The Kosovo crisis was just the latest in a series of cautious, halfhearted military solutions to international problems. If these Albanian refugees were worth fighting for, weren't they also worth risking American casualties? Our leaders must stop pursuing zero-casualty combat operations and begin asking themselves what kind of victory will be worth risking the lives of American servicemembers.
On the day immediately preceding the opening salvos of the action that came to be known as Operation Allied Force, U.S. Army General Wesley K. Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander-in-Chief, United States European Command, stated during a video teleconference with his U.S. four-star component commanders that the number one "measure of merit" for success in the upcoming operation was limiting, if not eliminating, any losses suffered by alliance and U.S. forces. Impacting the situation on the ground in the Balkans, whether through direct military effect or through the political message implicit in the upcoming bombardment, was secondary.
To many of those watching, there was no ambiguity in General Clark's direction to his force and unit commanders participating in the operation. The target list, strike packages, and public relations campaign were being tailored to bring a "proportional" level of force to bear on the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in order to force acceptance of the Ramboulliet Accords and to mitigate the ongoing anti-Albanian campaign in Kosovo. There was no discussion of a knockout punch, or of the kind of overwhelming waves of strikes that had heralded the opening night of the 1991 Gulf War. Though the question of a more complete campaign plan hung almost palpably in the air, it could not be discussed on the record simply because neither the North Atlantic Council (NATO's governing political body) nor the U.S. National Command Authority had authorized the military commanders to plan one. The U.S. and Western alliance military establishment of 1999, arguably hobbled by a decade of cuts but still supremely capable, found itself paralyzed by a lack of political will.
As the operation advanced from limited introductory strikes into a more encompassing air campaign, the situation in villages and towns across the province arguably may have even become tertiary to the concern that the NATO action might fray or crack the political unity of the alliance itself. The fact that NATO had no plans for a ground offensive was even pointed out with pride by NATO briefers at the daily press conferences in Brussels. Calculated to help keep less-motivated member nations in the fold, this fact actually publicly exposed the unnatural acts being undertaken to maintain the unity of the alliance. Behind the scenes, hard-working and earnest servicemen and women spent countless hours preparing targets, reviewing collateral damage estimates, and building strike packages in order to have their work parsed by a hierarchy of individuals out of uniform whose only previous connection with these issues had been theoretical at best. This process stressed repeatedly the direction of the alliance's political leadership not to "unnecessarily" hazard lives. The sheer technological, material, and professional superiority enjoyed by the alliance forces made this possible. And so, in a 78-day campaign waged expertly by U.S. and NATO forces, no casualties resulted from enemy action.
In traditional scorecard terms, NATO took the contest in a walk. Though a certain amount of revisionist recounting is now occurring, the stated, if hazy, political goal of the alliance was met. A NATO-led force today attempts to maintain the peace (civility is too far off to consider) as unwelcome guests in a province of a sovereign European nation. Despite this "victory," Slobodan Milosevic and his regime remained in Belgrade secure in power and privilege for another year as U.S. and NATO combat troops-cum-nation builders patrol Kosovo, spending precious dollars, resources, and occasionally lives while the inhabitants slip slowly back into fratricidal conflict. It is reasonable to suggest that in this case no traditional victory can be claimed, as the end state after the conflict is a political situation even more convoluted and dangerous than that which existed prior to the campaign.
It is not the purpose of this essay to examine the history or future course of conflict in the Balkans. Instead, the intent is to suggest that a simple, admirable, and wholeheartedly unassailable goal has taken on an insidious and cancerous role in the application, or misapplication, of military action in the greater context of U.S. foreign policy. As the United States steps broadly into the 21st century, with the confidence of a surging economy and status as the world's only true superpower, its armed forces are being progressively emasculated by the fear of taking casualties.
The ethos at the core of a volunteer military such as ours has been turned on its head. No longer do we ask our servicemembers to place their lives at risk in order to save the lives of others. Instead, guaranteeing the life of the servicemember is a higher priority than safeguarding the lives of those we have pledged to protect. This is not to suggest that it is or should be the core mission of U.S. servicemembers to safeguard non-American lives, but that once the preservation of those innocents is given as the bedrock rationale for placing U.S. forces in harm's way, ensuring their security gains de facto moral equivalence with safeguarding American lives. This leads to a series of serious and uncomfortable questions: What is an acceptable exchange rate in lives? How many more Kosovar Albanians needed to die in order to justify greater risk on the part of our fliers or our ground forces? What trip wires need to be crossed to make it "necessary" to risk the loss of life? Perhaps the most fundamental question is simply that which asks whose lives are worthy of our protection? During his effort to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Joseph Stalin is reputed to once have said, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." A similarly perverted logic seems to be at play in our approach to the application of military force in recent years. In our case, the approach seems to be to ignore the greater statistic in order to avoid facing the singular tragedy.
