Compromised Command

Rhetoric aside, many on both sides of the Atlantic proved averse to using decisive force against Serbia. To make matters worse, politicians undercut the effectiveness of coercion by announcing publicly just how limited military pressure would be. After President Clinton put all of NATO's strategic eggs in one basket -- airpower -- by announcing that he did not intend to use ground forces, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana undermined the coercive potential of the air campaign by suggesting that it would last "days, not months." Given this one-two punch against NATO's own strategy, it is little wonder that Milosevic thought he could outwait the bombing.

On the strategy for the air war, Clark was pulled in opposite directions by American military hawks and European civilian doves, and he tilted to the Europeans by acquiescing to a limited campaign. Yet on strategy in general he felt undercut by his military colleagues at home. As Clark saw it, U.S. officers and Secretary of Defense William Cohen resisted his efforts to move toward combat on the ground, undermined his attempts to get Apache helicopters into combat, subverted his command by conferring directly with his subordinates, and contradicted him in diplomatic consultations with allies. As Clark complains, despite the fact that the Goldwater-Nichols legislative reforms of 1986 were supposed to have made regional commanders like himself central figures in the U.S. chain of command, "somehow I had become just a NATO officer who also reported to the United States."

The orthodox view among professional officers is that U.S. military leaders failed in Vietnam by their supine complicity: the Joint Chiefs of Staff went along with irresponsible strategic decisions made by the civilian leadership, thereby supporting a limited intervention that was bound to fail. Some top officers in Washington sought to avoid repeating this mistake in Kosovo by dragging their feet to prevent large-scale involvement. Yet by doing so, ironically, they ended up supporting the use of indecisive force. To Clark, some of his colleagues "seemed determined to resist their obligation to win." To his dismay, they also resisted making the maximum effort in the Balkans for fear of diminishing the readiness of forces for Iraq or Korea: "The Chiefs were seriously considering withholding forces to be ready for two ... hypothetical major theaters of war elsewhere, even if it caused the United States and NATO to lose the actual war in Europe."

Beginning with his assumption of command for the occupation of Bosnia, Clark became persona non grata in Washington. At one point he even heard that General Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was saying that Clark "had one foot on a banana peel and one foot in the grave." Several days into the air war, Clark reflected ruefully on how odd it was that he had never been invited into strategy discussions with either the secretary of defense or the president. As he plaintively recalls, throughout the war "I always flashed back to the television footage of General Schwarzkopf going with General Powell to Camp David to brief President George Bush on the Persian Gulf [War]."

Cohen and Shelton even tried to prevent NATO's supreme commander from attending the NATO summit held in Washington during the war. Clark went anyway, and he reports a poignant scene that took place at a reception hosted by the American leadership. As he approached a receiving line that included Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Cohen, and Shelton, several of them glanced at him. "'Stay away' was the clear message from the body language. It was jarring." But once Europeans entered the room, Clark was soon surrounded by a respectful group of ministers and heads of state, "making me almost the center of a second receiving line." If not a prophet, Clark was a commander without honor in his own country. Indeed, after victory the supranational commander received the ultimate snub from his national superiors -- they booted him from office several months early to make room for a top Washington player, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Ralston.

LAWYERS IN COMMAND

The most bitter objection that has been leveled at U.S. civilian leaders for the air war against North Vietnam was that they micromanaged the campaign by picking bombing targets themselves. By 1999, however, neither the Clinton administration nor the Europeans seemed concerned about this criticism. Clark had to have every target approved not only by President Clinton but by Solana as well, along with American and European lawyers.

One of the most striking features of the Kosovo campaign, in fact, was the remarkably direct role lawyers played in managing combat operations -- to a degree unprecedented in previous wars. Clark does not rail against this phenomenon, but his matter-of-fact reporting of how the process unfolded is enough to shock any student of wartime command. The role played by lawyers in this war should also be sobering -- indeed alarming -- for devotees of power politics who denigrate the impact of law on international conflict. It may be reassuring, on the other hand, for those opposed to the long-standing NATO doctrine that relies on the first use of nuclear weapons. Judging from the standards applied against Serbia in the only war NATO ever actually fought, it is obvious that no U.S. commander will ever receive permission to launch a nuclear weapon. After all, as strategists used to joke during the Cold War, European towns are only a kiloton apart.