The Return: A Book for Frances about Life and Death
             Preface
            Back Cover
      You're in Charge: A Guide to Becoming Your Own Therapist
            Introduction: The Art of Self Observation
             On Dreaming
            Foreign Editions
   Since the New Deal: An Annotated Chronology of the Events That Have Changed the United States
             The C.I.A. (excerpt)
             Origins of the Cold War (excerpt)
             Some Quotations that Demonstrate the Underlying Philosophy Since the New Deal

 
      Afghanistan, "Terrorism," and Blowback   About Anthrax
     Some Thoughts on 9-11-2001

Pre-1989 Albanian Rule in Kosovo Discriminated Against ALL non-Albanian Minorities Why is there Civil War in Kosovo, Why Did Clinton Get Involved and What has Been Accomplished?

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The War

The war initiated on March 24 did not go well for NATO. A ground invasion was never a serious military or political option, and Mr. Clinton had been advised to that effect beforehand. There are few logical routes through which Yugoslavia could be invaded. Hungary, the only NATO country bordering Yugoslavia, was admitted to NATO only a few weeks before being pushed into war with its neighbor, and would be unlikely to consent to being used as a staging area. The neighboring Serbian province of Vojvodina that would come under immediate attack is home to more than 350,000 ethnic Hungarians.

Neither would Rumania, Bulgaria, or Madedonia likely consent to being a staging area for an invasion. They are not NATO members, and public opinion in all three is strongly anti-NATO after the bombing started. An attack from Bosnia, also not a NATO nation, would have to go through the Republika Srpska and ignite the conflagration in Bosnia all over again. An invasion from Albania into Kosovo would be a costly military operation, given the extremely poor infrastructure in Albania and the few passes through mountainous terrain that an invader would have to use.

Another very significant factor in a land invasion was the Yugoslav Army itself. In preparing since the 1940s for a possible invasion by the Soviet bloc, it built up an enormous network of underground ammo dumps, hangars, petroleum storage facilities, bunkers, barracks, and perhaps even petroleum refineries in the mountainous terrain of the nation. Most of this infrastructure remained untouched by NATO bombing after two and a half months, since it was designed to withstand nuclear blasts. The Yugoslavs have also developed a flexible command structure for concentrating and dispersing troops as needed in fighting a defensive war.

In these circumstances, there was little likelihood that a ground invasion would ever take place. The costs of victory would have been very high against a well trained professional army. During World War II, Serbian forces tied down 700,000 Axis troops with only the Greeks as their allies in the Balkans. Albanians, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Hungarians, Rumanians, and Bulgarians all fought for the Axis, and Germany herself had 23 divisions in Yugoslavia. Assuming we did occupy the country, what would we then do to govern a hostile population of 11,000,000? How long would we have to stay to control our new protectorate? A land invasion, moreover, would have provoked even stronger reactions around the world and within NATO countries.

Militarily, the air war was a debacle for NATO. The Yugoslavs had great success in preserving their anti-aircraft capabilities throughout. Many of their fixed sites were destroyed early, but they retained mobile sites and were strong in their ability to target lower flying aircraft. They set up dummy tanks, trucks, and SAM sites for NATO planes to attack, regularly moved and carefully concealed AAA and SAM sites, confused NATO aircraft with fake radar signals, and were highly successful in targeting the UAVs that NATO had to rely on to get real time surveillance over moving targets. Though they lost about half of their few MIG 29's, their most advanced aircraft, their pilots also shot down a number of NATO aircraft, including a Stealth fighter. The great bulk of their air force remained intact in underground hangars. Already, other nations in the world who assume they too might one day face a bomb-happy NATO are studying Yugoslav defensive tactics.

Though the official NATO line thus far is that only a few aircraft and no lives were lost, it is unreasonable to assume that such could be the case. The International Strategic Studies Association of Alexandria, Virginia, in its April issue of Defense & Foreign Affairs, reported that in the first month of the fighting NATO lost at least 38 fixed winged aircraft, including three Stealth fighters, six helicopters, seven UAVs (unmanned reconnaissance drones), and large numbers of cruise missiles. Remains of one Stealth aircraft and intact cruise missiles are already in Russia. These calculations were based on intelligence coming from a variety of sources.

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© Janette Rainwater 1997-2004

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