Posted on 09/12/2003 3:45:24 PM PDT by Dog
Robertson's plum job in a warring Nato
As Blair's man is installed, Richard Norton-Taylor details the way the alliance generals have been fighting
Tuesday August 3, 1999 The Guardian
No sooner are we told by Britain's top generals that the Russians played a crucial role in ending the west's war against Yugoslavia than we learn that if Nato's supreme commander, the American General Wesley Clark, had had his way, British paratroopers would have stormed Pristina airport threatening to unleash the most frightening crisis with Moscow since the end of the cold war. "I'm not going to start the third world war for you," General Sir Mike Jackson, commander of the international K-For peacekeeping force, is reported to have told Gen Clark when he refused to accept an order to send assault troops to prevent Russian troops from taking over the airfield of Kosovo's provincial capital.
Hyperbole, perhaps. But, by all accounts, Jackson was deadly serious. Clark, as he himself observed, was frustrated after fighting a war with his hands tied behind his back, and was apparently willing to risk everything for the sake of amour-propre .
Nato's increasingly embarrassing, not to say ineffective, air assault on Yugoslavia, had ended. It was over, not least as General Sir Charles Guthrie, chief of the defence staff, acknowledged in an interview with the Guardian, thanks to the intervention of Moscow - its refusal to come to the aid of Belgrade. The point was emphatically underlined by Jackson in a further interview over the weekend with the Sunday Telegraph.
"The event of June 3 [when Moscow urged Milosevic to surrender] was the single event that appeared to me to have the greatest significance in ending the war," said Jackson. Asked about the bombing campaign, he added pointedly: "I wasn't responsible for the air campaign, you're talking to the wrong person."
Having helped Nato out of its predicament, Moscow was embroiled in arguments with Washington about the status of Russian troops in the K-For operation. For reasons to do with efficiency as much as power politics, the west insisted the Russian contingent must be "Nato-led". With or without Yeltsin's say-so, on June 12 a group of some 200 Russian troops drove out of Bosnia - where they were serving with the Nato-led S-For stabilisation force - and in full view of the world's television cameras made for Pristina airport where Jackson had planned to set up his K-For headquarters guarded by British paratroopers.
The Russians had made a political point, not a military one. It was apparently too much for Clark. According to the US magazine, Newsweek, General Clark ordered an airborne assault on the airfield by British and French paratroopers. General Jackson refused. Clark then asked Admiral James Ellis, the American commander of Nato's southern command, to order helicopters to occupy the airport to prevent Russian Ilyushin troop carriers from sending in reinforcements. Ellis replied that the British General Jackson would oppose such a move. In the end the Ilyushins were stopped when Washington persuaded Hungary, a new Nato member, to refuse to allow the Russian aircraft to fly over its territory.
Jackson got full support from the British government for his refusal to carry out the American general's orders. When Clark appealed to Washington, he was allegedly given the brush-off. The American is said to have complained to Jackson about the British general's refusal to accept the order to take over Pristina airfield, and Jackson's subsequent appeal to his political masters when Clark visited Kosovo on June 24.
The unsuccessful issuing of Clark's order has left a bitter taste, especially given the delay in US marines joining the K-For operation - a delay which Jackson had been prepared to indulge even though it held up the entry into Kosovo. Had the British general carried out Clark's instruction, all hope for a compromise with the Russians would have been shattered. In the end, Nato and Moscow reached a compromise and General Jackson willingly provided water and other supplies to stranded Russian paratroopers holed up at the airfield. He swallowed any hurt pride he might have had by insisting, not entirely convincingly, that control of the airfield was not important.
The episode triggers reminiscences of the Korean war. Then, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the UN force, wanted to invade, even nuke, China, until he was brought to heel by President Truman. So concerned was Clement Attlee that he urgently flew to Washington to put an end to such madness. MacArthur was relieved of his command.
The comparison, of course, is not exact, but worth recording nonetheless. Last week, Clark was told in a telephone conversation from General Henry Shelton, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, that he must leave his post early and make way for an older man, General Joseph Ralston, a favourite of the American defence secretary, William Cohen. Clark fell victim, not only to the Pristina airfield row, but to his tense relationship with Washington throughout the war - his repeated requests for more aircraft, including Apache helicopters (never used in conflict because of the risk to pilots), the need for a ground force contingency plan and an altogether more effective strategy against Milosevic, a man he got to know well during the 1995 Dayton peace negotiations on Bosnia. Asked to comment on Clark's forced retirement, Jackson replied: "He is my superior officer and that's it."
So Nato will have a new supreme military commander close to Cohen and a new secretary-general - George Robertson - equally close to the US defence secretary as documents released under the US freedom of information act and reported today elsewhere in this newspaper testify. Though Nato was looking for a German - the defence minister, Rudolf Scharping declined - Robertson is said to have the enthusiastic support of the French and German governments to succeed the Spaniard, Javier Solana, who will take up a new post responsible for developing the EU's incipient common foreign and security policy.
What does Robertson's appointment - expected to be formally approved tomorrow - signify ? He is regarded as having a "safe" pair of hands. He is unlikely to take risks. His main task will be to straddle the Atlantic, to help patch fissures in the alliance which almost cracked during the Kosovo war, and to persuade the Europeans to cooperate more effectively in the defence and security field.
Robertson has talked much of "defence diplomacy". He will need to put this into practice, no more so than in Nato's relations with Russia, as the transatlantic alliance looks towards the east. The superficial rhetoric, Anglo-American arrogance, and the dangerously presumptuous approach towards Moscow, must be laid to rest.
Now he and a few other useless perfumed princes of the Pentagon are trashing Rumsfeld, President Bush and all of our magnificent military.
Behind Clark's ramblings you will find Shinseki, Zinni, Shelton, and Hackworth that washed up dirtbag.
Shinseki is about to run for that senate seat as Inouye is retiring.
IMO the whole traitorous crew ought to be ..........oh well, I'll keep my opinion to myself as I wouldn't want a visit from the secret service.
CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."
RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"
CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence." [end]
As far as I know we "never got any evidence" that the general was telling the truth.
OUR GROUP IS DEPLOYING A MAJOR ANTI-CLARK WEBSITE.
IF YOU HAVE ANY CREDIBLE, POWERFUL, UNFAVORABLE RESEARCH ON WESLEY CLARK...PLEASE PRIVATELY REPLY TO ME.
THANK YOU ALL IN ADVANCE.
--montag
This crisis was more serious than it appeared on the surface. The Russian move very likely was not ordered by Yeltsin, it could be a provocation by hard line Russian military which wanted to overthrow Yeltsin and help Serbs. Clark was walking into a trap.
After Brits prevented the disaster, Yeltsin rewarded responsible officers and pretended to be in control. But his days were numbered.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.