaw. This is a real evolution for you. Like so many people in
    your generation, you came of age when there was an unpopular war, and
    you had mixed feelings at best about the role of the military in our
    lives and so on. Did you ever think that you would find yourself running
    a war as Commander in Chief in those days?
        The President. No. Of course, I never thought I'd be President, and
    I certainly never thought, therefore, about this. But when I became
    President and because I hadn't been in the military myself and because
    I'd been a Governor and, therefore, had never been on the Armed Services
    Committee in the Senate or the House or otherwise directly dealt with
    defense policy, I determined to spend an awful lot of time on it. And I
    have spent major, major chunks of time on bases all over the world and
    all over the United States and at the Pentagon in briefings learning
    about how the military works, learning about how these weapon systems
    work, learning about the human challenges of military life today, and
    trying to make sure that these people have the support they need to do
    their job. I think the American people almost universally do understand
    that they're not only very admirable people but they are very, very good
    at what they do.

    Success of Kosovo Action

        Mr. Brokaw. Military people talk about the fog of combat when
    they're fighting. Isn't there also a kind of fog of running a war?
    Didn't you expect to be farther along at this point? We're now 6 weeks
    into the operation.
        The President. Well, I didn't really have expectations about the
    timing because I think the timing depends upon things that are, to some
    extent, beyond our control. That is, the timing depends upon the
    weather. Even though we've now flown 15,000 sorties, not all of them
    could deliver their payload because of the weather. The timing depends
    upon the extent to which Mr. Milosevic is
    willing to see his country and his military broken and taken into the
    ground in order to maintain this campaign of ethnic cleansing.
        I was just convinced that we had a strategy that would work, that we
    could do it at an acceptable cost, and that we had to stay with it until
    it did work. And I still feel that way. I feel quite good about it. And
    I feel more strongly that way, now that I had a long and detailed
    briefing from General Clark and General
    Naumann today. And that was certainly their
    recommendation and their feeling, that the campaign is working, that we
    are making progress on the military front, that the targets are being
    hit, and that they're having an impact, and that we need to stick with
    it. And that's certainly what I believe.
        Mr. Brokaw. General Clark was very upbeat. He said we're winning,
    and then he said General--then he said that Milosevic is losing his
    leadership capability. Did you get real evidence of that?
        The President. I think he has, first of
    all, concrete evidence of the things that are being

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    destroyed there, the ammunition capacity, the repair of weapons
    capacity, the energy capacity, and any other number of targets. And
    they're beginning to have more success now going after the Serb
    military, even though they're pretty clever at hiding.
        But I think also, these people hear things. You know, they're here
    on the ground; they're in combat; they're also in contact with people
    all over this region; and they just have a sense that it's beginning to
    change things. And I believe that to be true. But I also believe that we
    have to stick with the strategy.
        I think the fact that our soldiers were released, and then Mr. Rugova was released today, is an indication that
    Mr. Milosevic hopes to, by doing this,
    put some daylight among the Allies, split us apart a little bit, and
    hopefully to have some sort of an interruption of this campaign on terms
    that he can still claim some victory for this ethnic cleansing. And I'm
    determined to see that that doesn't happen.
        Mr. Brokaw. But do you have any hard evidence that he is losing in
    any way the grip that he has on power in that country?
        The President. I don't think he's--no, I do not think he's losing
    his grip on power within Serbia, and I don't think that's what General
    Clark meant. I think what General Clark
    meant was that he was losing his ability to be certain that he could
    continue to control Kosovo. I do think we have some evidence of that,
    yes.

