For legal and political reasons, it was never called a war. Anyone who was in Kosovo, as I was, in the winter of 1998-1999 could see that there was a humanitarian disaster. Now that the smoke has cleared, Timothy Garton Ash searches for answers The Kosovo War was a controversial war that took place from 1998 to 1999 in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Not only do most observers who were there at the time testify that Western leaders seemed convinced that it would be over quickly. It was also about the mismatch between political ends and military means.

It is estimated that by the end of May, 1.5 million people, i.e.

And why did Slobodan Milosevic finally capitulate? Kosovo is one of the youngest countries in the world and is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its independence from Serbia. I think that this is something... that is achievable within a relatively short period of time." Within Kosovo itself, an estimated 580,000 people had been rendered homeless. • This is an edited version of an article that appears in the current issue of the New York Review of Books. Once again: we really don't know what made the difference to that poisoned but calculating mind. Nato's commander of southern forces, Admiral James Ellis, later observed, "We called this one absolutely wrong." They thought Milosevic had been bombed into accepting the Dayton agreement in 1995. The KLA and the Kosovo War: From Intra-State Conflict to Independent Country 5 Table of Contents Introduction 7 1. That's all Washington can stand. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, after years of strained relations between its Serb and mainly Albanian inhabitants. 1556332. Was the Nato action a "humanitarian intervention", as … Cross-questioned on American television the night the bombing started, Madeleine Albright said, "I don't see this as a long-term operation. First, Milosevic had thought the Nato coalition would crumble. Now some say: "Ah, he settled because he knew that anything else would bring him one step closer to the Hague." But how it turns out in the end is still a matter of human choice.

The Serbs put painted logs on the backs of trucks; Nato obliged again. There was still a humanitarian disaster left over from the previous year. While these aren't directly wars they do show how NATO and the West wanted to increase influence during and following wars and the weakening of Yugoslavia. In sum, it is more accurate to say that the Nato action started as a piece of coercive diplomacy.

Why did Goliath do so badly? 'Why did Goliath do so badly?' Crucially, the UN administration in Kosovo was not provided with the police, judges, and jailers to establish the first prerequisite of any functioning state or protectorate: an effective monopoly of legitimate violence. He said that this war would help the U.S. financially. Congressional doubters, Greek, Italian and German allies, simply could not be "brought on board" if told the truth - that this might be a long war.

Berger has subsequently maintained that: "We would not have won the war without this sentence." That's why you've only got 90 targets.

Whether or not there was an actual plan called "Operation Horseshoe", there clearly was some operational planning for large-scale expulsions, otherwise they could not have been implemented so quickly. But just a week later he accepted the peace terms dictated by the European emissary, Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, and the Russian emissary Viktor Chernomyrdin. In fact, there were two parallel but largely separate campaigns: the tactical one, aimed at preventing Serbian forces in Kosovo from doing further harm to the Albanians, and the strategic one, aimed at Serbia proper. Politics means being economical with the truth. A plausible speculation would point to four main factors.

To those who had dealt closely with Milosevic, this response was not "impossible to predict". The Kosovo war was the last European war of the 20th century, and Nato's first. Western leaders failed to prepare for peace, as they had failed to prepare for war. They forgot that it had first required a large ground offensive - by Croatian troops.

Crucially, the bombers started destroying Belgrade's electrical power grids.

Serb forces started systematic cleansing as the Kosovo Verification Mission pulled out, just before the bombing started.

The Kosovo War began in earnest in March 1998, after a clash between Serbian police and KLA militants in the Likosane area of Kosovo resulted in … At the moment, he looks more like Europe's Saddam. To adapt Karl Kraus's famous remark about psychiatry, Nato's action was the disease for which it claimed to be the cure.

For the large I: astonishingly, the Defence Intelligence Agency did not even include Kosovo in its February 1999 survey of world trouble spots. Perhaps it was the fact that his wife, Mira, whom everyone agrees has enormous influence over him, got weepy at the bombing of their Belgrade house? Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan in the fog of war. To give credit where due: bringing Russia into the coalition to put more pressure on Milosevic was a characteristic achievement of the Clinton administration. As for Serbia proper, the question at the war's end was: will Milosevic prove to be Europe's Galtieri (the Argentinian president deposed after losing the Falklands war) or Europe's Saddam Hussein? But what are we to conclude if they didn't even tell their own military? "Yes," say supporters of the action. However, this last month of preparations and actions could be interpreted as anticipation of the bombing that would follow from Milosevic's rejection of an unacceptable agreement. Some 225,000 Kosovar men were believed to be missing. The bombing campaign did something very close to the opposite. Moreover, no western leader claims that he or she anticipated Milosevic's immediate mass expulsions.

But the Serbian armoured columns that withdrew from Kosovo looked in remarkably good shape. In 1999 NATO bombed Yugoslavia to prevent genocide in Kosovo.



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