Page 187 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

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THE CNN EFFECT IN ACTION
prime minister Tony Blair two days after it was agreed upon in the
United States, Clinton emphasized the importance of this point, stat-
ing, “If we do military action without a political plan, we will have a
86
problem.”
Agreeing on an action plan, in many ways, was the easy part. The
difficult part involved convincing the U.S. legislature and skeptical
European allies to back the plan. Racak, however, had a galvanizing
impact across the political horizon, and potential barriers that were
rigid had clearly softened. Albright seemed to realize this but knew
that she only had a limited amount of time to push for a new initiative.
According to one of her advisors, “Whatever threat of force you don’t
get in the next two weeks you’re never getting, at least until the next
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Racak.”
In terms of convincing NATO allies to support the new policy,
some reservations had to be overcome. The first related to the after-
math of any bombing campaign. Europeans wanted U.S. troops as
part of the implementation force and, to this end, the United States
privately agreed to provide troops to assist European allies enforce the
Kosovo protectorate. In February, the United States publicly made
this commitment during Clinton’s weekly radio address to the nation.
Second, some European allies were concerned that bombing the Serb
side with no penalty for the Albanians for noncompliance would be
uneven and allow the KLA to exploit the situation as they had done
during the Holbrooke-Milosevic Agreement. To address this concern,
it was agreed that NATO action would occur only with Albanian
agreement to the interim settlement; if the Albanians did not agree,
the FRY would not be bombed. 88 Besides making some adjustments
to the policy to address these concerns, the European allies were also
supportive of the policy change. Table 7.4 highlights the main policy
changes between phase 5 and phase 6.
As table 7.4 shows, the Racak massacre set off significant Western
policy change on Kosovo. At the strategic level, the West now sought
to create an autonomous Kosovo protectorate that would be secured
by an international force. This was a notably different goal and a much
larger commitment by the West than what might have been imagined
the previous year when autonomy along the lines of the 1974
Yugoslav Constitution that Milosevic removed was sought. The West
would now be committed to Kosovo and likely so for many years to
come. At the tactical level A, regarding what was expected of the par-
ties on the ground to fulfill the strategic policy, the previous policy was
almost completely discarded. The new focus had moved to pressuring