"NATO’s Balkan Wars and the Role of Air Power"
Victory Through Air Power
Following Yugoslavia's refusal in early 1999 to sign the Rambouillet peace agreement, NATO made good its threat to attack. The aerial bombardment called Operation Allied Force began March 24, 1999, and was prompted by NATO's determination to prevent a feared "ethnic cleansing" of the Albanian population in Kosovo. The premise of Allied Force was built upon the Air Force's Halt Strategy which asserts that air power can replace ground power under certain circumstances and defeat enemy armies. This strategy is, in part, based on Operation Deliberate Force over Bosnia in 1995. The limited military action also seemed to validate the growing reluctance to follow the Powell Doctrine’s insistence on using only overwhelming force when going to war.
Although NATO won and suspended bombing on June 10th, 1999, Allied Force was not the anticipated quick signal that stopped Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic's armed forces from terrorizing Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. American diplomat Richard Holbrooke was reportedly stunned by Milosevic's calm acceptance that NATO would bomb if he refused the Rambouillet plan. Clearly, Milosevic and NATO learned different lessons from Deliberate Force. The perception problem has been exacerbated with Allied Force.
Defenders of ground power instinctively know that air power alone cannot defeat armies despite relief that NATO compelled Yugoslavia to withdraw from Kosovo. Army defenders point out that the touted bombing accuracy is irrelevant if not focused on achieving an effect, note that demonstrated fear of friendly casualties hobbled the West, raise the point that actual damage to the Yugoslavian army turned out to be far less than first claimed by NATO, and recognize that fear of NATO ground invasion and diplomatic isolation were powerful factors pushing Yugoslavia to capitulate. The frustration of having to argue what should be obvious has led to criticisms of the war by attacking the policy considerations that led to initiating the war or even to denying that NATO really won the war.
Raising these objections--even the accurate ones--often hurt Army advocates by seeming to ignore the reality of NATO occupation of Kosovo. We may not like what NATO won, but it was victory. Ground power advocates have failed to attack the weak point of the Air Force's argument that relies on a leap in logic beyond the war itself to claim Allied Force proves the Halt Strategy's promise of defeating armies. This is where the Army can fight the battle for America's military strategy. Neither Allied Force in Kosovo nor Deliberate Force before it in Bosnia demonstrate the ability of air power to defeat a ground army. The Air Force's misreading of history must not stand. Reviewing the events of 1995 as perceived by air power purists and applying them to Allied Force should place air power in perspective and prevent the enshrining of another false lesson to bolster the Halt Strategy and abandon the Powell Doctrine.
The Blueprint for Air War
For 22 days during August and September 1995, NATO planes and a U.S. Navy ship delivered 1,026 bombs and missiles, including 708 precision-guided munitions (PGMs). The Bosnian Serbs relented to NATO demands and the Dayton Accords followed, paving the way for NATO to occupy Bosnia and maintain the peace. Major lessons learned by an Air University study about how Deliberate Force succeeded militarily include:
1. The air campaign was determined and robust.
2. The tempo was as great as that anticipated for a major war and at the tactical level was indistinguishable from war. The Air Force did not need to train differently for this operation other than war (OOTW) as ground forces would for missions requiring restraint or visibility.
3. PGMs allowed strikes over a short period of time that avoided collateral damage. Leaders were thus willing to use air power.
4. Using air power minimized allied casualties by preventing the Bosnian Serbs from fighting ground forces and avoided mission creep.
5. The goals were strategic and operational with the objective of influencing Bosnian Serb leadership rather than tactical. NATO pilots did not need to go "tank plinking."
6. Deliberate Force was decisive in bringing peace quickly, cheaply, and at minimal cost to the intervening states. NATO airstrikes "broke" the Bosnian Serbs.
7. The Bosnian federation and Croatian 1995 offensives demonstrated that the Bosnian Serbs had lost their military superiority and took land that the Bosnian Serbs had refused to surrender as part of any peace deal.
