FALLOUT FROM THE AIR AND MISSILE OFFENSIVE AGAINST YUGOSLAVIA 

Colonel (Retired) Alain Pellerin

Executive Director

Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) 

Introduction 

Some analysts have hailed the outcome of Operation Allied Force as a definitive foreign policy victory that vindicates the concept of  “humanitarian” security that places the right of the individual above the respect for  territorial sovereignty of the state, as well as a military triumph that affirms the primacy of air and missile power. 

Some, after the war, even spoke of  a “Clinton Doctrine” that would commit the United States, and hopefully its allies, to using force to halt ethnic cleansing wherever and whenever it occurred. 

Despite the positive outcomes of Operation Allied Force - NATO’s seventy-eight-day air and missile campaign against Yugoslavia in support of the Kosovars- preliminary analysis are revealing some uncomfortable truths for soldiers and politicians seeking lessons from these operations. 

The NATO victory in Kosovo, notwithstanding the one-sided nature of the military contest, was not clear-cut.  The campaign was far more prolonged than its planners visualized, and it clearly failed to avert the humanitarian disaster which it was aimed to prevent. The campaign also provided the Serb leadership a pretext to accelerate and intensify their ethnic cleansing campaign. 

The decision to avoid allied casualties, by keeping most aircraft sorties above 15,000 feet and by foregoing a ground invasion, not only limited the campaign’s ability to stop Serbian aggression against the Kosovars, but resulted in increased collateral damage, including that to the Chinese embassy, which cast the “humanitarian” nature of the aim into doubt and turned the question of zero-casualty on its head. How many Yugoslavs are worth the life of a single Americans?  

The diplomatic cost of the operation was severely strained relations between the West and China and Russia.  And the resulting fragile peace has done nothing to resolve the long term issue of Kosovo’s status, leaving both the Serbian aim of Yugoslavian sovereignty and the Kosovo Liberation Army’s aim of independence for the territory legitimized. 

Lesson 1 – Alliance solidarity - a “must” 

Despite  occasional displays of frustration by individual allies, the cohesion shown, by the nineteen-member Alliance, was not only impressive but also essential to the success of the war. Alliance cohesion left Belgrade isolated in Europe, and established NATO and its US leadership as the indispensable security organization in the Euro-Atlantic region. Whether that cohesion would have prevailed, had the ground offensive option been tabled in Brussels in early June, will remain the great unknown. 

Lesson 2 – Threats of military force against determined adversaries rarely succeed 

The US and its allies assumed that they had sufficient military power in the area to impose their will, and so NATO painted itself into a rhetorical corner by repeatedly threatening Yugoslavian President Milosevic without taking meaningful action. NATO was hoping also that Milosevic would cave in without having to take these meaningful actions. 

Convinced that these threats were just bluff, Milosevic escalated his repressive actions in Kosovo.  This left NATO with only one option – military intervention – to restore its credibility.

The Alliance finally resorted to bombing on 24 March for what President Clinton at the time said was a clear purpose: “to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo and, if necessary to seriously damage the Serbian military’s capacity to harm the people of Kosovo.” 

The U.S. and its allies, however, ruled out the use of ground troops and prepared only for three days of bombing - it is worth remembering that there were about 360 NATO aircraft in the region when the operation began of which only about 80 were combat aircraft capable of attacking targets - in the belief that Milosevic would agree to NATO’s terms after a few days.   

NATO, having thus underestimated Milosevic’ determination to resist military pressure, faced a mismatch between  its strategy and the  means to prevent the mass expulsion of Albanian Kosovars, the prevention of which was the core of NATO’s stated aims. 

Lesson 3 – Air campaigns alone don’t to win wars 

Clearly, NATO leaders were surprised when Milosevic did not fold after the first wave of cruise missile strikes on 24 March.   Failure to anticipate Milosevic’s willingness to respond by accelerating his own campaign led to an ad hoc air campaign, reminiscent of the discredited incremental approach to air power demonstrated in the Vietnam war. 

Self-imposed targeting restrictions permitted the Serbs to disperse and conceal their troops and equipment and to carry out their ethnic cleansing campaign.

As a result, post-war analysis indicates that, despite 38,000 air sorties, the Allies failed to substantially degrade the Yugoslav army in Kosovo and to shape the situation on the ground. Strategic bombing of  infrastructure targets was more successful, but there was no coherent anti-infrastructure plan, and targeting was severely constrained by the political leadership.

It would be premature, therefore, as some analysts have done, to conclude, that President Milosevic agreed to the June  peace deal solely because of the air campaign.The respected  British historian John Keegan wrote that “for the first time in history, air forces won a war.”  

