THE "GROUND OPTION"
74 One of the most controversial questions which
has been asked ever since 24 March 1999 concerns NATO's failure
to indicate before that date that, alongside the threat of air
strikes, it was prepared to seize ground in Kosovo in pursuit
of its aim of stopping the ethnic cleansing and averting a humanitarian
catastrophe. The Alliance began by ruling out this option, but
it was reconsidered very seriously at the eleventh hour of the
campaign. Many have asked whether the public eschewal by a number
of major Alliance politicians of this option during the final
stages of the search for a diplomatic solution and the early stages
of the air campaign, contributed to Milosevic's readiness to gamble
on the Alliance backing down or giving up before the damage done
to Serbia became unsustainable.
75 Once again, it is the multinational nature of
the operation which most determined this decision.[167]
General Naumann told us he had done some preliminary, conceptual
planning for a forced ground entry in the summer of 1998. He went
on to describe how—
I presented the results of
this in July or August 1998 to the NATO Council and we were told
that these options had to be put on the shelf. I saw a lot of
pale faces around the table when I presented to them what it meant
to enter Yugoslavia against the opposition of the Serb armed forces.
We would have won without any doubt, but it would not have been
easy.[168]
As General Naumann indicated, military planners were
acutely aware of the need to maintain NATO credibility and to
back up threats to use force by demonstrating a readiness and
capability to use force on a scale which might plausibly achieve
its stated goals. He told us—
... if you start an operation
like Kosovo but rule out by public statements that you are willing
to see it through, a ruler like Milosevic who does not feel much
responsibility to his people and his country, who has just one
interest, namely to stay in power, may come to the conclusion,
"I could try to sit it out since they will not go down the
road"... I have stated I do not know how often in the NATO
Council ... the same two points. You have to tell us what is the
political objective and if you tell us to use force please be
prepared to see it through. This preparedness to see it through
is not there if you rule out in public statements the use of ground
forces and that was the element which removed uncertainty from
Milosevic's mind.[169]
76 But after September 1998, military planners had
effectively set aside further planning for a ground option, which
it was evident would not be supported by all Alliance members.
For example, the Commander of the Allied Command Europe Rapid
Reaction Corps (COMARRC), Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson,
stated that his—
... focus for 1998—and
indeed, it remained that until perhaps May of last year [1999]—
was how to put together and how to operate a peace implementation
force which would put into effect whatever agreement may be achieved
between the various parties involved in the Kosovo conflict.[170]
He stressed that—
There was no question during
our summer planning and subsequently that this force would be
anything other than a peace enforcement force, in exactly the
same light as IFOR/SFOR in Bosnia.[171]
It would appear that no serious and detailed planning
for the contingency of an opposed ground entry into Kosovo took
place within NATO after August 1998. It was only resumed in April
1999.[172]
77 We sought to elicit from witnesses the extent
to which US views dominated decision-making during the military
planning process, particularly in relation to the ground option.
None considered there to have been an overwhelming influence although
DSACEUR, General Sir Rupert Smith, observed that—
The power of the major contributor
to the actual venture, as opposed to the Alliance as a whole,
is something you can recognise. They are the ones that are carrying
the risk. They tend to be the ones who are making the decision.
It does not have to be the Americans.[173]
Similarly, the present Secretary of State agreed
that—
... if you bring large amounts
of equipment and personnel to the party you undoubtedly have a
very considerable degree of influence as to how that equipment
and those personnel are used ... Nevertheless, there was an absolute
determination on the part of the United States to operate as part
of an Alliance and that, undoubtedly, was the case. There are
tensions in that kind of process ...
78 Among the tensions within the Alliance, it
is evident that there was initially little enthusiasm in the US
to become engaged on the ground in Kosovo. The US Defense Secretary
had said in October 1998 that he would not even commit American
ground troops to a peace-keeping force.[174]
No doubt the US position would have served to encourage other
doubting NATO nations to adopt similar positions. To most if not
all nations, it would have been inconceivable to engage in forced
entry into Kosovo without the participation of US ground forces.
US influence undoubtedly played a major part in shaping decision-making
during the military planning process (as well as during the military
campaign itself). It would have been surprising if it had been
otherwise.
79 In pointing to the lessons to be learned, General
Naumann made clear his belief that one of the keys to success
is the need to preserve uncertainty in an opponent's mind about
the consequences he might face in the case of his rejection of
peaceful solutions. He went on to say—
NATO nations did not pay
heed to that experience during the Kosovo Crisis. It became most
obvious when NATO began to prepare for military options but some
NATO nations began to rule out simultaneously options such as
the use of ground forces and did so, without any need, in public.
