Early On, Odds Stacked Against NATO’s Goal

Aboard the cruiser Philippine Sea, Capt. Ronald Jenkins issued the order to fire at 6:50 p.m., just as dusk was settling over the Adriatic Sea. In a small, dimly lighted cubicle called the Combat Information Center, a petty officer clicked a computer mouse, sending the first Tomahawk cruise missiles blasting from their deck tube hatches with a loud pop.

Yet even before the Tomahawks struck the outskirts of the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, Belgrade, just over an hour later on March 24, Operation Allied Force was virtually fated to fail at the one thing the United States most wanted to accomplish: preventing a Serbian military offensive that would terrorize, slaughter and eventually eradicate ethnic Albanians in the once-obscure province of Kosovo.

The deck was stacked against success from the beginning because even the world’s mightiest military alliance, a wealthy bloc of 19 industrial democracies, could not overcome the overwhelming tactical and political advantages held by one of the world’s last strongmen, operating in his own backyard.

Nor, in the end, was there the will in Washington and allied capitals to take the drastic action that might eventually reverse the Serbian conquest: deployment of a substantial invasive ground force to quickly halt Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s “ethnic cleansing” campaign.

Washington’s other recent military experiences and President Clinton’s own reluctance to use force, not to mention the sensitivity of rallying public and congressional support as Clinton faced impeachment hearings, eliminated any serious interest in a big ground offensive months before the first missiles were fired.

“There was no option that would have stopped [Milosevic’s] blitzkrieg,” a senior Clinton administration official acknowledged. “We had to admit before we began that we might not be able to deter the Serbs. We understood that they’d act quickly and brutally. The only realistic option was to make it difficult for them to hold on to their gains.”

For months, Clinton’s inner circle, consisting of key advisors from the Pentagon, National Security Council, State Department and CIA, agonized over Kosovo and growing signs that Milosevic would move against the 1.8 million ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province.

Belgrade’s intentions had been obvious ever since Milosevic suspended Kosovo’s autonomy a decade earlier.

The danger escalated sharply when political tensions erupted into a low-grade insurgency in early 1998. And last fall, after Milosevic began reneging on terms of a U.S.-brokered cease-fire, U.S. intelligence said the Serbs might launch a full-scale offensive in the spring, with the potential for the same kind of bloodletting and “ethnic cleansing” that took place earlier this decade in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Policymakers Outline 3 Broad Options

Washington’s top policymakers outlined three broad options:

* Deploy ground forces to protect Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population.

* Conduct an air campaign to blunt Yugoslavia’s military capability.

* Stand by as the Yugoslav military imposed its will in Kosovo.

The last option was ruled out first. “To stand by would be appeasement or capitulation to Milosevic, and that was unacceptable for many obvious reasons. The stakes were too big, the dangers of further impact in Europe were too great,” said one administration official.

In a decision that may come back to haunt the administration, the ground force option was next to go.

“Ground troops were basically off the table many months ago,” the administration official said.

Several problems contributed to the rejection of that option.

A NATO study last fall concluded that any ground force would require between 100,000 and 200,000 troops to protect Kosovo--an estimate that quickly scared off U.S. officials.

Recent military experience was a factor too. Such U.S. intervention has consistently dragged on longer and at far greater cost than initially anticipated, often with mixed results at best.

U.S. Marines on a peace monitoring mission ended up being dragged into Lebanon’s civil war in 1982-84--and suffered the largest loss of life since the Vietnam War in a terrorist attack that killed 241 troops. U.S. troops are still in the Persian Gulf eight years after the war with Iraq ended. U.S. troops spent 15 months in Somalia in 1992-94, when a humanitarian mission ended up pitting troops against a local warlord. In Bosnia, U.S. troops were dispatched for one year--and are still there more than three years later.

Because of the complex logistics of a major deployment, U.S. officials concluded that, even if they did authorize a ground offensive, Milosevic would have plenty of time to go after Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians.

