The Future of the American Military Presence in Europe Pub137

8/7/2019 The Future of the American Military Presence in Europe Pub137

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THE FUTURE OF THE AMERI CAN MI L I TARY

PRESENCE I N EUROPE

L loyd J. Matt hew s

Edi tor

May 2000


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ISBN 1-58487-021-4

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CONTENTS

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi i

1. The Future of t he U.S.-European Relat ionship:Framing the DiscussionJohn J. Hamre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Quest ions and Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2. The Role of U.S. Forces in EuropeWesley K. Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Quest ions and Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313. Staying in Europe: A Vit al Amer ican Interest

Klaus Naumann. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4. Amer icas Stance Toward Europe: Moving Awayfrom a NATO-Centered PolicyTed Galen Carpenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

5. Europe as a St rategic Staging Base for

21st Century Stabi l ization OperationsRobert H. Scales, J r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Quest ions, Answers and Commentary,Chapters 3 to 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

6. The Enlarging Role of NATOStephen Larrabee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

7. Guiding NATOs Future: A Return to BasicsChar les Glaser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

8. An Addit ional Role for NATO: Promot ingCollective Security ElsewhereCarl Kaysen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Quest ions, Answers and Commentary,Chapters 6 to 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9. Updat ing NATO Forces for the 21st CenturyThomas G. McInerney. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

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10.Modernizing, Restructur ing, Adaptation:Imperatives for NATO ForcesJay Garner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

11.Amer icas Diminishing Commi tment to NATO:Impl ications for Service Force St ructureJohn J. Mearsheimer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Quest ions, Answers and Commentary,Chapters 9 to 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

12.Whi ther the U.S.-NATO Partnership: Consensusand Dissent

Lloyd J. Matthews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

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FIGURES

1. U.S. European Command and NATO Command . . 15

2. Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Surrounding Region . . . . 19

3. Growth of Air Assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4. Air Operat ions Snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

5. Str ike Sort ies by Date. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

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FOREWORD

Ten years have elapsed since the fal l of t he Ber l in Wal l ,

which served as a fi t t ing symbol for the end of t he Cold War.That historic juncture brought into question the mainedifice of western European security arrangementstheNorth Atlantic Treaty Organizationthat had servedAl l iance members so well since NATOs founding in 1949. I talso brought into question the rationale for Americascontinued deep involvement in European security affairs.With the gradual realization that the Russian menace is

essentially dead, at least for the next 10 to 15 years andperhaps longer, and with NATOs missions having evolvedwell beyond the original purpose of territorial defense,debate on both sides of the Atlantic has begun to intensifyconcerning the vital issue of where NATO should be headedand Amer icas relation to the Al l iance.

To br ing an array of i nformed voices to the debate, four

inst itut ionsthe Office of t he Assistant Vice Chief of Staffof the U.S. Army, the St rategic Studies Inst i tute of the U.S.Army War College, the I rving B. Harr is Graduate School ofPublic Policy Studies of the University of Chicago, and theProgram on I nternational Secur ity Pol icy at t he Universityof Chicagojoined hands to sponsor a symposium titledThe Future of U.S. Military Presence in Europe, held atthe University of Chicago on August 4, 1999.

The present book is an outgrowth of this symposium. I tis not designed to set forth a literal record of words andevents in the mold of the t radi t ional symposiumproceedings, but rather is organized as an anthology ofindividual chapters complemented by selected questions,answers, and comments by symposium participants andattendees. The symposium opening address by DeputySecretary of Defense John Hamre (Chapter 1) and the

keynote address by the Supreme Al l ied Commander EuropeGeneral Wesley Clark (Chapter 2) cogent ly set the stage fordiscussion. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 address the first panel topic,Is Europe Still Strategically Important to the United

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States? Chapters 6, 7, and 8 tackle the second topic,Potential New Missions for NATO in the 21 st Century,while Chapters 9, 10, and 11 are devoted to the last topic,

What Type of Deployed Forces Does the United StatesRequir e to Meet I ts Commi tments in Europe?

Noteworthy among the commentaries is the wrap-up onpages 124-128 by General Crosbie E. Saint (USA Ret.). AsCommander in Chief of U.S. Army Europe dur ing the per iodof t he Gul f War, General Saint supplied the U.S. Army VI ICorps, nominally slated as an element of NATO forces, tothe coalition command that executed Operation DESERTSTORM.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.DirectorStrategic Studies Inst i tute

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CH APTER 1

TH E FUTURE OF TH E U.S.-EUROPEANRELATIONSHIP:FRAM I NG THE DI SCUSSI ON

John J . Hamr e

In the history of t he Uni ted States, there have been fivedistinct epochs or periods of American security policy. Thefirst was from about 1776 until 1812, though it is a littlehard to find exact demarcation points. I t obviously coveredthe formation of the new republic, which did not instantlyform at the end of the Battle at Yorktown. It took quite awhile for the republic to jell. The early Congress almostimmediately threw away t he Army and Navy. The RevenueCut ter Service, the predecessor of the Coast Guard, becamethe de facto Navy for some 10 years because the early

Congress said, in effect , We dont need a navy now, we dontneed an army. I t cut the Army down to 50 people. I t becameclear by 1812 that cut t ing the Army wasnt a good idea. Andit became even clearer when the Brit ish in 1814 sailed upthe Potomac and set fi re to Washington. The fi rst epoch wasthus one in which we were get t ing our feet on t he ground,getting ourselves organized, thinking about defense, anddeveloping the philosophy we were going to need to

undergird the republic for the rest of i ts history.The second epoch extends from 1814-1818 roughly t o the

turn of t he century. Obviously, there were some signi ficantevents dur ing that per iod, l ike the Civi l War. But in terms ofour international secur ity posture, it was a per iod when theUnited States was relatively free to expand into the innerterr i tor ies of t he North Amer ican cont inent . We were verycontent simply wi th growing int o the heart land of Amer ica.We had relatively modest interests overseas, and we werelargely sheltered by the British navy. Thus we werepreoccupied with ourselves during that second epoch. Itended, of course, with t he Spanish American War.

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The third period, which some think of as Americasimperial phase, saw the United States turn outward, bydesign annexing territory overseas and making it part of

America. The third period was culminated by ourexpedit ionary support for Al l ied forces dur ing Wor ld War I ,when, in an atypicall y Amer ican act , we sent a large armyoverseas, thus involving ourselves in what GeorgeWashington called a foreign war. I m not sure there is sucha thing as a foreign war for America any more. With theglobe today being so small, what were once perceived asforeign wars now usual ly seem to be in our own backyard. In

any event, we made a conscious decision to get deeplyinvolved in the Great War, and the third epoch drew to aclose wi th the end of that war.

On entering the interwar yearsthe fourth securityepochAmerica chose to retrench. In a way, this periodmarked a kind of void in Americas military and securityhistory. But it was enormously important in a broader

sense, for it was the time when the two great forces of the20th cent ur y emerged. On one hand, global recession set in,leading to the rise of national socialism in Germany andult imately to Wor ld War I I . On the other hard, internationalcommunism, centered in the Soviet Union, would arise,

joining in an uneasy mar r iage of convenience wi th the Westto combat the Nazi scourge.

The fi ft h secur ity epoch emerged fr om the ashes of Wor ld

War IIwe commonly characterize it as the Cold War. Itwas a time when the traditional international securityorder was shattered. In its place a new order emerged,initially very bipolar in character. That configurationdiffused significantly by 1960, but it still dominated oursecur ity mi l ieu dur ing the second half of t his century unt i lthe histor ic date of November 9, 1989, when t he Ber l in Wal lcame tumbling down.

I recall the first time I saw the Wall. It was ominous,frightening. I never thought in my wildest imagination Iwould live long enough to see it down. Then I remember

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going back another t ime. We went down late at night . As wegot closer, we began to hear this chink, chink, chink.People were chipping away the wall , collect ing pieces to sel l

as souvenirs to tourists like me the next day. There wereother people busy wi th paint and brushes because the pieceswere worth more if they had paint on them. Typicalentrepreneurialism at work. Thus the fifth epoch ended in1989. We are now 10 years into the next epoch, the sixth.But what is this new period? Its very hard to know. Weknow roughly when i t start ed, but we dont know where i t sgoing. Indeed, where i t s going is the subject of the present

book.Though things are still pretty fuzzy, I believe it is

possible to discern some of t he main features that wi l l l ikelydistinguish this sixth epoch of American security history.While the United States has emerged as the only globalsuperpower, it has not establ ished a pax Amer icanain anysense. Indeed, one t rait of t he sixth epoch is the disturbing

ethnic tribalism that now seems to characterize theinternational security order. There are some 40 to 50 suchstruggles going on around the world at this time, some ofthem dreadful in t he carnage and violence they produce.

