The NATO air strikes against Serbia to end the repression against Kosovo's Albanian majority raise serious strategic, moral, and legal questions--and they are likely to backfire. The cause is certainly just: The Serbian authorities have imposed an apartheid-style system on the country's ethnic Albanian majority and have severely suppressed cultural and political rights. However, this suppression has been ongoing since Yugoslav president Slobodon Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989. Until a year ago, the Kosovars waged their struggle nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and alternative institutions; indeed, it was one of the most widespread, comprehensive and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi's struggle for Indian independence earlier this century. However, the world chose to ignore the Kosvars' nonviolent movement.. It was only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged about a year ago did the world media, the Clinton Administration and other Western governments finally take notice. By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the West gave Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery than before. The delay has allowed the Kosovar movement to be taken over by armed ultra-nationalists who have proven to be less ready to compromise or to guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority in an autonomous or independent Kosovo. It is a tragedy that the West squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. It has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad message: in order to get the West to pay attention to your plight, you need to take up arms. Yet there are problems current with NATO strategy that run deeper than its belated response to the crisis: The threatened bombing led to the withdrawal of the unarmed OSCE monitors, which served as at least a partial deterrent to the worst Serb atrocities. As predicted, violence against the civilian population dramatically increased with their departure. Unable to effectively challenged NATO air power, the Serbs may well take their vengeance on the unarmed ethnic Albanian population should the bombing commence. The root of the Kosovar crisis, as was the root of the Bosnian tragedy, is the extreme Serb ethno-nationalism which emerged from the collapse of Yugoslavia. The paranoid view of Serbia as a besieged, isolated and threatened nation put forward by Milosevic and other Serbian demagogues has brought untold tragedy to a once peaceful--if autocratic--multi-ethnic federated system. The best way to undermine such dangerous ideologues is through supporting the growth of a more pluralistic Serbian society, such as encouraging Serbia's burgeoning pro-democracy movement. Instead, the threat of military action only re-enforces the Serb's self-perception that they are a people under siege, playing right into the hands of Serbian ultra-nationalists. Already, the bombing has given the regime and excuse to arrest leaders of the democratic opposition and shut down their media. Unlike the 1995 air strikes in Bosnia, the U.S. is not attacking a rebel Serb army in an internationally-recognized independent state, but is attacking Yugoslav forces within their own territory. Not only does this raise serious legal questions, but Serbian history--or at least mythology--sees Kosovo as sacred to their national identity, and the Serbs will be far less likely to capitulate. Furthermore, as any authority on conflict resolution can attest, workable conflict resolution cannot come from a pre-packaged "settlement" imposed from the outside through threat of force. Even though the peace formula put forth by the Americans and European is quite reasonable, true conflict resolution can only come from the interested parties themselves. At best, an imposed Western formula on Kosovo will result in an uneasy truce in a badly divided society which will not heal the wounds, encourage democracy or lead to real peace. The Clinton Administration has failed to offer any scenario as to what should occur if the bombing campaign fails to persuade the Serbians to compromise. Unlike with Iraq, the targets are not isolated encampments in flat open desert under cloudless skies. Serbia is mountainous, wooded, often overcast, and heavily populated, raising the prospects of the loss of both American pilots and Serbian civilians. There are also questions about the Clinton Administration's motivations. One does not have to be a Serb apologist to wonder why the U.S. so forcefully pushes for the same rights for Kosovars in Serbia that they oppose for the similarly-suppressed Kurds in Turkey. Indeed, the record of both the current and previous U.S. administrations of supporting repressive armies against occupied and indigenous peoples is scandalous. This has led to uncharitable speculation that Clinton may be motivated less out of concern for human rights than by a desperate search for a post-Cold War mission for NATO or perhaps even an effort to destroy what remains of Yugoslavia, one of the last European holdouts to an neo-liberal global order. Unfortunately, with the many missed opportunities for supporting nonviolent conflict resolution and the crisis now in such an advanced stage, it is increasingly difficult to find non-military alternatives. Still, securing agreement for the redeployment of unarmed monitors from the OSCE, encouraging direct dialogue between the Kosovar Albanians and Kosovo's Serbian minority and increasing support of the democratic opposition in Serbia and the what remains of the nonviolent resistance in Kosovo would provide opportunities for resolving the crisis. On the eve of a new century, the people of the United States and Europe should not be forced by their governments to choose between abandoning an entire people to terror and repression or the unwise utilization of military power.

Stephen Zunes is an assistant professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.