    Kosovo and Vietnam

        Mr. Brokaw. Defense Secretary Cohen said on ``Meet The Press'' on
    Sunday that they're prepared to go all the way until September if
    necessary in this campaign. That brings to mind what they were saying
    during Vietnam: It became necessary to destroy the country to save it. I
    mean, how much more damage can be done and still have something left?
        The President. Well, I don't think we're going to destroy the
    country. We're doing our very best, and these pilots have risked their
    lives on more than one occasion to avoid doing collateral damage. Very
    often, for example, the weapons fired at the airplanes are fired from
    heavily populated urban areas. And in former times, without a second
    thought, our planes would have fired right in there at those weapons,
    knowing that they would kill a lot of civilians. They don't do that.
    They really risk a lot to avoid destroying innocent civilians and to
    avoid destroying the country.
        But I do believe that we now have 10 years of evidence--this is not
    the same thing as Vietnam--we have 10 years of evidence that this
    man has built a power base on convincing
    the Serb military that they have the right to kill, rape, destroy, and
    uproot the history and culture of the Muslim people in Kosovo and in
    Bosnia, and to a lesser extent, the Catholic people in Bosnia. And we
    stopped it in Bosnia, but we can reverse it in Kosovo, and the people
    can go home.
        I think that--I realize that the average citizen in the street in
    Belgrade doesn't know what he's done. I
    don't believe they do. I believe that the truth has been kept from them.
    But we have to be prepared to pursue this campaign until it is clear
    that sticking with the strategy he has is more costly to him than
    meeting the conditions that we have laid down and looking forward to a
    different future for Serbia.
        So it's not a conventional thing where there's one side's going to
    win and one side's going to lose because one faction will control a
    whole country. It's not Vietnam. It's not a civil war. It's not
    communism versus noncommunism. It's about one dictator's ability to
    throw a whole region in turmoil over the principle of ethnic cleansing.
    And it is a problem around the world. We have the capacity to stop it
    and reverse it here, and I think we have to do it. It's not just the
    United States; it's 19 countries.

    Duration of Kosovo Action

        Mr. Brokaw. But based on what you heard here today, do you think
    that this war will have to go all the way through until September?
        The President. I think that the clearer we are in our determination
    to do that, the more likely we are to see it terminated before then. But
    I'm perfectly prepared to do it. When we started it, I never thought it
    would be a 3-day wonder. I only--the only way this conflict could ever
    have been over in a few days is if Mr. Milosevic had seen that NATO was prepared to do this and,
    therefore, imagined what it would be like a month or 2 months or 3
    months hence and decided to spare his people and his military and his
    political and economic apparatus that burden. He made a different
    calculation. He was always capable of doing that, and so we have to do
    what we have to do.

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        But I think--I have always been--relaxed is the wrong word--but
    patient about the timetable. And I'm looking forward, frankly, to May
    and June and July, where the weather is much clearer and we'll be freer
    to pursue our strategy.
        Mr. Brokaw. In the meantime, more refugees are coming out; we're
    getting closer to the cold-weather months. That's going to be an
    enormous problem, not only in the prosecution of the war in the meantime
    but what happens after that.
        The President. Well, it is, but I think that--look at the difference
    in the timetable of what we're doing now and what happened in Bosnia,
    where it took NATO navigating--with difficult circumstances with the
    U.N. for a long time--from at least 1991 until 1995 to act. And by the
    time we acted, it was a good thing we did--we saved a lot of lives--but
    a lot of the refugees didn't come home or haven't yet.
        Because we're moving now, I think the refugees will go home almost
    immediately when this is resolved. And that's a very good thing. That's
    a very important thing. And meanwhile, we're going to have to--all of
    us, the Europeans and the United States and Canada--we're going to have
    to spend the money and make the arrangements to care for the refugees.
    And we're going to have to be very sensitive not to put undue pressure
    on the daily life of Macedonia or of Albania, and we're going to have to
    work at it.
        I already this morning, since NATO is heavily involved in the
    refugee issue--and you and I are going to see evidence of that in our
    next stop--we talked quite a lot about what we have to do on that. This
    is going to be a huge challenge for NATO, for the U.N. High Commission
    on Refugees, for the NGO's around the world that are helping us.

    Espionage/European Stability

        Mr. Brokaw. Let me ask you a couple of concluding, tough questions.
    Your critics say the Clinton doctrine is: We bomb the small countries,
    Iraq and Kosovo, but when the big countries begin to give us trouble, we
    turn the other way. China and nuclear secrets is the most recent example
    of that. Isn't that a bigger risk, really, to the long-term history of
    the United States than Kosovo?
        The President. Well, first of all, I think that's apples and
    oranges. The Soviet Union spied on us all during the cold war. I don't
    recall President Truman or President Eisenhower or President Kennedy or
    President Johnson or President Nixon ever considering bombing Russia
    because of espionage. We didn't break off relationships with Israel when
    Israel was involved in espionage in ways that could have been quite
    damaging to us.
        So I think that's a foolish thing. We should handle this espionage
    case the way we've handled every other espionage case since spying
    began. I believe that we have more to gain from working with the Chinese
    than from totally divorcing ourselves from them. So I don't think--
    that's apples and oranges.
        NATO here has the capacity to stop and, I believe, to reverse ethnic
    cleansing. I believe that the threat that presents to the stability of
    Europe is very considerable. I believe the promise of a Europe that's
    undivided and at peace is what people have worked for for the last 50
    years. And unless we fix the Balkans or at least give them a chance to
    fix their own future, not only by ending this terrible conflict and
    ethnic cleansing but also by building the region, then we won't have the
    Europe we want, and someone like you may have to write another book like
    you just wrote 50 years from now. So I consider this to be a very large
    issue.
        I also believe that we have to increase the capacity of the world to
    stand against this. You know, after the horrible thing that happened in
    Rwanda, we've worked very hard to develop the African militaries and
    their capacity to cooperate and work with us and others to stop anything
    like that from happening again.
        I think this whole, you know, hatred based on race, tribe, religion,
    ethnicity, is going to dominate a lot of the world in the next 30 years,
    and the United States has a deep interest in trying to stand against it.

