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The Yugoslav War: Where to Now?
Gary Brown
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Group
21 April 1999
Contents
Introduction
A New Kind of War
Air Power Alone
Precision and Economy
Yugoslavia is not Iraq
Progress of the War
Unachieved Aims, Lost Objectives
Shifting Aims?
Where is the War Going?
President Milosevic's Strategy and NATO's Dilemma
The View from Belgrade
NATO's Dilemma
Reassessment Required
New Political Objectives
New Military Strategy
A War of Wills
Endnotes
It is now almost four weeks since
NATO launched its air war-Operation ALLIED FORCE-against the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia (FRY). Prosecuted with a combination of strategic bombers,
tactical ground-attack aircraft and cruise missiles, supported by the
military and economic resources of an immensely powerful alliance, this
war has already inflicted significant damage on FRY infrastructure and,
to an unquantifiable extent, on elements of its military.
This brief is a short analysis of the war, primarily
from the standpoint of military strategy.(1) It considers the nature of
the war and examines its development thus far. It suggests that in the
final analysis the war has become a contest of political wills, that the
Milosevic regime believes that the NATO countries lack the will to take
the steps probably necessary to defeat it and that the accuracy or otherwise
of this calculation will probably determine the outcome.
This paper is current to noon 21 April 1999, Canberra
time.
Air Power
Alone
This war is quite different from any other in history.
Notably, it is the first to attempt achievement of its aims by the use
of one arm of military power, air power, alone. Of course, air power has
often been used to carry out specific missions, but never before
has it been employed as the sole means of waging major war. In modern
times, where military thinking and organisation has continually stressed
integration of ground, maritime and air elements into increasingly seamless
force structures, this is a radical departure. Whether it is also a viable
departure remains to be seen.
Precision and Economy
Even as an air operation this war is unique. It has nothing
in common, for instance, with the great bombing campaigns of the Second
World War. In those days thousands of bombs were dropped from hundreds
of aircraft in only partly effective raids on key industrial targets,
which were almost always in large cities. Due to the highly inaccurate
nature of free-fall ('dumb') bombs civilian casualties around industrial
targets-what are now called 'collateral' casualties-were usually numbered
in hundreds if not thousands. For example, in August 1943, and again in
October, numerous US aircraft attacked a German ball-bearing plant at
Schweinfurt. The raids halted production for only six weeks and caused
some ongoing dislocation for perhaps six months. Very heavy losses in
US aircraft and crew were incurred. Hitler's Armaments Minister, Albert
Speer has testified that Germany actually increased industrial
production under the Allied bombing.(2) Hundreds of planes and thousands
of bombs could not then reliably destroy a target, even at the
price of heavy casualties to both sides.
By contrast, the essential characteristics of modern
air power are its precision and economy of effort. It is the norm (though
exceptions do occur) for a 'smart' weapon to strike what it is aimed at.
And with cruise missiles it is normally possible to strike a discrete
target from a thousand kilometres away. What could barely be done with
hundreds of aircraft and with serious casualties in 1943 is now possible
using a few aircraft and cruise missiles. Thus we hear of FRY installations-oil
refineries, industrial plants, bridges, even individual buildings in Belgrade-being
successfully targeted by NATO aircraft and/or missiles.
The present war is also noteworthy for the remarkably
passive nature of FRY resistance to the NATO attacks. In this respect
it resembles the Iraqi failure in 1991 to oppose the Coalition's air power-it
may be recalled that large numbers of Iraqi aircraft actually flew to
Iran to avoid destruction. FRY air defences naturally fire on NATO aircraft
where they can, and have achieved only limited success (one Stealth fighter
is confirmed lost by NATO), but since the first few days the Air Force
has hardly been seen. It is not known how many FRY combat aircraft (it
began the war with about 240 combat aircraft and 56 armed helicopters)(3)
have survived the NATO attacks on their bases, but few if any bases should
be operational after sustained air assaults.
Yugoslavia is not Iraq
For all of that, the air war against the FRY does not
readily compare with that conducted in 1991 against Iraq during operation
DESERT STORM. The air operations against Iraq were always intended to
pave the way for a ground campaign to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation
and were not expected to win the war in their own right. And the open,
flat, desert environment of the Middle East is far more friendly to air
power than the hilly, even mountainous, woody terrain of the FRY and Kosovo.
Likewise, the desert climate rarely interfered in the Middle East, whereas
in the Balkans the fickle early (northern) spring weather has significantly
restricted NATO operations.