There always has been an infernal calculus in warfare. Commanders always have asked how many Then can be justifiably hazarded in order to meet objectives or to bring maximum harm to their enemies. That legitimate calculus has been replaced with a different one: How many of our men can we hazard and still maintain public support for an operation? How many flag-draped caskets are we willing to welcome home by way of Dover Air Force Base?
The forces involved in Allied Force acted superbly, bringing about fantastically high rates of mission success, precisely delivering millions of pounds and many millions of dollars worth of ordnance with minimal collateral damage. That success clearly was judged within the operational boundaries set by the political leadership. The alliance rightfully trumpeted those successes. But could not the alliance also have trumpeted limited losses on the part of our forces in exchange for timelier and more conclusive end to the greater issue of the Milosovic regime's continuing stranglehold on south central Europe?
The decision to bring the terrible force of arms to play in a world crisis must be the most difficult, considered, and well-thought-out move any nation makes. The United States, by both design and by accident, has come to accept the awesome responsibility of being the preeminent actor on the world military scene in part by adopting and professing to follow higher moral and ethical standards than those of other nations. In the post-Vietnam era, thoughtful and reasoned approaches to the application of U.S. power gained acceptance, as embodied in the Weinberger Doctrine and the so-called Powell Corollary. These constructs set out specific measures and metrics against which questions of U.S. military action were to be judged.
Where do we stand today in light of those reasoned, thoughtful approaches to Clausewitz's view of "war as an extension of politics"? The traditionally accepted U.S. approach to foreign policy—that overwhelmingly held military action was the last resort—has been replaced at the highest levels by the belief that military force can be applied with the fidelity of a rheostat and still gain acceptable results. In this not-so-brave new world, no matter the nature of the policy question, the response turns out to be some measure of military action. The response when anti-American terrorist training camps are located in Afghanistan? Send in the Tomahawks. Determine the Iraqi regime has violated the cease-fire agreements that ended the Gulf War? Bomb selected targets for four days, but no more. Iraqi defenses threaten Coalition aircraft in the U.N. no-fly zones? Destroy the offending weapon system and occasionally kill some conscripts with little or no connection to the regime while the military and political policy makers are left unscathed. Create a situation reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust and present the greatest active threat to peace in Europe in nearly 50 years? Conduct a limited air campaign over an extended period of time with little appreciable effect on the forces conducting the atrocities. It is a remarkable irony that a nation of unassailable power is incapable of formulating or carrying out policies that successfully reflect that power.
In all of the above examples, where is there a quantifiable success? Is Osama bin-Laden enjoying the pleasures of the martyr's heaven he so richly deserves? Has the regime of Saddam Hussein been even slightly threatened with removal or defeat since the "100 Hour" ground war of 1991? Are the leading members of the Serbian nationalist movement that unleashed three major conflicts in the center of Europe in one decade any closer to the docket of the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague? The recent revolution sparked by Milosevic's electoral miscalculation appears to have removed the Serbian Nationalists from power, but no indication has yet been given that any accounting is to be made for the war crimes perpetrated during their reign. The policy makers involved in these actions must have performed a different calculus than Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and their advisors. Whatever their political stripe, our greatest leaders understood that with the decision to commit military force came the inescapable responsibility to see the action through to the end. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, John F. Kennedy promised to "bear any burden." Will the catch phrase of the first decade of the new century be "bear such burdens as may occasionally be necessary, but not in such a way as to actually require us to be put out?" As a nation and as a military, we profess to have "learned from Vietnam." Have we really? Without a doubt, enemies and prospective enemies of the United States and its allies must know that when faced with difficult and threatening situations, the United States will act militarily. But will that action be effective and conclusive? We are no longer held hostage by the memory of seemingly useless and endless losses of Vietnam. We are now held hostage by the memory of the miraculously low casualty figures of the Gulf War.
