Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Experts debate NATO's options for protecting Kosovar Albanians without a massive commitment of ground troops.
Apr 1, 1999 | Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov's stillborn diplomatic mission to Belgrade Tuesday accomplished little but to underscore Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's intransigence. As reports of Serbian atrocities inside Kosovo continue, prompting a grim march of refugees into neighboring Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia, the world is waiting for new military and diplomatic solutions. Can and should ground troops be deployed? Would ground forces need to be massive, or could NATO protect Kosovar Albanians with as few as 20,000 soldiers? Should the United States continue to negotiate with Milosevic, or press to indict him as a war criminal?
Salon asked two defense experts to talk about the diplomatic, strategic and military options facing NATO and the Clinton administration.
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Joseph Collins is a senior fellow in the political-military program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Gulf War colonel.
Do you think ground troops will be necessary to resolve the crisis?
Let's put it this way: If ground troops are necessary, it would take eight to 10 weeks to organize a significant force. If you wanted to go in and create a humanitarian enclave, you could get away with maybe 20,000 troops and you could get that seven days after you gave the order to go. A serious war-fighting force of over 100,000 would clearly be a couple of months away.
What degree of casualties would you expect in a ground troop scenario?
There could be two scenarios. One would be that the Yugoslavs would see it as the ultimate symbol of our commitment and therefore back off. Or perhaps more likely, back into a secure area of Kosovo and create de facto partition. That would bring light-to-moderate casualties. But a war with the Yugoslav army would be a significant fight and a much tougher combat than Desert Storm was. Right now, Yugoslavia has 40,000 troops in Kosovo. They could have twice that number that you would have to contend with. They've got 400 tanks right now and there may even be a lot more.
What would the humanitarian enclave scenario entail?
Essentially, if such an enclave became necessary -- and I certainly think it was a few days ago -- it would consist of three or more brigades that would serve as a light but moderately armed shield, behind which government and non-government organizations would be able to tend to the refugees, without them flowing into Macedonia or Albania. That force also would be an implicit signal to Mr. Milosevic that his jig was up, and that this could be the cat's paw for a much larger force. One could argue that this would be a small force and that it would be attacked by Milosevic with his tank armies, but the best thing to happen to the U.S. Air Force would be for those tanks to get on the road and try to move into southern Yugoslavia. With hundreds, perhaps thousands of armored vehicles on the road, they would finally be the greatest target that our Air Force has seen since the Mile of Death in the Desert Storm war.
The enclave is an idea that ought to be seriously considered. It could be sustained almost indefinitely, particularly if it weren't under serious attack. As a small force, it could also be removed very quickly. The Albanians would also have all the power of the Allies behind them -- a significant force on the ground to stop those "ethnic cleansers" who are coming around in trucks and Mercedes and lightly armored vehicles and telling whole villages that they have to move it.
Will support ever materialize among NATO members and in the United States for ground troops?
Support for a major 100,000-person force is unlikely. The leadership has set in the minds of people that there will be no ground operation, and there would be some risk. The European armies are not used to long engagements and deployments from home. In some cases, they're still conscript armies. That bodes against them being able to jump up their level of force here.
Were adequate strategic preparations made by NATO forces before launching an offensive against Yugoslavia?
I think it was a terrible mistake to declare straight away that we wouldn't use ground forces for any purposes. A second mistake that followed was that we didn't queue up or marshal any ground forces.
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