Page 170 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

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THE KOSOVO CRISIS—THE MICRO REVIEW
Table 7.1 Change in Western Policy Aspects between Phases 1 and 2
Phase 1
Phase 2
•
Kosovo autonomy (meaningful
self-administration)
Strategic Policy
•
Serb/Albanian dialogue
FRY to withdraw forces
Allow access to Red
Cross/humanitarian groups
Tactical Policy A
•
Arms embargo
Sticks – outer wall of sanctions
•
Senior official’s visa
Carrots
restrictions (threatened)
FRY in SECI
Tactical Policy B
JAT landing rights
Moratorium on government
Greater FRY diplomatic
credit/investment
(threatened)
recognition/consulate
permission • • • • • • Serb/Albanian dialogue 135
• The United States revokes
February concessions
incentives to promote dialogue, the new policy essentially withdrew
these and instead introduced a number of new sanctions. These meas-
ures, not surprisingly, were largely targeted at the FRY, which bore
the brunt of Western government blame for the Drenica incident.
The only exception related to the arms embargo, which was equally
applied to the Kosovo Albanians.
Western Decision-Making and the Media
The Drenica incident and its media images shook the West out of its
passivity over Kosovo and revived the horrors of the Bosnian war. It
especially brought back memories of Srebrenica—an incident that
seemed to still hold much collective guilt for the West, based on the
statements of Western leaders. Commenting after the March 9, 1998
Contact Group meeting, for example, Madeleine Albright stated,
“[We] were in the same room that we had been in during Bosnian dis-
cussions. I thought it behooved me to say to my colleagues that we
could not repeat the kinds of mistakes that had happened over Bosnia,