Unachieved
Aims, Lost Objectives
The declared political aim at the outset of operation
ALLIED FORCE was to force FRY President Milosevic to accept two conditions:
- autonomous status within the FRY for the Albanian-majority Kosovo
region, and
- NATO troops in Kosovo to ensure FRY and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
compliance.
Once operations began, there was in addition a third
objective:
- damaging the Yugoslav forces so as to prevent or at least seriously
hinder their campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
NATO's attacks are undoubtedly inflicting significant
damage on their targets. Much infrastructure-notably oil refineries-has
been destroyed. Less damage will have been taken, however, by mobile elements
and installations which are below ground or have been effectively camouflaged.
On one day NATO claimed the destruction of only seven Yugoslav tanks.(4)
The FRY has about 1270 tanks, most of which are doubtless carefully hidden.(5)
As noted, airfields should be useless by now and can be kept so by frequent
bombing with cratering weapons. Any fixed military installation (bases,
barracks, facilities of various kinds) will presumably have been targeted
and destroyed by NATO. Physical communications within Yugoslavia have
been disrupted by the destruction of key bridges, and electronic means-especially
those used by the military-have also been heavily targeted.
Despite all this, at the time of writing the first two
aims mentioned above have yet to be achieved, while the third is clearly
now unachievable. Since the start of NATO operations the FRY has systematically
organised the deportation (or worse) of hundreds of thousands of ethnic
Albanians from Kosovo in an 'ethnic cleansing' operation on a scale paralleled
only by the Nazi atrocities of World War II and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Kosovo is now well on the way to becoming, if not an Albanian-free zone,
at least one where Albanian numbers have been drastically reduced. The
FRY forces have also launched operations designed to destroy or at least
cripple the armed ethnic Albanian irregular forces, the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA).
Some allege that this is the direct result of NATO operations.(6)
However the Milosevic regime has a track record of ethnic cleansing campaigns
and, in the situation as it was prewar, it is likely that Belgrade would
have attempted some such operation in Kosovo regardless (this is why pressure
was exerted on Yugoslavia in the first place).(7) However, the NATO attack
has allowed the 'cleansers' to invoke the cover of wartime censorship
and restrictions, expelling all foreign observers from the area, while
air power has proven to be of small value in actually hindering the operation.
NATO attacks no doubt catalysed, rather than caused, the anti-Albanian
action and were also a convenient cover story with which Belgrade could
explain the exodus from Kosovo.
Ethnic cleansing, unfortunately, requires little more
than a reasonable number of lightly armed irregulars willing to stomach
the dirty work, light FRY regular forces to protect them from the KLA,
plus minimal logistics to move them from place to place. And of course
large scale movements of the 'cleansed', by foot, road transport (or even
trains provided by a thoughtful Belgrade regime), can hardly be prevented
by air power and also serve as cover for FRY troop and equipment movements.
The recent mistaken NATO attack (14 April) on a refugee convoy shows that
the movements of deportees cannot be prevented unless one is willing to
fire on them. This NATO will not do.
Shifting Aims?
In present circumstances it is at least questionable
whether the originally declared political aims remain relevant. Kosovo
in effect is now well on the way to being ethnically 'cleansed'. It is
now inconceivable that, for all their declared determination, those ethnic
Albanians who survive eviction, expropriation and deportation will ever
consent to return to a Kosovo under the authority of a Serb dominated
regime. For this reason, if Albanians are to return to postwar Kosovo
the political status of the region may well have to change. It may have
to become a kind of UN or NATO protectorate, or be allowed to join Albania.
None of this, however, has yet been clarified by the
NATO political or military leadership. Nonetheless it is becoming more
and more difficult to believe that the aims for which the war was started
can ever be achieved. There is a risk, therefore, of this war becoming
that most dangerous of things, a war with no clear aims. As was seen in
both Vietnam and Afghanistan, no practical amount of military power, even
that of a superpower, can win such a war.
If one accepts pronouncements from
NATO and the United States, the war will continue to be exclusively an
air war and will be prosecuted as such for as long as it takes. Calls
from military analysts for the use of ground troops against the FRY have
been consistently rejected at the highest level. President Clinton has
called for war funding for a further six months. Until very recently it
has seemed that the US at least is determined not to commit ground troops
to combat. At the time of writing there has been perhaps a hint of a softening
in this position, with unconfirmed reports that NATO is now planning for
an invasion with 80,000 troops in late May.(8) Officially, however, there
is still great reluctance to contemplate a ground campaign.
