With the war in Ukraine becoming increasingly grim, with the Russians now launching airstrikes against Ukrainian targets near the Polish border and reports that "thousands" of fighters from the Middle East will join the Russians, one wonders why NATO hasn’t warned Vladimir Putin that any Russian missile that lands in or near a NATO country, such as Poland—whether “accidental” or “justified” as a “legitimate” target—will require military strikes against Russian military targets in Ukraine. Maybe then “ordinary” Russians will realize this isn’t a “painless” game anymore, and they will have to decide if their acceptance of Putin’s psychopathy is worth it.
It is perhaps surprising that obvious war crimes being committed by Russian forces against Ukrainian civilian targets (including hospitals) has not put the military response option on the table. For decades NATO countries have been lulled to sleep by the belief that Russian was no longer the “enemy” thanks to Boris Yeltsin’s occasional cooperation in the 1990s, but they didn’t count on an authoritarian dictator with delusions of grandeur coming to power with the intent of reconstituting the Russian “empire.” Given that most Ukrainians believe that aligning with the West is more beneficial than being under the thumb of Putin, and is currently fighting for its democratic life, this should be sufficient reason to put the NATO response option on the table.
But it is not. Why? Because of fear that Putin is just crazy enough to start a nuclear war? Isn’t it worth testing this bluff? It must not be this time, since NATO has acted militarily twice before on European soil in recent memory against a Russian client state. That’s right, NATO countries used—with or without approval by the UN—military action to stop a conflict in the heart of Europe against a non-NATO entity that was at least propped-up by Russia. We are talking, of course, about the Serbians, during the 1992-95 Bosnian war and the 1998-99 Kosovo war. World War I, as students of history recall, was “sparked” by the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was a country formed after the breakup of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, but found itself absorbed within the Soviet-imposed “country” of Yugoslavia after World War II. Bosnia was a region that comprised of three distinct ethnic groups: Bosniac Muslims, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. During the breakup of Yugoslavia following the end of the first cold war period (we are now experiencing the second), there was initially a plan to establish the new country with a “democratically” elected government, but the Serbs and Croats wanted to create their own separate mini-countries. The civil war that followed initially saw the Serbs and Croats aligned against the Muslims, and then the Croats and Muslims against the Serbs. Over 100,000 soldiers and civilians died in the conflict, the most currently in a European conflict since WWII.
Although all sides were guilty of war crime-level abuses, the Serbs—whose leader Radovan Karadžić was a fascist fanatic and would eventually be convicted and imprisoned for war crimes—were the far worse perpetrators. The Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 captured Bosnian men and boys was done while a nearby UN force did nothing, and the siege of Sarajevo eventually required a NATO response, which included first a no-fly zone and then a devastating air campaign against Serbian targets. This forced the Serbs to come to the negotiating table; after the Dayton Accords, NATO maintained a ground force in the country until 2004. Today, the Serbs there are once again causing trouble, again seeking to separate into an “independent” country which could cause more bloodshed because it would suggest that ethnic cleansing is “necessary” in the Serb majority parts of the country.
Serbs were again the center of war in 1998-99. After the largely Muslim Kosovo was absorbed into Serbia, years of abuses by the Serbian government led to a rebellion to secede by the Kosovo Liberation Army. Under Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, Serbian forces were accused of the odd massacres and assorted war crimes in retaliation. After the failure of peace talks, NATO ignored objections from the UN and began a three-month bombing campaign that ended with the threat of a NATO ground offensive with British troops, and with Yeltsin declining to back Serbia, forcing Milošević to come to terms. A NATO occupation force which included U.S. troops, and Russian troops under a separate command, remained in the country for a decade. Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia, although only half the membership of the UN recognizes it as such. War crimes trial were commenced with both sides being accused, but most of them Serbian. During his trial, Milošević died of an apparent heart attack in his prison cell.
So there is a precedent for NATO military intervention in support of non-NATO countries. But Serbia isn’t Russia, and in particular has no nuclear weapons. The only thing that appears to be really stopping a NATO intervention is the fear of nuclear retaliation, because Putin is just crazed enough to do it. But it also proves that NATO and the U.S. are being disingenuous when it claims they don’t have sufficient justification for a military intervention in a country that has been unjustly invaded by another country committing what are clearly war crimes. With a missile attack on a NATO country all bets should be off, and no matter how Putin tries to spin it, it should be sufficient cause for NATO military action, at least an air campaign, against Russian forces in Ukraine.
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