Author: Benjamin S. Lambeth
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833032372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
This book offers a thorough appraisal of Operation Allied Force, NATO's 78-day air war to compel the president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, to end his campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The author sheds light both on the operation's strengths and on its most salient weaknesses. He outlines the key highlights of the air war and examines the various factors that interacted to induce Milosevic to capitulate when he did. He then explores air power's most critical accomplishments in Operation Allied Force as well as the problems that hindered the operation both in its planning and in its execution. Finally, he assesses Operation Allied Force from a political and strategic perspective, calling attention to those issues that are likely to have the greatest bearing on future military policymaking. The book concludes that the air war, although by no means the only factor responsible for the allies' victory, certainly set the stage for Milosevic's surrender by making it clear that he had little to gain by holding out. It concludes that in the end, Operation Allied Force's most noteworthy distinction may lie in the fact that the allies prevailed despite the myriad impediments they faced.
Author: Phil M. Haun
Publisher: www.Militarybookshop.CompanyUK
ISBN: 9781780392769
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
First published in 2003. The NATO-led Operation Allied Force was fought in 1999 to stop Serb atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. This war, as noted by the distinguished military historian John Keegan, "marked a real turning point . . . and proved that a war can be won by airpower alone." Colonels Haave and Haun have organized firsthand accounts of some of the people who provided that airpower-the members of the 40th Expeditionary Operations Group. Their descriptions-a new wingman's first combat sortie, a support officer's view of a fighter squadron relocation during combat, and a Sandy's leadership in finding and rescuing a downed F-117 pilot-provide the reader with a legitimate insight into an air war at the tactical level and the airpower that helped convince the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, to capitulate.
Author: A. J. Bacevich
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023112483X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
This is a concise history of the war for Kosovo. It offers a new lens through which to view U.S. national security in the age of globalization.
Author: Ivo H. Daalder
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780815798422
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
After eleven weeks of bombing in the spring of 1999, the United States and NATO ultimately won the war in Kosovo. Serbian troops were forced to withdraw, enabling an international military and political presence to take charge in the region. But was this war inevitable or was it the product of failed western diplomacy prior to the conflict? And once it became necessary to use force, did NATO adopt a sound strategy to achieve its aims of stabilizing Kosovo? In this first in-depth study of the Kosovo crisis, Ivo Daalder and Michael O'Hanlon answer these and other questions about the causes, conduct, and consequences of the war. Based on interviews with many of the key participants, they conclude that notwithstanding important diplomatic mistakes before the conflict, it would have been difficult to avoid the Kosovo war. That being the case, U.S. and NATO conduct of the war left much to be desired. For more than four weeks, the Serbs succeeded where NATO failed, forcefully changing Kosovo's ethnic balance by forcing 1.5 million Albanians from their home and more than 800,000 from the country. Had they chosen to massacre more of their victims, NATO would have been powerless to stop them. In the end, NATO won the war by increasing the scope and intensity of bombing, making serious plans for a ground invasion, and moving diplomacy into full gear in order to convince Belgrade that this was a war Serbia would never win. The Kosovo crisis is a cautionary tale for those who believe force can be used easily and in limited increments to stop genocide, mass killing, and the forceful expulsion of entire populations. Daalder and O'Hanlon conclude that the crisis holds important diplomatic and military lessons that must be learned so that others in the future might avoid the mistakes that were made in this case.
Author: Robert H. Gregory
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1612347312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
"Clean Bombs and Dirty Wars: Air Power in Kosovo and Libya explores how the U.S. public, policymakers, and military services perceived and utilized air power and precision munitions before, during, and after Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999 with incorrect assumptions"--
Author: Mark Clodfelter
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803264540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Tracing the use of air power in World War II and the Korean War, Mark Clodfelter explains how U. S. Air Force doctrine evolved through the American experience in these conventional wars only to be thwarted in the context of a limited guerrilla struggle in Vietnam. Although a faith in bombing's sheer destructive power led air commanders to believe that extensive air assaults could win the war at any time, the Vietnam experience instead showed how even intense aerial attacks may not achieve military or political objectives in a limited war. Based on findings from previously classified documents in presidential libraries and air force archives as well as on interviews with civilian and military decision makers, The Limits of Air Power argues that reliance on air campaigns as a primary instrument of warfare could not have produced lasting victory in Vietnam. This Bison Books edition includes a new chapter that provides a framework for evaluating air power effectiveness in future conflicts.
Author: Stephen T. Hosmer
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833032380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 191
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Book Description
This report examines the reasons Slobodan Milosevic, the then president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, decided on June 3, 1999, to accept NATO's conditions for terminating the conflict over Kosovo. Drawing in part upon the testimony of Milosevic and other senior Serb and foreign officials who directly interacted with Milosevic, the report analyzes (1) the assumptions and other calculations that underlay Milosevic's initial decision to defy NATO's demands with regard to Kosovo, and (2) the political, economic, and military developments and pressures, and the resulting expectations and concerns that most importantly influenced his subsequent decision to come to terms. While several interrelated factors, including Moscow's eventual endorsement of NATO's terms, helped shape Milosevic's decision to yield, it was the cumulative effect of NATO air power that proved most decisive. The allied bombing of Serbia's infrastructure targets, as it intensified, stimulated a growing interest among both the Servian public and Belgrade officials to end the conflict. Milosevic's belief that the bombing that would follow a rejection of NATO's June 2 peace terms would be massively destructive and threatening to his continued rule made a settlement seem imperative. Also examined are some implications for future U.S. and allied military capabilities and operations.
Author: Gian P. Gentile
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814731352
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
In the wake of WWII, President Truman established the US Strategic Bombing Survey to determine how effectively strategic air power had been applied during the war. The final study has been used for decades as an objective primary source and a guiding text. Gentile (history, US Military Academy) re-examines this document to reveal how it reflected the American conceptual approach to strategic bombing. He exposes the survey as largely tautological, throwing into question many of the central tenets of American air power philosophy and strategy. He shows how recent problems with bomb damage assessment in the Balkans reinforce his conclusions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Anthony H. Cordesman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313073929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
The conclusion of a war typically signals the beginning of a flood of memoirs and instant campaign histories, many presenting the purported, but often dubious lessons of the recent conflict. Cordesman is careful to avoid such pitfalls in this detailed and closely reasoned analysis, and helps us to begin to understand the implications of this dramatic conflict on its own terms. Based on a combination of official and unofficial (but always authoritative) sources, he builds a thorough case for the true lessons of NATO's first battle fought within Europe. After consideration of the historical, major political, and strategic factors that set the stage for the Kosovo campaign, Cordesman critically examines the actual effectiveness of the NATO air campaigns, both in Kosovo and Serbia proper. Operations in this rugged part of Europe were difficult, and compounding the challenges of terrain and weather were the conflicting national agendas within the Allied coalition that seriously hampered focused and decisive action by NATO. Although Milosevic ultimately conceded defeat, all of these factors played an important role in limiting the intensity and shaping the military outcome of the campaign, and the likely political and strategic results were far from certain. Cordesman unflinchingly concludes, that the air campaign over Kosovo exposed deep fault lines within and among the NATO countries and fundamental flaws in the way the West wages war.
Author: Michael Ignatieff
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312278359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
"Virtual War" describes the latest phase in modern combat: war fought by remote control. Kosovo was such a virtual war, a war in which US and NATO forces did the fighting but only Kosovars and Serbs did the dying. Ignatieff raises the troubling possibility that virtual wars, so much easier to fight, could become the way superpowers impose their will in the century ahead.