A second trait is the frightening devolution of theresources of violence from the old Soviet empire. For avariety of reasons, those resources are becoming broadlyavailable in the new world. This huge arsenal of biological

and chemical weapons, and possibly even components ofnuclear weapons, may fall int o the hands of very dangerouspeople. Moreover, the large stable of Russian militaryengineers and scient ists left over fr om t he Soviet era couldvery well be lured int o employment by elements inimicableto our secur ity. These are very t roubling fall -out s from theSoviet per iod.

A third trai t is the emergence of strange anduncontrollable new transnational actors on the scene.Guerr i l la organizat ions like that of Osama bin L aden, forexample, appear able to shift and move in and out of

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government structures. It is very hard to know how youdeter these sorts of new actors since they are not alwaysdependent on the normal st ructures of government wherein

and around which deterrence has evolved dur ing the last 50years.

But several other t ransnat ional forces have emerged onthe scene that have implications for our securitytheglobal ization of enter tainment and information t ypif ied bythe Internet , for example. The emergence of int ernat ionalcr ime is increasingly di f f icul t to dist inguish frominternat ional terror ism. In Colombia, we could soon find onthe international stage the first narco-state. Another ofthese transnational forces is disease. Few realize howprofound the changes might be in Africa if the AIDSepidemic there cont inues in i ts cur rent pat tern.

Also important to note is the t ransnational shi ft of jobs.An American product today may have the computer chipsmade in China, the software wr it ten in I ndia, the handsets

made in Ireland, the satellite made in Italy, the launchoccur r ing in Russia, and we call i t an Amer ican telephonesystem. Ours is a profoundly different wor ld where the jobshave now gone internat ional, and t his t rend extends even t oarmaments. The global spread of armaments and thetechnology of armaments, as we have seen, flows in largemeasure from the disintegration of the old Soviet empire.But not entirely because there are now some emergent

rogue actors such as North Korea, whose only source ofpolitical pride and cash is the sale of items like Nodongmissiles.

What, then, are the broader implications of all thesefeatur es of the new secur ity epoch? We can only see throughthe glass darkly, but some of those implications arebeginning to appear at least in dim outline. For one,

stabi l i ty is going to be an increasingly rare phenomenon inthis new epoch. The previous epoch, the Cold War epoch,was at least characterized by great inertia. Though hugeforces were at work, they moved very slowly. That doesnt

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appear to be the character of this new epoch. Second, itseems that many of the international str uctures that werecreated to mediate and manage security problems during

the Cold War epoch are increasingly brittle, if notineffective, in this new epoch. Recall how unnerved we allwere during the Asian economic crisis of 1998 when itappeared that the World Bank and the InternationalMonetary Fund could not cope because the disrupt ive forceshad grown bigger than the economic and financialstructures put in place by the industrial nations torationalize the international movement of capital. There

was widespread talk about having to re-engineer the ent iresystem. The problem seems to have abated, at least for thetime being, but Im not at all sure the underlying factorstending toward instability have been rectified. After all,capital i s more global today than at any t ime in history andbecoming more so.

The United Nations (UN) is increasingly irrelevant

because of the lack of consensus in the Security Council, astructure that requires unanimity before effective actioncan be taken. I t is only the rare uncont roversial mission thatatt racts sufficient support among UN members to pave theway t o act ion. When i t comes to a big issue, like the Balkans,the UN is frozen into immobil i ty. Thus the st ructures of theCold War era are increasingly inapplicable in this newperiod. There remains a question mark over NATO in this

regard. It is remarkable how NATO evolved to the point ofbeing able to contemplate uninvited military action in asovereign out-of-area stateit was the tragic situation inKosovo that made i t happen. Yet I worry about what I see inU.S. domestic political reactions to Kosovo and NATOoperations there.

When General Wesley Clark and I and others were at aNATO conference in June 1999, I was struck by the

absolutely consistent view by other government s as to whatthe Kosovo situation was all about . I t was the fi rst t ime inhis tory that NATO went to war for an idea. Thegovernments were saying that since they could not justi fy

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intervention on grounds of self-interest, they would appealto a tr anscendent ideal t o just i fy i t . In other words, it wasnot sufficient ly noble to go to war for nat ional interests any

longer. Governments must have a moral basis such ashuman rights to just i fy mil i tary act ion. I was star t led by theuni formi ty of this view. It worr ies me frankly that creat ingpoli t ical stabi l i ty is not a sufficient ly just i fiable reason t o goto war. Instead, we have to discover some transcendentideal to justify democracies in acting.

The United States was not immune to such thinking.Prior to NATOs decision to launch Operation ALLIEDFORCE, there was a great deal of domest ic quest ioning inthat regard. Thus, at t he very t ime when were confront ing awor ld that is more tumul tuous and less stable, we appear tobe exper iencing an erosion of t he t radit ional basis on whichdemocracies are wi l l ing to go to war . They seem t o be wi l l ingto do so only for more idealistic values. One must wonderabout the staying power of public support in this sort of

moral environment when the armed forces begin takingcasualties.

Everything thus far wr it ten in this chapter bears upon,but does not answer, the key quest ionWhat is the futureof the U.S. military presence in Europe? Not having acrystal ball, neither I nor anyone else can answer thisquestion except to note that it is a subset of a still broaderquestionWhat is Americas security posture going to be

in t his sixth secur ity epoch? Should we organize and or ientourselves around the policies and structures whichcur rent ly are the residue of t he previous epoch? Or shouldwe shi ft to something that s radicall y new, something thatwe dont yet understand?

For example, we have a vigorous debate going on inWashington over the F-22 fighter aircraft. The F-22 is a

weapon system designed at the height of the Cold War . Oneof our most defense-minded Congressional committeesdecided we should live without the F-22 because its greatexpense would usurp money for other essential military

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programs. Should we at the Department of Defense (DoD)fight to get it back because it is going to be essential forfuture war? Or is it an unnecessary relic of the previous

epoch whose pur chase would keep us from resour cing whatwe really will need for the future? These are very toughquestions. In 1997 the congressionally-created NationalDefense Panel criticized DoD for remaining mired in theCold War past. The implication was that though weveaccomplished a little downsizing, were continuing tomaintain the same kind of force we had during the ColdWar. Moreover, according to this view, such a posture

prevent s retool ing in preparation for the secur ity chal lengesof the next epoch. Such criticism overlooks the fact thatmore than once in the last 4 years weve had to mount twonearly simultaneous operations. When will the time comewhen we dont have to worry about Korea? Or about Europe?Certainly such worr ies have not been groundless in t he pastdecade. Thus, to repeat, the quest ion of whether to buy forthe contingencies from the past or retool for the

uncertainties of the future is not susceptible to an easyanswer.

The foregoing quest ion i s par t icularly problemat ic as i trelates to the Army. Even though we may be in for a longperiod of transition to a radically different force, we stillmust confront the current challenges, which argue formaintaining pret ty much what we look l ike today. The U.S.

Army needs to be in Europe today because i t represent s theconnect ive t issue that holds together the secur ity st ructureof Europe.

I worry that American public support for forces inEurope seems to be atrophying. Moreover, the Europeansthemselves seem not at all cer tain concerning their secur ityarrangements for the future. Thus, even if the U.S. Armyremains this connect ive t issue, what is i t connect ing? What

will it be connecting in 10 years? We have a nationalrequirement to keep our European all ies fi rmly engaged inthe debate. This is why we are willing to talk veryintensively with them about their own defense initiatives,

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that is, where they want to have an autonomous capabil i tyto act in t he secur ity arena apart from t he Uni ted States. I mdeeply skeptical that such autonomous capabilities will

eventuate, because the Europeans are not buying what ittakes to do that .1 But I m glad theyre talking about i t . Theworst thing that could happen is for them t o say, We wontever worry about security because the United States willcome in if the situation ever gets serious. Such thinkingwould be a very ser ious step in t he wrong dir ect ion. Thus theU.S. Army has to transform itself while at the same timeserving as the connective tissue holding the security

st ructure together in Europe for the t ime being.But i f the Army holds onto a nostalgic vision of i ts grand

past, its going to atrophy and die. The Army that existedthr ough the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s was one ofthe finest land forces ever assembled, but simply hangingonto a lighter , smaller version of that force for the future isnot going to work. The Army leadership that led the

downsizing in the wake of t he col lapse of t he Soviet Union in1989 was thoroughly professionaldispassionate, forceful,and direct. We need the same sort of resolve today, towardthe end t hat the Army must change i tself because i t cannotsimply be what it was and st i l l be relevant to this new andcomplex world emerging. But at the same time, the Armymust serve the indispensable function of holding togetherthe European continent, which right now is somewhat

adr ift in thinking about i ts secur ity requirements.

QUESTI ONS AND ANSWERS

QUESTION. In view of the perceived aversion t o casualt ieson t he par t of t he Amer ican public, is it any longer realist icto contemplate our involvement in host i l i t ies where blood isl ikely to be shed?