Not every world crisis has an acceptable military response. Nor is any military option inherently without risk. The question that must be asked is whether or not the end result justifies the possible or probable loss of American lives. Conversely, those warriors engaged in the fight have the right to expect that their lives be hazarded for some purpose greater than political "signal-sending." Aviators facing capable and motivated air defenses should be given a higher purpose than ensuring something "goes boom" in downtown Belgrade for the nightly news broadcasts. In modern doctrine, the concept taught is called "effect-based targeting." Professionals are taught to have specific goals for each weapon rather than bomb indiscriminately. One would think that those goals would have to do with the desired effect on the enemy, though it is legitimate to conclude from recent experience that we have acted more often to achieve an impact on ourselves. The imbalance that has developed is because we act militarily at little or no risk to ourselves in situations that quite likely had other, less violent solutions at hand.
If the military or civilian leadership at the Pentagon had claimed a series of near-blunders and missed opportunities such as those strung together at the State Department with respect to Iraq and the Balkans, there would have been wholesale reassignments, firings, "unexpected" retirements, and other public trips to the woodshed. In Barbara Tuchman's great history The Guns of August, scenes are recounted wherein the ambassadors of Europe's Great Powers literally broke into tears when required to announce to the governments of their soon-to-be enemies the breakdown of diplomatic contacts that inexorably would lead to war. Today, the sending of a wave of Tomahawks is treated as a sort of very serious demarche.
The cornerstone of the post-World War II world community, the United Nations, initially passed the buck on Kosovo for fear of the reaction of many member states that possess their own internal ethnic problems. The People's Republic of China, with Tibet and other issues on its mind, was unhappy long before the CIA accidentally nominated its Belgrade embassy for the target list. The precedent-setting implications of Allied Force will serve as Ph.D. fodder for political scientists and historians for years to come. Can the notion that NATO, the European Union, or even the United States acting unilaterally had no other choice but to act militarily against the Milosevic regime really be supported? During Allied Force, 16 of the world's strongest economies and militaries united to inconclusively bomb into submission (not surrender) a nation the geographic and economic equal of the state of Utah. The failure here is in failing to set our goals high enough at the start.
How do we justify to ourselves the time deployed from home and hearth in Southwest Asia? Saddam Hussein may have fewer palaces and more sleepless nights, but not so many sleepless nights as those enjoyed by the legions arrayed against him. Did we return the Kosovar Albanian refugees home from the terrible camps only to watch them return to the escalatory tit-for-tat atrocities that existed prior to March 1998? Given the recent attempt to smuggle explosives into Washington state through Canada, might some of the investment in $300 million or so worth of cruise missiles expended on tents in Afghanistan have been better spent in beefing up the U.S. Border Patrol? In perhaps the most perverse twist of logic in the entire Kosovo episode, NATO's political leadership made the argument that once Serbian failure to accept the Ramboulliet Accords became the "tripwire" for military action, failure to act would have placed the existence of the alliance in question. Therefore, an alliance created to prevent war in Europe precipitated one in order to preserve itself. These simple logical disconnects have an effect on morale and service members' attitudes toward their profession.
Though I am sure there will be some who dismiss this simple analysis, I offer that thousands of our military members have shown their dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs by voting with their feet. This effect can particularly be seen on the professional officer and senior enlisted. Though incomprehensible to most members of modern society, the vast majority of professional military men and women accept without question the simple fact that they may be wounded or killed in the performance of their duties. The Code of Conduct reads: "I am an American. I serve in the forces that guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense." We not only expect adherence to this code by our military members, we demand it of them. The men and women initially drawn to service out of a patriotic calling are those now left with the sense that the service has left them. It's not just the economy, stupid.
To paraphrase an old cliché, if something is worth killing for, isn't it worth dying for? Every effort must be taken to safeguard our forces from avoidable risk and loss, but placing operational constraints on combatant commanders in order to prevent even the risk normally accepted in peacetime training missions is counterintuitive. No number of tactically intelligent decisions on the part of unit, force, or unified commanders can excuse or ameliorate the effect of bad strategic decision-making. The bedrock motivation during the Kosovo campaign for refusing to consider a ground option, or limiting our fliers to operational environments and target sets that minimized their capabilities, was not "force protection." It was cowardice on the part of the alliance's political leadership, who themselves were infused with indecisiveness by U.S. political leadership of all parties. The leadership failed to understand the corners into which their political guidance had painted the combat commanders and failed to recognize that both the actions taken, as well as those left in abeyance, will have repercussions farther downstream than the next poll or election cycle. Our leaders have forgotten that the majority of their uniformed servicemen and women actually believe in the ideals, morals, and view of "service above self ' they casually bandy about in campaign ads and news sound bites. Our leaders largely lack the willingness on their own part to sacrifice and thus fail to comprehend the sacrifices the American people are willing to make when properly led. With a few notable exceptions, the membership of Congress and leading appointees of the executive branch have limited combat or even peacetime military experience, and it shows.