In defending the decision to commence Allied Force, President Bill Clinton cited Deliberate Force as an example of how "firmness can stop armies and save lives." Some regard it as "the prime modern example of how judicious use of airpower, coupled with hard-nosed diplomacy, can stop a ground force in its tracks and bring the worst of enemies to the bargaining table." The Air Force has built upon the false lessons of Deliberate Force and today boasts of the sole role of air power in NATO's Operation Allied Force. It is readily apparent to air power advocates that bombing caused the subsequent Yugoslavian withdrawal from Kosovo. They further conclude that this withdrawal proves the effectiveness of the Halt Strategy's promise to defeat armies.
Deliberate Force 1995 and Allied Force 1999
Was Deliberate Force the blueprint for Allied Force’s Achievements? In 1995, Milosevic gave up somebody else's land and was ready to make a deal before Deliberate Force began. Given the military defeats suffered by the Bosnian Serbs, the Dayton Accords granted them a status disproportionate to their power. The 1999 Rambouillet peace plan, by contrast, required the Serbs to surrender what they consider the cradle of their culture and allow NATO into Serbia itself. In order to end the war, NATO conceded that Kosovo would remain in Yugoslavia, made no mention of an earlier demand that NATO have access to Yugoslavian territory, abandoned NATO's exclusive role, and involved the UN Security Council where Russian and Chinese vetoes may shield the Serbs. Deliberate Force did not provide the basis for success in Allied Force.
The first two lessons miss the mark. Deliberate Force was robust only compared to earlier actions over Bosnia. Nor was the operation solely an air attack given that NATO artillery fired over 900 rounds in its early hours. Complaints that Allied Force was politically hobbled neglect the restraints imposed on the much smaller "robust" (and “successful”) Deliberate Force. Further, training for ground crews, pilots, and weapons officers may not be different but that demonstrates air power's inflexibility. Aircraft can kill people and break things (albeit at variable rates) but cannot control people or land. Ground power can do both and must train differently. This is the price of flexibility.
The third lesson is true but meaningless. Despite reliance on PGMs, trust clearly had its limits and even small chances for error induce caution. Based on Deliberate Force, NATO assumed similar restraint would work in Allied Force. Some targets too close to civilian buildings were avoided and, to reduce collateral damage, smaller bombs were used and pilots did not release bombs after failing to identify a clear shot. Despite initial caution based on the apparent lesson of Deliberate Force that a thousand precisely targeted bombs would win, it quickly became clear that Allied Force would not be rapidly concluded. Frustratingly, intolerance for collateral damage has kept pace with strides in accuracy and even rare mistakes inspired anti-American sentiment. Even jettisoning bombs into the Adriatic Sea (about 100) after declining to drop them under uncertain circumstances caused NATO problems when Italians, never eager to attack the Serbs, were roused to greater opposition to the war.
The belief that accuracy automatically delivers strategic effect fell short. Beginning in May 1999, NATO abandoned restraint and struck civilian targets and field forces. As the campaign became a war, PGMs ended up representing only a third of Allied Force's 23,000 bombs and missiles expended. While this effort failed to stop Serb atrocities, the atrocities NATO could not halt kept public support high enough to continue the bombardment despite Yugoslavian civilian casualties. Allied Force should at least show that PGMs may have great tactical effect but are not capable of sending a message to an entire military. Massive firepower is not obsolete.
The fourth lesson that air power is inherently safer than ground troops is the strongest. This emphasis on force protection is a corollary to the precision mantra. While precision seeks to avoid loss of support by avoiding civilian deaths, the safety claim hopes to maintain public support by avoiding friendly casualties. This lesson assumes the benefits of the Croatian and Bosnian ground offensives for the purpose of proving the effectiveness of Deliberate Force and, by asserting that no Americans were at risk, ignores the offensives where Croatian and Bosnian soldiers clearly were at risk. Air power will, without a doubt, suffer fewer casualties than ground power. Yet without an army in 1999, tactical success from three miles up was painfully slow. Even with few friendly losses, after seven weeks of war public support for Allied Force eroded in several NATO countries.
The second part of this lesson argues that air power is immune to mission creep, the escalation of objectives; and that there is a large firebreak between air and ground power, hindering escalation of means. While these are apparently valid deductions from Deliberate Force, they reflect the limits of air power and the unique situation on the ground. If not for the 1995 ground offensives that pushed the Bosnian Serbs back, NATO might have been compelled to retreat or escalate to ground forces. The same factor made the question of mission creep moot. The Croatians supplied the unacknowledged means to gain NATO's objectives in Deliberate Force.
