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Thursday,
April 1, 1999
I have considerable mail on the Kossovo situation. At one time I was considered an
expert on air warfare, particularly close support operations; indeed, I was one of the
people responsible for airpower inputs to the big Research Analysis Corporation war games
that resulted in the 11th Air Assault which became the Air Cavalry, and at another I was
offered the position of senior operations analyst for all of Army Air. I say this not to
brag but to establish that I have more than casual opinions on this.
I have one essay on the subject that is up at Intellectual Capital www.intellectualcapital.com now. It is
probably worth reading.
The situation cannot be resolved to the credit of the United States without some ground
operations. There needs to be a force large enough to defend territory as a base of
operations. After that you can get away with smaller forces if there is plentiful air and
rocket support. Unfortunately we are running out of smart weapons -- we didn't stockpile
enough for all the engagements our current administration -- which makes it much more
difficult to protect armed reconnaissance patrols with accurate missile fire. Worse, USAF
has never wanted the close support mission, but has been unwilling to give it up. The
result is that flying close support is a career affecting decision; USAF has always been
more concerned with air superiority and bombing. The close support missions don't get the
best pilots, and there is far less training. Few choose to fly Warthogs because they want
to. The result is that what would be a viable military strategy, armed recon aided by
massive air support, doesn't work as well as it ought to.
It's seldom useful to send in forces a dribble at a time. If you are going to do it,
you do it right: if you think a regiment will do the job, send a division. And so forth.
In this case we are up against a people who took on the Waffen SS and some first class
German troops, as well as those Albanians who went over to the Axis (many didn't, but some
thought that alliance with the Axis was a way to settle scores). It would take a rather
large combat force supported by an enormous logistic tail to conquer Kossovo and hold it.
Before such a force can be assembled, Kossovo will be ethnically cleansed if Milosovec
wants it to be.
The best deterrence against Milosovec was the threat of bombing. Now that we have
started it, we can threaten to carpet bomb civilian cities; try to take out military bases
that are very close to civilian targets (the Ministry of Defense in Belgrade is about 300
meters from the major city hospital and emergency rooms); or continue what we are doing,
which is seeking the Yugoslav air defenses. We aren't having much success at that because
the Yugoslavs are wisely keeping those hidden until we offer them softer targets at lower
altitudes. As we run out of missiles and smart weapons, we will have increasingly less
capability to deal with those air defenses they are holding back. Thus when we try low
level support we may well take unacceptable losses. That puts us back to high altitude
bombing in which a "hit" is defined at being within half a kilometer of the
target: not exactly precision bombing. (I may be obsolete in my numbers, which are taken
from the top of my head anyway; but surely the point is clear?)
The lesson is simple: either have a client state ready to do the real fighting while
you provide the heavy support; have an army ready to exert the power of the Empire when
you undertake dealing with small but tough nations; or stop trying these adventures. None
of those is easy for a democracy. It was precisely this kind of pressure that pushed Rome
from Republic to Empire. A democracy cannot have a great number of overseas adventures
involving a professional army and remain a democracy; or at least history shows no clear
examples of that. The danger of a standing army is not that it will oppress its own
citizens, but that officials will say, as our Secretary of State has said, "What's
the use of a big army if you do not use it?" Her context was that here was a clear
wrong that we could right, so we ought to do that.
She may have been correct. It is very difficult for Americans to watch butchery and
bestiality and do nothing. The trouble is that if you will undertake those adventures
there is no end to them; and as Walter Lippman said, military power is to diplomatic
influence what money in the bank is to a checkbook. At some point you must make good your
diplomatic promises and threats. We do not have that military power, and it doesn't appear
that we would like to pay the taxes to build it. Our military budgets have been decreasing
since 1992. This makes sense if we also reduce our commitments, but we have not done that.
The result has been to move funds allocated for training to operations like the bombing of
a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan (it's now clear it never had been involved in manufacture
of war gasses or anything else other than legitimate pharmaceuticals), the bombing of a
camp in Afghanistan where we managed to kill some Pakistani middle class on a religious
retreat, the bombardment of Iraq to no discernible purpose, the Bosnia operation, Haiti,
and so forth. Saving the world is expensive, and there comes a time when you must pay the
bill.
And there is no end to places to save. Shall we liberate the Christian slaves in Sudan
and Chad? Stop the Chinese conquest of Tibet? Impose peace among the Hutu and Tutsi?
Impose women's liberation on Saudi Arabia? Rescue the B'hai in Iran? Bomb Turkey to force
the Turks to allow Turkish Armenia autonomy and create a new nation of Kurdistan? There is
no lack of wrong to be righted in this world; and while we may have the power to right all
those wrongs, we should understand that it is expensive, and creating the kind of army
that can and will do this will fundamentally transform the Republic; or at least always
has done so to democracies in the past.
Once in, it is not easy to get out. I note that Milosovec, no fool, has loudly said
that he will adhere to the Geneva Conventions, and has invited the International Red Cross
to come visit the 3 American prisoners. Intelligent on his part.
I have no idea what we will do now. I know what we can't do: we cannot bomb Serbia into
giving up Kossovo without killing a very large number of Serbian women and children. We
can turn Belgrade into Dresden, and that may do the job; but at that point, what have we
saved?
Eagle One is now visible on the net. I removed
the network card as well as in System/Device Manager removed all the network stuff,
brought the system up with no net card, shut down, and installed it again. Windows 98 is a
pain on reinstalling stuff: it looks in unlikely places, and doesn't want to browse. Some
of what it demanded was already in Windows/ or Windows/System but the installer is too
stupid to look for it. Meanwhile, a lot of installation disks are intended for '95, which
is just enough different from 98.... I have seen nothing to disabuse me of the notion that
Microsoft has hired a demon from Hell to work on installation software.
When I got up CNN was saying that Milosovec had said he was adhering to the Geneva
Conventions. Now the crazy man is talking about putting US troops on trial. He has
advisors as bad as our President has. If there is one thing that will unite the American
people, it is mistreatment of our troops. So perhaps it is war to the knife after all.
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