Examination of witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 15 MARCH 2000
MR KEVIN
TEBBIT, GENERAL
SIR CHARLES
GUTHRIE, AIR
MARSHAL SIR
JOHN DAY
and MR SIMON
WEBB
Mr Cann
40. It is not a stupid question, it is very
pertinent.
(Mr Tebbit) I think you are missing the point though
that this was a political operation, this was not a military approved
operation. The success we sought was not a military victory over
Serbia or Milosevic, it followed a set of clear principles that
we articulated, that NATO articulated, that even the UN Secretary
General articulated.
41. In military fashion.
(Mr Tebbit) By their nature the military force was
an adjunct to a wider political effort. Military officers, including
the Chief of Defence Staff, were an adjunct to that overall objective.
It was not just a question of the effect of involving other countries.
Mr Cann: I take your strictures, but
I do not agree.
Mr Hepburn
42. 12,000 reserves is a substantial number,
can I ask what sort of disciplines you would have been calling
on to embark on an invasion?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) I think we would have
looked at logisticians, engineers, signallers and infantry, they
would be the main places where we would look.
43. Does that indicate a shortage that you have
within the forces at the present time?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) We have got 800 reservists
there. We have got shortages but recruiting is going very well
at the moment. Retention is getting better and we are hopeful
of getting full manning as predicted.
Mr Brazier
44. Two points just arising out of those answers,
Sir Charles, and also Air Marshal Day. Firstly, is there not a
certain paradox between, on the one hand, saying that there was
extreme urgency to get these people back to their homes as the
refugees had increased ten fold since the bombing, and yet on
the other telling us that the configuration was all wrong for
a ground invasion, that we would need much larger numbers of troops,
differently configured, and also that NATO was very stable and
solid but of course only on the air bombing? We know the French,
Germans and others had grave doubts about sending ground troops
in. Was this not, in fact, a very close run thing indeed?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) It appeared to us that
NATO was moving and other nations were moving. No-one was enthusiastic
about an opposed ground invasion but people were beginning to
realise that perhaps you could not go on bombing forever, and
therefore we ought to do something on the ground. It was coming,
some countries were more forward leaning than others, and I would
not want to mark them out of ten, but I felt people were moving
gradually in that direction from talking to my military colleagues
at the time.
45. It would have been a long way to move in
a few days, Sir Charles.
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) You are absolutely right
and that is why with the approaching winter I made the remark
that in the next month we needed to make that decision because
otherwise we would have got into winter and the bad weather. The
weather, as you know, is terrible in Kosovo.
46. The last point, just picking up something
my colleague, Peter, said earlier on, the issue of these cases,
and I understand there may be more than one, out of our relatively
small number of volunteers who have lost their civilian jobs as
a result of going to the Balkans. You mentioned an experiment
to take place shortly. Could I suggest that unless the MoD is
seen to very, very solidly support those people, experimenting
for compulsory call-out would be seen as a joke right across the
TA?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) I think it is absolutely
right what you are saying.
Chairman
47. General, I regarded the primacy of the mission
in the early days to retain NATO solidarity. Quite clearly the
United States put their stamp on it very early on by saying no
ground forces. I was of the view, as most people I suspect were,
that this bully once faced with the threat would run, but I am
not a professional psychiatrist or psychologist. When you look
at the evidence, when you look at the initial sortie rate of 0.35
sorties per aircraft a day, when you look at the very restrictive
rules of engagement, not getting below 15,000 feet, when you look
at the other factors which were obvious to Milosevic because we
said so quite clearly, in dealing with a hard headed flexible
realist like Milosevic would he not have reached the conclusion
very early on that these guys were not really serious and even
though most of us thought he would capitulate on reflection with
the soft way in which we started, I know you could argue it is
the lowest rung of escalation, was it not stupid of us all, those
who believed that these first modest signals would bring about
capitulation? Frankly do we not all look now—I say "we"
generally—quite ridiculous?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) Well, he did capitulate,
did he not? I would say that our experience of him at Dayton and
our experience of him in Bosnia had shown that he did back down.
He did not back down on this occasion and the leaders of NATO
were not at war with the people of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
They did not want to damage them any more and they built up a
programme and they ratcheted it up. Air Marshal Day is on the
edge of his seat to talk about 15,000 feet, which he ought to
be allowed to do. It went on for a long time. As I said, we were
prepared for a long haul. Have you a better plan?
48. Have I?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) A better plan?
49. I did not at the time but I do not think
you did either.
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) No, because we had a
plan which worked.
50. Eventually. Would it not have been feasible
to have started rather higher up the level of escalation?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) You have probably heard
what the United States General, General Short, has been saying
about how we ought to have taken out great chunks of Serbia and
bombed Belgrade on day one. Firstly, that was not what we were
trying to do and, secondly, again that was a step too far for
quite a lot of the alliance. We have to think of alliance solidarity.
Rather than having a triumph of NATO solidarity, which actually
saw this thing through, it would have had a disaster on day one.
Mr Viggers
51. Does it worry you that in the attempt to
maintain the solidarity of NATO, which was successful, the truth
was an early casualty?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) Why was the truth an
early casualty?
52. In stating that a ground campaign was ruled
out.
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) At that stage it was
but we moved towards it. I am just the Chief of Defence Staff.