The initial limited objectives of Allied Force that included deterring Yugoslavia from increasing attacks on Kosovo's Albanians were made obsolete by Yugoslavia's accelerated ethnic cleansing campaign. The new mission became punishing the Serbs and repatriating the ethnic Albanians. NATO spokesman Air Commodore David Wilby even stated the amazing objective of creating a "democratic and multi-ethnic" Kosovo. The success of force protection at least precluded public pressure to escalate the war to make the goals match a larger sacrifice. Instead, NATO's objectives could be scaled back from Rambouillet to match the limited means NATO was willing to employ.
Even the means in Allied Force strained to increase despite NATO's need for consensus. The images of ethnic cleansing argued for ground forces. The decision to dispatch Apache helicopters and MLRS to Albania began to bridge the gap between "safe" air power and a ground war. By mid-May 1999, the Pentagon finally advised "that only ground troops would guarantee fulfillment of the administration's political objectives." Talk of a NATO invasion to end the crisis grew serious as winter approached and no settlement appeared likely. Stalemate clearly eroded the firebreak.
The fifth lesson of 1995 failed in Kosovo. Deliberate Force was intended to grab the Bosnian Serb's attention and compel them to negotiate. Use of cruise missiles, rarely used until then, "scared the [slang word for feces] out of the Serbs" and indicated NATO's resolve. Unfortunately, cruise missiles have lost their aura from repeated use. In contrast to Deliberate Force's goal of showing determination, Allied Force tried to "plink" Yugoslavian units carrying out ethnic cleansing. Pilots had difficulty, however, locating dispersed Yugoslavian units that, without a NATO army threatening invasion, remained dispersed. Indeed, by using decoys and dummies, the Yugoslavians absorbed a number of strikes that NATO counted as successful. The synergy of ground forces and air power as executed in Desert Storm was thus absent in the air campaign plan for Kosovo. Two months into the war, Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Short announced that Allied Force would annihilate the Yugoslavian military in Kosovo in two more months or drive it out. A finely tuned signal to Milosevic became an aerial war of attrition.
The sixth lesson is myopic. Deliberate Force was brief and clean but the fighting had gone on for years. The military theorist Antoine Henri Jomini warned in the 19th century that in such wars, rather than intervening to pacify the region it is better to let time take its course and let passions cool on their own. NATO was lucky to intervene in Bosnia when both sides were worn out. Deliberate Force neither "broke" the Bosnian Serbs nor was decisive. The Croatian offensives complicated the ability to determine the effectiveness of the air campaign and the airstrikes may have been mostly irrelevant with the land offensives the key.
Brief and clean cannot describe Allied Force. Two months into it, Yugoslavian forces continued to expel ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Troops even trickled into the region as replacements or reinforcements. In the end, the scaled up Allied Force convinced Milosevic to withdraw. Yet the continued ground fighting against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the obstructionism of Yugoslavian officers as they ironed out the details of the NATO terms that Milosevic accepted were not the actions of an army beaten and stopped in its tracks. Indeed, NATO may bizarrely be compelled to do what Yugoslavia could not--demilitarize a KLA that wants independence--as well as police the Serbs.
The seventh lesson is the most important yet is ill remembered. In May 1995, Croatia captured western Slavonia from the Croatian Serbs. Operation Storm, in which the Croatians took the Serb Krajina region of Croatia, followed starting in late July and relieved the Moslem Bihac Pocket in western Bosnia. In conjunction with the Croatian offensive, Bosnia too scored victories over the Bosnian Serbs as Deliberate Force delivered its signal. By mid-September 1995, the Croatians had regained their land and the Bosnian Serbs had the 70% of Bosnia they controlled reduced to 51 percent. Accepting NATO's peace plan that coincidentally allocated them 51% of Bosnia simply required the Bosnian Serbs to concede reality. Air power advocates seem to imply that the Bosnian and Croatian attacks were successful because of the NATO airstrikes.