Dr. Hamre. I was struck by the consensus that existeddur ing the Kosovo operation. The skept ics bel ieved that aswe worked our way into the campaign, we had perhaps 2 or 3days wort h of public support . They were wrong. Even before

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the CNN cameras galvanized the wor ld wi th t he pictures ofthe terrible refugee exodus, which strengthened publicresolve, the Alliance leadership was quite solid. They

realized that there was an enormous amount at r isk i f t heAl l iance fel l apar t . The necessity for Al l iance cohesion wi l lthus lend backbone, even in the face of casual t ies.

With regard to our own position at home, when thesituat ion i s ser ious and there is a st rong consensus, Amer icawi l l go to war fast and wi l l accept casualt ies. The percept ionthat Amer ica is wil l ing to fight only so long as nobody dies iswrongif war were to break out today in K orea, wed fightl ike hel l . Wed take lots of casualt ies, but we wouldnt giveup unt i l we won. I m absolutely convinced of t hat. But in acontemplated military action not deeply supported by theAmerican people, if we proceed despite that lack ofbroad-based support , we then have to conduct the war in away that avoids undermining whatever fragile consensusthat does exist to carry it out . And therein might be the basis

of the criticism that America is not prepared to go to waranymore. When we as a nation are absolutely convincedthat i t s in our interest to do so, we wi l l fight . And i t doesnthave to be oi l were fight ing over. Well fi ght for ideas. We didthat in K osovo. What made Kosovo so hard was that we hadnever developed a profound consensus among our pol i t icalleadership over the Balkans at any t ime dur ing the last 6years. The crisis in Bosnia developed quickly, and the

mi l i tary did such an effi cient job there that we never had toent er the crucible of publ ic debate and consensus-bui ldingon why we were there and what we were fight ing for . We wi l lneed to do bet ter in the future.

QUESTION. Why should the United States underwriteEuropean secur ity in t he face of European prosper ity and i tsrefusal to spend more on defense?

Dr. Hamre. We have a mixed picture. I think there isbasic stabi l i ty in the European defense budgets. They oughtto be growing, but at least they arent being slashed. Theyare effectively eroding, however, because the purchasing

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power of their defense investments is badly undercut by thestructural impediments. We in the Uni ted States spend fourtimes as much each year on research and development

(R& D) t han all of Eur ope combined. The Eur opeaninvestment is further eroded by having stovepipeestabli shment s that have to be resourced in every country.Were not immune to that . We have an Army, Navy, and AirForce. We have an awful lot of i nefficiencies in t he Uni tedStates, too. But clearly there is a reduction of the value ofthe annual input into R&D in Europe because its feedingthe beast rather than buying new knowledge. Europe has to

come to gr ips wi th t hat problem. I t would be much bet ter i fthe United States and its European allies could jointlytackle the R&D problem. Well always have a sizabledefense budget , and well always be able to bui ld a force. Butour defense indust r ial base is now so nar row that we cantgenerate adequate R&D compet it ion t o underpin optimumforce modernization. I t would be best to tackle that problemon a transnational basis, but I m not optimist ic that wel l be

able to pull that off in t he present environment .

QUESTION. Speaking of t he power of an idea as opposed toselfish int erests as a clarion call for act ion, we all recall thatin November 1989 the Ber l in Wal l fel l and the people of t hatcity celebrated with an al l-night par ty in t he st reets. But weshould also recall that earlier in that year, during thesummer months of June through August, something else

happened that was t remendously i nspir ing. Young men andwomen, clothes on their backs and carrying their babies,walked out of East Germany and headed west , al l in the faceof real hazards and an uncertain future. Doesnt this exodusi l lust rate the power of an idea?

Dr. Hamre. To share in your recollections, do youremember when things were start ing to fall apart in early1989, and the Hungarian government announced that it

would no longer stop those who came fr om East Germany?That it would let them emigrate to the west? Almostovernight, 800 East Germans showed up at the WestGerman Embassy in Budapest , posing a major cr isis. They

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had to be got ten out , so the Hungarian government rented atrain bound for West Germany and took them outIremember CNN was fol lowing the t rain across the front ier .

When the train got to Frankfurt , a CNN reporterint erviewed a young couple, wi th the woman holding a baby.The reporter asked all the typical inane questions. Arentyou t ired? Arent you hungry? Wasnt this a terr ible t r ip? Doyou know what youre going to do? Al l this kind of stuff. Atthe end of it, the reporter asked, Is there anything elseyoud like to say? The young German father said, Yes,there is something Id like to say. I would like to thank

Amer ica for keeping a place in t he wor ld that is free. Thatsimple but eloquent statement by the young Germancaptured perfectly what America had been doing for 50yearsholding up the beacon of freedom for the worldsoppressed. Unfortunately, our post-Cold War generationlacks an equally compelling vision. But the flame is stillthere, even i f i t now burns less bright ly, and it becomes thetask of Americans everywhere to nurture that flame, to

brighten the beacon of freedom for those less fortunatethroughout the world.

ENDN OTE - CHAPTER 1

1. The European Union, for example, seems to be talk ing ser iouslyabout putting together a rapid-reaction corps of 50,000-60,000 troops,along with supporting aircraft and warships. See EU Pursues ItsMil it ary Plans, The Sentinel, Car lisle, PA, January 23, 2000, p. A8.

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CH APTER 2

TH E ROL E OF U.S. FORCES I N EUROPE

Wesley K . Clar k

With NATO having just celebrated its 50th birthday,wi th the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Ber lin Wall nowbehind us, and with NATOs historic coercive campaignagainst Serbia now rapidly becoming gr ist for the mi l i taryhistorians mill, the time seems right to pause and take

stock of where the NATO Alliance stands and where it isheaded, with particular attention to the American role. Inthis chapter, I shall address six broad topics: the importanceof Europe, secur ity chal lenges facing NATO as i t ent ers thenew century, the state of the NATO Alliance today,Operation ALLIED FORCE, lessons from the recent Balkanconfl icts, and winning in the 21st century. 1

TH E I M PORTANCE OF EUROPE

The figures speak volumes. U.S. trade with Europe,amounting to over $250 billion annually, produces overthree million domestic jobs. U.S. companies employ threemillion people in Europe. One in 12 factory workers in theUni ted States is employed by a European Union (EU) firmoperating in this country, of which there are some 4,000.Half of t he worlds goods are produced by the Uni ted Statesand the EU. Ninety percent of humani tarian aid dispensedthroughout the wor ld comes from the Uni ted States and theEU. Companies from the EU form the largest investmentblock in 41 U.S. states. Fifty-six percent of U.S. foreigninvestment occurs in Europe. Europe buys 30 percent ofU.S. exports. We should note too the large oil and gasreserves in the North Sea and particularly in the Caspianbasin that provide a strategic hedge against disruption ofsupplies from the Middle East .

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What these figures reveal is the enormous degree ofeconomic int erdependence between Eur ope and the UnitedStates. The economic t ies are complemented and reinforced,

of course, by pol i t ical, cul tural, and diplomat ic t ies of l ongstanding. The unity of vision and purpose shared by Europeand the Uni ted States provides enormous leverage as thesepartners act in concert to encourage peace and prosperitythroughout the world. Thus the maintenance of politicaland economic stabi l i ty in Europe remains in the forefront ofAmer icas nat ional interests.

As a result of those interests, we have continued tomaintain a st rong mil i tary presence in Eur ope, though it isa far cry fr om t he size of t he U.S. Seventh Army at the end ofthe Cold War, which amounted to 17 or 18 brigadeequivalent s. So far as force st ructure is concerned, we havetwo mechanized divisions in Germany, an airborne br igadein Italy, a brigade-size special forces unit, and assortedReserve and National Guard personnel. The Air Force has

two-plus fighter wings distributed in Germany, Italy,Turkey, and the United Kingdom, while the Navymaintains NATO-assigned aircraft carr iers in theMediterranean much of the time as well as a MarineExpeditionary Unit afloat. The numbers come to 65,000personnel for the Army, 34,000 Ai r Force, 10,000 Navy andMarines, and 3,500 reserves, all embraced within a budgetof some four bil l ion dol lars.

U.S. forces in Europe, though deeply interrelated to theNATO command structure, are not exclusively andautomatically dedicated to NATO. The distinction isachieved through the maintenance of two separatecommand structuresthe United States EuropeanCommand (EUCOM) for U.S. forces and the SupremeHeadquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) for NATOcommandswith dual-hatted commanders for several

pr incipal elements wi thin the two structures (see Figure 1).For example, the commander of EUCOM also serves asSupreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) withinNATO. The commander of U.S. Navy Europe (NAVEUR)

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also commands Allied Forces South (AFSOUTH) inNATO.The commander of U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) isin Bosnia serving as commander of NATOs stabilization

force (SFOR).

