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Air Force General Criticizes Conduct of NATO's Air War in Kosovo

May 25, 2000

Lt. Gen. Michael Short, the Air Force general who led last year's air attacks against Yugoslavia, said May 12 the United States has not yet learned the correct lessons from the war over Kosovo. Among them, he said, was that the U.S.-led NATO force operated without clear political objectives for much of the war.

"We need clear political objectives" in order to fight a war, Short said in a speech at an air-and-space symposium in Arlington, VA. "Men in uniform in the next generation need to know what our political leadership wants to do. And those political objectives have got to be translated into military objectives, and you and I would like to know what the end state is."

He said he "knew what the initial end state was for Kosovo: We'd like [Yugoslavian President Slobodan] Milosevic to stop doing what he was doing" -- house-to-house expulsions and violence against ethnic Albanians. "We'd like to modify his behavior. But I don't think anyone really knew what the end state of Kosovo itself was going to be, and I don't think anybody knows today. They're still cutting throats and burning villages and killing each other in Kosovo, and I would submit that's going to continue for a long time."

Short is the first U.S. military leader involved in the war to publicly offer this criticism in such stark terms. Behind the scenes, a number of Pentagon and NATO officials have complained the Clinton administration tasked the military to undertake strikes against Yugoslavia without tangible political objectives, and thus it became nearly impossible to derive a military strategy, at least at the war's outset.

Short, who recently turned over command of Allied Air Forces Southern Europe to Lt. Gen. Ronald Keys, is set to retire from the military at the end of June. "If there's somebody in this town who can speak to lessons learned from Kosovo, I'd like to meet him," Short said. "There are lessons from Kosovo, but nobody's learned them, as far as I'm concerned." A Vietnam War veteran, Short added, "I will tell you that [in 1999] we revisited lessons we said we'd learned in 1967." He said his views "may or may not be politically correct, but...with 48 days [left] I'm not terribly concerned about that."

Short also raised a number of issues related to the U.S. military fighting as part of a large coalition. He said that to get a seat at NATO's decisionmaking table at the outset of a war, an ally should be able to offer the following in terms of air power: "You've got to be able to fight at night; you've got to drop precision munitions; and you've got to kill BVR [beyond-visual-range targets]. That's the seat at the table, that's the price to pay," Short said.

Other lessons Short said must be learned about coalition warfare from the Kosovo war experience include:

• "Joint ops are interesting, [but] coalition ops -- to us -- ought to be compelling...We want to fight as part of a coalition," he said.

• "We need clear political objectives...I don't know what the end state is [for Kosovo] today, and I will tell you we certainly didn't know [on] the 24th of March what the end state was going to be."

• "Our politicians have got to be prepared for what we are about to do. And that's a real hard thing to do, I understand that. But men in uniform have a responsibility to explain to our politicians that there will indeed be collateral damage. And there will be unintended loss of civilian life. And none of us wants that to happen. My kids are doing their best every night to hit the targets they're supposed to hit and to not kill people they're not supposed to kill. But that's real hard to guarantee," Short said. In this regard, he added, military leaders are "our own worst enemies. We have spent years going to [Capitol] Hill, explaining to congressmen how we need 'Weapon A' and showing them film after film about [how] Weapon A never makes a mistake...It's perfect, it never misses the target, it always guides, it always does exactly what it's supposed to do."

• One lesson NATO politicians have learned from the Kosovo war -- but perhaps should not have learned -- is that air power can be used without taking any allied casualties, Short observed. "We're good, we're the best on the face of this Earth, but we're not perfect and our politicians need to know that," he said. "And while I am not sure that they have learned the lessons I'd like them to learn about Kosovo, that's one lesson they have learned. From their perspective, air power's a freebie. Air power is easy, no one dies."

• If the United States is to continue leading coalition operations, leaders "need to understand what limitations our partners are going to place on us," Short said. "When you're the big dog and one of the puppies tells you what you can and cannot do, that's a real hard way to do business." He continued: "If your partner says you can't bomb except between 2:00 in the morning and 4:00 in the morning, maybe you don't want him as a partner, maybe you don't want him on your team. Maybe there's something attractive about a coalition of the willing, as opposed to a coalition where everybody gets the same vote. You've got to smoke that out before you drop the first bomb because once you commit those nations to go to war, now they've got to win." If leaders wait until after the war has begun to sort this out, smaller partners gain more leverage because they know the United States is committed, "and [they] can now nip at your heels," he said.

• "You need to understand what the contribution's going to be [of each ally], and you want to get the best that country's got to give," Short said. He noted the United States can accept limitations on a particular nation's use of its own forces, as long as that partner does not attempt to limit everybody else.

Finally, Short said, the United States "needs to saddle up" and "be ready for a leadership role." He said U.S. leaders should be willing to negotiate compromises to be part of a coalition in warfare, but "I just happen to believe there are some compromises we should not make. The big dog should not accept some degree of compromise that places our people in harm's way and makes the fight long."

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