Waging Modern War

...There was deep skepticism in the Commonweal 24 September 14, 2001 Pentagon about "Madeleine's war," and dogged resistance, particularly from the Army, to diverting resources earmarked for other strategic plans...

...that our command structures have become too complex to be effective...

...Commonweal 25 September 14,2001...

...Concurrently, pressures increased for a bombing pause to allow U.S...

...The price we paid in this case is the new impetus the Kosovo operation gave to the development of an independent European force...

...But getting the job and his fourth star was the easy part...

...Not only Clark, but all the Europeans, were therefore stunned when, in late July, he was abruptly relieved of command, two months before his term would have been up...

...The story line is relatively simple...

...and in the process written a textbook for the future...

...Clark tells the story of an increasingly improvised operation in which the alliance, hamstrung by its own complexity and divisions, almost ran out of time and military options before, somewhat to its own surprise, Milosevic accepted NATO's demands to withdraw from Kosovo...

...His underlying conviction was that, having engaged Milosevic, the alliance simply could not afford to lose the only war NATO has ever fought without risking its credibility and most likely its survival...

...For more aircraft were now needed to chase Serb ground forces in Kosovo, which diffused the mission and led to debates about priorities...

...Waging Modern War is not a comprehensive analysis of the moral and political implications of the Kosovo crisis...

...Once the short air campaign, begun on March 24,1999, failed to persuade Milosevic to accept the Rambouillet formula, events quickly accelerated...

...ambassador Richard Holbrooke to resume negotiations...

...Even so, he became increasingly disturbed as the air campaign dragged on...

...As one European defense minister said afterwards: "We'll never do this again...

...The alliance began showing signs of strain and it became clear that planning for an allied ground operation and the use of Apache helicopters against Serb ground forces in Kosovo could become crucial...

...Clark was pointedly not asked to attend the NATO Fiftieth Anniversary Summit in Washington in late April...

...The Pentagon—restrained by post-cold-war budgeting, uncomfortable with a president who remained an elusive presence, and wary of politically driven interventions—saw its interest as circumscribing the Kosovo mission...

...When he went anyway, the president, Cohen, and the chiefs gave him an icy brush-off...

...Clark attributes some of the resultant stress to bureaucratic complexities in Washington and in his own dual command...

...The key was that the damage had been increasingly substantial, the alliance had held, and Clark had done his job...

...Surely, Pentagon preparedness for hypothetical new wars in Korea and Iraq could be deferred somewhat until we had won the war at hand...

...As the bombing dragged on and civilian casualties and the Chinese Embassy fiasco captured the front pages, NATO nations became even more insistent on the political importance of keeping military and civilian casualties low...

...The endgame, during which Clark kept up the air pressure on major targets while Milosevic conceded in a complex international pavan, came rather unexpectedly in early June...

...Contrary to the media spin, Kosovo was not a well-scripted campaign in which antiseptic American air strikes enabled the allies to romp to inevitable victory...

...Although logical, the argument ran counter to perceived Washington "realities...

...It was up to him, therefore, as supreme allied commander, to maintain unity, gather resources, and preserve the commitments of various nations to succeed—in short, to apply decisive force...

...He was similarly excluded from a White House review of the war because it would "put too much pressure on Cohen...

...forces in Europe, the role in which he was under Joint Chiefs of Staff command, which actually turned out to be his most serious challenge...

...Clark again prevailed, insisting that this would amount to de facto division and give Milosevic the last word...

...Pentagon critics have dismissed the book as Clark's revenge...

...Quite the opposite, in fact...

...Clark describes what it was like to "work these issues...

...In NATO's first combat test since the days of Dwight Eisenhower, the dilemmas and stresses this brilliant and deeply dedicated American soldier-diplomat faced under its "dual hatting" arrangement had clearly not been respected or even understood in Washington...

...He had been moved from his planning berth on the JCS to become Holbrooke's senior military assistant in the tortuous negotiations over the Bosnian war that culminated in the Dayton agreements...

...A final flurry involved Russian efforts to obtain a sector in the Serbian part of Kosovo...

...Instead, Clark has written a poignant, highly instructive account of his professional performance as NATO's most senior soldier...

...He had strong support from the UK and several others, but clearly failed to convince his Washington masters...

...Clark writes that he had somewhat naively hoped Defense Secretary William Cohen and the Joint Chiefs would give him the lead in strategy and tactics and full material support to conduct the war, as doctrine for theater commanders prescribed...

...George Jaeger is a retired senior Foreign Service Officer who served as chairman of NATO's political committee and has extensive experience in the Balkans...

...This basic conflict haunted Clark's relations with both Cohen and the chiefs...

...This proved harder to accomplish than expected...

...and that operations and alliances become severely strained when we give ourselves a special status and seem unwilling to think creatively or share risks and roles with others...

...Clark argued forcefully, therefore, that merely starting the planning process would send a powerful signal of NATO's resolve to Milosevic...

...As it turned out, it was Clark's other role, as commander of U.S...

...However, Clark quickly learned that this would not be the case...

...George Jaeger Waging Modern War is General Wesley Clark's apologia of his conduct of NATO's Kosovo campaign, in which he prevailed against substantial odds, only to find himself relieved of command before his term was up...

...Milosevic then launched his genocidal attack on Kosovo's Albanian population, a decisive mistake since it reinforced allied resolve, even though it exacerbated NATO's military problem...

...He knew the Balkan situation and had met and negotiated with all the key players...

...As the showdown with Milosevic loomed, he was clearly the right man to lead the NATO forces...

...Some of its key lessons are that "coercive diplomacy," as in Bosnia and Kosovo, is the most likely scenario our forces will confront in the future...

...The Army, in particular, was furiously anxious to avoid a ground campaign on difficult terrain, perhaps even if this ultimately risked making a deal...

...Clark argued with increasing exasperation that he was running the only war in which American and allied forces were actually engaged...

...Decisive air strikes on Serbia's nerve centers—favored by Washington, less by the Europeans— had to await elimination of Serbian air defenses...

...More likely it will stand as the textbook critique of Washington's cavalier management of NATO's first and, one suspects, last military operation...

...Clark had got the NATO job, not because his colleagues liked him, but because he was indisputably the best qualified...

...Clark vigorously resisted, convinced that, once suspended, military action would never be resumed and Milosevic would have won the game...

...conducting the war was something else...

...that military thinking must therefore be flexible enough to accept and deal with other-thanplanned scenarios...

...An intense, brilliant, youngestever three-star general, a Rhodes Scholar, half Jewish and a devout Catholic, Clark was hardly the model of the standard career general...

...Their response was to keep him on an extraordinarily tight leash while often remaining painfully slow to approve target lists and plans...