The Battle For Kosovo

Nearly two weeks have passed since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)launched its massive air campaign against the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his Serb forces. The aim of the NATO air war was to prevent a humanitarian disaster from unfolding in the region and to preserve the regional stability, unhinged in the wake of aggressive Serb designs, in the Balkans. The Serb actions in Kosovo were undertaken in light of maintaining its ethnic and cultural identity in the Balkans. To the Serbs, Kovoso is a national shrine and the birthplace of Serb nationalism and hence, Kosovo is the sine qua non of a Greater Serbia; the foci logica of all Milosevic’s intentions in the region. By driving out all the ethnic Albanians, Milosevic is creating a de-facto Serb majority in the region by which he intents to leverage some sort of a favorable position for his régimé in any post-conflict discussions. NATO’s decision to take up belligerent status against Yugoslavia to prevent the ethnic cleansing or genocide, by which Milosevic is slowly driving out the non-Serb population from the former provinces of Yugoslavia, seems to suggest that the scope of the conflict might be enlarged. Early assessments of NATO airstrikes indicate that, contrary to what the alliance hoped to achieve, the bombing has reinforced a sense of solidarity amongst the Yugoslavs and has intensified the Serb campaign to de-populate non-Serbs regions.

When President Bill Clinton addressed the nation, justifying NATO intervention, he said that NATO’s military gambit was undertaken to prevent the neighboring states of Macedonia and Albania from suffering a similar fate as Kosovo and to prevent a regional crisis in the Balkans. Within forty-eight hours of NATO strikes, the political reason behind NATO’s use of force were rendered invalid, because the refugees fleeing Serb aggression, in Kosovo, were indirectly contributing towards a regional instability in those nations. Given the rapidly worsening situation in Macedonia and Albania due to the inflow of the refugees, the only viable option that NATO has, to stabilize the situation, is to prevent a further exodus of refugees from leaving Kosovo and entering Macedonia and Albania. Such an option, if seriously considered, involves the use of ground troops, because NATO has to tackle the political source of this crisis; Serb nationalism. The only way NATO can stem the flow of refugees is to create an enclave in Kosovo and to create an environment, which fosters the conditions for a safe return of the refugees to their homes. The only feasible scenario, for the creation of such an enclave, is to remove the Yugoslav-Serb military forces from the region and to occupy Kosovo for the near foreseeable future. The use of air power to interdict Serb military assets on the ground will impede the Serbs’ abilities to practice genocide, but it will not stop the flow of the refugees escaping Serb persecution. Hence, despite the best intentions of an air campaign, the situation will continue to de-stabilize, because it can not create the conditions necessary for an immediate return of the refugees to Kosovo.

Thus, the justifications and arguments used by NATO to attack Belgrade through an air war suggests that NATO is only interested in securing a regional status quo and not in reversing Serb aggression on the ground. The aim of an air war seems to make Milosevic accept a peace plan along the lines of Rombolliet accords which would offer the Albanian Kosovars some form of a political settlement in a Serb dominated Yugoslavia.

The Battle for Kosovo seems to turning against the NATO forces, because the Serb offensive to expel the ethnic Kosovar Albanians has mooted the political reason for NATO’s involvement in the region. The NATO intervention was justified under the rubric of maintaining a regional stability and to deny Milosevic the chance to impose Serbian autocracy in Kosovo. Within days of the NATO offensive, the Serb military and para-military forces embarked upon a systematic program to root out the residents of Kosovo by committing acts of atrocities against them. Through this policy, not only have the Serbs managed to physically control the province of Kosovo, but they have also invalidated the reason for NATO’s involvement in the region; the maintenance of Kosovo’s autonomy against Serb aggression. NATO had hoped that its airstrikes against Serb-Yugoslav military assests would de-grade Belgrade’s ability to enforce its will in Kosovo, but the subsequent Serb actions and the flow of the refugees which stemmed from that have caused NATO to re-think its options. Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military strategist in his book, On War, once said the war is the continuation of politics by other means and that a military aim, the strategy of a war, is determined by the political reasons for which a war is being fought. This raises the question of what exactly is the political aim of the war, against Yugoslavia, which NATO hopes to accomplish. NATO, at this particular point in the campaign, is faced with two options, both politically untenable, which must be articulated and justified as a reason for its military intervention in the region. First, is it still the political aim of NATO to guarantee political autonomy to the Kosovars and secondly, does NATO hope to do this by bombing or through the induction of ground troops into the theater of operations.

