THE DOWNSIDE OF ALLIANCE WARFARE

Throughout Operation Allied Force, there were targets that one or more of the key NATO countries would not approve, those that such countries would not allow to be hit by attacks launched from their soil, and those that they would not hit themselves but would allow other allies to hit. The principal NATO member‑states also had differing political agendas and even differing business and financial interests, which heavily affected their reluctance or unwillingness to countenance attacks against certain targets. As a result, General Short was never able to mass forces in the execution of an integrated campaign plan in pursuit of desired strategic effects that had been carefully thought through in advance. Instead, he was left to go after approved targets largely in piecemeal fashion, in what one Allied Force participant caustically dismissed as “target‑based targeting” rather than conscious effects‑based targeting.

As the air war entered its second fitful week, one senior U.S. official suggested that the bombing effort was turning out to be a real‑world battle laboratory, in which the allies were “learning by doing how you conduct a NATO operation, both at a political and at a military level.”[458]Another later declared, less charitably: “This is coalition warfare at its worst.” After Allied Force ended, yet another complained that “the NATO troops had too many political masters. The system was so cumbersome that it limited the effectiveness of some of the best technology. Joint STARS, for example, couldn’t be used to direct aircraft to the targets it saw because it took too long to get approval for a strike.”[459]

A senior NATO official commented that “NATO got in way over its head, stumbled through, didn’t know how to get out, [and] was scared to death by what was happening.” This official added that the entire bombing effort had been a “searing experience” that had “left a bitter taste of tilting within governments, between governments, between NATO headquarters in Brussels and the military headquarters at Mons.”[460]Reflecting the consensus arrived at by many senior U.S. military officers, both active and retired, Admiral Leighton Smith concluded that “the lesson we’ve learned is that coalitions aren’t good ways to fight wars” and that, at a minimum, the political process in NATO needed to be streamlined so that the collective could use force in a way that made greatest military sense.[461]

In what became a particular sore spot, leaks of target information were discovered early on during Allied Force, contributing in part to the change in procedure described above to streamline the target selection process to allow commanders and planners greater freedom to bomb without consulting every NATO ally every time. In one instance of a suspected leak, two empty Interior Ministry buildings in Belgrade were struck by cruise missiles at the end of the third week. Only 24 hours previously, those buildings had been full of employees, suggesting that the enemy knew the attack was coming and when.[462]

Even before that event, the Pentagon had admitted the discovery of operational security problems, as well as its suspicions that the Serbs had gained access to at least parts of the ATO, thereby enabling them to reposition mobile SAMs in anticipation of planned attacks.[463]Allegations that France, in particular, had been kept out of the loop with respect to some target planning because of concern that the information would be passed on to Milosevic were tacitly confirmed in early April by a Clinton confidant, who remarked that “there are circles and circles within NATO.”[464]In a post–Allied Force interview, Clark admitted that at least one ally had leaked secret targeting information to Yugoslav officials. Without naming the alleged culprit, he said that the security breach was “as clear as the nose on your face.”[465]

After the air war ended, Secretary Cohen conceded in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee that “it was very difficult to take 19 different countries and get an effective campaign under way without some bumps in the road.” Cohen added that the alliance was “slow, in some cases too slow, to achieve a consensus.”[466]Citing what he called “self‑inflicted wounds in asymmetric warfare,” Admiral Ellis added, in his own after‑action briefing to Pentagon officials, that the enemy had most definitely drawn aid and comfort from the cumbersome White House and NAC target approval process, as well as from the poor operational security the coalition operations had generated, not only on the NATO side but on the U.S. side as well.[467]