EUCOM serves as the backbone for many elements ofNATO, but the Uni ted States achieves addit ional leveragethrough i ts command of other nat ional forces via the deviceof dual-hatting. All in all, the United States is making apreponderant cont r ibution to the NATO Al l iance.

SECURI TY CHAL L ENGES FACING NATO AT T H ETURN OF TH E CENTURYAND B EYOND

We remain in a period of danger. Unlike those whobelieved that the end of the Cold War marked the end ofserious security challenges, NATOs statesmen realizedimmediately that we had not after all reached the end ofhistory. Other security problems were emerging, as they

always have over the course of t ime, and simple prudencedemanded that they be prepared for . But the probabil i ty ofoccur rence of par t icular kinds of confl ict is different todaythan it was during the Cold War. The probability of local

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Figure 1. U.S. European Command and NATO Command.


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instabilities and insurgencies was quite high during theCold War, with the chances for intra-failed-state conflict,regional conflict, conventional war, and the ultimate

horrornuclear wardeclining rather precipitately as onemoved toward the more violent end of the spectrum ofconflict. But in todays security milieu, lacking thesuperpower polarity t hat oft en served to impose tense orderin a confrontational world, intra-failed-state and regionalconflicts are now joining with local instabilities andinsurgencies to define the most likely forms of armedconfl ict . Our task is to deal wi th t hese dangers successful ly,

while preventing further movement toward the mostserious manifestations of war.

Looking further down the road, we find other securitychallenges emerging. Regional instability such as we areseeing today in the Balkans will continue to be a problemand indeed may well intensify. The rapid proliferation ofweapons of mass destructionparticularly chemical and

bio logicalis becoming of paramount concern.Transnational threatsrefugee movements, terrorism,criminal activity, environmental issues, scarcity ofresourcesare shouldering forward, demanding theattent ion of defense planners. The fai lure of democracy andl iberal r eform in states of t he former Soviet Union could alsopose dangerous security issues.

TH E STATE OF TH E AL L I ANCE TODAY

In the face of such an evolving security environment,NATO has cont inuously adjusted i ts st rategic concepts so asto remain current and relevant. NATOs present strategicconcept, agreed upon at the Washington summit in April1999, represents an evolutionary adaptation of post-ColdWar pol icy. I ts hallmarks are:

Broader appreciation of what const i tutes secur i tyinterests;

Emphasis upon deterrence and rapid response;

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A t echnological imperati ve;

Adoption of a European Secur ity and Defense Ident i ty(ESDI ) wi thin the Al l iance.

The revised strategic concept ref lects a broadappreciation of secur ity interests, recognizing that secur ityis not the same thing as defense. Though we must havecollective defense as the foundation of security, membersunderstand that events adjacent to or near Alliancecountries can have decided impacts upon NATO securityitself.

Deterrence remains important. Though we have nonation as adversary at this time, it is vital to retain themeans to deter the out break of confl ict wherever i t can affectsecurity within the Alliance. We recognize also theessentiality of being able to respond militarily in rapidfashion, not only wi thin the borders of NATO countr ies butalso without. Accordingly, we are placing increasing

emphasis on rapid-reaction forces.Technological advancement, of course, has never moved

faster than i t is moving today. Technology offers chal lengesas well as opportunit ies, however, for i t is not easy to keepthe national militaries within the Alliance at the cuttingedge of modernization and also interoperable with eachother . I t is important for the European pil lar of t he Al l ianceto do more in t his regard.

In sum, NATOs strategic vision has evolved from asingle-minded focus on the threat from the east, asprevailed dur ing the Cold War, to a European Secur ity andDefense Ident i ty, more expansive in concept and focused onno identified enemy. This is what both Europe and theUnited States want. It is time to halt the reduction ofresources dedicated to defensethe so-called peace

dividendand face up to the reality that in this stilldangerous wor ld secur ity never comes cheap.

Though the Al l iance has no standing enemy, it wi l l in t heebb and flow of event s find i ts attent ion fixed at t imes on a

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part icular nation or region. Such is the case today, with theformer Yugoslavia having already spawned two conflictsthat demanded NATOs intervention and with the still

unsettled nature of events there showing every promise ofrequir ing long-term All iance involvement .

In Croatia (see map at Figure 2) we have a stateattempting to become a democracy, living with theaftermath of war, facing elect ions in late 1999, governed bya hard-line party, and headed by a president whose healthproblems have cont inued to inhibit his coming to gr ips wi ththe need for democratization in his count ry. In Bosnia, westill have 30,000 NATO and associated troops on theground. A three-member rotating presidency is in place,representing the Bosnian, Croat, and Serb constituencies.Encouragingly, it held together despite the enormousstresses imposed by the war in Kosovo. Refugees arereturning, though some remain displaced. The armed forcesare increasingly under control. A recent Balkan stability

summit brought progress in terms of call s for reduct ions ofthose forces. But we cannot yet claim true reconciliation inBosnia, even though the people there are growingaccustomed to the taste of peace thanks to NATOs work inthe region.

Montenegro, which was drawn reluctantly into theconflict in Kosovo, remains a province of the so-calledFederal Republic of Yugoslavia. The president, Milo

Djukanovic, governs an uneasy coalition, with one majorcoali t ion partner st r iving for independence while he himselfworks to remain within the Serbia-Montenegro federationeven as he attempts to wrest concessions fr om Belgrade.

Albania, though not a part of t he former Yugoslavia, wascaught up in t he spreading Balkan problem. I ts governmentcollapsed in early 1997, leading to intervention by Italian

forces to restore stabi l i ty. Aft er wi thdrawal of the I talians inthe fall of 1997, the viability of the government remainedtenuous. Then came the Kosovo crisis and the consequentflood of refugees across the border into Albania. The

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Albanians urgent ly appealed to NATO for assistance, whichwas provided. Adjacent to Albania is Macedonia, former ly a

part of Yugoslavia, but now a free and democratic state. U.S.t roops have been on the ground there since 1993 as part of aUnited Nations (UN) stabilization and security mission,which correctly anticipated the subsequent flow of events.Macedonia, despite the very r eal cent r i fugal pol i t ical forcesloosed in t he country, managed to hold together dur ing theKosovo confl ict .

Finally, of course, there are Serbia and Kosovo. InSerbia, Slobodan Milosevic remains in power. The economyis devastated as a result of his exposing the nationsinstr uments of product ion t o NATO at tacks. The people arerestive and concerned about the winter season now finallyreceding. Milosevic is still doing his best to keep his handson t he reins of power. At the center of al l the furor is Kosovoitself. We have there today over 30,000 NATO troops on t heground, along with a small Russian contingent. Refugeeshave flowed back in the largest spontaneous reversediaspora since the post-Wor ld War I I era. The people havereturned, and the sor t ing-out process is now proceeding.

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Figure 2. Bosnia, Kosovo, and t he Sur rounding Region.


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OPERATI ON AL L I ED FORCE

That is the situation in the Balkans as it exists today.

But lets now flash back to the spring of 1998 to see howNATO conceptualized its response to the emerging conflictin Kosovo. Planning proceeded along the fol lowing st rategicaxes:

Coercive air campaign;

I solation of t he Federal Republic of Yugoslavia;

Humanit ar ian rel ief to refugees;

Cont inued implementation of the Dayton Accords.

We had recognized on March 24, 1999, when the firstbomb dropped on Yugoslavia, that an air campaign inisolat ion would not be enough t o deter Slobodan Milosevic.We also had to impose diplomat ic and physical isolat ion onthe federal government of Yugoslavia, let t ing it know therewould be no succor fr om any quar ter and that the count rywould be exposed to the ful l brunt of NATOs power. We alsohad to make provision for humani tarian rel ief t o refugees, alesson learned fr om Bosnia. Final ly, we had to keep the l idon in Bosnia itself, continuing to implement the DaytonPeace Agreement signed back on November 21, 1995. Thusthe NATO headquarters was extraordinarily busy withthese multiple tasks.

Our plan was to mount a steadily escalating series ofsteps designed to increase pressur e on M ilosevic in order tosecure heightened diplomatic, psychological, and physicalleverage. The first step was to be persuasiondiplomacybacked by threat (discussion of the air threat occurred inJune 1998 fol lowed by issuance of t he air threat in October1998). The second step was to be coerciondiplomacybacked by force (the air campaign commenced on March 24,

1999, with a ground threat possible in June 1999). The thi rdstep, should it prove necessary, would be forcible terr i tor ialseizure and securing by ground operations as backed byappropriate diplomacy.