Such a conclusion would  overlook the other two main  factors which greatly influenced his decision:  the strong possibility of a ground offensive at the end of May and early June, and the pressure applied on Milosevic by Russia, who by that time had come to believe that a ground offensive was eminent. 

The air campaign, conducted in isolation, is not a fair test of air power, nor should its apparent success lead to asymmetric bases for future strategy and force structure.  In fact, air power alone failed  to meet its prewar promise.  Also, Yugoslavia provides a unique example of asymmetric power which future adversaries are unlikely to match, and also showed that asymmetric strategies can be countered in other areas.

In summary, air power can increase the cost of holding territory, but it cannot control territory. In the final analysis what got the Serbs out of Kosovo, NATO troops  in, and the Albanians back, was the threat of a concomitant ground offensive.   Because this axiom was ignored until the tail-end of the war, the people of Kosovo paid a stiff price. 

Lesson 4 – Air campaigns are unlikely to achieve humanitarian objectives

One of the stated purposes of the war was to “deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo.”  It became apparent in the early stages of the operation that NATO air strikes could not achieve that objective.  President Milosevic took advantage of the air attack against Yugoslavia and of NATO’s concomitant promise to abstain from a ground assault, to launch an “even bloodier offensive.” 

Unfortunately, the  main victims between NATO’s desired objective and the military means made available to its commanders, were the Kosovars.  Serbian forces killed  thousands of ethnic Albanians, uprooted more than 1.5 million from their homes, expelled more than 800,000 refugees from Kosovo and put to the torch some 500 Albanian communities.  

Despite its best intentions, Operation Allied Force demonstrated that air power has only limited ability to prevent humanitarian abuses.There is no reason to believe that any similar air operation has any other than very limited capability to prevent these and other humanitarian abuses. 

Lesson 5 – Casualty avoidance reduces military effectiveness 

Operational restrictions to limit NATO casualties which forced NATO pilots to try to distinguish between military and nonmilitary targets  from 15,000 feet undermined the operation, it severely limited NATO’s ability to curb Yugoslavia ethnic cleansing within  Kosovo and finally,    contributed to mistakes in the bombing campaign.  In effect the air operation implicitly accepted civilian casualties to prevent military ones. 

Henry Kissinger has said that NATO “undertook the Kosovo operation, at least in part, in reaction to public repugnance at television footage of refugees; but a similar fear of the pictures of allied casualties caused them to adopt a military strategy that, perversely, magnified the suffering of the population on whose behalf the war was ostensibly being fought.” 

Not only did the efforts to keep aircraft away from effective anti-air weapons increase the likelihood of collateral damage and prolong the campaign, it denied NATO commanders the use of forces, such as Apache helicopters, which could have been effective against Serbian ground forces engaged in ethnic cleansing.

The unique character of the air campaign, with no combat deaths, also means that Kosovo is likely to be as unreliable a guide to future interventions as the Gulf War and the short-lived “new world order” were in 1991.

A widespread belief exists in the foreign policy communities of the  Western industrialized world, but particularly in Washington, that the public will not support military intervention where there are, or are likely to be casualties. 

Interestingly enough, a recently conducted survey, by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, indicates that Washington leaders may be out of touch with the American population on this issue. Collectively, the survey results suggest that a majority of the American people will accept deaths- so long as the mission has the potential to be successful. 

Policymakers will need to start listening more closely to the general population who seem to understand better than their leaders that war is a messy business which puts our own troops into jeopardy and may therefore involve casualties. 

Self-sacrifice and mission accomplishment  is the essence of military service.  “Casualty-free” operations have not been a feature of past conflicts, nor will they be a feature of future wars. 

Lesson 6 – Military intervention must be linked to clearly defined political goals. 

While there may be little doubt about the scale of the immediate victory, there is great doubt about its future strategic consequences.  NATO effectively exchanged a 78-day air and missile war for a ground-oriented peacekeeping mission of unlimited duration.  Effectively NATO has assumed responsibility for both control of Kosovo and the stability of the whole Balkan peninsula.

Evidence indicates that NATO, and the KLA and its successor organization, whose objectives are diametrically opposed , may be  on a collision course in the territory.

To support the KLA’s aim of an independent Kosovo would probably lead to a movement toward a “Greater Albania”, uniting Albania with Kosovo and parts of Macedonia., leading in turn to destabilization of the entire Balkan region. On the other hand, efforts to fully disarm the KLA could lead to a full-fledged “low intensity conflict”with KFor’s peacekeepers in the middle of a shooting war and the likely collapse of NATO’S policy of bringing stability to the region.

