Now that the war in Kosovo is over, what lessons, if any, can be drawn? Clearly, this was a war of air power; the great question must be which application of air power proved decide.
Sloodan Milosevic held out against a sustained application of strategic bombing, which, among other things, completely destroyed the Serbian oil industry and also wiped cut the electric power grid supplying his capital. Much of his military industry was disabled. Toward the end of the air war, NATO began to attack Serbian troops and special police in Kosovo, and, not too long after that campaign began, the Serbians withdrew from Kosovo. One might then conclude that although Milosevic could survive easily the loss of Serbian industry, he felt very different about his troops and his police, which are the props of his regime back in Serbia.
Any such analysis, however, is complicated by an additional factor. Throughout most of the air campaign, the Russians loudly protested the bombing. Milosevic may well have imagined that they would help him. Indeed, there was some talk in Belgrade of a political union among Russia, Belarus, and Yugoslavia. The Russian press hinted darkly of armed aid to the beleagured Serbs. Then, quite suddenly, the Russians told the Serbs that they could forget about aid. They decided to join the NATO campaign to demand a place among the peace-keepers in Kosovo. At that point, Milosevic lost his main hope of restraining NATO. At that point, too, some of the NATO leaders, particularly Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, were talking about using ground troops to end the problem. There seems to have been a realistic prospect of an invasion, probably in August.
We can only guess at Milosevic's reasoning, yet our guesses are very important for the future. To the extent that we face limited rather than large-scale warfare over the next few years, our enemies are likely to resemble Slobodan Milosevic: dictators or semi-dictators relying heavily on nationalist rhetoric. In this regard, Milosevic is not that different from, say, Saddam Hussein. Neither cares particularly about the fate of his people. For each, it is clear that personal survival as a ruler is the only important issue. The ultimate props of both regimes are the army and the police. In Saddam's case, the army itself could be seen as a threat, and so he created a special force, the Republican Guard, to protect the regime against any possible army coup.
Thus in Iraq, the Republican Guard and the secret police were the key guarantors of the regime and thus, one might suggest, the most important targets for any attacker. In Serbia, Milosevic seems to be reasonably sure of the loyalty of the army, and apparently there is no large elite force interposed between him and it. That may well mean that the Serbian government is fundamentally more stable than that of Iraq's.
For the future, the U.S. military is committed to the strategy embodied in the Joint Chiefs' Joint Vision 2010, which emphasizes the surgical use of very precise weapons to overcome massed enemy forces. The strategy depends on identifying and destroying the enemy's center of gravity, in hopes of promoting a quick collapse. The war in Kosovo can be seen as a search for just that center of gravity. The war began with an enabling campaign, intended to secure for NATO aircraft more or less complete freedom of action over Serbia and Kosovo. This phase was widely derided, and many commentators saw it as proof that NATO governments were more interested in avoiding casualties than in doing damage. Yet a glance at the strengths of NATO air arms show that the numbers of aircraft and airmen are not huge. Serious losses would prove crippling, not merely embarrassing on the evening television news.
Had it been obvious just what attacks would have thrown the Serbs out of Kosovo quickly, then it could have been argued that the delay involved in that initial phase was obscene: every day that NATO dallied more Kosovars were being thrown out of their homes or murdered. It now seems clear, however, that no one really knew what the Serbs' center of gravity was. At the outset, there seems to have been some hope that the simple shock of NATO's willingness to strike directly at Serbia would have pushed the Serbs out. Presumably reflecting the hopeful briefings he received before the war, President Bill Clinton eventually said that he imagined there was a 50-50 chance of victory within the first week or so.
That was wishful thinking; the next phase was more sophisticated. Milosevic relies on well-placed allies to maintain his power, and the goal became to convince them to oust him. Presumably they support him because he helps them enrich themselves, in classic Third World fashion. Thus the next phase of the NATO campaign was to attack the major properties of those supporters, such as Serbian oil refineries. In addition, attacks began that were designed to bring home to the Serbs the cost of their support for the horrors in Kosovo, and Belgrade was deprived of electric power. As in past bombing campaigns, these actions seem to have cemented public support for Milosevic—antigovernment demonstrations notwithstanding.
It probably did not help that a U.N. court in The Hague took this juncture to indict Milosevic for war crimes, although the court's action certainly provided NATO forces with more moral support for their attacks. It is difficult to see just why Milosevic would have wanted to surrender in order to face the charges. Presumably there is some thought that, having seen their leader exposed to the world as a criminal, Serbs would reject him. This is to deny the nationalist logic of the Balkans. The same court has indicted and convicted officers in the Croatian Army for their crimes in Bosnia, and those same officers have returned home after serving sentences to be greeted as heroes. Milosevic's rule has been based on nationalism, and for a Western oriented court to attack him may merely increase his prestige at home. We have not yet reached the point where our ideas of justice are universally accepted. Had that been the case, the Kosovo crisis never would have happened.