Chairman
53. A position eagerly sought I must say. You
are doing it exceedingly well, Sir Charles. The line of questioning,
so far as I am concerned, is that the alliance was right in saying
we had to remain cohesive but I think it is useful for the punter
outside to realise that a price was paid for alliance cohesion
and that was adopting a military strategy which now it seems almost
inevitable in the short term was bound to fail. Whilst I do not
think you were wrong in what you did, people then had to realise
that in elevating political considerations above all other considerations
you often find military success is less and less likely.
(Mr Tebbit) There is one point you are overlooking.
I think everybody would agree with you that the more you can keep
uncertainty in the mind of a bully that he might really get clobbered
hard the better it is. Personally I regret also that we were not
able to keep that uncertainty going and that there were clear
statements ruling out a ground campaign. But that was the political
reality, we agreed with that. There is a second point which does
not give anybody particularly more comfort. But in terms of fact
it would have taken the alliance a long time to have mobilised
a force that could have given effect to a threat. Also we would
have had to have come to terms with what would have been going
on in Kosovo during that period. As I say, we could not have got
it there any earlier than George Robertson said, in September,
in order to have used ground forces. The international community
was still working at that time with the Russians trying to bring
pressure to bear on Milosevic to reverse his actions. There was
that dimension as well. It is also a question of whether one could
have credibly achieved other options quickly and that was not
possible, it was not there. The strategy that was adopted was
successful in the end.
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) We did not have to bomb
Belgrade to achieve Dayton.
Dr Lewis
54. Surely saying that ground forces would not
be used, full stop, meant that all Milosevic thought he was faced
with was having to sit out the bombing to the end?
(General Sir Charles Guthrie) Yes.
55. Would you not agree that the most recent
ex-Chief of Air Staff at the time all this was going on, Sir Michael
Graydon, was right when he stated publicly that it was a mistake
to rule out the use of ground forces in this way, even if we were
not going to use them at all or even if, as Mr Tebbit said, we
would not be able to use them for some months, because it would
enable Milosevic to shelter all his military hardware in impenetrable
bunkers so that an air campaign could not possibly take it out?
I would like, perhaps, Sir John Day's comments on that as an airman.
(Air Marshal Sir John Day) I would love to answer
that. There is no point in threatening ground forces if you have
not got the organisation ready to mobilise those ground forces.
Milosevic, as any other opponent, is very shrewd and if we, the
NATO alliance, had threatened the use of ground forces and he
did not see ground forces starting to mobilise, he would have
started to see fissures in the alliance as to who was prepared
to react quickly and who was not, that would have been a complete
own goal for NATO.
56. One short one on that. That would apply
if we said "we are going to use ground forces any minute
now", but what we did was to say "We are not going to
use ground forces at all" and that surely sent Milosevic
the signal that if he could just hold out with the bombing long
enough he would win?
(Mr Tebbit) We did not have the luxury of being an
independent commentator like Air Marshal Graydon, we were actors
within a team and we had to play by the rules of the team. I have
already conceded your point that ideally one aims to put uncertainty
in the mind of an aggressor but there were also very big political
realities there. If you are going to threaten things you have
to be able to back it up, you have to be able to do it quite swiftly,
and it was not possible to do so. Consider the amount of civilian
casualties you would have inflicted and created by an opposed
ground force operation. We talk lightly about all this. We did
everything we possibly could to minimise casualties and collateral
damage because we were not waging a classic military war, we were
seeking a political objective to reverse ethnic cleansing and
this was a problem even from the air. If it had been an opposed
ground force invasion the casualties would have been enormous
and we would have been rightly criticised for that sort of carnage.
Now these were real political calculations and practical calculations
that had to be made at the time.
57. We did threaten that.
(Mr Tebbit) In the end, yes.
(Mr Webb) Having come to work on the lessons side,
I think Lord Robertson made an important point in his piece for
all of those who come and look at this from a lessons point of
view, which was to say "Here is a campaign which achieved
its objectives without a single combat casualty". People
who want to introduce new options, and I know something about
what happens when you have ground force actions, have to ask themselves
the question of whether their alternative suggestions could have
achieved the objectives without a single combat casualty, and
I think that is the dilemma we all face here.
Mr Gapes
58. Can I take you to the work of the Kosovo
Verification Mission before the actual conflict. In retrospect,
do you think that the Kosovo Verification Mission was sufficiently
strong, well equipped and capable of carrying out its mission?
Have our partners within the OSCE accepted/recognised that it
was unwise to leave a mission in post which was incapable of carrying
out its mission? Are there any lessons for the future about the
way in which that Verification Mission worked or did not work
and was then forced to be taken out?
(Air Marshal Sir John Day) The fact of the matter
is the Kosovo Verification Mission was the best deal that Mr Holbrook
could get in October 1998. It worked for a few months. It was
a bit slow getting on the ground and in the end those who thought
that it was given an impossible task were proved right. The fact
that it was slow getting on the ground, there was a vacuum between
the Holbrook deal being agreed with Milosevic in October and the
Verification Mission building up, was one of the reasons why various
nations, including Britain, put troops on the border ready from
March onwards so as soon as the air campaign succeeded there would
not be a vacuum before the ground force went in. Arguably you
are right, they were not sufficiently well equipped in terms of
what the law gave them, what Milosevic had been prepared to give
them, but at the time it was the best deal that could be attained
and there was hope that it would succeed.
59. By agreement they were unarmed?
(Air Marshal Sir John Day) Correct.
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