Examination of Witness (Questions 940
- 959)
WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 2000
GENERAL SIR
RUPERT SMITH
940. Where was the decision taken to extend
the bombing campaign beyond Kosovo into Serbia?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) That decision was made,
as I recall it, at the North Atlantic Council.
941. Which did senior commanders consider to
be the more important in shaping the campaign plan: attacking
the Serbian para-military police or the Serbian military?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) We did not differentiate
at SHAPE between the two. They were working side by side and in
cahoots.
Laura Moffatt
942. Sir Rupert, we have been trying to focus,
in our evidence sessions, on the issue of ground forces considered
at the beginning or not. It appears from evidence from other committees,
the Foreign Affairs Committee interviewing Sir John Goulden, that
it may have been possible for the politicians to say that it would
have been wise at that stage in order to keep the Alliance together.
But, on the other hand, from other evidence, particularly from
General Guthrie, it may not have been necessary and there was
no enthusiasm from the military side of the operation to commit
ourselves to ground forces. Do you agree with that assessment?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) No, not really. From the
point of view of SHAPE we were urging the development of a ground
option once the bombing was on from really very early in that
period, March to June. I am trying to remember, I would have said
in early April, if not earlier, SACEUR and I were talking about
the need to develop a plan. The next major escalatory step was
to go and take this place, how were we going to do it and so on
and so forth.
943. It was being considered?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Yes, but let me be quite
clear about the difference between what two generals were thinking
and starting to talk about and what was formally tasked. We were
thinking, certainly, about it in April and my memory is early
in April. We were talking about it and suggesting that we should
be getting on and thinking about it, and making a plan and so
on and so forth. We were not formally tasked to do that in a formal
sense.
944. Hence the political influence there.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Yes.
945. I understand that.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Certainly we were talking
about it to our capitals and I would have said by mid April, certainly
late April, I had a pretty clear idea in my own head how one would
go about it if we had to do it and so on and so forth.
946. Right. What I am driving at is the time
span that was available to you as this became more of an option.
We have heard about politicians saying nothing had been ruled
out and the time span that was offered to you. You have told us
that you were the person who had to think about where all the
bits of kit and the people were going to come from.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Yes.
947. What did that do to your planning process?
We have heard from people that there were two months to do the
job.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Let us draw a distinction
just for a moment between taking the decision to do this as opposed
to taking the decision to make the plan. The more parallel and
informal activity you have taking place the quicker you can reach
that point of making a decision in a hurry. Part of our thinking
was to get comfortable, that there was time to do something. You
have played it back to me, presumably you have had it from somebody,
some witness or other, that we only had a month to go or words
to that effect. That was a month, as I recall, a month for a decision
to be made so we could start moving the forces to get there, so
we could have time to do the job if we won and then get the refugees
back before winter. That became the stop line. Let us say winter
is the beginning of November, therefore you have to have a month
to do that in, therefore you have to ... etc., etc.. So part of
the thinking of all that through was to make sure we had an understanding
of what the time limits were, but also to have an understanding
of what would be required and that sort of thing. Now, so far
as I am concerned, as the force generator, it poses me with a
problem because I cannot formally go around asking nations for
this thing if we have not had a formal plan and so on and so forth.
The next thing I have to make a judgment about, and it is a straight
forward, professional judgment—I say it is straight forward,
it does not make it easy—is as to what level of—these
are my words for it—fight are we going to have. Broadly,
that dictates the size of your national grouping. Generally we
all agreed that if we were going to have to occupy Kosovo, and
have a bit of a fight to make that happen, and enforce some form
of agreement, then the level of national grouping needed to be
a brigade group, and that was what you saw us generating for Mike
Jackson's force in the actual event. If we were going to go in
and actually fight for Kosovo then we were looking at national
divisions. I do not say it would have been like the Gulf in the
sense of the quantities or those sorts of forces but it would
have been like the Gulf in that the national components which
actually went to do battle were at divisional level because that
was the size of the fight. I would have started to look for divisions
and, indeed, started to say to people in various capitals "If
we are going to do this, this is what we are going to need to
buy".
948. Right.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Now, to that extent, that
may have put all sorts of people off but it was better in my view
that they knew the size of the cheque before they wheeled me in.
949. You had determined the level of force presumably
at this 150,000 mark?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) No, national components
I am talking about, the size of that block.
950. Right, yes.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Now, when you add it up
in other words as to how one might do this, you are coming in
at about a corps which in round figures, with its national support
elements and all the rest of it, you are looking at about 150,000.
951. Okay. We promised 50,000 so you would have
had to look for another 100,000 elsewhere.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) United Kingdom had.
952. You put that to various nations, "100,000
between you, you have got to come up with"?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) No, it was not "100,000
between you" but "I want this in fighting blocks of
one nation".
953. Right.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) "I want a division
from you and a division from you".
954. Okay.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) We were beginning to hawk
that around, informally, at purely professional levels at the
end of April.
955. That took you how long to just warn people,
warn nations?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) I suppose about a fortnight.
This was in every day discourse, if you like.
956. I think, Sir Rupert, most people would
say—and I am amongst them—that as the campaign went
it was as well executed as it could possibly be but the reality
was that we were quite lucky to get away with it. Do you agree
with that? Do you think that is a fair statement or would you
like to add to it?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) I do not think it is a
fair statement, no. Where was the luck? What did we get away with?
We—NATO, 19 nations—said we would go and do this and
we did it. We did not fall apart. We did not lose anybody. We
lost three aeroplanes, I think I am right in saying. We achieved
those stated objectives of getting the VJ and the MUP out and
putting the refugees back, etc. Whether that was worth doing,
whether that was what we should have done within a greater diplomatic
hold, I leave to others to argue but in the use of NATO I do not
see where the luck played.
Chairman
957. Was not the luck that we did not have to
fight a ground war? You knew all about the Gulf and we had months
to build up our forces, we had wonderful air fields.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) If that was what you meant
by "getting away with it", that we did not have to escalate,
we would have had another load of mountains to climb but I am
quite convinced we could have done that ground attack.
Mr Brazier
958. Who else would have produced a division,
General? Who else do you think would have divvied up one of these
divisions?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) If it had come to that,
I think you would have seen American, British, French and German
forces deployed. I am not saying there would not have been other
nations there.
Mr Hancock
959. General, in the fighting of the air battle,
do you think we were equipped from the start to do the job that
NATO wanted done? Part of the reason was that the right assets
were not in the right place and maybe we shot our bolt a bit too
early and that was why it took so long.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) There was an imbalance
in the equipment, that was for sure. There was far too much good
stuff with America. I do not want it to be taken away from the
Americans but it is not healthy for an Alliance, as an Alliance,
to have quite such an imbalance of that high quality stuff. Also,
we were using NATO and its equipment for a purpose that was not
what that construct had been designed for. We were applying it
in a very new situation to achieve an objective that was a coercive
objective, a deterrent objective, and actually to change someone's
intention when the whole machine was designed to destroy an attacking
force and thereby deter. We were now using it for really quite
a different thing and using the equipments that had been procured
and the procedures and all the rest of it, using those for that
other objective, for a different objective. A lot of the comment
I suggest—a lot of the comment—about what we did,
specifically about SACEUR, can be understood, I suggest, because
he was the person who found himself having to employ these equipments
and procedures for an objective that was not what they had been
intended for in the first place.
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