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Date sent: Thu, 27 May 1999 10:54:15 -0700
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From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: NATO OFFERS LESSON IN HOW NOT TO MAKE WAR - Lewis Mackenzie
retired Major-General Lewis MacKenzie
THE VANCOUVER SUN THURSDAY, MAY 27,1999
A soldier's view:
NATO OFFERS LESSON IN HOW NOT TO MAKE WAR
Forget about launching a land war this year. It is already too late
for a fractured alliance to get into Yugoslavia before winter.
By Lewis Mackenzie
OTTAWA — NATO's strategy in Kosovo will be used for generations
as an example of how not to wage war. In fact, if students in this year's
U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force war colleges had come up with the
NATO objectives now being pursued in the Balkans, each and every
one of those students would have — or at least should have — been
failed on the spot.
I never thought I would be saying this. I served 10 years with
NATO forces in junior command and staff positions and participated in
eight United Nations peacekeeping missions, the last one as
commander of the UN forces that opened the Sarajevo airport for
humanitarian relief flights in 1992.
When the Kosovo conflict erupted, my experience with both
organizations led me to believe that NATO's decision-making process
would put the UN's to shame.
I now realize that I was terribly naive. NATO, with its 19 members
and 19 national leaders, is saddled with some of the same problems
that I observed at the UN during the Bosnian civil war.
The crisis in Bosnia in 1992 was the UN's first major post-Cold
War challenge. Just weeks after our modest peacekeeping force (900
troops initially) established its headquarters in Sarajevo, Bosnia's
capital, the civil war broke out.
The difficulty of achieving consensus within the 15-member UN
Security Council on what we should and could do became all too
obvious. Dominated by its five permanent members (the United States,
Britain, France China and Russia), the Security Council could only
reach agreement if it watered down its resolutions to the point of
ineffectiveness.
The creation of five "safe havens" that the UN could not keep safe,
and the establishment of a "dual key" authorization for air strikes
(shared by NATO and the UN) are but two examples of the bizarre
decision making that resulted from the Security Council's need to
compromise beyond reason.
Because of NATO's 50 years of practice and experience, I ex-
pected better this time around. But once again the need to please
everyone has led to a flawed strategy that pleases no one and cannot
accomplish NATO's goals.
Much has been written and said about the folly of eliminating the
option of using ground troops even before NATO launched its first air
strikes against Yugoslavia on March 24. The American people
breathed a collective sigh of relief, I'm sure. But I dare say that
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was even more delighted.
I spent three weeks recently reporting from Belgrade for Southam
News and Canadian television, and I interviewed a number of Serbian
politicians. Many of them brought up the possibility of a ground war
(perhaps to learn something from me), but I had the clear sense that no
one considered it a serious threat. By taking that option off the table at
the outset, NATO emboldened Milosevic and his backers.
Now, suddenly, talk of a ground war is back in the headlines.
Pundits continue to dissect U.S. President Bill Clinton's statements,
looking for a change of heart. The British are lobbying to position more
troops in Albania and Macedonia to be ready for a "semi-permissive"
environment (presumably that exists when only some of the enemy's
forces want to kill you).
The Germans, Hungarians and Greeks still say no to ground troops,
and Canada continues trying to keep everyone happy by deploying a
small ground contingent (not due to arrive until July 1) while actively
urging a negotiated settlement.
Sorry, folks, but it's too late to even threaten a ground war. It may
sound odd to say so now that the weather has just turned nice, but on
the military calendar, winter is at hand. There isn't enough time to
achieve the necessary political consensus (remember those 19 national
leaders) or enough time to put together, train and supply an inter-
national force that could complete an occupation of Kosovo before the
nasty Balkan weather sets in (Napoleonic wishful thinking to the
contrary).
The fact is that it took NATO a month to deliver 24 Apache
helicopters to the region and it will take more than two months to send
800 Canadians there, so the rapid deployment of more than 30,000
additional troops and their equipment sounds at this point like a fairy
tale.
A combination of factors weighs against launching a NATO
invasion force from Albania and Macedonia. Anyone who has walked
the terrain will tell you that it is challenging at best and, in many places,
untenable for mechanized or armoured forces.