A simple historic fact is that air power alone can not determine military campaigns and no war has been won exclusively through the application of air power. It took the coalition against Saddam Hussein nearly six weeks of intensive air war to whittle his air defenses into submission and then it was only through the use of ground forces that the Iraqi Army was evicted out of Kuwait. The Balkans, as a geographic entity, are not the most conducive of all theaters of operations for an air campaign. The terrain of the Balkans is a rugged, mountainous countryside dominated with patches of fog and low visibility. Conditions that prohibit an execution of a sustained air campaign. The weather over the Balkans, and not the specific nature of the intended targets, will determine the scope and utility of an air war. The present NATO military strategy of using air power to de-grade Serbian military assets will not work, because the real nature of the conflict in the Balkans is ground based. The war in Balkans is being fought for territorial possession of villages and towns and air interdiction of Serbian forces, though viable as a hindering tactic, will not stop nor turn the progression of the land campaign in NATO’s favor. Furthermore, Milosevic will not politically capitulate to NATO’s demands just because he is being bombed. To force Milosevic to agree to its conditions, for stopping its attacks against Serb forces, NATO needs to identify and target his political center of gravity. Milosevic’s political center of gravity, from which all is power is derived from, is the Yugoslav Army and its assets on the ground (armored tanks, mobile surface to air missile batteries and infantry troops). These are the military assets, which are reinforcing Milosevic’s political aims in the region and giving him the power to advance his political interests in the region: unification of all former Yugoslav provinces into a nationalistic state to be called Greater Serbia.

The air campaign, against Yugoslavia, can inflict heavy casualties on the Serbs, but it can not under any circumstances alter the balance of power on the ground or revert the Serb aggression so far. To force Milosevic to accept a diplomatic peace, it is necessary to weaken his political power and that entails the systematic destruction of the Yugoslav military itself. NATO’s First Phase of air operations correctly identified the list of targets as the Yugoslav military command and control centers. The use of cruise missiles, against those targets, was from a tactical sense justified, because those were stationary targets and hence, not too difficult to hide. The Second Phase, of NATO air operations, seems to be directed against destroying the infrastructure that could sustain the ground operations of the Yugoslav military forces (ammunition depots, bridges, and railroads). The Third Phase, should it occur, would be the hardest part of the military operation against Yugoslavia so far. Having once isolated the Yugoslav military forces, and denied them avenues of support, it would be advisable to destroy them on the ground. The allies followed a pretty similar approach in Operation Desert Shield. Once the Iraqi Army was isolated, its capability to wage offensive actions was de-graded from the air prior to a ground assault on its positions. The combat conditions, in Operation Desert Shield, were optimal due to the fact that the theater of operations was a desert. Also, the Iraqi forces were concentrated in large numbers in statically linear defensive postures and hence, were easy targets to locate, identify and engage from the air. The Yugoslav-Serb military forces, by contrast, are operating in a terrain that is hilly and generally tend to be in mobile armed units which are difficult to locate and identify from the air.

This is not to suggest that the task is impossible, but such an approach does hint that the nature of the military campaign will have to change. Should such a change happen, NATO military operations will shift from an operation purely designated as an air war, to a set of priorities more focused on providing close ground interdiction. This would entail the NATO aircraft-attack helicopters to fly lower and slower to engage targets on the ground and it would also increase the risk to the pilots themselves. So far NATO has shown an aversion to risk its planes and pilots in tactical missions while preferring strategic missions such as the destruction of Yugoslav air-defense systems. In the long run, this NATO policy of strategic bombing is destined to become a liability. The reason simply is, if it is NATO’s intention to win this war, through an air campaign, it will have to target the SAM batteries and tanks of the Yugoslav Army to influence the flow of the battle in its favor. Otherwise, the conflict will have no end in sight and it will only embroil NATO in a Balkan quagmire, which will seep the political will of the alliance and leave Milosevic in possession of Kosovo. Should such a probability materialize, it will be akin to a political defeat of NATO and its justifications for pursuing this war.

