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THE KOSOVO CRISIS—THE MICRO REVIEW
on December 25, 1992, to intervene unilaterally if the Kosovo
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To date, this warning had not
Albanians were suppressed by force.
been acted upon because Kosovo remained relatively calm under
Rugova’s pacifist approach. After the events of early March 1998,
however, a limited circle within the U.S. government, including the
secretary of state, believed that the warning had been triggered. The
majority in the NSC and U.S. Congress, however, were in no mood
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for war.
The United States began to show its displeasure toward the FRY by
first halting and then revoking the concessions it made in late
February. This was followed by the return of Special Representative
Gelbard to the FRY on March 10, but this time, with a very different
emphasis. Whereas two weeks earlier, Gelbard’s mission had focused
on conciliatory measures, the message after the Drenica massacre was
largely one of condemnation, referring to recent government actions
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Gelbard
as “brutal, disproportionate, and overwhelming force.”
criticized the FRY government for resorting to violence and denying
the Red Cross and other independent groups investigating war crimes
with access to the victims’ bodies. He demanded that authorities allow
forensic teams access to the bodies before they were buried, backing
the demands with the threat of sanctions that the Contact Group had
outlined. 16 To appear even-handed, Gelbard also visited Rugova and
the Albanian political leadership in Kosovo and outlined Washington’s
opposition to their goals of independence. Other states including
Britain, Germany, and France took similar actions, sending represen-
tatives to both the Serb and Albanian sides to pressure them into dia-
logue and a political resolution.
Policy Shift after the Drenica Massacre
Since late 1995, the West had carefully attempted to balance the need
for FRY’s cooperation in Bosnia with the desire to pressure the FRY
into granting political rights to the Kosovo Albanians. In Western
calculations, the cost of losing the FRY’s cooperation was higher than
the benefits that might be gained through pushing the FRY into
granting more Albanian political rights. Thousands of Western
troops were now peacekeeping in Bosnia, and the Bosnians had
already died in the tens of thousands. If Bosnia were to slip into war
again, it would not only endanger Western troops but could also
potentially cost thousands of additional lives. The Bosnians had already
shown an appetite for mass killing, whereas the Albanians and Serbs
in Kosovo had not. Kosovo Albanians, though repressed, had been