Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat [Hardcover]

General Wesley K. Clark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 22, 2001

The Supreme Allied Commander who directed and won NATO's war in Kosovo offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at how the war was actually fought, and explains the conflict's surprising implications for how war will be waged in the decades to come. Ugly, shocking, frightening, war came to Europe once more in March 1999. The world watched in dismay as Yugoslavia's military machine attacked its own citizens in the province of Kosovo. Pictures of refugees fleeing and stories of murder and rape flashed to the top of the news. But this time, the United States and its allies intervened. Using an innovative, high-technology air operation, NATO brought modern military power to bear against Serb forces in the field and the machinery of repression that backed them up. It was modern war-limited in scope, measured in effect, extraordinarily complex in execution. The American commander who oversaw this massive military effort and managed the often incompatible demands of NATO's nineteen governments was General Wesley K. Clark. In Waging Modern War, Clark recounts not only the events that led to armed conflict, but also the context within which he made the key strategic decisions. He also describes, for the first time, the personal conflict he felt as he walked the tightrope of high diplomacy and military strategy and navigated the crushing restraints of domestic politics. Laying out the new realities of war-fighting and war-planning, Clark reveals how the American military infrastructure will have to adapt if it is to meet new threats. This is the story of war today, and as it will be fought tomorrow.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

U.S. Army General Clark describes this account of his tenure as commander of the 1999 Kosovo operation as a personal memoir. But the book, Clark's first, uses a narrative of the campaign as the springboard for a provocative analysis of contemporary war. Clark, in contrast to other American military leaders, places protecting human rights among U.S. vital interests. By the time diplomatic and political options have been exhausted and armed force is employed, he notes, the stakes have become too high for defeat or withdrawal to be acceptable. The military effort is thus impelled by political factors (and political failures), which in turn renders difficult the application of traditional "principles of war" that focus on quick, decisive victory. Military options are further restricted, Clark notes, by dynamics within both the general public and the armed forces that make unacceptable both taking casualties and inflicting them in any number. Clark correspondingly regards air campaigns, along the lines developed in Kosovo but with improved technology, better intelligence and a more sophisticated public-relations element, as the most generally acceptable future form of large-scale military action. Ground operations, he declares, are currently too slow, too costly, too indecisive and too unpredictable to be a first choice in the complicated political and diplomatic matrices of modern warmaking. Instead, Clark favors developing a more mobile, more deployable U.S. army, and urges considering Europe's relatively successful experience in constabulary-type missions. In the same context, Clark disparages the prospects of unilateral action, instead arguing for the overriding importance of maintaining integrated, allied military operations. Clark's affirmation of the continued importance of NATO is, however, balanced by his demonstration that, as supreme allied commander, Europe, he still retained ample authority to protect U.S. interests. Complex and controversial, this work merits wide public discussion for its analysis of a superpower's role in a regional conflict the sort the U.S. will most likely continue to face in the coming decade.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

General Wesley K. Clark, U.S.A. (Ret.), was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, from 1997 to 2000. He served previously as director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon from 1994 to 1996 and was the lead military negotiator for the Bosnian Peace Accords at Dayton in 1995.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 479 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (May 22, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158648043X
• ISBN-13: 978-1586480431
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > History > Europe > Serbia
  • #7 in Books > History > Europe > Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding book, May 23, 2001

By 

Misha (Staten Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (Hardcover)

Obviously, General Clark is not out to win a lot of friends with the publication of this book, a damning account of how politics and war make, at best, awkward bedfellows and at worst, the potential for inadvertent sabotage.

More telling (for me, anyway) than the tone of the book, which shows how political claptrap can tie a commander's hands from committing intelligently (no lessons learned from previous conflicts?), Clark shows throughout the entire book that everything we have been taught regarding the basic principles of warfare, from Sun-Tzu to Clausewitz and beyond, have been completely done away with in the Bosnian conflict. Through technology in our weaponry, the delivery platforms, the intelligence, and most pointedly, in our communications networks (particularly the media), by which we more or less spoon-fed Milosevic our every move well in advance, thus eliminating the vital element of surprise.

Another notion that has brought angst to most Americans is that of the "no-civilian-casualties" conflict. Clark echoes, point-blank, the same words that every commander throughout the history of modern warfare has muttered - war is hell, and people will be killed, combatants and non-combatants; that's the nature of war. With smart technology at our feet, and brilliant weapons technology knocking at the door, we have come to expect that firing a missile onto a bridge where a bus is passing will somehow have allowed the bus to escape unharmed. It's not possible now, nor will it be possible in the future. The weapons, as Clark states, can only be as perfect as not only the people who develop them, but as the people who upload them, arm them, test them, engineer them, and ultimately fire them. I would take it a step further and add that the weapons are only as good as the intelligence which feeds them.

Clark has written a book that deserves recognition as a bold step in Warfare Theory literature, and should be on the Airman's and Soldier's official reading lists for officers and enlisted alike.

26 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most Miss Point: Book Excells At Highlighting Our Weaknesses, November 3, 2001

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (Hardcover)

Every citizen should read this book so they can instruct their elected representatives and vote for military reform. As things now stand, we will lose the war on terrorism over time because of the perennial flaws in our system that this book identifies.

