The Limits of Coercive Airpower: NATO's “Victory” in Kosovo Revisited

Abstract

Many studies of the 1999 Kosovo crisis argue that although airpower played an important role in forcing President Slobodan Milošević's capitulation, NATO's threat of a ground invasion was critical. Other studies claim that no such threat existed or that it was irrelevant to ending the crisis. Instead, they attribute NATO's success solely to the strategic use of coercive airpower. There is, however, another explanation: the rising dissatisfaction with Milošević's rule among his supporters as the crisis dragged on. Despite NATO's overwhelming strategic superiority, Milošević was able to reject his adversary's terms of surrender until his political position became untenable. This suggests that airpower may have greater limitations as a tool of statecraft than its supporters maintain.

Kosovo traumas: How NATO got out of its depth in crisis management operations

“…The risk that NATO could get caught between expansive humanitarian values and limited national interests is reflected also in the debate on air strategy: the NATO Kosovo campaign command was riveted by dissent between the supreme commander, General Wesley Clark, who sought to tailor the use of force to political limits and subordinate commanders, notably Lt. Gen. Michael Short, NATO's Joint Air Force Component Commander, who pleaded for a classical campaign of shock and awe (Henriksen, 2007). A great air power debate ensued wherein some argued that it was politically dangerous to believe that advanced technology-air power-could decide complex societal conflicts as the one in Kosovo (Lieven, 2001), some argued for the power of air force to decide even complex wars (Harvey, 2006), others argued that a mix of military and diplomatic efforts had sealed NATO's ultimate success (Byman and Waxman, 2000) and yet others that the end of the war was due not so much to NATO's strategic choices as the exhaustion of the strategy adopted by Serb president Milosevic (Posen, 2000;Lake, 2009). Leadership thus applied to the traditional axis of politico-military command and its relevance for new wars and conflicts.…”

Flying to Fail: Costly Signals and Air Power in Crisis Bargaining

“…On the other hand, Byman and Waxman (2000) argue that air power played a role, but the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's threat of a ground invasion ultimately ended the conflict. Lake (2009) challenges all of these conclusions over Kosovo, arguing that strategic bombing in conjunction with economic and political sanctioning caused political destabilization in Milošević's regime.…”

“…A number of scholars and policy analysts have analyzed the ability of air power to coerce within interstate war (Pape 1996;Byman et al, 1999;Horowitz and Reiter 2001;Byman and Waxman 2002;Allen 2007; Van Creveld 2011; Pietrucha and Renken 2015) and in the context of counterinsurgency (Corum and Johnson 2003;Kocher, Pepinsky, and Kalyvas 2011;Johnston and Sarbahi 2016;Lyall 2014;Felter 2014). There is also a considerable debate over specific cases such as the 1999 air campaign over Kosovo (Byman and Waxman 2000;Stigler 2002Stigler /2003Pape 2004;Lake 2009), the Persian Gulf War (Press 2001), and the Vietnam counterinsurgency (Clodfelter 1989;Thies 1980). Most academic scholarship suggests that air power lacks general coercive utility within war (Pape 1996).…”

Space and War, Constants and Change from a Historical Perspective

“…omezenou efektivitu (Pape 1996, Press 2001, Lake 2009. Ačkoliv je tedy možné provádět strategické bombardování na velké vzdálenosti, obvykle takové akce mají samy o sobě jen omezený dopad na vojenskou moc napadeného státu.…”