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The actual implementation of the diplomacy ascontemplated above proved most instructive. We tried topersuade President Milosevic not to use military forces

against the Kosovar rebels. He wasnt persuaded.Accordingly, in October 1998, NATO issued an activationorder for a forthcoming air campaign. General KlausNaumann, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee,Javier Solana, NATO Secretary General, and I as SACEURtraveled to Belgrade to confer with Milosevic on severaloccasions. On October 25, we issued the air threat direct ly tohim, and it resul ted in a respite of some 2 to 4 months in the

Kosovo fighting.After Milosevic had signed off on his promises to NATO,

he offered us brandy and we sat around talking in aphi losophical vein. He said, We know how t o deal with t heproblem of these Albanians. Weve done this before. Weasked where. In the Drenica region in central Kosovo in1946, he told us. We asked what the solut ion was. He said

right out: We killed them. We killed them all. It tookseveral years, but eventually we killed them all. And thenwe had no problem.

After this chi l l ing conversation, we knew that the clockwas t icking. Sure enough, by March of the next year we wereinto a campaign of coerciondiplomacy backed by force.The intent was to

At tack, disrupt, and degrade cur rent Serb mil i taryoperations;

Deter any fur ther aggressive Serb act ions;

Degrade Serb mil i tary potent ial.

I t was vitall y important that the air campaignfit t inglycal led Operat ion ALLIED FORCEbe a success.Accordingly, we established several goals to satisfy ournotion of success, calling them measures of merit:

Avoid losses;

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Impact Serb forces in Kosovo (and associated targetsthroughout FRY);

Minimize col lateral damage;

Maintain all iance cohesion.

Each of these goals was important. It was paramountthat we avoid losses. Why? Because in an air campaign youdont want to lose aircraft. When you start to lose theseexpensive machines the countdown starts against you. Theheadli nes begin to shout , NATO loses second aircraft , andthe people ask, How long can thi s go on? The answer had tobe, It can go on indefinitely, whatever time it takes tocompel Milosevic to comply wi th t he wi l l of t he internationalcommuni ty. But all realized it could not go on indefini tely i fwe were suffering a succession of aircraft losses. Moreover,the same argument appl ied i f we were losing air crewmen.Thus the ext raordinary steps to avoid losses.

So far as the other measures of success were concerned,

obviously we had to hi t , hur t , and inhibit the Serb forces inKosovo because Serbian actions there were the casus belliitself. Of course, we wanted to strike hard at the strategicand infrastructure targets throughout the Federal Republicof Yugoslavia, but the attacks on these fixed targets wererelatively easy compared to gripping the tactical forcesthemselves. I t was unheard-of for an air component to wagea ful l and successful tact ical campaign against fielded land

forces without benefit of a ground component. We knew itwould be a huge challenge, particularly given thetopographical and vegetative features of t he terrain, whichlent themselves to enemy cover, concealment, andcamouflage.

The minimization of civilian casualties and damage tocivi l ian structures and propertywhether Serb or

Kosovarwas very high on our pr ior i ty l ist . This was so forboth humanitarian and political reasons. Any lack ofdiscrimination between legitimate military targets and

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off-l imi ts civi l ian areas would have undercut our effor ts toexplain what we were doing and maintain public support.

The final measure of success, no less important than t he

others, was the maintenance of Alliance cohesion. Inplanning and waging Operation ALLIED FORCE, it wasnecessary to consider the views and sensit ivi t ies of Al l iancemembers because a united effor t over the long haul was anessential precondition for achievement of military andpolitical goals.

Opera t i on ALL IED FORCE cons is ted o f two

simultaneous air lines of operationa strategic attack onSerbia i tself and a tact ical at tack in K osovo. The strategicattack targeted Serbias integrated air defenses, commandand control structures, Yugoslav army and Ministry ofInter ior forces, war-sustaining infrastructure andresources, and military supply routes. In Kosovo, theattacks were designed to degrade, isolate, and interdictSerbian forces.

From the inception of the air campaign, it was ourintention to make it serious, sustained, and intensifying.Between kick-off on March 24 and termination on June 9,the total number of aircraft employed almost t r ipledfrom366 to 912 (Figure 3). These figures would have risen stillfur ther had Milosevic not capitulated when he did. Early inthe campaign, reporters kept asking us how many sorties

and how many strikes were launched, showing an almostendless fascination with the numbers. To accommodatethem, we kept tabs. The final figures revealed over 37,000sorties, with almost 11,000 strike sorties flown and over23,000 bombs and missiles launched (Figure 4).

Looking at the number of strike sorties as they weredist r ibuted over the course of t he campaign, we see that themanned aircraft st r ike sor t ies increased fr om about 100 perday in the beginning to close to 500 on some days in thelatter stage (Figure 5). The figures varied day by daydepending on weather conditions and the nature of thetargets. We used a lot of cruise missiles early in the

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campaign when the targets were more suitable, butdiscont inued their use later . Out of all the devastation fr omthe air implici t in the foregoing numbers,there were only 20incidents of significant collateral damage. I dont believe

any other air campaign in history achieved this degree ofprecision.

The air staffers who planned those missions and theairmen who flew them did an absolutely superb job. The

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Total Sorties Flown................ 37,465

Strike Sorties Flown............... 10,808

Ordnance Expended

23,000+ Bombs and Missi les

35% Precision-Guided Muni t ions

329 Cruise Missi les

Figure 4. Ai r Operations Snapshot .

Beginning Ending24 March 10 June

Str ike 121 355

Air to Air 561 20

Reconnaissance/UnmannedAerial Vehicles 26 72

Suppression of Enemy AirDefenses/Jamming 55 74

Tanker 66 228

Other Suppor t 42 63

Total Aircraft 366 912

Cruise Missi le Plat forms 10 17

Figure 3. Growth of Air Assets


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men and women who flew our air craft dai ly into the skiesover Yugoslavia are the real heroes of this campaign. Theyare for the most part anonymous. Their ident i t ies were keptconfident ial to avoid put t ing their famil ies at r isk. But theyflew over Yugoslavia day after day, night after night , facing

continuous antiaircraft missile fire. Despite the fact thatnone of our pi lots lost their l ives, there were numerous closeencounters in which aircraft were banged up and almostlost . It was a tough fi ght ing environment , and the success ofour pilots is a great t estament to their ski l l and courage.

We need to ask our selves why the war ended when i t did.Why did Milosevic toss in the towel? The best explanation is

that he had finall y run out of options. Ear ly on, he had anynumber of hopes. Maybe NATO would not muster the wi l l tobomb despite i ts threats to do so. I f NATO did send bombers,maybe he could shoot them down in politically tellingnumbers. Or maybe the bombs wouldnt be accurate and hecould absorb them. Maybe he could embarrass the All ianceso that domestic support would erode and cohesiondisappear. Maybe other nat ions would rall y to his side and

provide assistance. Maybe he would defeat the Kosovarforces and all resistance would collapse. Maybe he coulddestabilize the entire region and NATO would be toodistracted to focus on Serbia. But in the end all those

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Figure 5. Str ike Sort ies by Date.

MannedAircraft

CruiseMissiles


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maybes came to naught . The only opt ion l eft to him was toaccept NATOs condi t ions. He waited unt i l the last possibletime to accept those conditions and still have a chance to

retain power. That was his cold calculation, explainingwhydespit e tel l ing General Naumann and me in January1999 that keeping Kosovo was more important than savinghis headin the end he gave up Kosovo in an attempt tosave his head.

L ESSONS FROM TH E BAL K AN CONFL I CTS

What did we learn from the Kosovo exper ience? Fi rst , itbecame apparent that rapid, sustained, and detailedplanning was an absolute must. As mentioned earlier,starting in the spring of 1998 NATO headquarterscommenced detailed planning, constantly updatingprovisional plans in the light of breaking events, and itcontinued such work at a feverish pace virtually non-stopthrough the end of September. Second, we learned that

contrary to expectations, NATO even in post-Cold WarEurope must maintain real warfighting capabilities: rapidreaction forces with deployable command and control;Alliance intelligence fusion; air-ground reconnaissance;all-weather, full-spectrum engagement capabilities; andint eroperable, sur vivable, sustainable forces.

In particular, intelligence had to be available, not juststrategic warning indicators but hard data for immediatetarget ing. To accompl ish t his, we had to use air to conductreconnaissance of t he ground. The ideal inst rument for thismission proved to be unmanned aerial vehicles, which wedeployed and used effectively for the first time in combat.Also, we had to be able to engage the enemy, not just in thebright , clear weather condit ions l ike those in the Amer icansouthwest where U.S. forces train, but also in the soup,

where visibility was poor or nonexistent. In short, Kosovoconfronted NATO and the men and women who served in i tsforces wi th a real warfight ing exper ience.

