The United States and its NATO allies have attacked Serbia because its leader, Slobodan Milosevic, has progressively undermined peace in the Balkans throughout this decade and because all other means of keeping him in check have failed.

Serb attacks have intensified each day of the bombing. But Serb military forces and paramilitary gangs had swarmed into Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, and surrounding cities days before the first bomb was dropped, driving Kosovars out of their homes, burning houses, stores, factories, and bars, beating, killing, and driving Kosovars out of Kosovo.

Once the bombing started, foreign journalists, especially Americans, were treated like "ethnic Albanians": shoved, slapped, threatened, arrested, interrogated, expelled—their cameras and photographic equipment smashed.

Since observers and foreign journalists have been driven out, it has not been easy to get detailed information about events inside Kosovo. But it is clear that Serb forces have launched a full-scale ethnic cleansing, moving from village to village, torching houses, seizing and sometimes executing Albanian teachers, journalists, and political leaders—and beginning the ominous separating out of boys and men that has more than once preceded massacres.

It is said that this deadly work is being carried out by the paramilitary gang known as "Arkan’s Tigers," the most brutal ethnic cleansers in Croatia, then in Bosnia, who come now to do their dirty work in Kosovo.

Milosevic’s Plan

Because the myth of NATO aggression is already being circulated by Milosevic apologists, in coming days it will be important to remember that the latest buildup of military and paramilitary forces began well before NATO reluctantly started bombing. Milosevic’s intention was already clear: to drive out of Kosovo a large portion of the 1.8 million ethnic Albanians (Muslims) who make up 90 percent of Kosovo’s population—having already driven 400,000 Albanians from their homes, destroyed more than 500 villages and over 22,000 homes, and killed well over 2,000 persons.

Milosevic’s plan was evident in 1989, when, soon after winning an election in Serbia, he moved arbitrarily to revoke the Statute of Autonomy that the 1974 constitution provided Kosovo. That revocation was the preface to a campaign of deprivation, discrimination, and brutal ethnic cleansing against ethnic Albanians that has finally driven NATO governments to countermeasures.

It is hard for Americans to understand and to believe just how aggressive, murderous, and persistent a role Slobodan Milosevic has played in the Balkan states in the last eight years. This is the "leader" who drove Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina into terrible wars that left millions homeless and tens of thousands dead, the man whose megalomaniac drive for power has reduced the once large Yugoslav federal state to a fraction of its former size.

Milosevic is the man who, today, presses Serbia’s claim to "sovereignty" and has even managed to persuade a good many Europeans and Americans of its justice. But Serbia had no historic or constitutional right to seize control of Kosovo’s police, courts, or civil defense—of its social, economic, or educational policies. It had no right to choose Kosovo’s language. But all these policies were imposed by Milosevic after he revoked Kosovo’s autonomy.

Milosevic has no right today to drive Kosovars from their homes and villages. But he commands the military to do so. He has the power, as he had the power earlier to impose war on Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Those former components of the federal state of Yugoslavia eventually acquired weapons and won their independence, but not until Croatia and Bosnia had endured ethnic cleansing and war.

From the beginning, Milosevic has proceeded by force and responded only to force, rebuffing the efforts of dedicated diplomats—Lord Peter Carrington, Cyrus Vance, Lord Owen—to find peaceful settlements to these conflicts. Slobodan Milosevic has not been interested in agreements that give minorities equal rights—or any rights. He has not been interested in negotiating agreements or implementing agreements negotiated. He has not been moved by appeals to conscience, enlightened self-interest, or honor.

He agreed to the Dayton Accords only under heavy American pressure and has partially implemented them because they are backed by substantial (U.S.) force. He has ignored the October (1998) cease-fire agreement he signed "under duress" with NATO. He boycotted the Rambouillet peace conference (of February 6-23) and ignored the resulting accords signed by the Kosovars.

Milosevic does not desire a peace that establishes democratic self-government for Kosovo. He does not intend to withdraw Serb forces from Kosovo or to implement the October cease-fire. He would do none of these unless forced. Instead, again and again he has escalated violence.

That, of course, is why NATO governments—finally—decided it was necessary to bomb Serbia’s military assets. It is why the United States must move now to arm Kosovo, as earlier Croatia and Bosnia were provided arms and assistance, enabling them to defend themselves.

It is why pressing the people of Kosovo to accept Serb rule has become unthinkable.

The attraction seen in recent days to violent nationalism of some groups in some countries in Southeastern Europe—manifest in smashed embassy windows and violent demonstrations—dramatizes the danger Milosevic poses to the peace of the region.

It is not dominoes we must be concerned about in the Balkans; it is the contagion of mass murder. The only known antidote is the imposition of law and civilization.

That is the important task in which the United States government and NATO are now engaged.

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at AEI.