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Author:  Eric Margolis  

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Publisher/Date:  Toronto Sun (Ca), September 5, 1999  

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Title:  NATO's flaws exposed by war in Kosovo  

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Original location: http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis.html

PARIS -- Few recent conflicts have produced so many confusing military lessons or such a muddled political outcome as the recent, 78-day war in Kosovo. Post mortem analysis reveals:

• NATO almost splintered over military operations against Serbia, due to bitter opposition from the Italian and German left, and from Greece. If Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic had held on a few weeks longer, he might have actually won the lopsided conflict.

• U.S. President Bill Clinton and his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, committed NATO's biggest blunder by proclaiming there would be no ground invasion, nearly handing Milosevic victory. Ironically, it was Milosevic's mistaken belief that NATO was preparing a full-scale invasion of Kosovo that made him sue for peace.

Clinton's foreign team displayed incompetence and amateurishness in waging the war and then bringing Russia - Serbia's ally and backer - into the peace process.

Even so, had it not been for resolute American and British opposition to Serbia's barbaric ethnic crimes, the rest of NATO's weak-willed members would have done nothing. Morality without muscle is simply voyeurism. Once again, the United States demonstrated that however flawed or self-serving its actions may sometimes be, notably in the Mideast, it remains the world's pre-eminent force for good and decency.

• Militarily, the air war was a major disappointment. At first, NATO delivered only pinprick attacks on Serb forces, mistakenly convinced Milosevic would quickly surrender, as he had in Bosnia. Sandy Berger's foolish strategy of slowly increasing military pressure on Serbia was a replay of Robert McNamara's catastrophic strategy of "gradual escalation" that led to America's defeat in Vietnam.

NATO commander Wesley Clark, who opposed this stupid policy and urged a ground invasion, was rudely sacked by the Clinton administration once the war ended.

• When NATO finally got serious about punishing Serbia, its decision to keep strike aircraft above 15,000 feet to avoid losses from AA fire saved air crews, but killed more Albanian civilians than Serb soldiers.

NATO's claims that it destroyed 500 Serb tanks and 1,000 guns proved absurd. Clever concealment techniques and decoys used by the Serbs spoofed NATO's pilots and reconnaissance. Actual Serb losses were only 10% of those claimed. The Serbs simply parked their tanks in farm houses, moved only at night and used Albanian civilians as human shields.

Serb paramilitary gangs, who committed the worst atrocities in Kosovo, suffered almost no casualties.

• The only time NATO air power had any tactical success was when KLA fighters flushed hidden Serb units into the open, or designated them with lasers for air attack. Otherwise, timidly employed tactical air power proved a failure in Kosovo.

In Serbia, however, widescale destruction of infrastructure and factories caused great damage and played a major role in convincing Milosevic to negotiate. World War II-style strategic bombing proved far more effective than the Pentagon's new hi-tech, whiz-bang weapons.

• The war showed the U.S. lacked sufficient stores of smart weapons and was short of electronic jamming aircraft. Communications were often inadequate; operations lacked co-ordination. Recon was insufficient.

Even so, the USAF, which flew 75% of all strikes, showed itself a full generation ahead of all other air forces, and a master of that American specialty, long-range logistics.

But the conflict imposed enormous stress on the air force, which has been ravaged by budget cuts, and showed clearly that the Pentagon's cherished claim to be able to fight 2.5 wars at the same time, or even 1.5, was wishful thinking.

• Kosovo revealed shocking military weakness in America's NATO partners. They had to rely on the U.S. for jamming, refuelling, munitions, logistics, command and control. The conflict showed that none of NATO's members, save the U.S., could move troops or aircraft in large numbers outside of their home areas, supply them, or wage modern, hi-tech war.

Canada's handful of aging CF-18s, for example, lacked modern communications and radars, and had to be fitted with laser targeting pods.

• Heavy bombers, only recently dismissed as dinosaurs, showed their value as cruise missile launchers and precision attackers. The hugely expensive B-2 Stealth bomber proved remarkably deadly; the B-1 an effective carpet bomber; the venerable, majestic B-52 indispensable after more than 50 years of service.

However, to the air force's chagrin, Kosovo demonstrated that precision weapons are more important than the aircraft that carry them.

As impressive as cruise missiles are, nothing replaces sustained artillery fire and ground assault by armour and infantry. Two NATO armoured divisions would have swept the Serb Army from Kosovo in a week, something all NATO's aircraft and laser technology could not do.

• The deployed but never-used U.S. Apache attack helicopters were a huge embarrassment. The Pentagon feared to send the US$13 million Apaches against the Serb Army. The U.S. has put too much emphasis on attack helicopters, which may terrify tribesmen and Iraqi bashi-bazouks, but are sitting ducks when used on their own against a modern force equipped with AA guns and surface-to-air missiles.

The object of war is peace. Unfortunately, NATO made a hash of the peace, leaving Kosovo in turmoil, its status unresolved, the Russians entrenched in the Balkans and Serbia waiting for revenge.

Unfinished wars inevitably lead to new ones.