A senior editor from The Atlantic Monthly has an interesting new article on General Clark...
theatlantic.com
<<...As Clark argued in Waging Modern War, his 2001 memoir of the Kosovo campaign, NATO's action against Milosevic provided a blueprint for how future wars should be fought. At the time of the action many nations, the United States prominent among them, had doubts about a military campaign. By waging war through NATO, Clark gained the assurance that the governments of all nineteen member nations had a political stake in the campaign and thus a commitment to victory. Working with NATO required extraordinary diplomatic efforts; every nation theoretically had to approve a strike on any target. Nevertheless, Clark concluded that having allied support for America's use of force sent a powerful message to the enemy and imparted crucial political backing for the military campaign—benefits that far outweighed any tactical restrictions.
Clark believes that working with allies is more than a diplomatic necessity —it makes a military power stronger; he calls an alliance a "force multiplier." Even though other candidates take similar positions, Clark can explain his in commonsense terms that elude them, and with the authority of someone who won a war. He is likely to find an increasingly receptive audience if the news from Iraq gets worse.
"I would have first aligned the United Nations and NATO against al-Qaeda," he told me in December. "Then, when it comes time to work against Iraq or Iran or North Korea, you've got a strong, committed group of allies." The order of threat, he believed, was al-Qaeda, North Korea, and Iran—and then Iraq. Clark did not oppose intervening in Iraq; he simply thought the Bush Administration's military decision was premature, and reckless in its unilateralism...>> |
