Don’t Doubt NATO. It Saved My People.
Some in the United States have downplayed the importance of NATO. Many European partners worry that after the U.S. presidential election in November, the American commitment to the alliance will wane. But as NATO prepares for the start of its summit in Washington on Tuesday, marking 75 years since its birth, I would like to remind the world of how NATO is etched into the cultural and political identity of one country in Europe: my own, Kosovo.
In 1999, a ruthless Serbian campaign led by the Serb leader and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic brought massacres, rapes and the expulsion of about half of Kosovo’s majority Albanian population. It was a humanitarian disaster. NATO’s sustained aerial bombardment of Serb forces and positions put a stop to the horror. The alliance sent in nearly 50,000 troops immediately after.
Who among my people could forget the sight of NATO soldiers being cheered as they arrived? Over the past 25 years, as NATO helped liberate Kosovo and maintained the peace, we in return built democracy to foster this peace from within. We declared our independence in 2008, an idea that will resonate with Americans who have just celebrated their Independence Day. Most of the world now recognizes the nation known as Kosovo, although I prefer the Albanian spelling, Kosova.
There was little doubt to us, given the fresh memories of genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, that the situation in Kosovo would have deteriorated rapidly without NATO. As a Kosovar, it is painful even to imagine how much worse it could have become.
From the outset, NATO’s intervention was humanitarian. But a humanitarian intervention serves national interests, too, however much we’d like to think of them as distinct. Peace in Europe and stopping human suffering served the national interests of NATO’s members. Conflict in the Balkans increases the risk of spillover into Western Europe, not only through refugee crises but also by drawing foreign players into this historically significant geopolitical borderland, threatening Europe’s security.
NATO is not an abstract entity acting on its own. It requires political will. In Kosovo’s case, we had the political will of many great powers, including the United States, NATO’s biggest military power. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright knew the region and the terrors of European wars. Despite being strongly associated with the Clinton administration, the intervention was bipartisan. In Congress, Senator Bob Dole, a Republican, was a strong advocate.
