Nukie that's especially for you...Do your sources classify this guy as a Serb sympathizer or Muslim hater too?
Nato must head for door marked exit
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April 18, 1999
The Sunday Times
sunday-times.co.uk
Air power has failed and the allies' only real option is to get out,
writes General Sir Michael Rose . . . .
The tragic accidental bombing by Nato of civilians in Kosovo will not surprise those who understand the difficulties aircrews face
flying missions over Yugoslavia and the limitations of Nato air power. Its weapons systems were designed for general war against
the Warsaw Pact - not for the limited type of engagement taking place over Yugoslavia.
Think back to February 1994, when Nato issued another ultimatum. Then the United Nations brokered an agreement between the
Bosnians and the Serbs to establish a 20-kilometre exclusion zone around Sarajevo; Nato said it would launch airstrikes against
any heavy weapons that remained within the zone.
But surveillance aircraft found it impossible to determine accurately whether there were any tanks or guns in the exclusion zone.
On one occasion, air reconnaissance identified a Serbian mortar position that turned out to be a collection of haystacks. Nato had
to rely on UN military observers on the ground to verify possible targets.
It is not easy for pilots flying at more than 400mph over broken country to identify the sort of targets that will have to be
destroyed if Nato is to succeed in Kosovo. The lesson that can be drawn from the sad incidents that have occurred so far is that
air power is a blunt weapon, wholly inappropriate for use by itself in this form of conflict.
Without soldiers on the ground able to verify targets and direct airstrikes, the terrible mistakes (the bombing of a passenger
train and refugee convoy) that occurred last week will inevitably continue to happen.
Such a lesson is not clearly understood by Nato. On April 14, at the daily press conference, Jamie Shea, the alliance's press
spokesman, said Nato had chosen a modus operandi in line with its policy not to be at war with the Serbian people. The alliance,
he said, wished to avoid inflicting "unnecessary pain on the Serbian people or their economy". Within a few hours many Kosovo
Albanians had been killed and wounded by Nato airstrikes.
Expressions of regret, however sincere, coupled with bland assurances that Nato is doing all it can to avoid such mistakes - and
that anyway Milosevic is to blame - are an insufficient response to these mistakes. Civilised people will not stand by for ever
and watch the Serbian people, who have already been reduced to the edge of survival by their brutal rulers, being bombed.
One of the more worrying characteristics that has emerged during the first month of the war is the degree to which rhetoric has
taken over from reality. Daily, we are being subjected to increasingly irrelevant accounts of military actions being routinely
undertaken by Nato against civilian and military targets in Yugoslavia - without any real analysis as to whether what is being
done is delivering the stated objectives.
Instead, we get the sort of fairy tale told by Shea that "every morning President Milosevic wakes up and realises that in the last
24 hours he has become weaker, he also sees that Nato is becoming stronger".
These musings are usually accompanied by emotional descriptions of the terrible things that are being done by Milosevic's brutal
regime - as if their repeated telling would somehow justify the continuation of a Nato strategy that has already failed.
Before long, the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo will be halted - not because of anything Nato may have done, but because there will be
no Kosovo Albanians left in Serbia.
The alliance's credibility is already hanging on a thread. Clear thinking coupled with firm action, not words, are required if it
is to emerge intact from its war in the Balkans. We urgently need to find a way for Nato to extricate itself with some vestige of
honour from this increasingly messy situation.
Assuming it is now too late to prevent Milosevic from achieving his objectives in Kosovo, Nato will be left with the options of
continuing the air campaign for the foreseeable future, escalating the war to include the use of ground forces, or seeking a
political compromise.
Nato and the Americans seem to favour the first course of action. This would reinforce failure, leave the initiative to Milosevic
and assume the continuing unity of the alliance. But success would still not be guaranteed.
The second option, while making military sense, having moral right on its side, still seems to be ruled out by most of the
contributing countries; they are either too worried about the possibility of military casualties or do not believe they have
armies properly equipped or trained to fight a ground offensive in Kosovo. Such an option would also require the presence of
combat troops on the ground for many years.
Most armies have been drastically reduced in size since the end of the cold war, and it is unlikely that they could undertake the
sort of commitment still being met in South Korea by the American army almost 50 years after the Korean war ended. At present
levels of operational deployment, tour intervals in the British Army are less than 12 months. This is unsustainable even in the
short term.
The third and, in my view, the most likely option is that Nato will agree a political compromise through the mediation of the
Russians and the UN. It would meet some, but not all of Milosevic's political aspirations. With his typical ruthlessness, he would
probably judge that by ceding part of Kosovo to the Albanians he would be ridding Serbia of a big problem for ever.
The long-term benefits of this would greatly outweigh the loss of territory that a partition would imply.
He has done so before: in 1994 he struck a secret deal with Franjo Tudjman to quit Krajina in return for an early end to the war
in Bosnia.
Whatever the outcome of the war, Nato cannot continue to ignore the fact that it has suffered a strategic defeat. It cannot go on
using words to conceal the absence of a suitable exit strategy from the increasingly counterproductive war in which it is now
involved. Above all, it is worth reminding the political and military masters of Shea, who recently described life in Kosovo as
"nasty, brutish and short", that Thomas Hobbes also wrote that words were "the money of fools".
General Sir Michael Rose is a former commander of
the UN in Bosnia and author of Fighting for Peace.
Copyright 1999 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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