Don't Bother Us Now. The U.S. political system is not structured to pay attention to "early warning". Kosovo (as well as Croatia and Serbia beforehand and later Macedonia) were well known looming problems, but in the aftermath of the Gulf War, both Congress and the Administration in power at the time said to the U.S. Intelligence Community, essentially: "don't bother us anymore with this, this is inconvenient warning, we'll get to it when it explodes." We allowed over a hundred thousand to be murdered in genocide, because our political system was "tired."

"Modern war" is an overwhelming combination of micro-management from across the varied nations belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; a reliance on very high-tech weapons with precision effect that are useless in the absence of precision intelligence (and the lawyers insist the intelligence be near-real-time, a virtual impossibility for years to come); and an obsession with avoiding casualties that hand-cuffs our friendly commanders and gives great encouragement to our enemies.

Services versus Commanders. The military services that under Title 10 are responsible for training, equipping, and organizing the forces--but not for fighting them, something the regional commanders-in-chief must do--have become--and I say this advisedly--the biggest impediment to the successful prosecution of operations. The detailed story of the Army staff resistance to the use of the Apache helicopters is the best case study I have ever seen of how senior staff generals with political access can prevent operational generals with field responsibilities from being fully effective. In combination with the insistence of the services that forces be held back for Korean and Persian Gulf threats that might not be realized, instead of supporting a real war that existed in Europe, simply stated, makes it clear that there is a "seam" between our force-creating generals and our force-fighting generals that has gotten *out of control.* The fog of war is thickest in Washington, and the greatest friction--the obstacles to success in war--are largely of our own making.

Lawyers, Fear, and Micro-Management. Just as we recently witnessed a lawyer overruling the general to avoid killing the commander of the Taliban, General Clark's war was dominated by lawyers, a fear of casualties, and micro-management, from Washington, of his use of every weapons system normally left to the discretion of the field commander. This has gotten completely out of hand. Within NATO it is compounded by multi-national forces whose commanders can refuse orders inconsistent with their own national view of things, but reading this book, one is left with the clear understanding that General Clark was fighting a three-front war at all times: with the real enemy, with the media, and with Washington--his NATO commanders were the least of his problems.

Technology Loses to Weather and Lacks Intelligence. Throughout the book there are statements that make it clear that the U.S. military is not yet an all-weather military, and has a very long way to go before it ever will be. Aligned with this incapacity is a high-technology culture that suffers from very weak maintenance and an almost complete lack of intelligence at the level of precision and with the timeliness that is needed for our very expensive weapons to be effective. Nothing has changed since MajGen Bob Scales wrote his excellent Firepower in Limited War, pointing out that artillery still cannot be adequately supported by the intelligence capabilities we have now.

Strategic Mobility Shortfalls, Tactical Aviation Constraints. Although General Clark judges the air war to have been a success, and an essential factor in facilitating "coercive diplomacy", he also communicates two realities about U.S. military aviation: 1) we do not have the strategic aviation lift to get anywhere in less than 90-180 days, and his request for a 75 day mobilization was not possible as a result; and 2) our tactical aviation assets are so specialized, and require so much advance preparation in terms of munitions, route planning, and so on, that they cannot be readily redirected in less than a full day. A full day. This is simply outlandish.

We Don't Do Mountains. No statement in the book hurt me more than one by an Army general telling General Clark that his plans for the ground campaign could not be supported by the U.S. Army because "we don't do mountains" This, in combination with the loser's attitude (no casualties) and the general reluctance of the services to put their high-tech capabilities like the Apache at risk in a real war, sum up the decrepitude of the U.S. military leadership and the Revolution in Military Affairs-Andrew Gordon in Rules of the Game has it exactly right-the post Viet-Nam and post Cold War era has left us with a bunch of high-tech chickens in control of military resources, and we need to find ourselves some rat-catchers able to redirect our military toward a lust for man to man combat in every clime and place-and the low-tech sustainable tools to do the job.

General Clark's concluding words, on page 459: "In Kosovo my commanders and I found that we lacked the detailed prompt information to campaign effectively against the Serb ground forces. Most of the technologies we had been promoting since the Gulf War were still immature, unable to deal with the vagaries of weather, vegetation, and urban areas, or the limitations of bandwidth and airspace. The discrete service programs didn't always fit together technically. And (sic) the officers who operated the programs were not qualified to work across service lines and did not understand the full range of national capabilities. I worried about the nature of Joint skills even among senior officers." Are we ready? No.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read For Political & Military Leaders, October 21, 2001

By 

S. Miska (Germany) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (Hardcover)

General (Retired) Clark writes the best account of the tensions and competing demands of senior military leaders trying to bridge the divide between politics and military operations. He also clearly explains the linkages between our national security strategy (NSS) and national military strategy (NMS). As an insider during the Dayton Peace Accords, he had the benefit of understanding the development of a NSS with regard to the Balkans. He was able to transmit his unique insights during Dayton into an effective military campaign to bolster the credibility of NATO and keep soldiers from needlessly getting injured.

Anyone on the staff or getting ready to assume a political office which relates to our NSS should read this book to understand the frustrations of competing demands placed on military commanders in a highly complex environment. Likewise, all future field grade officers should read and understand General Clark's insights. Given the complex nature of military engagement and the blurring of strategic, operational, and tactical realms due to new technology and the media, military leaders would do well to study this book. Warfare has changed in many substantive, as well as subtle ways. Thoughts on the subjects that General Clark exposes could save allied soldiers lives in the future.

This book is a great addition to any military library and those interested in strategic thinking.