There is good reason for this reluctance. The FRY will
most likely offer more effective resistance than Iraq. The terrain favours
the defence to an extraordinary degree, and there is a strong will to
fight what are perceived-due to successful propaganda and prewar media
censorship by President Milosevic's government-as aggressors and invaders
supporting Albanian terrorists determined to strip Serbia of part of her
ancient heartland. In a sense Yugoslavia has been ready for war since
Tito broke with Moscow in the late forties and prepared the country for
possible Soviet attack. As might have been expected, the coming of war
has caused the Serbs to bury their internal differences and unite in the
face of foreign attack, and they have a proud military tradition of their
own.
Part of that tradition, the successful Yugoslav guerrilla
war against the Nazis (1941-45), is often cited but is perhaps less relevant
than some think. Though Tito's partisans did tie up large numbers of Germans
and inflicted significant losses on them, it needs to be recalled that
at no time could Germany employ its full might against Tito's forces.
Simultaneously Germany was fighting a huge war in the East against the
Soviets and, after D-Day (mid-1944), against the Western Allies as well.
Tito's partisans moreover received extensive supplies and support, especially
from the British.
If NATO desires, however, it can deploy its full power
against the FRY. This would represent overwhelming force. Yugoslavia can
be isolated from any significant sources of resupply and its Armed Forces
in effect starved to death. Russia, Serbia's traditional ally throughout
this century, is presently too weak to do more than register empty protests
unless it wishes to employ nuclear weapons-something already ruled out
by the Russian Foreign Minister.(9) Nevertheless it is clear that ground
operations against a determined FRY defence would result in losses to
NATO. There would be body bags returning to the countries that committed
troops to a ground campaign.
The View from
Belgrade
The preceding is probably the assessment made in Belgrade.
There it is most likely believed that the political will to employ ground
troops is lacking in NATO and that the FRY can endure the air war until
such time as NATO tires of the effort and expense, and international political
pressures can be brought to bear to terminate the campaign. If so, then
the FRY may yet emerge battered but territorially untruncated and, moreover,
with the clear gain of an 'ethnically cleansed' Kosovo.
Such an outcome would represent a serious blow to NATO
and especially American prestige and would of course be a catastrophe
for the remaining Albanian people of Kosovo. Nevertheless, in going to
war NATO was always risking some such outcome. When a decision is made
to invoke force to settle political disputes, it is necessary to consider
carefully what level of force is likely to be necessary to achieve the
aims. President Milosevic probably thinks that NATO's leaders failed to
do this.
NATO's Dilemma
Naturally, NATO has not disclosed its military strategy
concepts or operational plans. Nevertheless, on the basis of what is publicly
known, NATO-or at least the civilian Governments which control NATO policy-appears
to have believed that air power alone could bring Yugoslavia to an acceptable
position and simultaneously prevent (or at least retard) the 'cleansing'
of Kosovo. Certainly NATO has failed in this last aim and, as noted, the
original political objectives seem increasingly irrelevant.
One can only speculate as to how long the air war will
be allowed to continue. In theory, given enough aircraft, ordnance and
time NATO could bomb the FRY back into the proverbial 'stone age'. But
few if any Kosovar Albanian lives would be saved thereby, and such a process
would take a long time-longer, perhaps, than domestic and international
pressures will allow. At the time of writing NATO, for all its military
power, actually seems little closer to achieving its aims than it was
at the start of the war.
The only military way out of this trap is for NATO to
invade Yugoslavia, defeat the FRY armed forces and dictate terms to the
Milosevic regime. But this involves a ground war and therein lies NATO's
apparent dilemma: a continued air war with dubious prospects of success
or a ground war with numerous body bags?
New Political
Objectives
If as suggested above the original war objectives are
now irrelevant, then for what is this war now being fought? A clear restatement
of NATO's terms is necessary: without this, even the Belgrade government
can have no clear idea of what NATO's demands now are. If Kosovo is to
be taken from Serbia but retained in the FRY, if it is to be a UN protectorate
of some kind, if it is to go to Albania-these points need to be clearly
understood. Likewise, it needs to be understood that the harsher the terms
the stiffer will be the resistance-the 'unconditional surrender' demand
in World War II is widely held to have prolonged that conflict.