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I d also l ike to glance at a few of the lessons drawn fr omBosnia, because what weve been doing in Bosnia for sometime has relevance to our present task in Kosovo. Many

have an impression of peacekeeping as consist ing of soldierspatr ol l ing along a cease-fire l ine, dr iving back and for th injeeps while exuding good wi l l to the locals. But the reali ty inBosnia is quite different, presenting a far more complexpicture than simple peacekeeping. By way of example,consider three vignet tes: the Serb rall y at Banja Luka; theseizure of Serb radio-television t ransmission t owers; and anunfor tunate incident involving returning Serbs at Drvar .

On September 6, 1997, just before the local Bosnianelections, the hard-line parties in the Republika Srpska(Serb Republ ic) announced a special Republika-wide r allyfor the elect ion in Banja Luka. We knew that the gather ingwas more than a mere rally because the day before we hadseized a cache of police uniforms and weapons. There wasthus very good reason t o bel ieve that thi s so-called peaceful

rally was in fact dedicated to overthrowing the moderateSerb Co-President , Bil jana Plavsic. The situat ion presenteda tricky military problem, because how can peacekeepingforces proper ly take act ion against what is represented as ademocratic rally? The call had gone out for all courageousand intel l igent Serbs to get on a bus, t ravel to Banja Luka,and be with their brothersand get paid 200 to 400Deutsche marks for the experience. From all over Bosnia,

250 busses loaded up and started to move.In the meanwhile, as we worked to coalesce political

opinion against the rall y on the basis that i t represented athreat t o democracy and stabi l i ty in Republi ka Srpska, wewere able to delay the arr ival of t he busses using nonlethalmeans. We successfully fostered broad public sentimentthat the rally was not only unnecessary but illegal andthreatening as well . And so i t came about that by about 6:00

p.m. on September 8, the rally was effectively banned byBosnian Serb pol ice.

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The hard-l ine Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik att emptedto hold the rally anyway. He stood in the square with 400supporters, surrounded by 1,500 hostile Serbs who

supported the moderate Serb president Madam Plavsic, andwas l i terally booted off the stage. He took refuge in a nearbyhotel, and the next day Milosevic called me, saying, Youmust protect his life. We asked, Whos in the hotel withhim? Milosevic said, Oh, just some armed guards andother people. But he is in danger, he is president, and hemust be t reated with respect . NATO thus found i tself in theposit ion of assist ing and protect ing the very same hard-line

Bosnian Serb leader who had been a consistent opponent ofNATO forces. The episode was the gravest defeat of radicalSerb forces in the entire 5-year campaign, and it wasinflicted by other Bosnian Serb forces assisted by NATO.The B an ja Luka i nc i den t demons t ra ted t ha t i fpeacekeeping forces have mobil i ty, informat ion super ior i ty,int eroperabi l i ty, and sublethal means of engagement , theycan win in situat ions where nobody even knows theres been

a fight .

The second illustrative peacekeeping vignette fromBosnia relates to the disrupt ive influence of Serb radio andtelevision. A few weeks after the incident in Banja Luka,Carlos Westendorp, the EU Peace Envoy and HighRepresentative in Bosnia, called me and said, Youve got tohelp me with Serb radio-televisionits undercutting

democracy. Under the authority provided by the NorthAtlantic Council, I spoke to Secretary General JavierSolana, and we agreed that we would seize control of thetelevision transmission towers at Duga Niva, Udrigovo,Trebevic, and Leotar.

The planning began at 7:00 p.m. on the evening ofSeptember 30, 1997, in SFOR headquarters. The order toexecute went out after midnight , and at 5:00 a.m. the next

morning, I talian, Spanish, and U.S. forces moved out to takethe towers, each of which was guarded by a small Serbcont ingent . We knew the routes and moved to each sit e wi than overwhelming display of force, knocked on t he door of the

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secur ity huts, and said simply, Why dont you come out andjoin us for breakfastwe have some hot coffee. The Serbslooked at our tanks and armored personnel carriers,

glanced at their puny AK-47s, and then said, Wed lovesome hot coffee! They walked away from the towers, andthat was i t . The operati on att racted vir tuall y no headlinesbut had a huge favorable impact in Bosnia. The key lessonswere the need for rapid and flexible planning, inter-operabi l i ty, effect ive engagement capabil i ty, mobil i ty, andsurvivability.

The final i l lust rati ve vignet te from Bosnia occur red onApr il 24, 1998, even as the situat ion in Kosovo was heatingup. I t did not work out successful ly l ike the earl ier two. I twas our pol icy to encourage all minor ity refugees to returnto the home areas from which they had fled. In Drvar, agroup of hard-line Croats decided they would get r id of t hereturning Serbs. Outside Croats, unfamil iar t o us and thelocal author it ies, inf i l t rated the town and gathered into an

unruly crowd. They produced incendiary devices andproceeded to burn some 100 Serb homes plus severalvehicles, moving along planned routes. The Canadianbat talion responded, but only after the crowd had begun toleave. Lacking nonlethal capabilities, the battalion wouldhave been unable to prevent the violence wi thin acceptablelimits of coercion.

The result was a huge setback for the refugee

repatr iation effor t in Bosnia. I t stopped the endeavor almostcold for 9 months, giving hard-li ne leaders on al l sides newli fe and encouragement . In drawing lessons from the Drvarincident, we find affirmed the essentiality of localin te l l i gence , sub le tha l engagement capab i l i t y ,interoperability, and rapid response, all of which werelacking or inadequate in this instance. NATO is engaged ina continuous process of analyzing its Balkan operations,

drawing the relevant lessons and disseminating themthrough national channels. We will doubtless confrontsimi lar challenges again in the fut ure.

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On a more general level, a paramount lesson we der ivefrom the Balkan experience is the incredible complexity ofmilitary operations. Every decision, every act, every event

reverberates with tactical, operational, strategic, andpoli t ical implicati ons. The mi l i tary commander must attendto all four. No matter how small or insignificant an eventmay seem in the t radit ional mi l i tary sense, the commanderwi l l discover that in todays secur ity mi l ieu that minor eventmay suddenly become the object of consuming interest atthe highest counci ls of state.

WI NNI NG I N TH E 21st CENTURY

Looking ahead into the next century, we see a growingneed for rapid-react ion forces wi thin t he Al l iance. Thoughwe must retain main defense forces as a hedge againstuncer taint yagainst t he worst possible cont ingenciesweare going to have to acquire the tools to deal with the farmore likely crisis and conflict scenarios outside of NATO

territory. Thus there will be a strong new effort tostrengthen the reaction forces in NATO member nations,forces that can be moved quickly to deal with localinstabilities and insurgencies, failed-state situations, andregional confl icts in areas that can affect NATO secur ity.

At the Washington summit, NATO members adoptedthe Defense Capabilities Initiative, conceived to producereact ion forces that can respond t o any possible chal lenge byovermatching the opponent in size, technology, readiness,and training. These reaction forces would possessinformation superiority, interoperability, sustainability,broad-spectrum engagement capability, survivability, andmobil i ty. This is what i t wi ll take to win NATOs bat t les inthe next cent ur y, and I bel ieve were on t rack to obtain suchcapabil i t ies. NATOs force goals and force planning process,

guided by the concept of a European Security and DefenseIdentity, will produce the forces we need to implementNATOs new strategic concept.

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Clearly, European security remains vital to U.S.interests, and we can never safely remain indifferent tosecurity in that region out of a misbegotten yearning to

return to the isolationism of the 1930s. In pursuing itspolicy of engagement, it is critical for the United States towork through NATO so as to benefi t fr om the huge leveragethat such association br ings. However, it is inevitable andproper that both NATO and the NATO-U.S. relationshipcontinue to evolve over time. Evolution and adaptation ofthe comfortable security fixtures of the past should be nocause for concern, for t hrough such prudent adjustments we

equip ourselves to confront the flux of events that t ime shal lsurely br ing.

QUESTI ONS AND ANSWERS

QUESTION. I d like to ask a quest ion not about the Balkanstates but rather about the Baltic states. A member of theU.S. State Department who was recent ly in the Balt ic states

is repor ted to have said that their membership in NATO ispractically inevitable. If that took place, how would youuphold NATOs treaty obligations to protect those statesfrom armed attack (North Atlantic Treaty, Article 5), andwould that involve specificall y the deployment of U .S. andNATO troops and/or nuclear weapons?

