Leading Article: We must find the stomach for years of war over Kosovo

WILL IT be over by Christmas? Since Vietnam, we in the West have grown used to short wars. The Falklands war in 1982 was over in two-and- a-half months. The ground war in the Gulf in 1991 famously lasted just 100 hours after a six-week aerial bombardment. However, Kosovo is different. The Prime Minister's statements over the weekend that Nato's goal is to return the Kosovar Albanians to their homes, to "defeat Milosevic", and to "do what it takes, for as long as it takes", were astonishingly direct. And when his spokesman suggests that the war may go on for four years, it is obvious that we are entering a potentially long haul.

Yet Britain and its Nato partners are fearfully unprepared for a long and bloody European war. Militarily, Nato has been gearing up for some time for air strikes. But if the Kosovar Albanians are to be returned to their homeland against the will of Serbian forces, troops will be needed on the ground. Tony Blair has not ruled out the use of ground troops (despite much reporting to the contrary), but neither has he started to build up the forces needed to fight a land war.

Mr Blair's strategy for forcing the Serbs to end the terror in Kosovo, outlined yesterday, is to "make Milosevic pay a higher and higher price, day by day, until he does so". But what if he does not? And how high can the price be if Nato air strikes continue to be careful to minimise civilian casualties? The threat of air strikes did not work. The intensification of the strikes, especially if they consist of the accurate targeting of empty interior ministry buildings, seems unlikely to be any more successful.

The public in the West is unprepared too, despite opinion polls showing increasing support for the use of ground troops. That is an understandable reaction to pictures of the lost souls in the Macedonian mists. The focus groups will say: "Something must be done." But if significant British casualties are to be sustained, the country will need to be motivated by something more durable than a tug at the heartstrings.

That is why the Prime Minister's words over the weekend were right and necessary, although his blazing moral certainty - "a battle between good and evil" - was jolting, even scary. It should have been made clearer to the people earlier that there never was any point getting into this business, if we were not prepared to see it through.

There is only one consistent, morally defensible position that is opposed to this war, and that is what might be called the Alan Clark isolationist position, which is that the Kosovar Albanians should have been left to their fate, because the United Kingdom's national interest is not at stake. But that was not right in Bosnia and it is not right here. The rich, stable and democratic peoples of Western Europe have an interest, as well as a duty, to prevent atrocities in neighbouring states which may one day be members of the European Union.

Maybe the bombing should have started earlier, but those who argue that it should not have started until ground troops were ready to go in overlook the fact that, while Nato troops would be fighting their way across Kosovo, the Serbian forces would have had plenty of time to commit atrocities against the people who are now dying on the borders of the province.

Despite the mechanisation and computerisation of war, it is not usually a quick or a painless business. Perhaps part of the reason why the refugee crisis came as such a surprise and shock is that there are no refugees in computer games. A long war, with a heavy price to pay for justice, is difficult for our accelerated media culture to accept. But accept it we must.