New Military Strategy
Defining acceptable terms is one necessary thing, but
the means to force Belgrade to agree to them are another. If the military
strategy of an air war does not produce significant results within an
undefinable but probably not extensive timeframe, then NATO will be perceived
to have failed. Before that happens, if NATO desires military victory
over the FRY then a more developed strategy is required. It is now clear
that any such strategy will need to include the extensive use of ground
forces. Air power alone has already failed to stop the 'cleansing' of
Kosovo and thus far there is little indication that it has weakened Belgrade's
will to fight on.
For ground operations the next four months are the critical
time, because large forces can move freely in this poorly developed region
only during the northern summer. But a substantial NATO force will need
to be deployed, operational plans drawn up, the political difficulties
of embarking on direct combat addressed. All this, especially deployment,
takes time. Just how much time is open to debate: some believe that the
US has compromised its ability to rapidly deploy forces, though this conclusion
is by no means beyond dispute.(10)
There is little doubt that NATO can defeat the FRY forces
in a properly conducted ground war (which would of course be supported
by the continued use of air and even sea power). However there remains
the question of casualties. The defensive advantages enjoyed by the FRY
forces-they are far better placed than were the Iraqis-suggest that a
NATO victory will not come cheap. In some ways the effects of the air
war will assist the ground defence, because (for example) destroyed bridges
will hinder the movement of fast NATO forces along the few good roads.
This is a consequence of the initial decision to use air power alone:
because no thought was given to ground operations, the destruction of
bridges which, it now seems, might later be needed by NATO forces was
not seen as a problem.
Whatever NATO's real intentions were, it is arguable
that it was bad military strategy to so emphatically rule out ground operations.
There is a possibility that if Belgrade can be convinced that NATO will
undertake an invasion, it might give up the struggle. Whatever the casualties
NATO might take in a ground war, the FRY forces would suffer far worse.
And Serbia itself, which dominates the FRY, would be crippled for years
to come if NATO invades and defeats its armed forces in open combat. Kosovo
would certainly be lost, while Serb minorities in Bosnia and other former
Yugoslav republics would lose a powerful protector. Montenegro might abandon
its Serbian alliance. Instead of 'Greater Serbia', Belgrade might become
the capital of a much reduced 'lesser' Serbia. Anti-Serb wars promoted
by neighbours seeking vengeance for past injuries might be waged. Milosevic's
military advisors, if at all competent, will no doubt tell him this. A
truly credible threat of invasion might, therefore, suffice. No
such threat has yet been posed: on the contrary, NATO leaders are taking
every opportunity to state the exact opposite. This must greatly reassure
President Milosevic and reinforce his domestic position.
This war has quickly become one of
wills. On the one hand is the will of the Belgrade regime, now with overwhelming
popular support, to endure whatever NATO air power can throw at it for
as long as necessary. The air war is NATO's attempt to break that will.
Thus far it has not succeeded.
On the other is the will of NATO-again, of the civilian
Governments which control NATO-to win the war. NATO faces a hard choice
between a continued air campaign, which has yet to produce decisive results
to compensate for the loss of life caused, and a ground war which will
deliver results but only at the cost of the lives of many NATO soldiers.
Whichever side has the stronger will to win is the factor
that will ultimately decide this war.
- On 30 March 1999 the FADT Group issued a Research Note, The War
Over Kosovo, which provided some background to the conflict.
- John Sweetman, Schweinfurt: Disaster in the Skies, Ballantine
Books, London 1971, pp. 108-119 and pp. 137-43. Albert Speer, Inside
the Third Reich, Sphere Books 1971, pp. 390-92.
- International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance
1997-98, p. 100.
- NATO Press Briefing, 17 April 1999. From NATO Website: http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1999/s990417a.htm.
- Of these tanks, however, about 970 are obsolete types-World War II
Soviet T-34s (about 180) or early postwar T-55s (about 790). International
Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1997-98,
p. 99.
- Jennifer Hewitt, 'Lack of direction worries Congress', The Age,
14 April 1999.
- For a good historical survey of the breakup of Yugoslavia, see David
Anderson, The Collapse of Yugoslavia: Background and Summary,
Research Paper No.15, 1995-96, issued 23 November 1995.
- Geiif Kitney, 'Serb vow: we are ready for all-out war', The Age,
18 April 1999.
- 'Foreign Minister Ivanov Denies Missile Retargeting, Says Russia Committed
to Peace', Russian Federal News Service, in English, 1348hrs (GMT),
9 April 1999.
- Thomas Ricks, 'Sending in ground troops is out of US reach,' Sydney
Morning Herald, 20 April 1999.
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