    President's Leadership

        Mr. Brokaw. I have a question, Mr. President. It's not an easy one,
    but based on what we're seeing on Capitol Hill and other signs of it as
    well, in 1998, your job approval rating remained very high, but there
    were real questions about trustworthiness and credibility and so on even
    in the public. Has that made running this kind of operation more
    complicated for you?
        The President. No. No. You know, the people on Capitol Hill will
    have to decide how they respond as Americans to their obligations here.
    But it hasn't been a problem. And the American people made clear in the
    election in 1998 who

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    they trusted and for what reason and what their priorities are. They
    hired us all to do their work, and they want their lives and their
    children and their future and their national interest put first. And
    that is what I have done, and that's what I'm doing today and what I
    intend to continue to do until my last day in office. And I think that
    those who do it will be supportive, and those who don't will have to
    deal with the consequences.

    Quality of Life in the Military

        Mr. Brokaw. Do you have anything else you want to say?
        The President. No. I don't think so. He wanted to know if we wanted
    to say anything else. One thing that I think you might want to
    emphasize, and I don't know if you want to do it now or later, is there
    is one legitimate concern I have, which is that these people--
    ironically, the good economy has made it harder for us to keep a lot of
    these folks in the Air Force and in the Army.
        Mr. Brokaw. Right.
        The President. And there are so many opportunities for them, and
    they serve their country, and then it's easy for them to go out and make
    a lot more money doing something else. And one of the important things
    that I believe will be done, on a completely bipartisan basis, this year
    in the Congress is to raise pay, to improve retirement, to have
    reenlistment bonuses, to try to make sure that we can keep the good
    people we have. And we have downsized the military, but as a
    consequence, they have to do more missions in closer sequence, and they
    don't get the time off they used to get, so they work under enormous
    pressure.
        Now, you could see from that crowd today, there's not a morale
    problem at this base. These people have high morale. They're proud of
    what they're doing. But they also have--I think the general here said,
    General Van Cleef said about 80 percent of
    these people are married. Many, many have small children. And so one of
    the concerns I have and one of the reasons I wanted to come out here and
    listen and talk to these folks is that we're working very hard--and as I
    said, I don't think there's any partisan difference here at all--on a
    completely bipartisan basis, to try to give these folks the income, the
    quality of life, the stability that they need and to find ways to get
    more of those who do join to stay and more to join, even though there's
    a good economy and a low unemployment rate.
        So that is a genuine challenge for us, but one that I have so far
    had only the highest compliments for the Congress and the members of
    both parties about how they're meeting it, because everybody knows it's
    a big issue.
        Mr. Brokaw. It would be a huge item on the agenda, I would think, in
    2000; don't you think?
        The President. It depends on--well, it will be unless we are able
    to----
        Mr. Brokaw. Head it off first----
        The President. ----yes, adequately address it now. But there has
    really been no partisan difference here. I mean, I proposed the first
    substantial increase in defense spending since, oh, the middle of
    President Reagan's second term, this year, largely to address not only
    some of our equipment needs but mostly the people needs. And you know,
    you get the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years and you get incomes
    rising at the highest rate in 25 years, it's hard to keep folks, and you
    have more competition for people coming right out of school. So we're
    just going to have to work at it.

    Note: The interview began at 2:50 p.m. at Spangdahlem Air Base. In his
    remarks, the President referred to Gen. Wesley K. Clark, USA, Supreme
    Allied Commander Europe; Gen. Klaus Naumann, chairman, North Atlantic
    Treaty Organization Military Committee; Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene
    of Belgium; Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany; President Slobodan
    Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro);
    Ibrahim Rugova, leader, Democratic League of Kosovo; and Brig. Gen.
    Scott Van Cleef, USAF, Commander, 52d Air Expeditionary Wing. The
    transcript was released by the Office of the Press Secretary on May 6. A
    tape was not available for verification of the content of this
    interview.