Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tuesday that events in the Balkans have proven her right–and her incoming successor, Colin Powell, wrong–on the use of American peacekeeping troops.
As she prepares to turn over her office to the retired general, Albright made clear in her farewell news conference at the State Department that she wants the U.S. commitments to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina to continue.
“I believe that the story in the Balkans is not finished and that the next administration needs to keep in mind that our presence there is very important,” Albright said.
Albright’s remarks revealed a wound left from Powell’s description in his 1995 memoir of a debate he and Albright had early in the Clinton administration over the limited use of military force.
If military power is applied at all, Powell has argued, it should be done not in limited fashion but with overwhelming force so the outcome is never in doubt.
“You know, Gen. Powell wrote a book and one of the problems with writing a book is that it takes a while to get it published,” Albright said. “It was, I think, probably ironic that just at the time that this [book] came out, in fact, the limited application of limited force in Bosnia was working.”
In 1993, Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Albright was Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations. The former Yugoslavia was breaking up and its factions were embroiled in a brutal, ethnic-based civil war. Images of atrocities, the shelling of Sarajevo and the so-called ethnic cleansing of villages flashed across U.S. television screens.
Albright, who was born in Central Europe and is deeply committed to integrating former communist-bloc states into the West, argued for U.S. intervention. Powell, whose formative experience was in the Vietnam War, held to his belief that the Bosnian region was of marginal U.S. interest and that U.S. troops had no clear role there.
“My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we could not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective,” Powell wrote in his memoir. Albright, he wrote, “asked me, `What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’ I thought I would have an aneurysm.” Powell said Albright was treating American GIs as “toy soldiers.”
In the years since that encounter, the Clinton administration has deployed tens of thousands of peacekeepers to Bosnia and waged an air campaign over Kosovo and Serbia. There are now roughly 11,000 U.S. peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo, representing about one-fifth of the total NATO ground force.
With a democratic regime in power in Belgrade and peace taking hold in Bosnia, Albright said the Clinton administration’s view has been “vindicated.”
Circumstances are about to come full circle. Powell is President-elect George W. Bush’s secretary of state-designate. Albright is leaving office, and the incoming president has made an issue of what he views as the overcommitment of U.S. troops, particularly to Bosnia.
Seeing one of her top policy priorities imperiled, Albright has gone out of her way in her final weeks in office to defend the U.S. commitment to the Balkans.
Albright is articulating a view widely held within the Clinton administration that the past eight years have discredited the so-called Powell Doctrine, which holds that U.S. forces be used only to protect national interests, when there are clearly defined goals and an exit strategy.
“Our plan is to undertake a review right after the president is inaugurated and take a look not only at our deployments in Bosnia but in Bosnia and Kosovo and many other places around the world, and make sure those deployments are proper,” Powell said last month.
A spokesman for Powell did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday.
The United States routinely bases 200,000 troops overseas in Europe and Asia. The actual number of forces “deployed”–that is, sent to hazardous locations where their families cannot follow–is nearly 70,000. About 20,000 are in the Persian Gulf region, 11,000 in the Balkans and 37,000 in South Korea.
The Bush administration, with its returning ranks of senior officials who waged the Persian Gulf war on Iraq in 1991, is not expected to soften its military posture in the gulf. Nor is any troop reduction in Korea likely in the near term. That leaves the Balkans as perhaps the only place where Bush can make good on his promise to limit U.S. troop commitments.
Albright’s parting advice to her successor was a mixture of wry humor and serious policy prescription. She urged the new administration to continue the dialogue with North Korea.
Saying that the problem of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had been bequeathed to the Clinton administration by the first President George Bush, Albright said she was “sorry to say that we are passing it on” to the incoming Bush administration.
“I do think that Saddam Hussein is weaker,” Albright said.
The Clinton administration has struggled against widening international criticism to maintain economic sanctions on Iraq. Albright said Powell will have his hands full trying to make good on Bush’s vow to adopt a tougher line on Iraq.
“When secretary-designate Powell and I spoke about this, he said that he wanted to strengthen the sanctions, and I wish him a lot of luck in that,” Albright said. “It is the right thing to do, but it’s very difficult.”
Albright was philosophical about the dynamics of changing administrations taking on enduring problems.
“Foreign policy doesn’t come in four-year blocks,” Albright said. “There is a continuum.”
