At the time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair openly described the intervention in Kosovo as “a battle between good and evil; between civilisation and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship.” But the story was hardly so pure. The case for humanitarian intervention under international law was based on preventing more Serb atrocities, but in practice that meant supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)—a group that U.S. officials had previously described as terrorist. It was fighting for full independence rather than Washington’s more limited goal of political autonomy. U.S. officials were aware that moralistic rhetoric cloaked political risks: Intelligence agencies privately warned that the KLA was trying to provoke Serbian massacres in hopes of persuading NATO to support its bid for independence. [...]
Milosevic then seized the advantage to ramp up the ethnic cleansing of Albanians. Only when the United States, two months into the war, insisted on a change in strategy—bombing targets deep in Serbian territory—did the momentum shift. Americans also picked up an increasing share of the operational slack, not least because of the wide gap in capabilities between U.S. and other NATO air forces. By the war’s end, the United States had conducted about two-thirds of all sorties while undertaking the majority of reconnaissance, suppression of air defenses, and precision-guided strikes.[...]
Although Russia has traditionally been a Serbian ally, the Kremlin initially positioned itself as the West’s partner in finding a solution to the crisis. The bargain was both instrumental (Russia’s economic troubles made it dependent on foreign assistance) and strategic: President Boris Yeltsin believed Russia could cooperate with Western institutions in maintaining global order. Russian diplomats even communicated to their Western counterparts that, although they would veto any U.N. Security Council resolution approving a war, they had nothing against airstrikes. As Richard Holbrooke, a U.S. diplomat, once said, “For them, it was all about respect.” [...]
When President Bill Clinton and U.S. State Department officials formally apologized for the attack, Chinese state-run media did not broadcast the news for several days as demonstrations continued. It was a strategy of stoking domestic victimization that the Chinese would return to for years afterward, most notably in the 2012 territorial disputes with Japan over islands in the East China Sea.
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