Examination of Witness (Questions 960
- 975)
WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 2000
GENERAL SIR
RUPERT SMITH
960. General, your colleagues who were here
an hour before you told us for a year before they had every possible
plan under the sun put into place. I sat in the Pentagon on Monday
and the Secretary of Defence told us that every possible air platform
that was required was available. Was it the plan that was wrong?
Was it the politicians who got it wrong and said you had to fight
a softly, softly war or was it that we just were not ready and
that was why it took so long to subdue Milosevic?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Certainly it was not the
latter because he was involved, Milosevic. That is like saying
to a boxer "Why don't you always knock him out in the first
30 seconds?" There is an adversary involved and he is part
of the equation. Where I think this lies is two fold. We were
using a machine, as I have described, that was used, an Alliance,
the whole structure, for something that it was not designed to
do in the first place. That is my whole point about changing a
man's intentions rather than taking what it is you want. My second
point is that not only were we trying to change his intentions—I
have forgotten my second point now.
Chairman
961. It does not really matter because we have
eight questions to get through in about nine minutes.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) It has completely gone
out of my head, my second point.
962. I am glad you have forgotten my second
point.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) It will come back.
963. General, the US Department of Defence in
their After Action Report to Congress said thus: "NATO's
command structure worked well, but parallel US and NATO command-and-control
structures complicated operational planning and unity of command".
Would you agree with that? Were they saying "Hell, we could
have managed on our own. Why did we not fight a war just with
the United States? NATO made things more difficult for us"?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) It is difficult in an Alliance.
It is a subset of one of my other answers. This is inherent in
an Alliance, you have to consider the other parties. It is complicated.
You do not even speak the same languages and so on and so forth.
Of course it is easier to use a national link but then you are
not in an Alliance.
964. Sure.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) It goes back to this business
about it was designed for something it was not being used for.
I remember the second point now, it is this point about the context.
NATO is a military force, it does not do diplomacy. You only get
the military bit when there are other pressures and other factors
to be brought to bear.
965. Can I go back to an earlier question, and
perhaps as time is short you could drop us a note. You said to
Mr Viggers that the decision to extend the bombing to strategic
targets in Serbia was a military planners' decision. It seems
to me something as precipitate as that, to move out of Kosovo
into Yugoslavia or Bosnia, I would have thought that should be
a political decision not a military decision. Could you have a
look through your papers.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) I said it was the North
Atlantic Council.
Mr Viggers: Yes, I heard that.
Chairman
966. Okay. Fine. It is not entirely clear from
which headquarters the air campaign was effectively directed.
The impression we have is that it was dictated from SHAPE by SACEUR.
Is that so?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Putting it together, packaging
the forces up, actually briefing all the pilots and all of that
sort of thing, that was conducted by the headquarters beneath
SHAPE. The direction of the effort and the clearance of the specific
targets was conducted by SACEUR and SHAPE.
967. One of the things we have heard is that
perhaps General Clark needed a senior air man beside him. Who
was his senior air adviser? Where was Lt General Short who was
the designated Combined Force Air Component Commander?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) He was down in Italy at
the CAOC. There were these daily video television conferences.
I do not think he lacked for air advice.
968. Did the command and control of air operations
and the physical dislocation of NATO senior commanders give rise
to any problems?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) By which you mean that
SHAPE was where SHAPE was.
969. Yes, and spreading out.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) No, I do not think so.
As I say, we had these VTCs and endless telephone links and so
on and so forth. There was no shortage of communications. You
could argue that there was possibly too much of it.
Mr Hepburn
970. We gained the impression from General Jackson
that there was little dialogue between the Air Component Commander
and himself regarding the conduct of the air campaign. Is this
right and, if it is right, should there have been greater dialogue?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) It is so. General Jackson's
part was not part of that plan. Now, we could argue that we should
had a sort of holistic overarching plan but, as I have said before,
there was no such context. This was an air option being exercised.
That is the procedural reason, if you like.
971. General Jackson also said that it was not
clear to him at the time of his deployment into theatre what he
was supposed to be doing. At this point we believe he was directly
under SHAPE command. Is he right to be critical on this point?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) I would not say it is critical,
it is a statement of fact. He was deployed, as I recall it, under
the extraction force plan at its third stage. We had authority
to do that, we wanted to get the headquarters out there and so
forth, and my memory is he went out under the extraction force
plan, whatever that was. Again, we must differentiate between
the difficulties of an Alliance needing these things and those
of us who were trying to make it work in spite of those difficulties
and get over these various mountains. So you seize these opportunities
to move people out there when you can. As a result people are
deployed into less than perfect text book circumstances. He is
completely correct in what he says. What is more, nations for
all parts of my debate, as it were, started to deploy people out
there under their own auspices as opposed to waiting for this
to be done on a consensus basis by the Alliance as a whole. We
built forces up there which mercifully were in place when all
those people started flooding out. Yes, those are comments. They
could be criticisms but that was why it occurred. What would you
rather have NATO do, sit on its hands and wait to be told, in
which case you would not have had those people there in time at
all.
972. What wider crisis management command and
control lessons has NATO learned from the Kosovo experience? Are
its structures, practices and procedures responsive enough?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) I think the answer in the
broad terms is that we have got to produce a more overarching
context in which to employ force. That was the whole. The recognition—I
think this is fair to say—in NATO, I am now speaking of
NATO not of SHAPE, of this point about building in a capacity
to escalate. All of that has to be laid off against the recognition
that an Alliance is an Alliance and has certain characteristics
which will always make that a relatively difficult thing to achieve.
Chairman
973. Lastly, which would you say was the most
important part of the bombing campaign, that of Kosovo or of Serbia?
(General Sir Rupert Smith) In terms of achieving the
objective, the latter, the strategic targets in Serbia rather
than the tactical targets in Kosovo.
974. Thank you very much. We will terminate
the meeting now. If there is anything, when people have left,
you would like to say informally we will be grateful.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) Thank you.
975. Thank you so much, General. I hope we will
chase you to your next appointment, wherever that is.
(General Sir Rupert Smith) I will try not to make
such foolish mistakes.
Chairman: We all make them. You are on
a steep learning curve when it comes to making howlers like that.
I am top of the list. Thank you so much.
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