MARINA DEL REY, CA -- President Clinton's decision to send 33,000 American reservists to Kosovo is a clear example of America's disastrous foreign policy of self-sacrifice, said an Ayn Rand Institute senior writer.
     "The principle that ought to determine our foreign policy is national self-interest. The proper purpose of government is to protect the rights of its citizens -- not to sacrifice them in a senseless war," said Robert Tracinski. "The fight in Kosovo is between two tribes whose mutual hatred dates back literally 600 years. Both sides, Serbs and Albanian Kosovars, are fighting for the same vicious doctrine: ethnic separatism. And even if one side in this conflict were less tribalist, the fighting would still have no relation to American interests."
     Tracinski, who is also the editor of the monthly magazine The Intellectual Activist, noted that the Clinton Administration's approach to Kosovo is consistent with the Left's principle of foreign policy. A principle which insists on helping "underdeveloped" nations, while it condemns as "imperialist" any attempt to protect U.S. interests.
     "To support Clinton's flailing in the Balkans, U.S. fighter jets have been moved from Turkey, where they were patrolling Iraq, and an aircraft carrier has been ordered out of the western Pacific, decreasing our military presence near China and North Korea," he noted.
     Tracinski advocates immediate withdrawal of American forces from the Balkans and discounts the Clinton Administration's claims that this would damage American credibility.
     "If 'credibility' is our goal, then Kosovo is the least of our problems," said Tracinski. "What about our surrender to Iraq, our appeasement of China and North Korea, our passivity in the face of attacks by Islamic terrorists? If we want to re-establish our 'credibility' by following through on our threats, there are countless opportunities to do so in conflicts that involve real and vital American interests. The absurdity of the current debacle is that we are being asked to do in Kosovo, where we have no interest, what we have failed to do anywhere else."