General Clark. I m not going to speculate on hypothet icalor prospective military activities in the form asked, but Iwill make a couple of points in response to your question.Fi rst , the Al l iance leaders have said that the door to furtherNATO accession remains open. The Baltic countries areamong those earnestly seeking to join NATO. I was inLithuania and Latvia recently and had very goodconsultations with their leadership. They are making realheadway in terms of transforming and creating armed

forces that could be interoperable with NATO. NATOspolicy in t he past has been t o fi rst be sure that democraticconditions are met before NATO membership is granted.The Balt ics are doing qui te well in t hat regard. Weve also

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said that we want to help them through the membershipaction plan to become interoperable, and they are workingin t hat dir ect ion also. But the decision t o extend invi tations

for membership is a political decision which I couldntcomment on. Nor could I comment on any hypotheticalArticle 5 operations or deployments except to note that inthe case o f the access ions o f the f i rs t th reecountriesPoland, the Czech Republic, and Hungaryweve said t hat there would not be a need for NATO forwarddeployments there, certainly not nuclear weapons. Norwould there be any large NATO headquarters in those

countries.Were not t rying to re-create the division of Germany and

move it further east. It is of fundamental importance tounderstand what NATO leaders have always told KlausNaumann and me: NATO is first and foremost a politicalalliance, not a military alliance. It has a broad program ofoutreach at multiple levels to provide assurance and

stabi l i ty throughout Europe. I t does this throughpartnerships for peace, through scientific exchanges, andthrough conferences, dialogue, and multiple forms ofcooperation. It extends assurances of security, it provideshope, it provides a basis for people in these formerlyturbulent regions of eastern Europe to believe that in thefuture they will achieve the stability needed to attractinternational investment in t heir count r ies. This stabi l i ty

and security form the essential bedrock for all the otherreforms, hopes, and dreams that these societ ies have. ThusNATO is a political alliance first and foremost, with ami l i tary component among many others.

QUESTION. Id like to ask about Task Force Hawk, theU.S. Apache helicopter and support contingent. Accordingto the newspapers, the United States provided Task ForceHawk to NATO, but never gave it release authority for

employment. Can you comment on countries providingforces, but then not allowing them to be used.

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General Clark. Every country that provides forces toNATO normally places condit ions on their use. In this case,the decision was made to deploy with a possibility later of

employment . That decision to employ was never made, andthus the author ity was not passed to NATO.

Task Force Hawk, however, got there in a very effect iveway, even though it didnt meet the early expectations fortimelines that had been publicly announced. Originally,Task Force Hawk was to be deployed into Macedonia, but atthe very time when we made the decision to deploy, thewell-publicized wave of refugees began flooding intoMacedonia, producing a potent ia l ly destabi l iz inghumanitarian crisis there as well as in Albania. Thedecision was then made to shi ft i ts location from M acedoniato Albania. This necessitated a much larger force packagebecause of the geography and other condi t ions in Albania.That increase in turn extended the deployment timelines.Our t roops did an excel lent job of moving and set t ing up on

the air field near Tirana.Task Force Hawk made an enormous cont r ibut ion t o the

outcome of t he war. I ts arr ival on t he ground signaled a realdetermination to succeed. The people and government ofAlbania immediately recognized it for what it was. TaskForce Hawk represented the Uni ted Sta tes andNATOthey were visibly there in Albania with boots on theground. As a resul t of t hat, the army of Albania cont inued to

strengthen its performance, it moved to the frontier, itprotected its own border. Moreover, it encouraged thepeople of Albania to deal pragmatically with the otherproblems in their count ry. I t provided key intel l igence andplanning data as we moved into the final days of the aircampaign. I t was a superb effor t .

We were all crushed by the tragic loss of our two Apache

helicopter pilots who went down on a training mission inAlbania. But I cant say enough for the character and thecourage of the men and women of Task Force Hawk, whomoved in there rapidly in a difficult environment, trained

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up to speed in unfami l iar surroundings, and in that processmade a profound contribution to the successful outcome ofthe campaign.

QUESTION. When the war in the Balkans began, manybelieved that air power would never win the war. But inret rospect , i t appears to have done so. Judging from r eportsin t he news media, a larger role for the Air Force is in t heoffi ng because of i ts mount ing ut i l i ty in winning wars. Areyou wil l ing to accept that the Air Force has now become ourfavor ite tool for fight ing wars?

General Clark. We know, first of all, that this wasntreall y a war. We call i t a war, and for the men and womenwho flew over Belgrade I guarantee you i t was a war. But interms of foregoing all hopes for a diplomatic outcome andinstead simply crushing the enemy, no we didnt do that. Weoperated on mul t iple levels throughout this campaign. Weisolated Milosevic, we stabil ized the countr ies in the region,we kept the l id on i n Bosnia, we applied pressure through

the air campaign, we kept our NATO resolve intact. Allalong, we said we are winning, Milosevic is losing, and heknows it . He knew i t because he couldnt touch our air craft ,he couldnt protect his equipment on the ground, and theend was obvious and inevitable. Ultimately, therefore, heconceded. But in an air campaign like this, there was neversome specific cr i ter ion, some predictable level of damage, atwhich we were assured of at taining the desired resul t . Thus

we always said that the air campaign was working, i t was ont rack, but we wanted to be sure that we had the opportunity,i f necessary, to do other things as well .

When I look at the campaign in retrospect, I see thetremendous contribution made by Task Force Hawk, thesignificant impact of the Kosovo Liberation Army influshing out the Serbs during the last weeks of the

campaign, and the effect ive use of ai r power. I thus bel ievethe old rule is st i l l the r ight rulethat i t takes a balancedmix of capabilities to wage modern war and that thesevarious capabil i t ies must be exploited in differ ing degrees

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and combinations depending on the specific political andmilitary circumstances at hand. The result in OperationALLIED FORCE demonstrates that we did exact ly that.

QUESTION. How did you come up with the measures forsuccess in gauging the success of Operation ALLIEDFORCE?

General Clark. I f you look at the measur es of successIprefer to call them measures of mer ityoull note that notone of the measures could be accomplished totally orabsolutely, but only to a certain degree depending on the

t rade-offs we chose to accept . Ar e we doing enough to avoidfriendly aircraft losses while still striking Serb forceseffect ively on t he ground? Are we str iking his infrast ructureand forces on the ground hard enough or do we have to backoff a l i t t le bit to minimize fur ther col lateral damage? I f werestr iking too hard, if were causing too many problems, arewe risking Al l iance cohesion? Al l of these measures of meritwere fundamentally at odds with each other, because the

considerations in determining how to design the campaignand how to work i t on a day-to-day basis are so difficul t andcomplex. In r et rospect , we made many calls that could havegone another way, but one of t he things I learned a long t imeago at the National Training Center is that theres no singlebest way, theres no single best plan. There are just twokinds of plans, two kinds of waysthose that might workand those that wont work. You have to pick a way that

might work, and then you make i t work. That s what NATOdid.

QUESTION. Have you determined the cause of the loss ofthe Stealt h bomber?

General Clark. An invest igat ion has been accomplished,but I m not at l iber ty to discuss the detail s of i t here becauseStealt h i s a classified platform. We have gone through themechanics and we know pretty much what happened. Weremain very confident in our equipment and were veryconfident in our pilots. I want to say one more time inconclusion how proud all of us should be of the men and

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women in the Army, Navy, Ai r Force, and Marines who werethere in the air and on the ground in this very ambiguoussituation. They did a great job for our country and for

NATO. Theyre the heroes of this campaign and I saluteeach and every one of them and will never forget them. Imade t r ip after t r ip to I taly, Albania, and Macedonia, and itwas an inspiration t o meet our young tr oops, to wi tness theinnovation, the positive attitude, the dedication, thedeterminat ion t o succeed. The pi lots that flew over Kosovoand watched the burning and the mayhem everyday knewbetter than anybody else what this campaign was about.

They were determined t o succeed. And they did.

ENDN OTE - CHAPTER 2

1. This chapter, under the t i t le The United States and NATO: TheWay Ahead, and wi thout the quest ion-and-answer sect ion, appeared inParameters, Vol. 29, Winter 1999-2000, pp. 2-14.

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CH APTER 3

STAYI NG IN EUROPE:A VIT AL AMERI CAN I NTEREST

K laus Naumann

To approach the question of Americas future militarypresence in Europe, I shall begin with a brief glance at thesituat ion as I see i t today. True, the Uni ted States is the onlysuperpower lefteconomically, politically, strategically,militarilyindeed, it is militarily stronger than ever.Washington is at present actively involved in conflicts inEurope, Asia, and the Middle East. But despite suchAmerican power projection into overseas areas, despiteAmerican involvement in foreign political, economic, andmi l i tary affairs, it remains, to quote Samuel Hunt ington, Alonely superpower that cant do much alone. The UnitedStates needs a global partner who can act together withWashington as a global power. Such a new conception ofpart nership is required to deal with old and new challengesof the multipolar post-Cold War environment. Thepost-Cold War turmoil in the Balkans, the eternalTurkish-Greek-Cyprus crisis, the situations in the MiddleEast , India, and Pakistan, as well as a new Russian-Chineserapprochement, are some of the hallmarks of this new

world, and in responding to them alone the United Stateswould find even i ts vaunted power st retched too thin.