Ground power eventually aided Allied Force, in part with the surprising revival of the KLA and its offensive which compelled the Yugoslavians to mass their hidden forces. The Yugoslavians finally provided NATO pilots a "target-rich environment" that resulted in a disproportionate share of Yugoslavia's casualties being inflicted in only a few days of air attacks. Under these conditions, Allied Force could have smashed Yugoslavia's heavy equipment. It would not, however, have been militarily significant unless NATO invaded since even without artillery and armor, the Yugoslavians could have held off the KLA and killed civilians. More important was the increasingly credible threat of eventual NATO invasion. Indeed, since the war, it has become apparent that invasion was far more imminent than coalition warfare needs allowed NATO to admit at the time. It is probable that Milosevic was more aware of this than the Western public and acted accordingly.
Blueprint for Limited Victory
The Air Force's Halt Strategy is not supported by our Balkan interventions. Victory in Bosnia was clearly a Croatian ground win supported by NATO air power. Given that false memories of Deliberate Force served to encourage Allied Force, NATO air power ironically largely earned the laurels in Kosovo. While a victory, it depended on Milosevic deciding he had endured enough damage. Our leaders believed it could be done in days. It ended up taking eleven weeks. It could have taken longer. Or NATO could have tired first. It would be a mistake to conclude that the Powell Doctrine is obsolete and that America must be willing to start out on the path of war with limited force insufficient to overwhelm the enemy. In the first two weeks of Allied Force, Milosevic, on a clear if twisted path, essentially achieved his war aims of "cleansing" Kosovo. Bombing did not purchase a limited victory until after NATO lost what it defended. If Milosevic had used the time NATO granted him to kill Kosovo Albanians instead of expelling them, NATO might have won a charnel house.
Allied Force achieved only a limited victory because an air war against ground power is essentially a defensive war. In a ground defense, dug-in troops shoot at the enemy until they retreat. The enemy can keep coming back when they recover unless your side takes the offensive to finally cement the defensive victories. If you do not attack, the enemy may eventually decide to end the war, perhaps even to your advantage, but they will have calculated that it is better to settle and not be truly beaten. Allied Force resembled this. NATO aircraft pounded the enemy from their 3-mile high "fortifications" secure from Yugoslav fire in the hope that the pain inflicted would lead Milosevic to yield. Aided by the KLA, Allied Force did inflict enough pain for the Yugoslavian government to decide
to stop its ethnic cleansing. Yet negotiations over the military/technical agreement to implement the theoretical "yielding" and continued fighting and depredations during the withdrawal showed that the bombardment had compelled negotiations and not real surrender.
Although the Yugoslavians have gone to great lengths to minimize their losses (with unearned credibility), whatever their losses, the air attacks did not annihilate their army. Boasts made that air power "alone is capable of rendering [Milosevic's] military ineffective" stand out in contrast to reality. The rapid and well-ordered withdrawal adds to the sense that the Yugoslavian military in Kosovo was hardly staggered by the aerial onslaught. Indeed, a study of what NATO airstrikes accomplished against Yugoslavian forces in Kosovo indicates far fewer tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery pieces destroyed than initially claimed. And although NATO still claims, for example, killing 93 tanks, only about a quarter were catastrophic kills. Even if NATO hit far more than the stringent criteria allow NATO to claim, the numbers show that controlling the battlefield with troops on the ground is needed to prevent the enemy from recovering, repairing, and returning to service equipment disabled but not destroyed.
Although Milosevic yielded, the fact remains that he chose to negotiate rather than risk further attacks and possible invasion. Instead of dictating terms to Milosevic, NATO negotiates with an indicted war criminal. Undeniably, NATO has done well to have achieved this much at such a low human cost to friendly forces. Although Deliberate Force provided the rationale for beginning Allied Force, the methods of 1995 clearly did not provide the basis for victory in 1999.
