`The war is over," some Serb deputies shouted jubilantly after parliament in Belgrade voted yesterday to accept NATO's peace plan for Kosovo. They may be right - the deal, if read literally, amounts to a complete capitulation by President Milosevic of Yugoslavia.
After 72 days of bombing, the leader in Belgrade has completely accepted NATO's war aims, including a total withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo, the return of refugees and the introduction of an international peacekeeping force pro vided primarily by the alliance and operating under a united command.
Gone are the Yugoslavs' hopes that they may still retain unfettered control over Kosovo. Gone also are Milosevic's dreams about an ethnically cleansed province. At the very best, the dictator in Belgrade has saved his skin and some of the military equipment which his troops will be dragging out of Kosovo in the coming days.
On paper, therefore, NATO's triumph is total, but the reality is that even if the deal is implemented in good faith - and Milosevic is not famous for such virtues - the real test for both the alliance and the Yugoslav dictator is just beginning. The hot Balkan war may be over soon; the cold, but just as intense, diplomatic war is about to start.
For Milosevic, the most immediate task is that of sheer survival. Kosovo is the fourth war he launched this decade and represents his fourth straight military defeat. Not only has the war been a calamity (the damage to economic infrastructure alone is estimated at around €100 billion) but the country may ultimately shrink in size to its pre-first World War frontiers.
Paradoxically, as long as the confrontation with NATO continued, Milosevic remained unchallenged; no other local politician relished the prospect of seizing power only to hand over Kosovo to the West, but with the province now lost, Milosevic will face pressure from all quarters. The military will regard him as a failed commander, nationalists will brand him a traitor, while the democratic opposition in Serbia will point out that as long as Milosevic remains in control, the country has no chance of emerging from its international isolation.
Always the consummate survivor, Milosevic sought to deflect personal responsibility by asking his parliament to vote on the peace deal. The tactic has already backfired. Although parliament has accepted the settlement, it did so by the narrowest of margins, and only after the Serbian Radical Party, composed of nationalists more extreme than Milosevic himself, stormed out of the chamber.
Parliamentary procedures never decided power struggles in Belgrade, but the combination of extreme nationalism, aggrieved military commanders and a pulverised economy will represent a huge challenge for the Yugoslav leader.
Milosevic rose to power by playing on the Kosovo problem; ultimately, it will be the Kosovo issue which will bury him. In theory, NATO faces no such problems. It has apparently confounded its critics at every turn. Political consensus among 19 member-states - originally assumed to be fragile - held up even during the worst errors in the air campaign.
Alliance military losses are negligible and the humanitarian principles which NATO claimed to uphold have been vindicated.
True, Milosevic is unlikely to face an international criminal tribunal soon, but no alliance leader negotiated with him directly or made any compromises; Belgrade was presented with an ultimatum which it could not refuse. Furthermore, the gloomy predictions about a peace deal have not materialised.
The Russians were forced to accept NATO's terms and the Chinese, although still furious about the accidental destruction of their Belgrade embassy, have not created additional troubles.
If the deal holds, it will be granted the United Nations' stamp of approval as a mere formality. However, the problem for the alliance is less with the actual text of the deal and more with its long-term application on the ground.
The most immediate difficulty is that of assembling the force which will march into Kosovo. The troops need to be provided quickly, partly to make sure that Yugoslav forces will not return the moment the air campaign stops and partly to prevent the KLA, the Albanians' guerrilla movement, from establishing control in the province.
The internal and often violent struggle between ethnic Albanian leaders, one of the least documented stories of this war, is soon to become the most important consideration for the alliance. Curiously, however, although NATO demanded the right to police Kosovo for the last two months, little was done to assemble the necessary force.
Britain has pledged up to 20,000 troops and already has at least half of this complement on the ground. President Clinton has just announced the dispatch of 7,000 US soldiers, and the Germans, as well as some other European countries, are well behind in their preparations.
To make matters worse, NATO will need more than just the roughly 50,000 soldiers now planned for Kosovo; additional troops will be required to ensure stability in neighbouring Macedonia and Albania as well. Advance parties can enter much sooner, but the alliance commanders in Brussels may be reluctant to send small units into a dangerous terrain.
Unless NATO assembles the required force quickly, it may find itself marching into a province in which various bands of marauders settle their own scores and the remaining ethnic Serbs are massacred, hardly a favourable ground for a lasting peace settlement. Milosevic himself may assist in creating this mayhem by withdrawing Yugoslav units at various times. Yet, even if the difficulty of assembling the force is overcome and the huge effort required for the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees is met, there is the wider problem of the command structure which NATO will have in the province.
Although precise details of the deal are still to be negotiated, the West assumes that the entire force, which will include troops from some non-NATO countries, will operate under a unified command. In theory, this means that Russians will not be able to have their own sector in Kosovo and that the province will be kept as a whole.
However, it stretches credulity to believe that Russian generals will consent to take orders from NATO commanders and, even if they did, much of the Russian military equipment and communications are not compatible with that of the alliance.
THE result may be that although Russians will operate alongside NATO troops - with the invariable claims of how wonderful this is for European co-operation - Moscow's soldiers will still be confined to one part of the province. If this happens, refugees will refuse to return to that area and a division of Kosovo will take place, almost by default.
Further ahead, the work of stabilising the Balkan region is bound to get more difficult. In the heat of battle, Western governments touted vast reconstruction plans, complete with billions of euros. As always, the funds promised in haste will then explained away at leisure, for nobody has the huge resources necessary for a truly regional reconstruction effort.
In practice, priorities will have to be established, with Kosovo being at the top of all aid efforts, followed by Macedonia, from where refugees will have to be removed quickly, Albania and only then other neighbouring states. Meanwhile, the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia will have to be maintained and NATO could be called upon to protect Montenegro, if the republic decides to leave Yugoslavia, as it may well do in the coming months.
If this is not enough, there is a real possibility of a humanitarian crisis in Serbia itself this winter. In short, the Kosovo operation is just part of a wider regional effort
None of these difficulties is insurmountable, but they do suggest that even if a Kosovo deal is carefully crafted and properly applied, many security dangers throughout the Balkans will arise. NATO may be entitled to claim victory in one battle. However, the real test for the alliance is how to manage the peace.
Jonathan Eyal is director of studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London