SIT-REP 5-4; Tuesday, May 4, 1999

In this Issue: NATO and The Art of the Deal --3; Plan A/Plan B

Let me make something clear to my readers; conflict, like politics, depends on emotion, passion and misinformation to sustain support through to a climax --victory. But I am an analyst, an observer expected to sift through the emotionally-charged propaganda from all sides, using facts, reason and logic to peer through the bombast, dissembling, half-truths and lies. News is history-in-the-making, not a single day's events.

In archiving old news reports regarding the Yugoslav wars, I have confirmed that much of what we are told by NATO and the US government is wildly inaccurate. At worst, all sides in these wars are equally culpable; at best, the level of atrocities in each case has been vastly less than alleged at the time, as reflected by court proceedings at the International Criminal Tribunal-Yugoslavia in The Hague. Louise Arbour is planning to resign in the middle of the alleged "Kosovo Genocide," I heard late last week. Ambitious prosecutors do not retire in the middle of the case of their careers.

Jesse Jackson went to Belgrade and succeeded in getting three American prisoners of war released over the weekend and a new round of spin began: was it out of weakness, strength, or reasonableness that Mr. Milosevic let the three soldiers go free?

This is the Art of the Deal playing out under our eyes. Unlike most people, I, and many political scientists, understand that in a confrontation, there is a great deal of theater and back-channel dealing; you try to leave as little to chance as possible, while maintaining the appearance of spontaneity (for plausible deniability if things go wrong), which leaves room for policy changes as circumstances change.

As to strategy, you need an end-game strategy more than you need "an exit strategy." You need a Plan A and a Plan B in a controlled confrontation, such as Kosovo; otherwise you must declare "unconditional surrender" as your objective, something very rarely justified, and clearly not so here.

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Milosevic both play their cards close to the vest, in what is for both a high-stakes game. Clinton has his legacy at hazard, Milosevic his life. That tends to keep the application of force under some limits so that serious war crimes or mistakes are not triggered.

Operation Allied Force has now entered its 42^nd day and is now longer than Operation Desert Storm, without a clear conclusion in sight. Time to prepare a Plan B outcome that substitutes more carrot and less stick --Operation Allied Force is all stick and not working militarily, diplomatically, or in public relations terms. Worse, it is illegal in international law, only by hanging together do the 19 NATO members prevent the collapse of several weaker governments, the loss of their credibility and the defeat of the Social Democrats vision of "the Wholly-Socialist Empire" in Western Europe.

But Mr. Clinton, in the background behind Albright, Gore, Javier Solana and Tony Blair on this misadventure (to maintain plausible deniability in launching the mission), has his own reputation to consider. First the alternate end-game must be trial-ballooned, then tried out; then he must allow it to take precedence when the gap between sides narrows. Clinton is a rational actor and knows that Milosevic is too. So watch this newly revealed Plan B evolve in coming days.

Rev. Jackson's Belgrade visit has been in preparation since early April, even before Cypriot Spyros Kyprianou attempted his own intermediation; that is a matter of media record. Dissident sources in Belgrade advised SIRIUS at the time that Kyprianou would not succeed but that an arrangement was in the works. Then, at an April 14^th meeting between Serb-American liberals and NSC staffers (Sandy Berger's office), sources advised me that Mr. Clinton joined the meeting and proposed, himself, that at a future moment, Rev. Jackson would go to Belgrade to attempt some reconciliation and see if the POWs could be released. That happened Sunday morning, though officially, Jackson's effort was disclaimed by Clinton's office --plausible deniability in case the initiative led nowhere.

But Viktor Chernomyrdin (who some suspect of being Al Gore's pliant plaything) showed up with a new and more detailed proposal from Boris Yeltsin, while Russian Prime Minister Yevgenny Primakov increased the firmness of his intention to see a reasonable deal through to agreement. Having met with Clinton, Chernomyrdin continued to meet with Al Gore (whose polls in New Hampshire are slipping fast), and on Tuesday, is meeting with Kofi Annan at the UN, as is Rev. Jackson. There may be fits and starts, but Plan B is evolving.

The gap will have to be closed further, I expect. But Milosevic's last published plan envisioned keeping the 11.000-man Pristina Corps of his army in the province and intended to retain control of the borders and their crossing point functions. NATO hardliners (Albright, Blair, Strobe Talbott), desperate to hang onto their reputations in the face of a failing campaign, still insist that NATO must police the province and only after all Yugoslav military and special police units withdraw --an act of surrender that Yugoslavia will not make. Nor should Belgrade, the pluralist society, accept giving the Serb heartland to a racist, drug-running conspiracy, which is what the KLA remains, despite all Albanian-American and NATO spin control to the contrary:

The above quote betrays the fundamental intellectual dishonesty at every level in this ongoing and increasingly criminal NATO bombing campaign. Yugoslavia is the most multi-ethnic state in Europe; it is the KLA and its ethnocentric supporters who seek an ethnically pure "Greater Albania" at the expense of NATO troops and taxpayers, as well as other ethnic communities in Kosovo.

Reading Clark's statement, one also wonders how much longer Scots in kilts will be suffered by the Wholly-Socialist Empire's enlightened despots. We'll get further into the matter of the Wholly-Socialist Empire on another day.

