Clark's Role in Kosovo Exemplifies His Traits
A Second Role
Clark explains that he wore a second hat, little understood in Washington, as the top NATO officer as well as the top U.S. officer in Europe. In that role, he says, he had a responsibility to meet with members of Congress and senior officials outside the Pentagon to inform them about "dangers looming in the Balkans," including the risk of genocide such as that seen in Bosnia.
"Maybe the flaws of excess, intensity and single-mindedness left him tone-deaf about how he might be received" by superiors, said a NATO colleague and friend during this period. The friend added that nonetheless, Clark had commendably forced the Pentagon to "face up" to the Kosovo crisis at a point when its doctrine and traditions favored avoidance.
The continuing discussion of Clark's role is relevant to the debate over the merits of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an issue that Clark admits he "bobbled" at the outset of his campaign by expressing weak support. Lately, Clark has been unremittingly critical of the timing of the war and the planning that preceded it. Those are the same issues on which Clark's Kosovo efforts drew criticism from the Pentagon.
Clark's independent streak at NATO was foreshadowed during his first tour of duty at its headquarters, in 1978. "Not a yes man," Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., then the supreme allied commander, said in Clark's performance rating that year, praising him as a "soldier-scholar" with qualities that set "him apart from his contemporaries."
Clark first involved himself in Balkan policymaking as a military envoy to Holbrooke during negotiations to end the Bosnian war in 1995. But Clark says his passion for intervening militarily in Kosovo grew out of watching the Clinton administration fumble during the slaughter of half a million people in Rwanda during 1994, when Clark was the director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"I was not going to stand by after Rwanda and let [expulsions occur in Kosovo] . . . without raising the alarm in Washington," Clark recalled recently. "That was my duty." An official who worked closely with him at the time of the Kosovo crisis said, however, that he did not recall Clark mentioning Rwanda.
Clark also said he had a "professional gap" on the issue with Army Gen. Henry H. "Hugh" Shelton, then the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, because Shelton -- a special forces veteran -- was a "conventional military officer" and planner. Shelton and his Pentagon colleagues worried acutely about the absence of widespread public and congressional support for a Kosovo war, and told Clark that Washington had no vital interests at stake there.
'Do You Want to Fight?'
Not shying from confrontation, Clark said he pressed Army Chief of Staff Dennis J. Reimer, asking, "Do you want to fight a war anywhere?" There was a problem in Europe, he said later, "and it did not fit their model," which envisioned major U.S. wars only in North Korea and the Persian Gulf area.
Albright, in an interview, said "it was very clear to me that the Pentagon did not want to move on this issue. . . . Wes and I thought it was worth doing." A former Albright aide said Clark's credentials lent critical ballast to Albright's advocacy, providing cover for Clinton and White House officials who were loath to stand up to unified military opposition on any issue.
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East while Clark commanded NATO, said, "There is always a tension between the CINCs [regional commanders in chief] and the service chiefs. The CINCs see the need for intervention, engagement, while the services control the resources and see this as a distraction."
But Clark's personal style evidently caused the policy dispute to boil over into a personal clash, according to former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman John M. Shalikashvili, who appointed Clark to the NATO job over the objections of the Army leadership. Clark "is a guy who by temperament is more likely to operate on the edge of the system," Shalikashvili said. The chiefs "might have felt that Wes pushed them too far."
A former senior military official confirmed the account. "If Wes did not agree, then he thought it was okay to call . . . anyone else who would help," the official said. "We don't do that in the military." Shelton was provoked, largely by Clark, to demand in a classified 1999 memo that all the regional CINCs inform him in advance of all their meetings in Washington.
James Steinberg, then the deputy national security adviser, said the White House would not have allowed Clark to conduct an end-run around the Pentagon. "I did not think he was being insubordinate," Steinberg said. But "people who knew him understood that when he felt strongly, he wanted to let people know. . . . My perspective was that there was value in his giving his ground-truth."
By the spring of 1999, the administration reached a consensus that a NATO bombing campaign was inevitable, partly because of the indiscriminate use of force by Yugoslav troops against suspected rebels in Kosovo. But tensions persisted between Clark and Washington, even after the war began on March 24. On the second day, Clark announced that NATO bombers would "ultimately destroy" Yugoslav military forces if Milosevic did not concede. |
