CONSIDERATIONS IN ADDITION TO THE BOMBING

Beyond the obvious damage that was being caused by NATO’s air attacks and the equally obvious fact that NATO could have continued bombing indefinitely and with virtual impunity, another likely factor behind Milosevic’s capitulation was the fact that the sheer depravity of Serbia’s conduct in Kosovo had stripped it of any remaining vestige of international support–including, in the end, from its principal backers in Moscow. Although Milosevic’s loss of Russian support may not have been the determining factor behind his capitulation, it was, without question, a contributing factor. A high‑level official in the Clinton administration who was directly involved in setting policies for Operation Allied Force later commented that with respect to the numerous ongoing diplomatic efforts to backstop the coercive bombing, Russia was “a key arrow in the quiver.”[147]That became most clearly apparent when Russian President Boris Yeltsin called Clinton on April 25, the last the day of the NATO summit, and, in an unprecedentedly long 75‑minute conversation, expressed his concerns over the escalating air war and offered to send former Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin as his personal envoy to help find a negotiated solution. Once Milosevic came face to face with the realization that Russia had joined the West in pressing for a settlement of the Kosovo standoff, he knew that he had lost any remaining trace of international backing.

On top of that was the sense of walls closing in that Milosevic must have had when he was indicted as a war criminal by a UN tribunal only a week before his loss of Moscow’s support. On May 27, that tribunal charged Milosevic and four of his senior aides–including General Dragoljub Ojdanic, the Yugoslav army chief, and Vlajko Stojilkovic, the interior minister responsible for the MUP–with crimes against humanity for having deported more than 700,000 ethnic Albanians and having allegedly murdered 340 innocents, mostly young men. Even if that indictment did not give Milosevic pause in and of itself, it almost surely closed the door on any remaining chance that Russia might change course and resume its support for him.

Yet a third factor, this one a direct second‑order result of the bombing, may have been mounting elite pressure behind the scenes. As the air attacks encroached more on Belgrade proper, Secretary Cohen reported that senior VJ leaders had begun sending their families out of Yugoslavia, following a similar action earlier by members of the Yugoslav political elite and reflecting possible concern among top‑echelon commanders that Milosevic had led them down a blind alley in choosing to take on the United States and NATO.[148]U.S. officials indicated that during the last week of the air war, VJ leaders had swung from supporting Milosevic on Kosovo to openly rebelling and pressuring the Serb dictator to agree to NATO’s terms. Cohen’s report of increasing demoralization among the VJ’s most senior leaders as they helplessly watched the escalating destruction all around them gave rise to hopes within the Clinton administration that Milosevic might be looking for a face‑saving way out.[149]The fact that the bombing effort caused more infrastructure damage during its last week than during its entire first two months was thought by some to have reawakened old tensions between Milosevic and an army leadership that was said to have never fully trusted him.

A related factor may have been mounting heat from Milosevic’s cronies among the Yugoslav civilian oligarchy, prompted by the continued bombing of military‑related industries, utilities, and other infrastructure targets in and around Belgrade in which they had an economic stake and whose destruction increasingly threatened to bankrupt them.[150]On that point, administration officials remarked that among other things, the dropping of bridges throughout Serbia by NATO air attacks had hindered the activities of smugglers who represented a key source of income for those cronies. Moreover, CIA and other allied intelligence organizations were said to have been gathering information on the bank accounts and business interests of Milosevic and his closest partners, the latter of whom were starting to pressure him to call it quits.[151]

Finally, U.S. psychological operations could have been a contributing factor, although the evidence for that remains both spotty and less than convincing. One report to that effect suggested that Milosevic’s wife was becoming “increasingly hysterical” as the bombing intensified and that Milosevic himself was finally pushed over the edge after the United States, via a “friendly intermediary,” shipped him a videotape showing what a fuel‑air explosive could do to his forces–at roughly the same time as the KLA’s counteroffensive in Kosovo forced VJ troops into the open and exposed them to NATO fire.[152]Apart from the fact that fuel‑air explosives are not currently maintained in the U.S. munitions inventory, this claim presumed that the VJ’s troops were a particularly valued asset for Milosevic, which, by all indications, they were not.