I think the Serbs will meet NATO's terms at the last possible moment just prior to the initiation of a ground war, but not until we have already expended all of the time and effort to put those forces in place to attack.
Having said that, I believe that eventually Serb and NATO ground forces will trade shots, but it will be in a series of of small confrontations, once NATO ground troops are locked into the role of being a peace keeping force, rather than the Serbs facing them in the far more dangerous role (dangerous to the Serbs) of an invading force, with the mission of conquering an opposing force as opposed to being constrained by the ill-defined, static mission of "peace keeping". I've served in as part of two "peace-keeping" missions and they were both doomed to failure from the start because the forces that we were supposed to be enforcing the peace against had not been driven to the ground and emasculated prior to "peacekeeping".
If we are going to have ground troops there, I think it would be better for NATO in the long run if they established their bona fides with a ground assault that completely drove Serb military forces from Kosovo or destroyed them where they stood, instead of relying on them to obey a treaty negotiated under the duress of an air bombardment which they never had any intention of complying with. |