This highlights a central political-military lesson:  the ability of the modern military to project destructive power abroad has far outraced the ability of political leaders to use that power to achieve political goals and manage war’s consequences. 

Lesson 7 – The conditions of coalition war and the principles of military operations should be reconciled 

The air  campaign effectively demonstrated the great potency and precision of modern air weapons, but the restraints imposed by the political leadership of the nineteen member nations were seized onto by several analysts as having contributed to the initial ineffectiveness of air operations.   

But the basic tenet of democracies that the military must be subject to civilian control is incontestable.  Nor can one expect the political leadership simply to set the restraints then turn the conduct of the battle over to the generals and admirals.

The most controversial decisions - the incremental pace of the bombing, the question of committing ground troops to Kosovo and the decision to attack the economic infrastructure in heavily populated areas - all had important political and psychological implications far beyond the question of whether destroying an electric power grid would help bring about Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s capitulation.  

These wider implications are properly the responsibility of elected political leaders in NATO countries and not professional military officers.

All military operations have political consequences, as Karl von Clausewitz underlined in his well-know observation that “ war is merely the continuation of policy by other means....Therefore there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great strategic issue, nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.” 

Consequently  the conduct of operations in Kosovo took place against the overarching constraint of keeping the alliance together. In the final analysis, the very essence of the NATO alliance demands the primacy of  political decision.  On the whole, NATO is truly remarkable in how much it actually does accomplish through the unanimity of nineteen separate governments. 

That being said , the question as to whether this campaign was conducted in the most effective political and military way, has not yet been fully answered and will be debated long after the end of the war. 

One can hope, as U.S. Defence Secretary Cohen noted, on 9 September, that the “Kosovo conflict highlighted the need to shift more authority to military commanders in the field for maximum flexibility. In the future, NATO’s political structure will need to remain as adaptable as its military structure.”  

Lesson 8 – There exists a need for better burden-sharing

The war revealed deep ambiguity at the heart of NATO. At one level, the dependence of Europe on American capabilities was brutally underlined in the air campaign.  The US provided some 80 percent of the air assets and most of the precision-guided munitions.( The Canadian CF-18s did better than most European, flying 10 per cent of the total strike missions and hitting their targets 75 per cent of the time.) 

A glance at the expenditure figures is very revealing.  The US spends $36 billion on defence R&D, compared with some $10 billion by the remaining 18 NATO nations combined.  It also spends 3.2% of its gross domestic product on defence, representing more than  $250 billion, compared with an average of 2.1 % for the European members and less than 1.2% for Canada, for a total of approximately $160 billion. 

Yet, at another level, American political leadership during the operation was uncertain.  The lesson for NATO is clear:  America remains crucial to Euro-Atlantic peace and security, but Europe (and Canada) must assume more responsibility for their own defence. 

Unfortunately European, as well as the Canadian Governments have not, since the end of the Cold War, been very serious about defence.  Over the past decade, most  European nations, along with Canada, have sharply reduced their defence budgets, their weapons spending and the size of their armed forces to cash in on the peace dividend made possible by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Transformation of current forces into more flexible and better adapted forces proves most difficult in a climate of defence under funding.  

The Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo have all shown that the capabilities of the European nations and Canada in the fields of intelligence, strategic reconnaissance, tactical air power, transport, command and control and “smart” weapons, to name a few, are so lacking as to render them powerless to act militarily without the United States.

In his May farewell press conference, General Klaus Naumann, the outgoing Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee commented bluntly on “. . . the growing gap of capabilities which we see inside NATO . . . The military capabilities of the European nations and Canada must be improved.  We require action and not just paper declarations.”Yet, paper declarations is a field where European governments continue  to excel.  At each meeting of the European Union and Western European Union, ministers  mouth  their commitment to developing European defence capabilities and Europe’s security and defence identity.  

But, as spelled out by Admiral Venturoni, the new CMC,“unless there exists a real European resolve to acquire the necessary resources, the European Defence and Security Identity will remain nothing more than a noble concept.” 

Europeans and Canadians  must be prepared to assume a greater share of the burden.  Perhaps the Kosovo crisis will lead Europe to devote more resources to the security dimension of its new identity.  Europeans  must, however, be ready not just to spend somewhat more on their military capacity, but to spend it on forces that are relevant to the post-Cold War world.  

Lesson 9 – Military shortcomings need to be addressed 

As a fifty-year old alliance dedicated to the defence of Europe, NATO shows unacceptable failings in military infrastructure, notably in command, control, communications and intelligence. This was highlighted by the lack of secure voice interoperability between the US and the remaining allies. Interoperability remains a must if NATO nations are to work together effectively.