War is Hell
In 1995, air power was the only military means acceptable to NATO countries. Croatia's forgotten army was decisive in that war. In 1999, with the Balkans again deemed not worth the bones of a healthy NATO infantryman, air power still seemed the only option. Luckily, NATO again had a ground threat. The KLA could not win outright yet compelled Yugoslavian forces to deploy and become vulnerable to the powerful NATO air armada. Just over the horizon, the far more worrisome threat of NATO ground invasion to exploit the aerial pounding crystallized as winter approached. Of course, just as air power purists accurately catalog the various elements that went into ending the Bosnian intervention successfully while highlighting only the NATO air strikes, ground force advocates must not mistakenly focus only on the weak KLA or the hypothetical NATO ground intervention as they resist air power advocates who again claim the role of victor. A successful air campaign that damaged Serbia's infrastructure and struck forces in Kosovo at will (albeit with unclear results) without the combat deaths of any NATO air crew, the dire consequences of a NATO invasion even if the probability of its execution was unknown; and diplomatic isolation (including the apparent loss of Russian support) and the unity of NATO in pursuing the war, all contributed to Milosevic's capitulation. The need for 50,000 NATO-led troops to implement the agreement rather than rely on air power's ability to coerce is a post-Allied Force proof that controlling land requires boots on the ground.
Despite the erroneous conclusions drawn from a memory of Deliberate Force distorted by the apparent desire to have a clear example of air power's effectiveness against ground forces, the Air University's analysis of the Bosnian campaign was surprisingly accurate when taken as a whole. Air power, a powerful ground offensive, and two sides exhausted enough to deal led to success in 1995. Yet by early 1999, only the dramatic bombing by American planes stood out in the minds of air power advocates and key government leaders. The subsequent victory in Allied Force cannot be allowed to perpetuate and strengthen the misconceptions of Deliberate Force. Fortunately, the Air Force faces contradictions that will hurt its ability to portray Allied Force as proof of the Halt Strategy's potential. Although the Halt Strategy claims it will stop an army with air power, the Air Force's strategists did not even want to hit the Yugoslavian military in Kosovo. They believed the center of gravity was the leadership which was vulnerable to hits against strategic, economic, and emotional targets.
Without question, the Army needs an Air Force capable of hitting and killing enemy ground forces. This should be supported as a vital component of stopping an enemy short of its goals. We should not take the dangerous leap of logic that concludes that spending on ground power only gets in the way of air power's theoretical capabilities. In theory, Yugoslavia’s 3rd Army in Kosovo should have been demolished. In reality it marched home. Ground power supporters must not let air power purists argue that mere soldiers and Marines are obsolete even as we join with them in relishing air power's accomplishments in the Balkans. To settle the debate, we must at least agree on what NATO did in Kosovo and earlier, in Bosnia.
Instead of being an application of the Halt Strategy, the Kosovo war demonstrated air power's unparalleled ability to execute punitive missions. These military operations other than war (MOOTW) are nothing new. Throughout history, armies have laid waste enemy lands and navies have razed coastal cities to compel a change in behavior or to punish without engaging and defeating enemy armies. By tumbling the infrastructure of a modern state into the streets and rivers of Serbia, air power has simply joined the ranks of those who can punish. Compelling Yugoslavia's withdrawal was a major achievement but the war does not demonstrate that air power, in defiance of the Powell Doctrine, can replace ground power to win a ground war with limited and calibrated force. But just as Deliberate Force has been misinterpreted so too will Allied Force be cited as real world proof of computer-generated billiard table theaters of war where computer simulated PGMs smash rolling frontal assaults that do nothing unexpected.
Like Deliberate Force before it, Operation Allied Force has failed to prove that air power, though clearly powerful and indispensable, can deliver decisive results over ground forces as the Halt Strategy promises. Even if it is no longer an iron rule, the Powell Doctrine is worth remembering if we hope to achieve decisive victory rather than limited victory. War is still war despite computers and wars about land require joint efforts built around ground forces smashing an enemy. Any lesser effort will produce lesser results. That is an iron rule.
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So there you go. We're in another air war that we hope will decisively influence events on the ground. I hope it works. I'll have to guess it won't unless we get really lucky.
UPDATE: Just in the nick of time, this is, as Allied Force is extolled as an example for today. The author has a point that it is too soon to panic since the war is less than a week old. Our press was in panic mode when we merely paused outside Baghdad during a sand storm in 2003. And I suppose we have a choice of outcomes: getting lucky in an air-only campaign or a hard success (by someone with an army) on the ground.
I do keep asking how lucky is President Obama?
