Second, especially for those who view the relations among nations only from the perspective of realpolitik, the bombing of Serbia reflects a very strange set of priorities. As a rule, there are 30 or more significant military conflicts somewhere in the world at any given time. Why intervene in a Serbian civil war but not, for example, in Colombia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Kashmir, or East Timor? (For the moment, the United States has committed only several hundred logistics troops in support of the UN intervention in East Timor.) Some of those other conflicts are in countries that are closer to the United States, involve far higher humanitarian threats, or are more distant from some other potentially countervailing power. If Serbia is a threat to other countries in the region, there are a half dozen governments in Europe with more than enough forces to counter that threat, acting alone or in concert but without U.S. forces.
Although bombing Serbia, by narrow standards, led to a military victory, the bombing campaign jeopardized several more important interests. Support for NATO was probably weakened by this campaign, especially support of the new member governments that thought they were joining a defensive alliance only to find themselves pressured to support an out‐of‐area offensive action within days of joining. The major strategic opportunities of the early 21st century are to reduce the large nuclear arsenals and to integrate Russia and China in an international rule of law. The major strategic threats of this period are an alliance of convenience between Russia and China and terrorist threats based on a proliferation of grievances against the United States. All of those interests were seriously threatened by the bombing of Serbia. U.S. relations with Russia and China are worse now than at any time since the end of the Cold War. And the governments of many smaller countries are learning that their only defense against the militant Wilsonianism of the U.S. government is the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and the threat of terrorist attacks.