The allies also lack  stand-off weaponry for its  air forces, and forces able to project power from a distance. As well, the lack of stand-off weapons in a modern battlefield environment places European aircraft at unacceptable levels of risk.  Hopefully, the recently launched NATO Defence Capabilities Initiative will correct some of these shortcomings. 

Among  the few highlights were the performance of unmanned aerial vehicles and the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to Air Missile. 

Comment  – China and Russia rethink their security after Kosovo 

Russian President Yeltsin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, at their 25 August meeting, underlined their nations’ hostility to further NATO eastward expansion and to the alliance’s actions in Kosovo.  The Moscow-Beijing axis will likely be reinforced, as will their determination  to confront what they see as American world domination. 

In my  recent visit to the Chinese Institute for International Strategic Studies, in Beijing, defence analysts repeatedly voiced  the same message. The U.S. has only one goal: “the hegemonic domination of the world.” In their view , the U.S. plan  to “control the world” is  based on two prongs - “NATO’s eastward expansion and close defence ties with Japan.” 

NATO’s air offensive against Yugoslavia and, particularly the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, proved particularly useful to China’s hard-liner because the bombings allowed them to fan Chinese fears that a vast expanding Western alliance might attempt to limit China’s power in Tibet, in the restive northwestern province of Xinjiang or in Taiwan.   

As for Russia, three issues in particular have given Moscow an interest in improving its relations with China: their concern about missile defence, the entry of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic into NATO and promised further expansion, and the frustration particularly felt by the Russian military and the sense of powerlessness in Moscow at NATO’s intervention over Kosovo and Russia’s inability to do anything except to go along with the West’s plan.

Both see the Kosovo intervention as a dangerous precedent which could be used to justify other interventions around the world without UN authorization.  They will likely resist any further weakening of the tradition of non-intervention in nations’ internal affairs. 

Question – Is Kosovo a precedent for military humanitarian intervention? 

I would suggest that, despite President Clinton’s sweeping statement at the June G-8 meeting of the U.S. willingness to intervene in cases of racial- or religious-based genocide anywhere that “. . . it is within our power to stop it . . .”, Kosovo’s value as a precedent will be limited. 

Other members of the US administration quickly  made it plain that three conditions will have to be met before a U.S. military intervention takes place:  first, there must be a clear moral justification for using force; second, the area must be of “strategic importance”; and third, the operation must be mountable “without exacting a heavy price.” The most undermining condition attached to intervention may be the implied avoidance of U.S. casualties. 

Hence, Kosovo may deter some dictators , but not all – witness the recent massacres in East Timor – but whether it has really forged a new form of moral internationalism seems rather doubtful.   

One reason is that – all the rhetoric aside – the U.S. and NATO allies did not intervene in Kosovo primarily for humanitarian purposes.  If U.S. foreign policy was  driven mainly by such concerns, the U.S. would, for example, have sent a few thousand troops to Rwanda in 1994, when massacres on a much wider scale took place.

What tipped the balance in Kosovo, as in Bosnia in 1995, were two concerns:  that the conflict would spread to other areas of the Balkans and beyond, and that the American leadership of NATO would be thrown into question.  The Kosovo operation was in part meant to prove that NATO was still relevant in a post-Soviet Europe.  None of this applies outside of NATO-Europe.

In practical terms after having narrowly escaped the strong possibility of launching a bloody ground invasion, and with some 80,000 peacekeepers now tied down in the Balkans for the unforeseeable future, there will be little appetite in NATO capitals or in Washington for a similar venture elsewhere in the world anytime soon. 

Secretary of State Albright has cautioned against any notion of precedent, and Chancellor Schroeder of Germany and Prime Minister Chrétien have issued similar cautions.  

Put more bluntly, it means the Kosovo model applies to Kosovo and probably nowhere else. 

The very limited U.S. response to the crisis in East Timor, for instance,  is a clear indication of the gap between principle and reality.  East Timor, and for that matter, Chechnya, are not Kosovo.  A similar humanitarian situation now exists in the Caucasus as occurred in the Balkans, yet a NATO-led armed intervention is, to say the least, highly unlikely 

The message from Washington is clear: “The U.S. cannot respond to every humanitarian catastrophe in the world, we cannot do everything everywhere.”said President Clinton at the UN. Hence, U.S.-led crusades of the Kosovo, Somalia and the Gulf variety are unlikely to be the rule in the next century.  Regional powers – France, Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, India, Nigeria, to name a few – had better plan to take regional security issues into their own hands.