This allowed Milosevic to calculate his risk and to speculate
that there might be a chance for him to ride the threat out and
to hope that NATO would either be unable to act at all or that
the cohesion of the Alliance would melt away under the public
impression of punishing air strikes.[175]
The Chief of the Defence Staff was similarly clear
on this point—
I would like to have seen
a ground option planned before the first bomb was dropped. I believe
it was important to do that because you need to face Milosevic
with different options.[176]
But, he explained—
We obviously had to go along
with what the market would bear. Other countries were less keen
on it.[177]
But it is not so evident that the UK was exactly
enthusiastic about the possibility of a ground option. As the
Permanent Secretary commented—
... 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 ... 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.[178]
On 24 March the then Secretary of State, George Robertson,
told us—
It is a pretty unanimous
view of the military commanders that we should not get involved
in a land campaign because the sheer numbers that would be involved
are so considerable and that is why, when I spoke to our troops
on a hillside in Macedonia three weeks ago, I gave them the commitment
that they would not fight their way into Kosovo.[179]
In the case of UK, we know it would have been difficult
to contribute to such a force on the scale required, not least
due to the overall levels of commitment facing our Armed Forces
in 1998/99.[180]
80 We conclude that, although they represented
the only politically acceptable position within the Alliance,
the public pronouncements made throughout 1998 and well into 1999
giving the impression that Alliance leaders, including those in
the UK, had discounted a forced entry ground option as part of
their military strategy, were in military terms a serious error
of judgement. They signalled a lack of resolve on NATO's part;
they resulted in serious military planning and preparation for
such an option effectively being discontinued between August 1998
and April 1999; they hamstrung the Alliance's diplomatic leverage
for securing Milosevic's compliance without recourse to military
means; and they removed a critical element of uncertainty and
danger from Milosevic's assessment of the Alliance's intentions.
Moreover, they are likely to have given comfort to Milosevic and
strengthened his hand on the domestic front, and so to have been
a significant factor in encouraging the Serbian élite to
continue to support him in defying NATO. Finally, they enabled
Milosevic to shelter much of his military equipment underground,
rather than leaving it deployed to meet the possibility of a ground
attack. This severely weakened the impact of the air attacks against
forces in the field.
81 The MoD's own report on Lessons from the Crisis
comments—
Planning for future military
operations, to be useful and relevant, needs to take into account
diplomatic, legal and political factors. Planning should cover
as many military options as necessary, but, in practice, priority
will usually be given to one or more of these. This was the case
with the air campaign option in the Kosovo crisis. In the course
of the Kosovo crisis, NATO considered a wide range of options.
The priority given to making a success of the air campaign meant
that some others were not pursued in detail. But all options remained
on the table, as the NATO Secretary General made clear during
the campaign.[181]
This last claim is not consistent with the evidence
we have taken—the ground option was only 'on the table'
between August 1998 and April 1999 in the sense that it had been
cast aside. The more truthful point is made in the MoD's next
sentence—
... the bottom line is that
maintaining NATO unity made possible the achievement in full of
our shared objectives.[182]
But maintaining NATO unity carried a high price.
The report goes on to say—
Within this context, planning
for a range of options will help maintain our flexibility of action
and the highest possible level of uncertainty in the minds of
our adversaries. It will also be important in future operations,
as was the case in the Kosovo air campaign, that when a clear
commitment is made to use force, this is sustained for as long
as necessary to achieve the agreed objectives. If potential opponents
are convinced of our purpose and determination, they are less
likely to push us to the use of force.[183]
This is putting a very positive gloss on what was
actually a much more ambivalent and confusing public presentation
of the Alliance's strategy. But it seems a muted, if welcome,
acknowledgement that political pressure to maintain Alliance consensus
led to some unforced strategic errors in the way in which the
threat of military force was deployed prior to and immediately
after 24 March.
82 However, conducting military operations in Kosovo,
with its extremes of climate and variable weather patterns, also
presented particular difficulties which we examined in some detail.[184]
Routes in and out, especially through Albania and Macedonia, are
few, with the lines of communication potentially stretched. If
forced entry had been required, then the terrain favoured the
defender.[185]
Accurate assessment of the military capabilities of Serbian and
KLA forces would also have been important in estimating the resources
NATO needed to execute a forced entry option successfully. The
VJ was a well-equipped and trained fighting force, operating in
favourable terrain. Some of our witnesses told us that it is unlikely
that the VJ could have resisted a serious NATO ground assault
for more than a few days.[186]
However, it would have been extremely difficult for NATO to deploy
its technically far superior troops to such a hostile environment,
even with air superiority gained. If the Serbian troops had put
up robust resistence there could have been significant casualties.
But as Air Marshal Sir John Day commented—
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.[187]
We discuss in more detail below the state of readiness
of the Alliance's ground forces towards the end of the campaign.
It is clear that the lack of enthusiasm in most allied governments
for justifying to their electorates the case for a forced ground
entry caused inhibitions to be placed by politicians on NATO's
military staff even to plan for a ground option. Given the failure
of NATO to plan and prepare earlier, even if the threat of a ground
attack had been made publicly before 24 March 1999, it
would have taken time to become credible to Milosevic and his
Generals.
83 The consequence was that by 24 March 1999 NATO
had to initiate military intervention in order to fulfil its threat
of the use of force, and that it had no other choice but to hope
that an air campaign would succeed in delivering its political
objectives.
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