The Kosovo War at 20 by Gil Barndollar - The American Conservative
This is a year of major European milestones. In April, NATO turned 70, to subdued celebrations in Washington and questions about the alliance’s continued relevance. June will mark the centennial of the Treaty of Versailles, a rending of empires that provided only a brief respite from world war. November will see the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Lost in these commemorations is the 20th anniversary of a brief, minor war. NATO began dropping bombs on Serbian forces in Kosovo on March 24, 1999. This three-month bombing campaign in the Balkans is an afterthought to most Americans today, a distant memory after the last two decades of ceaseless war around the Greater Middle East. Even at the time, Kosovo’s victors didn’t try too hard to inflate their accomplishment. When it was over, General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the war’s director, admitted that, “This was not, strictly speaking, a war.”
Kosovo’s veterans, none of whom died in action, won’t receive a spot on the National Mall. Yet the Kosovo War is worth reflecting on as a harbinger of many key features of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy—the era of forever war…