The General Takes a Hit

With Slobodan Milosevic still sitting in the presidential palace in Belgrade, the war over Kosovo has taken a belated casualty. U.S. Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the NATO commander who pressed an 11-week bombing campaign and forced a Serbian retreat from the embattled Yugoslav province, will be hanging up his four stars earlier than expected.

Despite denials all around, differences with the White House and the Pentagon clearly are factors in Clark’s departure, which was announced shortly after he received a one-year extension of his term as NATO commander in Europe. He will serve only until next April instead. Clark, 54, will be succeeded at NATO by U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston. These are the wages of war and politics.

Clark should be evaluated both as a general and a diplomat, for he was engaged in trying to restrain Milosevic both militarily and politically. The issue is whether he succeeded within the parameters of White House expectations. Apparently not, and clearly NATO’s generals were caught short in several ways. No preparations were made to handle what became a tragic exodus of refugees as Milosevic’s army shot its way into Kosovo. The subsequent NATO bombing campaign had to be one of the most highly previewed in military history, but it became one on which NATO and the White House saw eye to eye. Not so on the tough question of when or whether to send in ground forces. Clark insisted that the option of using troops remain on the table.

Little of this fully satisfied the power centers in Washington. NATO appeared to have won a war, so why was Milosevic still hanging on in Belgrade? Clearly the situation didn’t please President Clinton and his advisors, and they called for the change in NATO leadership.

Clark got the word Tuesday on a diplomatic visit to Lithuania. There’s no step but down for a NATO commander, and Clark told reporters there, “When a soldier’s journey is over, it’s over.”

That left White House spokesman Joe Lockhart telling reporters: “No one is being pushed out. No one is being forced out.” But Clark will be gone by April. So far there are no clear answers why.