I'm sure the Kosovo Liberation Army finds the hilly terrain useful
for its guerrilla tactics, but a NATO attack would have to break out of
the mountains and on to the open plain that runs down the centre of
Kosovo. This isn't a place for the kind of lightning-quick race across
the desert that we saw in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.
In addition to the terrain problem, there is an absence of space to
the south of Kosovo. A military force of any size occupies a large area,
and the borders of both Albania and Macedonia are crowded with
nearly 800,000 refugees (as well as the people and equipment to feed
and house them).
Every port, railway, road and airfield is being used to transport
relief supplies. The region's infrastructure is strained to the breaking
point, including the few roads leading toward Kosovo.
Moving an army is a mammoth operation in any circumstance; the
vision of moving hundreds of thousands of tonnes of supplies to troops
at the front, through unavailable ports and airfields, over nonexistent
roads, should be enough to eliminate any thought that an invasion could
be mounted from Albania and Macedonia before the weather changes
in late October or November.
An attack from the north is a different story. Hungary would
provide an ideal staging ground for any NATO force. A few weeks
ago, I drove from Budapest into Yugoslavia, and it didn't take long to
confirm what any map clearly shows: A wide open plain leads past
Belgrade and extends all the way into Kosovo.
It is a long distance, but a NATO operation from the north could
bypass Belgrade with relative ease; the difficult terrain along Kosovo's
borders with Albania and Macedonia would come into play in the last
phase of the offensive, rather than at the beginning.
The Hungarians would surely have a few things to say about such a
plan. Hungary is one of NATO's newest members. Just five days after
joining the alliance, it found itself part of a war against one of its neigh-
bours; becoming the primary launching pad for a ground war is
probably more than the Hungarians can bear at this stage.
All this speculation about what could happen would be strictly
academic if the NATO bombing campaign had reduced the Yugoslav
army in Kosovo and Serbia to the point of operational ineffectiveness.
It seems clear that it hasn't.
Optimistic estimates put Yugoslav losses at somewhere between
10 and 20 per cent of the army's capability. It is safe to assume that key
items — such as tanks, artillery pieces and surface-to-air missiles —
must still be there in serious numbers. Otherwise, the Apache heli-
copters would have been authorized to cross the border and fly into
Kosovo airspace by now.
But if the Yugoslav army is more battered than I think it is, the
existing NATO forces in the region could mount an invasion from their
current positions. There are 12,000 NATO troops in Macedonia; soon
there will be 8,000 in Albania and 2,500 U.S. Marines afloat in the
Adriatic. There are also 2,500 or so U.S. troops with NATO's stabi-
lization force in Bosnia.
They have not trained together and their logistic support is inad-
equate for a prolonged operation, but they could mount a modest
operation to provide a large "safe haven" for displaced Kosovo
Albanians before the snow flies. Mind you, I would not hold my breath
waiting for it.
There is an assumption on the part of some politicians and military
planners — too many, I suggest — that Milosevic will be watching and
waiting while NATO puts together an invasion force. That is not what
he did at the start of the bombing campaign.
Based on the principle that the best defence is a good offence, it
would seem that Milosevic's best option would be an attack, perhaps
with artillery and missiles, against the refugee camps in Macedonia and
Albania. He might simultaneously launch an "ethnic cleansing" of
300,000 Hungarians who live in Yugoslavia's northern, ethnically
diverse province of Vojvodina, pushing them into Hungary.
This action would merely add to the humanitarian crisis that NATO
is now trying to resolve (sound familiar?). Military planners and
commanders will always be frustrated by some of the decisions made
by political leaders. That's a function of their very different roles and
responsibilities, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Nevertheless, NATO has a serious problem on its hands due to the
size of its membership and the inherent difficulty in reaching
consensus. Its early elimination of a ground war option for Kosovo is a
perfect example of a collective solution that met the "lowest common
denominator" test but was counterproductive in its application. And
now it is too late to put it back on the table — at least, too late for this
year.
Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN
troops during the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian civil war of
1992.
[PEN-L:7368] (Fwd) NATO OFFERS LESSON IN HOW NOT TO MAKE WAR - Lewis Macken
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Thu, 27 May 1999 23:27:19 -0500
