Fighting Europe’s Battles

After-battle assessments of NATO’s 78-day air war against Serbia last year continue to reveal major military and political deficiencies. What was hailed as a triumph is now acknowledged to have been a flawed and inconclusive success. Lord John Gilbert, a former British deputy defense minister, asks, “What if we’d been up against a serious opponent” instead of a third-rate power? If NATO is to maintain peace in Europe, the implications of that question must be addressed.

Some are impatient with self-criticism. George Robertson, who was Britain’s defense minister during the Kosovo war and is now NATO’s secretary-general, insists, “Lesson one is crystal-clear: We won. . . . The ethnic cleansing and state-sponsored violence were stopped, the perpetrators withdrew, the refugees are home.” But to assert, in effect, that victory is its own justification is to turn a blind eye to some compelling truths. High among them is that political indecision and infighting within NATO prolonged the conflict, added to its cost--most of which fell on the United States--and increased its civilian victims.

This week the Pentagon issued a report acknowledging that NATO’s initial claimed successes in destroying mobile Serbian targets in Kosovo were later found to be greatly exaggerated. Half or fewer of the tanks, military vehicles, artillery pieces and mortars originally reported destroyed were actually hit.

The most significant part of the Pentagon report calls attention to the many shortcomings among NATO’s European forces in command, control and information systems, communications, precision weapons, in-flight refueling capability and transport aircraft. The Europeans, in short, for the most part are incapable of fighting a modern war or even of significantly helping the United States to do so. Kosovo, like Bosnia before it, is a European problem that the Europeans themselves should have been able to handle.

The issue is an old one. Western Europe, which is about as rich and populous as America, is simply unwilling to spend more to preserve peace and stability in Europe. That’s probably how things will remain so long as the United States continues to accept grossly inequitable burden-sharing within NATO. Some will regard this as the price of leadership. Others are likely to see it as the mark of a dysfunctional and failing alliance.