Columnist Charles Krauthammer, writing in The Washington Post on March 26, 1999, confirmed that the Clinton objectives going into the bombing lacked coherence. Discussing Clinton’s speech on March 24, Krauthammer said: "For incoherence and simple-mindedness, for disorganization and sheer intellectual laziness, it is unmatched in recent American history." He added: "It is not forgivable to send American men and women into battle in the name of a cause one can barely elucidate." The columnist sharply criticized Clinton’s attempts to equate Miloševic with Hitler. "But if Serbia's Miloševic is Hitler, how come this Hitler has been our peace partner in the Dayton Accords these past three years now? Never mind. When in doubt, play the Hitler card. No matter how ridiculous the analogy. After all, Serbia has no ambitions to rule a continent, nor the power to do so."

Significantly, Clinton has always chosen small, relatively weak opponents when he has needed "bad guys" to take the media attention away from his problems. As we noted in this journal earlier, he has no intention of allowing anyone on the enemies list to make peace. He has always needed to be able to resurrect a villain on command. Iraq’s Saddam Hus-sein, Libya’s Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi and Yugoslavia’s Miloševic have been his targets of choice.

So it is probably fair to say that Clinton has no wish to end this conflict as long as he has need of distraction from the intelligence/funding scandal as outlined in the Cox Report, now awaiting release. So the Yugoslavs can do little to appease Clinton (and therefore NATO). The answer is that Clinton is seeking a prolonging of the war at as little cost —and as much noise —as possible. If he is forced out of the Kosovo crisis, he must immediately resurrect another crisis. The US has already resumed bombing of Iraq, "just in case".

That is the Clinton rationale. Not all of his Administration, nor his allies, have the same rationale. There is a geopolitical perspective in Washington which says that US dominance in the Balkans, via Albania, is essential if the US is to retain any strategic influence in a Europe which could soon be dominated by a homogeneous political entity —and economic rival —in the form of the European Union.