Had the NATO forces overrun all of Serbia, or had the Serbians themselves ejected Mr. Milosevic, the U.N. tribunal's decisions would easily have translated into the trial of a deposed leader. With Serbia still more or less intact, however, we find ourselves in the difficult position of making President Milosevic's ouster a precondition for economic aid to that badly damaged country, while it will be quite easy for him to portray any opponents as traitors more interested in comfort than in standing up against foreign attackers. All of this would have been true anywhere, but it is perhaps more relevant in Serbia, a country in which the central legends are all about victimization. Indeed, the issue of the war crimes is reminiscent of the post-1945 debate over whether it was really wise to announce the goal of unconditional surrender during World War II. To proponents, the Allies had to demand unconditional surrender, lest the manifestly criminal German and Japanese governments survive. To detractors, the demand for unconditional surrender made it that much easier for the Nazis and their Japanese counterparts to call for a fight to the death. Of course, we may now make some deal with Milosevic, but that would be to devalue, perhaps fatally, the international court.
Back to the bombing—with Serbian industry badly damaged and Belgrade in shambles, the allies tried one other tack: they attacked Serbian forces in Kosovo directly. That was not easy, because there were no NATO ground forces in contact with the Serbs, and because the Serbs were not operating in large concentrations. In past wars, it has been very difficult to find, let alone to strike, such enemy forces. This time NATO had an important lever in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Small KLA units ambushed Serbians guerilla-style, after which the Serbians would concentrate to overrun the ambushers. NATO aircraft would then attack the concentrations from the air. At the end of the war, NATO claimed that it had killed 5,000 to 10,000 Serbian troops and special police in this way. In addition, it claimed that it had destroyed about half the Serbian tanks. As this goes to press, the number of tanks actually destroyed appears to be far lower—possibly because the Serbs deployed large numbers of decoy tanks and vehicles.
These attacks did matter though, because they apparently finally struck at something Milosevic cared about—the army and the special police, which are the ultimate support of the regime. To the extent that the air campaign was decisive, it would seem that Milosevic decided that he could not afford continued destruction of these forces. It may well be that he feared that serious damage would so disaffect them as to cause mass desertions.
With the end of the war, it became apparent that NATO claims of damage to Serbian vehicles and troops had been greatly exaggerated. The Serbs claimed that only 592 soldiers and special police had been killed. While that is almost certainly far too low, the NATO claims are probably too high. No shattered tanks were found in Kosovo, but it is known that the Serbs took their damaged vehicles home to cannibalize them (with an arms embargo in place, they can hardly seek replacements and the factories used to produce vehicles have been badly damaged). We just do not know how well NATO air did. We can guess, however, that Milosevic did not want to risk severe damage.
For him, Kosovo was a means, not an end. It was a lever to power, used to excite Serbian nationalists; the great Serbian national legend is an account of defeat by the Turks in Kosovo in 1389. For Serbians, the Kosovars are the descendants of those Turks. Milosevic's effective political career began in Kosovo in 1989, with the cry that Serbs would never again retreat; as soon as he used that cry to gain power, he eliminated the autonomy which the Kosovars had enjoyed. That ignited the long unrest in the province, culminating in the war. However, it is vital to keep in mind that Milosevic manifestly cares far more about his own power than about any particular territory. Kosovo is gone, but now he can capitalize on the grievances this war has left in Serbia itself. That is not too bad a consolation prize. He can, moreover, stir up Serbians with the cry to build to reconquer the province. Reconquest will seem particularly sweet if the West makes Kosovo prosperous while Serbia languishes in self-imposed poverty.
For anyone who regards this scenario as absurd, modern history in the Middle East provides a reasonable parallel. Who can count the number of regimes that had no difficulty retaining power after their armies had been soundly trounced by the Israelis? Or which survived the loss of territory they claimed was integral to their statehood?
So perhaps the strategic lesson of Kosovo is that everyone got something as a result of the way the war ended. The West triumphed, in that Kosovo has been liberated. The Kosovars will get their homes back, with generous economic aid to make up for the devastation wrought by the Serbs. In triumphing, the West rather too generously allowed the Serbian army and police to withdraw from Kosovo in good order; they even presented their return to Belgrade as a triumph of sorts. Milosovic got something, too: a new cause to replace the failed triumph of Kosovo (which in turn succeeded a brutal failure in Bosnia). NATO's campaign probably guaranteed him another decade in power.
Was this victory for the West? In one sense yes, because Kosovo was liberated. In another sense no, because Milosevic remains in power. The great question is whether any other ruler, contemplating the damage done to Serbia, will risk the same. Perhaps the real point of the early stages of the air war against Serbia was not so much to dislodge Milosevic as to dissuade other would-be Milosevics. Just how well that has worked remains to be seen.