Our nation must come to grips with the fact that our position of relative global military supremacy places an even higher threshold of national interest and justification prior to the decision to take up arms. Allied Force proved B-2 bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, can range the length and breadth of the earth to deliver powerful and precise strikes. Does that mean they should? If suffering and injustice are cause for military intervention, then we will never run out of brush fires and localized conflicts waiting for the application of U.S. arms. As we pick and choose which conflicts are worthy of our intervention, do we run the risk of being ultimately guilty of hypocrisy? Do not innocent Rwandan and Chechen civilians merit our protection as surely as innocent Haitians, Bosnians, and Kosovar Albanians? Which is the greater variable in the equation that decides the question of intervention? The injustice suffered? The racial makeup of the population? Or is it perhaps the relative impunity with which we can act?
If it is legitimate to characterize Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic as "Hitlers," then do not they deserve the same final treatment that the Nazi leader received? I propose the idea that U.S. arms would be more feared, more respected, and less likely to be employed if they were used infrequently but overwhelmingly. The new government in Yugoslavia has not replaced the heads of their military forces. President Kostunica has yet to allow the International Tribunal for War Crimes in Yugoslavia to pursue indicted former members of the Yugoslav government. Would this be possible if NATO had not settled for half-measures and incomplete results? Would Germany have been so warmly welcomed back into the family of Westem nations without the Nuremburg trials? The decade-long mission to economically isolate Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein is more likely to come apart at the seams with each passing month. Many of our allies, as well as world competitors, eagerly eye the end of U.N. sanctions. All member services of the Department of Defense currently pay some price for continued vigilance in the Middle East. There are few places on the globe farther from the home ports of the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, or more unforgiving to the people and equipment of the Air Force and Army. The recent apparent terrorist attack on the USS Cole (DDG67) in Yemen should remind us all of our continuing vulnerability to asymmetrical warfare carried out by determined, if not fanatical, opponents of our interests. Removing Hussein and the Ba'athist regime would not guarantee perpetual stability and peace in the Middle East, but it certainly would change the timetable for a return to belligerence and change the players' roster in the annual media guide.
The next generation of policy makers from both major political parties must accept the premise that the next time the United States takes action against another state, the only acceptable "end state" is one in which the factors and leadership inciting the conflict are removed. Implicit in this premise is the probability that the United States will suffer casualties to achieve the desired end state. (We used to refer to the desired end state as "victory.") Status quo antebellum is not an acceptable resolution to a situation wherein both our forces and the military and the population of our enemies are subjected to the threat of losing their lives or livelihood. Worse yet, leaving an in-situ enemy with potential and motive for revenge or simple ongoing opposition certainly does not merit the loss of American lives. As weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles proliferate, it should not take military genius to question the wisdom of allowing an enemy state or regime to survive.
If we continue to employ this minimalist approach to the application of military force, will we be preventing casualties or merely deferring them to some time when a more powerful and more committed adversary calls a president's bluff? Have too many years passed since we last learned the price of appeasement? We need not act without regard to mercy, but we must be aware enough to recognize when our own fear of taking action cloaks the adoption of the path of least resistance in mercy's guise, and we must be resolute enough to refuse it.
Most of us in uniform are familiar with the concept of the "red-guarded switch," the switch on the console that is not to be casually or negligently toyed with. The United States must approach the use of military force with the same conscious decision-making that is required to actuate a red-guarded switch. To do so with less respect for the consequences will only accelerate the growing dissatisfaction that exists today in the hearts of many of our professional warriors. That, in turn, will impact our ability to meet future challenges. We may soon be reminded that there is more to superpower status than economic and supposed military primacy. Our continued security requires a price be paid that will be measured in more than economic terms. Sooner or later, it will be paid in the blood of U.S. servicemembers. In this nation's future, more caskets will find their way to Dover. Hopefully they will be few, and hopefully there only will be one measure of merit used to judge the wisdom with which their occupants were committed to enter into harm's way. Did their loss serve to forward the cause of victory?
Commander Lewis is operations admin officer in the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), currently deployed to the Arabian Gulf. A 1990 graduate of the Naval Academy and P-3 pilot, he served as flag lieutenant and U.S. naval aide to Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Allied Forces Southern Pacific.