Can air strikes alone find Milosevic's 'pain treshold'?

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): The phrase is so discredited that I never thought I would hear a soldier use it again, but Gen. Wesley Clark, North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) Supreme Commander in Europe, is an historical innocent.

Asked recently how long the bombing campaign against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic would continue, he replied: "It is to some extent a function of his threshold for pain and loss."

"Pain threshold" as a strategic term came into widespread use in 1968, when the United States began a bombing campaign meant to wring concessions from North Vietnam without risking American ground troops. They never did find Hanoi's threshold of pain, and the term went into disgrace with the U.S. retreat from Vietnam in 1973. But there was Wesley Clark, an army officer at that, parroting that old air force slogan as if it were freshly minted.

Days later I got an e-mail from Lt. Col. David Grossman, a retired U.S. Army officer whose wise book on modern war, called simply "On Killing", has just gone into its seventh printing. He'd seen an article of mine suggesting that somebody involved in planning the Kosovo campaign should have had the courage to resign instead of going along with it.

Quite right, Grossman said, but you are missing the inner play. His explanation of the inter-service politics that still drive strategy in Kosovo was so clear and striking that I am reproducing it virtually unchanged except for length:

"There is a war going on in our post-Cold War military. As usual, it is a war for turf and resources, but it is made especially vicious by the reduction in available resources, and the changes in stable relationships, brought on by the end of the Cold War."

"Ever since the World War II there have been enough resources for everyone to get a slice. The ground, air, and sea forces were all needed, since desperate battle might occur on any or all of these fronts. But now there is no threat to our superiority at sea or in the air."

"No one has ever shot an F-15 Eagle down in air-to-air combat. Nobody is even seriously thinking about the decades-long process of planning and building the planes that might offer a threat to our existing aircraft. Yet we are spending billions of dollar on a new generation of fancy new fighters."

"Instead of air superiority aircraft and Seawolf submarines, the post-Cold War world needs 'policemen.' The war against totalitarianism has been won, and now our primary responsibility is to foster democracy around the world. That takes peacekeepers, doing the kind of work that nations like Canada and Denmark have been doing for decades."

"There is limited need for strategic bombers and major warships, and a greater need for ground troops and ground support and deep in their hearts just about everyone knows it. A large portion of the Navy and Air Force sees their traditional slice of the pie withering away, and thus there is a tremendous battle raging in the Pentagon. The poor bastards in Kosovo are trapped in the middle of it."

"Here is where you are a little wrong (or at least incomplete) in your assessment, Gwynne. There are people in the Air Force and the Navy who sincerely believe that they can win with air power. They are that most dangerous of creatures: sincere, stupid men. They never really have understood or liked combat: real, up- close, bayonet-and-blood combat."

"Hell, they have never really understood people. They like machines, systems. Like baffled demigods, they truly cannot understand why mere mortals fail to fall beneath their mighty thunderbolts. But they carry on regardless, because this strategy justifies a world in which they, not the nasty ground pounders, get to sustain their slice of the military budget.

"Much of what has happened in the post-Cold War world can be explained by Air Force and Navy attempts to justify their existence. The 'No Fly Zone' in Iraq was done not because it served much of a purpose, but because it could be done, and it helped justify the existence of a lot of aircraft for something other than transporting and supporting ground troops. Blockades and economic sanctions have been largely counter-productive, but they justify a naval role that goes beyond transportation and ground support operations."

"But that is not all. The Air Force and the Navy are aided and abetted by people in the Army who cannot tolerate the idea of engaging in peacekeeping operations. They have spent a lifetime preparing to fight the Soviets, and they feel cheated that they never had their great battle. If they can't fight 'a real war, a manly war for manly men, against a worthy enemy,' then they are going to keep all their marbles at home."

"They truly do not grasp the fact that if they are not willing to let their troops be used for peacekeeping operations (which is really the only game in town), then the population of a democracy will not long tolerate their cost. They know that they could do the job of peacekeeping if they had to. They just don't think that the job is worthy of doing.

"Many in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps (probably the majority) are willing to do the dirty job of peacemakers and peacekeepers, and a significant minority in the Air Force and Navy are behind them. Like the rest of the world, they want to stop the horror in Kosovo, and they would really rather not have to "destroy the village to save it."

"They are ashamed of what has happened in Kosovo. They do want to rise to the challenge of their generation. They proved in Bosnia that they can do it. But they are being systematically undermined by the majority of the Air Force and the Navy, and by many Army leaders who claim they can't do the job when really they just don't want to."

"Finally there is a third institution: the military-industrial complex, so named by President Dwight Eisenhower, the most experienced American general of his generation, who warned against its influence in his farewell speech. The MIC aids and abets the air-power adherents, funding studies to reassure them that this time it will work, and giving them nice jobs when they retire. And so it goes. I guess my point is that it is more complex than just moral cowards who know it is wrong but refuse to fall on their swords."

"The sad thing here is that the NATO commander is an Army guy, and our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is an Army guy, and they let a straight air show happen, knowing it was probably doomed. I think it comes down to what you said: the politicians wanted a painless answer, the high priests of air-power told them it could be done, the politicians listened to the ones they wanted to, and the Army saluted and obeyed. Which brings us back to your point. Couldn't just one of them have resigned in protest?"

Last summer, the U.S. Department of Defense invited Dave Grossman to present a paper at a high-level conference on air- power. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was the opening speaker, and Grossman was next. In the end, alas, Albright dropped out. It might have made a difference if she had heard Grossman on the futility and immorality of relying solely on air- power.