Gov. George Pataki (R-NY) in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the departure point for the NAI delegation

Since the breakup of communist Yugoslavia, ethnic groups in what remains of that country and in the nations that have broken away from it have committed notorious atrocities against one another. Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic has instigated four wars in the territory, and a fifth looks increasingly likely. Those events and the disruption they have caused throughout southeastern Europe have led to direct military intervention by the United States and NATO. The United States, the United Nations, and the European Union have also expended considerable financial and diplomatic resources trying to stabilize the area. Nevertheless, the region remains beset by unrest, economic ruin, a massive displacement of people, and the threat of even more conflict. Meanwhile, it is not clear whether the United States and its allies have a clear set of goals or plans driving their involvement.

The New Atlantic Initiative (NAI), in association with the Project for the New American Century and the German Marshall Fund of the United States, organized a June 24-29 fact-finding mission to observe conditions in Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia—the most volatile parts of the area—and to gather information and insights from senior leaders and officials.

Gov. George Pataki (R-N.Y.) led the group, whose members included Morton Abramowitz, former U.S. assistant secretary of state; Marc Leland, cochairman of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and former U.S. assistant secretary of the treasury; and Noel Malcolm, a British historian and the chairman of the Bosnian Institute in London.

Members of the delegation agreed that the likeliest spot for another Balkan war is Montenegro. They met with Montenegrin president Milo Djukanovic, whose administration has distanced itself from the Serb government in Belgrade and is contemplating outright independence. Montenegrins fear that Serb president Slobodan Milosevic will use force to try to keep them in Yugoslavia, as he has with others in the past, and will try to destabilize Montenegro’s democratically elected government. The West is aware of these concerns but has done little to prevent them from being realized. As usual, Milosevic sets the agenda while we wait.

Members of the delegation agree that the alliance needs a regional strategy. Historically, solutions "on the cheap" prove expensive in the end. If we do not think forward and plan strategically when dealing with Balkan crises, others will set the agenda, as they have before, with disastrous consequences.

NAI, an international nonpartisan coalition led by AEI and directed by Resident Scholar Jeffrey Gedmin, was formed in 1996 with the goal of bringing Americans and Europeans together for common causes. Those causes include the admission of Europe’s fledgling democracies into institutions of Atlantic defense and European economic cooperation, notably NATO and the European Union, and the establishment of free trade between an enlarged European Union and the North American Free Trade Area as a means of advancing global free trade. NAI sponsors conferences, debates, and roundtable discussions on both sides of the Atlantic.