So NATO bombing continues, getting more malicious each day; more directly aimed at degrading the "quality of life" for Yugoslavia's Serbs and 25 other ethnic groups, though spokesmen all assert the target is Milosevic, and not the people. That sophistry falls on deaf ears as bombs continue to impose "Censorship by Terror" and as carbon-ribbon canisters crash the power grid. The TV station in Novi Sad, wrecked Monday night (without killing anymore technicians or hair dressers) broadcast news in 5 languages to the ethnic communities of Vojvodina: Hungarian, Romanian, Ruthenian, Roma and Slovakian --Serb "propaganda" is generated and broadcast from Belgrade now.

NATO vainly hopes to turn the people, in their increasing misery, against Milosevic. But on Monday, both ABC and CBS's Dan Rather (in Belgrade), confirmed the vast majority of the people stand solidly behind the government as long as the attacks persist. Each bomb makes the people hate NATO more and makes it harder for Clinton to insist that NATO man the peacekeeping mission.

That will be an important factor as the Russian-Jesse Jackson "Plan B" negotiations evolve. In the final scheme, somebody is going to be responsible for disarming the KLA in Southwest Kosovo, and that will be best accomplished by a robust force from the proposed international security presence. More on this as the talks progress.

Oh, Wesley Clark, in his personal spin-campaign, admitted a Jewish grandfather as the root of his personal commitment to justice in the Balkans. It seems he has not explored his Holocaust connection sufficiently to uncover the Nazi connections of his Albanian client-allies, and like the whole Albright-Cohen-Berger-Rubin-Holbrooke team, is ignorant about the Croat-Ustasha concentration camp at Jasenovac.

Liberals on Crusade: There is nothing quite like America's Liberal-Left when they adopt a cause. As we have seen, vital factual history is ignored, heroin overlooked, Albanian racist-exclusionism excused, and international law overrun. In short, sophistry, rhetoric and outright lies are used to justify breaking all the rules --after all "we must do something!"

The Crusade is in trouble. NATO governments, by hanging together, hope to avoid being cast out of office by votes of no confidence, but in fact, they have violated enough international law --the UN Charter, the Helsinki Accords, the Geneva Conventions (perhaps), the NATO Charter, and in the case of Mr. Clinton, the Constitution.

Yugoslavia has filed charges against 10 NATO powers at The World Court in The Hague and hearings are set for May 10-11. A Congressman, Tom Campbell, has filed charges regarding Clinton's violation of the Constitution and suits have sprung up in Norway, Britain and elsewhere.

I do not expect much from all this litigation, but it does add to the pressure to speed forward on Plan B, to bring this tragic debacle to an acceptable end where many sides can safely claim a share in victory.

A Border Fight --Air-Ground: The Times of London reported yesterday that the KLA has succeeded in lodging itself astride the border around Morani, the Serbian post facing the KLA headquarters village of Tropoje. The KLA, we are told, has taken Kusare and is trying to take Morani, while pumping other troops and munitions further into SW Kosovo. The Yugoslav Army, of course, is fighting back.

This sets the stage for a meat-grinder battle where NATO aircraft can inflict meaningful damage on Yugoslav forces while they counter KLA attacks. In such a battle, A-10s and Apaches might have an impact, but risk becoming casualties themselves. We already saw this over the last few days with an F-16 getting shot down and with an F-117A and A-10 getting damaged in separate incidents. It is clear that the Yugoslav air defenses are not as degraded as NATO has publicly asserted they were in briefings.

The A-10 "Warthogs" have started to fly low, circling in holding patterns over Macedonia and Albania, then darting into Kosovo under direction from high-altitude spotter aircraft. This creates realistic risks for Yugoslav forces in that border fight. And the prospect of that fight's casualties is one of the realistic pressure points NATO can seek to maintain on Mr. Milosevic.

The Apaches: With the arrival of AH-64D helicopters plus support in Albania, the Army now has a chip in the big game. But it is a weak chip, despite the official Pentagon suggestion of the Apache's killing power. As David Hackworth has observed, it is being talked up as something of a "silver bullet" weapon, something which, alone, can change the tide of battle. That is only true insofar as the Yugoslav forces adjust their tactics to minimize its threat to personnel and equipment. A two-man, $15million Apache will only have scattered infantry to hunt, even in the above-mentioned border fight around Morani. And the Apache does not have the survivability of the A-10 Warthog.

Nor will the gunships have many high-value targets to attack. The tanks and armored fighting vehicles will be hidden, while infantry lurk in the woods with plenty of shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles. Apaches will, thus, not have many rolling targets to shoot at if they do start dodging around in the border mountains --probably mostly at night. I cannot see the Apaches going beyond those border ridges, and therefore, the gunships will be only of marginal value at best. Again a weapons-target mismatch, again a risk-reward imbalance between value of targets and value of the Apache platform. This will take some pressure off the remnants of the KLA and might allow some further infiltration through the border minefields, but the Apaches cannot force the Yugoslav forces to submit, or even heavily influence the shape of ground combat.

The Apache Longbow has many problems; there are not many of the re-manufactured AH-64Ds deployed yet, and there are not many spare parts. Further, the few available, I am told, have been used heavily in training and maintenance has not been up to standard; they can be fragile, as the training accident in Albania suggests. Further, even when operating with US ground forces in a combined arms environment, during their combat evaluation at Fort Benning last year, though Apaches did demonstrate that they are lethal against Soviet-style armor onslaughts, 32 of 48 were rated "killed" during the simulation. Remember, the US lost over 5000 helicopters in Vietnam before the advent of shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles. There is a final point worth mentioning; the Army is short of trained Apache pilots and weapons officers.

© Copyright 1999 by Benjamin Works - SIRIUS www.siri-us.com