The Chinese and Russian defense mini sters now meet ona regular basis. Beijings military procurement policy isundoubtedly favorable to Russian products. FormerRussian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov in his visit toDelhi in December 1998 proposed a trilateral relationshipamong Russia, China, and I ndia. The Chinese premier Zhu

Rongji and Russian president Bor is Yeltsin st ressed dur ingtheir meet ing in February 1999 in Moscow the necessity ofincreasing political, economic, and military cooperation.They clearly expressed a preference for a mul t ipolar world,

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reject ing the idea of dominat ion by t he Uni ted States. Thesedevelopments should be watched carefully. True, bothBeiji ng and Moscow are weak at this t ime. But that might

change in the next 10 to 15 years. I am sure it wi l l change asfar as China is concerned.

A compl icating factor is that we shall be confronted wi ththe simultaneous presence of three different forms ofsociet ies and their concomi tant forms of warpre-modern,modern, and post-modern. This is a new developmentsuggesting that no single nationnot even the UnitedStatescan any longer pursue nat ional secur i tyuni lateral ly. The mul t i faceted, mul t idirect ional t hreats weface at t he beginning of the third mil lennium wil l requireresponses by all iances. We wi l l be confront ed wi th nonstateactors who will use military weapons. We will seeprol iferation of weapons of mass destruct ion, including themost dangerous one, biological weapons. And we might evensee opponents who use informat ion warfare to paralyze our

very vulnerable modern societ ies.We are about to enter a world that will be less

predictable and less stable than t he bipolar wor ld which webrought successfully to an end in 1989. And we will see aworld containing another novelty: the United States ofAmer ica, the only superpower, wi l l be vulnerable to attacksby nonstate actors. Again, Amer ica wi l l need a par tner . Butwhy should it be Europe, a continent striving to achieve

unity but which is far from speaking with one voice. Theselection of a strategic partner is based on a nationsstrategic interest. Why is Europe important to the UnitedStates?

Europe is of strategic importance because three of themost important and difficul t challenges at t he beginning ofthe 21st cent ur y can be successful ly tackled only i f Europe

and the United States cooperate more closely than everbefore. These thr ee chal lenges are, fi rst , to manage Russiasweakness; second, to contain the new risks and the newreasons for conflict; and third, to halt the proliferation of

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weapons of mass destruction. Let us address each of thesethree chall enges in turn.

First Russia. Russias transformation is far from

complete. At the moment, Russia is not yet a true democracynor are there signs of lasting economic stability. TheRussian el i tes st i l l bel ieve their country to be number two inthe wor ld, alt hough their gross nat ional product equals thatof Denmark. They continue to believe military power canimbue Russia with global importance. Perhaps that is thereason for what I would call the coup of Pristina, whereRussia without prior announcement landed a 200-mancontingent in the wake of Operation ALLIED FORCE inorder to forge a role in the Kosovo peacekeeping effor t . Theyincreasingly believe they must rely on nuclear weapons tocompensate for their weakness. We have to deal with thewounded psyche of a continental power that failed tounderstand it was confronted by a military alliance calledNATO. The Russians have wanted veto r ights over NATO

act ions in Eur ope, and t hey had to learn dur ing the Kosovocrisis that while NATO was willing to inform them ofcontemplated act ions, i t would not grant them any r ight s ofco-decision. This stance will likely be maintained. No onecan p red i c t Russ ia s f u tu re w i t h ce r t a i n t y . I t sdisintegration is as possible as its resurrection as a globalplayer dur ing the fi rst half of t he 21st century. The greaterdanger at this moment, however, is the disintegration of

Russia.We need to cooperate with Russia and give her

assistance. To thi s end we need a coordinated Eur opean andAmer ican approach, which in my view could best be handledby NATO. The task is simply too big for either Europe or theUnited States acting alone. And without managing theRussian problem, we will never have stability in Europe,nor indeed in the world.

Challenge number two: we need to keep the new risksunder cont rol and prevent new forms of confl ict . To that endwell again need close U.S.-European cooperation. Two of

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the most likely reasons for conflict at this time are masshuman migrations and the shortage of water as aconsequence of ever increasing populations. At the

beginning of the 1980s, we had some 11 mi l l ion refugees onour globe. Today we are approaching the 30 million mark.We learned in Kosovo how quickly refugees can be used todestabil ize count r ies. According to a study commissioned bythe United Nations, by the year 2050 approximately 25percent of our wor lds population wil l suffer from a severeshortage of water. People have killed each other for lessergrievances than a shortage of water .

Confronted with these new risk-laden reasons forconfl ict , we have to work together to mi t igate tensions andresolve grievances. People who have nothing to lose caneasi ly be seduced by a ruthless regime. Neither the Uni tedStates nor Europe can cope with this problem alone, sinceneither electorate has a keen int erest in what they see as aremote and rather unl ikely danger. The Uni ted States and

Europe are the only players who reali st icall y could hope toresolve such problems, and even t hen only by joining forces.To this end, we need a well-coordinated effort to keepregional instabilities from growing into global instabilitythat could engul f us all .

Challenge number three: so far as proliferation ofweapons of mass destruct ion is concerned, we need a globaleffor t . But such a comprehensive effor t is pract icable only i f

we execute i t in a steady, incremental way, as is the presentapproach, rather than demanding sudden giant bounds.Most nat ions are simply not aware how urgent the problemis and thus will be unprepared to acquiesce in draconiansolutions. It is particularly important to prevent what Iwould call soft proliferation, that is, the acquisition ofweapons of mass destruction by rogue states that hiredispossessed weapons scientists and engineers who carry

blueprints for such weapons in the back of their minds.There is no hope of preventing any of the various forms ofproliferation unless the United States and Europe takecommon act ion. What seems obvious is that Europe and the

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United States need each other as partners to find anysolution at all.

The three global challenges discussed above matter for

both the United States and Europe. They requirecooperation, not isolated approaches. Europe, of course, isnot as militarily strong as it should be. But it is a reliableand by and large predictable par tner . I f t he Uni ted Stateslooks around at potential partners, it will not often findamong them these qual i f icat ionsrel iabi l i ty andpredictability. Furthermore, Europe is a partner whoshares the same values as the Uni ted States, a rare quali tyamong Amer icas partners around the globe.

I conclude therefore that the European cont inent is st i l lof strategic importance to the United States. WithoutEurope, there is little to no chance to keep the risks toAmer ica at a distance. And unless those r isks are kept at adistance, the vulnerabi l i ty of t he Uni ted States wi l l increaseas well . On the opposite sideand let me be absolut ely clear

on thiswithout the United States in Europe, there isneither security nor stability in Europe itself. For quite atime to come, Europe cannot do without the Americanpresence.

But there are other security interests at stake.Economically the United States still finds an importantexport market in Europe, a region in which Amer ican firms

have invested considerable money and on which thousandsof domestic jobs depend. The proposition also works inreverse, wi th Europe simi larly dependent upon the Uni tedSates. Europe and the United States need economiccooperation in order to remain competitive in the Asianmarket in t he 21st century. Amer icas economists know t hatbetter than its defense establishment does. They realizethat Europe forms a gateway for the American economy to

Eastern Europe, to Russia, and to the Central Asiancountries ranging from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan.These places are potentially areas where consumer goodsmay be in high demand i f everything goes well . But business

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wi l l never invest there if secur ity is lacking. Amer ican andEuropean cooperation in enhancing such security couldcreate the prerequisites for business investment in an

emerging marketplace in this enormous region east of theNATO Treaty area.

Moreover, for Americans cooperation between theUni ted States and Europe opens the door to the EuropeanUnion (EU), securing for them a certain measure ofinfluence on this organization, which is, after all, aneconomic competitor of the United States. A continuingAmer ican presence in Eur ope enhances such inf luence andallows both parties to better exploit the potential of theEU-U.S. declaration on t rade.

But there are at least three other st rategic reasons thatspeak for an ongoing Amer ican presence in Europe, the firstbeing the geostrategic factor . The Uni ted States as a globaland maritime power needs free access to the coastlines onboth sides of the Atlant ic. The Europeans offer cont rol of the

European coastline through Americas participation inNATO and through their preparedness to host Americancontingents in Europe. Thus, if I understand my AlfredMahan properly, an American presence in Europe is inAmericas strategic self-interest since it allows the UnitedStates to protect vi tal sea lines of communications.

Second, as I int imated earl ier , we need to keep confl icts

at a distance, which means that a European-Americannexus can continue to serve as a launch pad for U.S.st rategic deployments. Ref lect ing on the Balkandeployments and their promise of being prolonged, we notethat the customary stationing of U.S. troops in Europeoffers a cost-effective solution. It is far cheaper thantemporary deployments fr om the States, and i t is leveragedby the concomi tant pol i t ical i nfluence.

Enhanced Amer ican influence beyond t he Europe of t heEU is a thi rd st rategic benefi t of a cont inued U.S. presence.With American forces on the continent, the United Stateshas a cost-effect ive solut ion for Partnership for Peace (PfP)

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