Wes Clark's War
Straight from the New York Times reporter who covered the war in Kosovo, here is an apt and concise summary of the points of his article.
1."...But it is worth taking a step back and taking a fuller look at General Clark's record. The larger story is this: General Clark believed the stakes were so high for NATO that the alliance needed to be prepared to confront Mr. Milosevic militarily.
When the fighting erupted, General Clark managed to keep the alliance intact. Along with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, he believed that NATO could not ensure victory by relying on airstrikes alone and needed to have the option of using ground troops — a view that that put General Clark at odds with a risk-averse Pentagon, but one that was supported by many strategic experts.
NATO's military campaign was not perfect by any means. But the general's judgment on those critical issues seems pretty solid when viewed in perspective: a humanitarian wrong was righted and NATO won its first and only war."
2. "...Since General Clark announced his intention to run for the presidency last month, a number of partial and even misleading accounts of the war have emerged. Some have suggested that his strained relationship with the Pentagon reflects badly on his skills as a leader. What is often overlooked in these accounts is that important issues were at stake in deciding whether and how to go to war.
There was a general sense in many allied capitals that the West had dithered too long in the early 1990's before intervening to quell the ethnic fighting in Bosnia, and that this had occurred at the cost of thousands of lives and the credibility of the NATO alliance. General Clark was among those who urged that the West act in a more resolute way when the Kosovo crisis developed years later. But not everyone at the Pentagon shared those priorities or was eager to commit the forces to back them up.
3. "...It was important for NATO to take a stand in the Balkans and foolish for the alliance to go to war with one hand tied behind its back. Conventional air power had never previously won a war single-handedly and there was no guarantee that it would succeed in Kosovo in a reasonable time frame. General Clark's insistence on preparing a ground option was sound military doctrine."
4. "Another notion about General Clark's record is that he was reckless when he proposed occupying the Pristina airfield in Kosovo after the war to preclude the Russians from rushing in troops.
I was in Moscow at the time and it was clear that this had occurred without the blessing of the Russian Foreign Ministry and initially, it seems, the Kremlin. After reports of the troop movements first surfaced, I asked the Kremlin spokesman to check with his superiors. He later assured me no orders had been issued to send troops to Kosovo, something that did not say a lot for civilian command and control in Russia.
General Clark was anxious to prevent the Russian military from sending in more reinforcements and creating a Russian-protected Serb enclave. Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine were persuaded to close their airspace to Russian transport planes. But what if they relented under Russian pressure or the Russians defied the ban? Would NATO intercept Russian planes carrying troops?
General Clark's plan was to put NATO troops on the airfield to make it impossible for reinforcements to land. But a British general, Mike Jackson, who was in charge of the peacekeeping force that was to stabilize Kosovo after the Serb troops withdrew and who now serves as the head of the British Army, complained that it was too risky, famously asserting, with some hyperbole, that it would be risking World War III.
Britain was the United States' staunchest ally, and so the Clinton administration decided to defer to the British position. Still, General Clark's recommendation was not rash; it was a judgment call that had been discussed in detail in Washington and that was initially supported at senior levels of the American government."
So there it is. As many of us knew Clark was the main force behind halting Serbian genocide and keeping the alliance together during those tumultous times in 1999. The evidence is there and it speaks volumes.
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