A dangerous chill

A rare mixture of caution, courage, and cunning will be required to cope with the international tensions resulting from the Kosovo crisis and Chinese nuclear espionage

A new Cold War is taking shape. And unless the leaders of Russia, China, Western Europe, and the United States summon up the imagination to exercise what will surely be an extremely taxing mixture of resolve and sensitivity, the world could be plunged into a period of big-power tension and anxiety like the one that existed for 44 years from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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The media war
Diplomacy for hire
Calling for peace

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Since the fall of the Wall, a sort of myopic truce has emerged between the West and Russia and China. Although the rhetoric grew heated, the US and Europe adopted what were essentially passive responses to Russia's brutal war in Chechnya. During that action the Russians ferociously smothered a secessionist movement and killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people in the process, a number of casualties far greater than what NATO has inflicted on Serbia. And when Communist authorities in China crushed the spirit of a grass-roots democracy movement with Stalinist dispatch, the West -- hoping for improved relations with that nation -- spoke strongly but waved barely a stick.

For their part, Moscow's semi-democratic autocrats and Beijing's totalitarian capitalists stood on the sidelines when the US and its allies drove megalomaniac Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and re-secured the flow of Middle East oil, the ultimate lubricant -- even in this digital age -- of Western prosperity.

Now the West has chosen to face down another megalomaniac, Slobodan Milosevic. Unlike Hussein's, this butcher's ambitions are not, for the moment, extra-territorial. He merely wants to consolidate and maximize the influence and position of ethnic Serbs in the polyglot states that were once Yugoslavia. His tools: murder, rape, and forced expatriation. It is estimated that his forces have so far killed as many as 5000 -- but 100,000 Kosovar men are missing, so the number could be far higher. The number of ethnic Albanians who have been driven out exceeds 900,000 -- plus the 600,000 who remain in Kosovo but have been displaced from their homes. (This means that more than 90 percent of the entire Kosovar population has been affected.)

As preparations begin for assembling a 50,000-member force (including 7000 to 8000 American troops) to secure the peace that NATO hopes to win with continuous air and missile strikes, it seems time to recognize that NATO's strategy is not working.

The Serbs and the West clearly misread each other at the outset of the war and continue to do so today. The goal of stopping the killing and returning the displaced people to their homeland must stand. But it is a task that will take months, if not years, to accomplish.

It is unlikely that we will be able to accomplish it without, at best, the active cooperation of Russia -- or, at minimum, its neutrality. This is a tall order. The Economist recently reported that support for the Serbs is extraordinarily high in Russia and in Balkan states such as Bulgaria. Revulsion at genocide clearly does not run as strong or as deep in the East as it does in the West.

This cultural divide is deep, but we should try to bridge it. NATO should test Russia's collaborative resolve by seriously considering its offer to send a sizable peacekeeping force into Kosovo, though the plan needs to be modified. Russia is wary of NATO involvement because it has little influence in that quarter. And NATO is wary of UN involvement because Russia and China hold veto power on the Security Council. Compromise won't be easy. If Russia's offer turns out to be a hollow one, NATO can walk away. But at the moment, Russia provides a glimmer of hope.

China is another matter. Its outrage at the bombing of the Chinese embassy is understandable, but its response was -- and is -- exaggerated. China has clearly decided that the best defense is a strong offense. Its leaders know that their already uneasy relations with the US are going to sour as scrutiny of Democratic campaign-finance scandals involving Chinese cash continues, and as the espionage that spanned the presidencies of Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton -- perhaps the greatest breach of national security since the beginning of the Cold War -- is further revealed.

That's why it's doubly important for us at least to try to engage the Russians in a Kosovo solution. NATO needs to restore the integrity of Kosovo. If it can't remove Milosevic, it needs to isolate him.

We can expect no help from China. But trying to work with Russia -- a country over which the West holds tremendous economic leverage -- may be the only way we can avoid having the current diplomatic chill turn into the Second Cold War.

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