“Even if we’d decided ground troops was the right choice, it wouldn’t have stopped what’s happening now,” the senior official said. “It would have taken several weeks [to amass ground forces], and, while we did that, he would have gone ahead and done exactly what he’s doing now.”

‘Powell Doctrine’ on Unacceptable Risks

Adding to the considerations were both Clinton’s long record of reluctance about using force and the “Powell doctrine,” which emerged from the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Under that doctrine, named after former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell, high risks are unacceptable and U.S. offensives must project overwhelming force.

“For the Americans, the lack of willingness to take risks has been a decisive factor from the beginning. The Europeans would have sent troops for peacekeeping last fall as part of the October settlement, but the U.S. was reticent, so it didn’t happen,” said a European diplomat. “NATO strategy was boxed in early by that original U.S. decision on ground troops. And no European country was prepared to put in troops without the Americans.”

Also lurking in the background was Clinton’s volatile personal situation. The early signs of Milosevic’s cheating on the cease-fire coincided with the impeachment crisis.

U.S. officials vehemently deny that the Lewinsky affair played any role in policy deliberations. They point out that diplomacy had to take its course over the winter.

“If Lewinsky hadn’t happened, we might have had 20% or 30% more of his attention, but not 200%,” said the European envoy. “His own reluctance to use force probably was a bigger factor.”

At the same time, however, the president’s top advisors recognized the difficulty and awkwardness of trying to win congressional and public support for a sizable military intervention in the Balkans at a time when the very presidency was on the line--and every House and Senate vote counted, an insider acknowledged.

By the process of elimination, that left only one tenable option--air power. Yet it too presented inherent flaws, limiting its impact and fueling debate about U.S. policy even as the first missiles were being fired.

The biggest problem for either military option--ground or air--was the issue of time, U.S. and European officials contend.

Developing a strong consensus policy among the 19 countries of NATO was time-consuming. “We had to deliberate as part of the democratic process, while Milosevic is a single authoritarian dictator with forces at a standing start,” said a second senior administration official.

Even after NATO settled on the threat of airstrikes, the use of force was deemed unacceptable without diplomacy being exhausted first, despite predictions by all key players that Milosevic would not bend to the heavy suasion of U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke.

“The timing was always his, not ours, to control. After the October agreement, the politics of it and the diplomatic momentum forced us to wait until Milosevic began his dirty deeds. Some threshold of violence had to have occurred,” said a U.S. intelligence official.

In hindsight, U.S. and European officials recognize that Milosevic was laying the military groundwork for a new push into Kosovo even during the first round of peace talks, in Rambouillet, France, in February.

“The Serbs were never serious during Rambouillet. They were just buying time to assemble troops,” the European envoy said. “It’s like dealing with any criminal. He chooses the moment.”

NATO Fear of Ground Deployment Assailed

With the benefit of hindsight, critics now say that NATO’s fear of deploying as many as 200,000 ground forces doomed the ethnic Albanians.

“When the ground force numbers came down, everyone said, ‘Forget it.’ But since air power can’t win wars, they said, ‘Let’s define the mission in a way that we can succeed,’ ” said Ivo Daalder, a Balkans expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former National Security Council staffer.

“The irony is that the mission is now so vague that the United States and NATO can’t succeed,” Daalder said. “If they hit a tank, they may be able to degrade [Milosevic’s] military capability. But that has nothing to do with our political objective, which is to protect the Kosovars.”

Administration officials counter that the critics are engaging in Monday-morning quarterbacking before the game has ended.

“There were no guarantees that we’d have an instant effect, or that airstrikes were a sure thing,” one administration official said.

“And there’s no question that people are horrified by what we’re seeing on the ground, in terms of refugees and ethnic cleansing on a scale and speed that is horrifying. But there’s a difference between being horrified and not expecting a tragedy--and knowing there were no other options.”

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Times staff writer Paul Richter contributed to this report.