Consequently, NATO has no option, but to seek a revision of the status quo as it was prior to the onset of hostilities. In other words, NATO should not settle for peace, which does not include some form of political autonomy for the Kosovars. Unfortunately, this can not be achieved through an air campaign, which does not target the ground elements of the Yugoslav forces that are presently occupying Kosovo, but through the use of NATO ground forces.

This raises the question as to what is most effective way of attaining that peace and in the process, implementing NATO demands upon the régimé in Belgrade. The best and only option, for NATO, to gain this end is through the introduction of ground forces into Kosovo and to militarily remove the Yugoslav-Serb forces from the region. The reality of the situation is that Serbs will not willingly retreat from Kosovo and the air war, no matter how well executed, will not remove them from Kosovo physically. Also, as long as the Serb tanks and mobile SAM batteries remain, NATO will have failed to realize its reasons for starting the war and guaranteeing some sort of political autonomy for Kosovo. Hence, NATO is faced with unenviable option of seeing this crisis to the end and to emerge victorious, both militarily and politically, from this war. NATO not only needs to intervene with ground troops to affect an outcome beneficial to its interests, but it also needs to use those ground troops, as guarantors, to enforce the post-crisis political status quo that will emerge in the region.

NATO’s political leadership is acutely aware that to secure a modicum of regional stability in the region, the use of ground troops is becoming, sotto voce, the sine qua non of a political settlement in the Balkans. The biggest obstacle to the use of ground forces is the consensus amongst the NATO members themselves, because NATO is a political and not a militarily alliance. Presently, within NATO members there is no political will to get involved in a ground war, but as the situational reality is emerging, the option of a ground war is becoming increasingly the only viable means for forestalling a crisis and insuring a balance of regional stability in the region. The impetus that is forcing NATO to re-consider the use of the ground forces is the moral dimensions of the crisis. NATO can not be seen as being ineffective in the face of genocide on the eve of its fiftieth birthday celebrations. Though the use of armed force based on morality, to stop genocide, is a poor substitute for a military policy, NATO has no choice, but to embark on a ground campaign to insure regional stability. Only through ground intervention and through the use of combat troops in Kosovo can NATO offer a sense of regional security, as cited by its leadership, because NATO no longer can accept the status quo as envisioned by Milosevic's régimé in Belgrade.

Consequently, NATO has to emerge victorious in this crisis, because not only has it staked its influence, and credibility on the issue of Kosovo, but its morality is also being questioned in lieu of the genocide occurring in what was former Yugoslavia. NATO can not agree to the political independence of Kosovo, because that would establish a dangerous international precedent for other ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds in Turkey, to demand their own political autonomy. NATO can not accept a status quo, as in the form of Rombolliet discussions, because of the Serb brutality and hence, its only option is to answer force with force. In this, NATO is justified to use armed might to politically remove Milosevic from power and it ought to use any and all available means at its disposal to win this war, because the alternative is not worth considering. NATO can not emerge as a victor in this war through air power alone, but it needs to deploy ground troops not only to defeat Milosevic and his Yugoslavic-Serb military forces; to end the refugee exodus out of Kosovo, but to insure a regional peace in the Balkans. Only the use of ground troops can attain the political ends, in this war, for which NATO claims to be fighting the Yugoslav military forces. Any response short of the full commitment of ground troops into Kosovo, by NATO and western nations, will hint of an appeasement of Milosevic and a political-military defeat for NATO in its war against Yugoslavia. Like the old saying, “in for a penny, in for a pound”, NATO has no choice, but to win this war and it must win this war by any means possible including the use of ground forces.